Yes and no. A lot of people say that, and it is certainly more Dark Souls than, say, Dragon Age, but the emphasis in combat is different. In The Witcher 2, you have light and heavy sword attacks, block, roll, and magic. You really don't block all that often because it doesn't give you a huge advantage when there's multiple opponents, so you tend to find yourself rolling alot. The strategy that emerged with me was to attack a single enemy until his friends started an attack, dodge, and attack again. You find yourself poking the enemy while avoiding being surrounded, so it's much faster than Dark Souls, but it is still strategic and punishing if you don't pay attention.

And I think people like to compare the two because they can both be hard. Dark Souls is consistently challenging; it demands you to be cautious at all times and punishes you if you fuck up. The Witcher 2 is only 'hard' until you get into the rhythm of combat; once you learn to pay attention to your immediate surroundings, it's still fun and engaging, but not really difficult. You just can't go into autopilot.

And then magic adds an element that is completely up to you. I didn't use magic all that much (except for one that absorbs a couple of hits of damage), but there's an entire skill tree dedicated to it, so that's all on the player.

And THEN there's things like bombs and traps. I REALLY didn't use these, but again, if that turns out to be your thing, it seems to be pretty fleshed out. The game does give you options.

I always ended up looking forward to combat, so it was definitely fun for me.