The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

This is easily my favorite of the 3 Witcher games to date, and I'd say I enjoyed my time with it, but it was just fine. The combat wasn't bad, but it was a little sluggish for my liking, and switching swords only really happens when it feels like it; I'd sometimes have to tell it 3 or 4 times in a row before it'd happen. This was definitely streamlined from the first game, which isn't bad, but I didn't dislike the researching elements. I would've liked more big monster battles in this, too; the first big monster you fight is really exciting, and after that, you don't really get much of anything else like it. For a game about a monster hunter, that was a bit underwhelming for me. The writing still wasn't great; it kept telling me that Geralt hates politics, but you keep getting forced into political involvement. Sure, these things can happen, but why write it that way? More than that, none of the characters really hooked me, and most of the time, I wasn't really invested in any of the things I was doing. Now, I love Mega Man, so that's not a dealbreaker on its own, but if the gameplay isn't that interesting, either, then what's left? My favorite thing about the game was seeing all the different armors on my character, and that should be pretty telling. The game isn't bad at all, and of the 3, it's the only one that I finished, but I didn't think it was outstanding, either.

Keyboard options are Qwerty, Qwertz or Azerty. If you're on anything else, the game is going to use scancodes and prompt you to press keys based on what they'd be labelled on a keyboard that it knows about. The tutorial decides to teach lots of the keys in a single session, and moves on to the next topic as soon as you perform current topic once. Sometimes the tutorial disables the move that the previous topic was teaching - so perform it once, and then it gets disabled immediately, without the opportunity to practise it before the next topic gives a new key to learn. Counter-attacks are done by blocking and then attacking at the right time. I got stuck for a long time trying to block at the right time but rarely seeing the icon saying that a counter-attack was possible, only to find that there's no limit on the time spent blocking - if you're just stood waiting in the block pose then the enemy will attack in a way that makes them vulnerable. It did come together - when the tutorial was telling me to press C to open the character screen and assign talent points, pressing C actually opened the inventory, showing me that I had a mutagen item. After entering the correct screen, I assigned the talent point and returned to the tutorial, which was still telling me to press C and assign talent points (no mention of mutagens in the German text). So I pressed C again, and noticed that I still had a mutagen, and then poked everything in the character screen until I found a way to use that mutagen. There's a review below from someone who got stuck there, by this broken message. As the game has a lot of high-ratings, I might try it again with a controller instead of mouse+keyboard. However, based just on the tutorial and then re-reading other reviews with the hindsight of that, there's much better games to play instead of learning the controls and UI design of this one.

I can't throw bombs in the tutorial - so I'm stuck in the stupid arena. I can't believe such a gamebraker even in the enhanced version. Sorry, but a game with only 30 minutes of (frustrating) gameplay deserves only one star.

I recently bought Witcher 2 but it has some serious problems which cant be fixed, here is my review: Combat system is a blend of Bushido Blade and Street Fighter 2. Both of those games are really old so dont expect much fun with Witcher 2. I Played on hard difficulty and the combat requires varied strategy and tight reflexes. Not impressed. There is a terrible bug which causes you to get hacked to death if you're surrounded by 4 or more enemies. I've been working around it by placing myself strategically and disabling enemies with traps and magic. This way you can kill them one at a time. It works ok but requires you be constantly aware of enemy positions when fighting or they'll go off the screen and then come back and stab you in the back. Hopefully CDPR fix this for the 360 version. Graphics are a letdown. As an example, spend some time looking at the trees. They look just like a tree you might find outside. Its a straight copy. The light dances off the leaves and the branches float gently in the wind. Not an ounce of creativity. Who did the trees in this game? I want names and contact details. Character animation is equally unimpressive. Its almost like they recorded actual people doing hundreds of different movements and then just put them all together like Dragon's Lair did in 1983. Very lazy of the animators and its easy to tell that everything was recorded like a film except they couldnt afford a movie studio because theres stuff going on in the background all the time. Aside from the main actors, if you look carefully you can see all the extras fidgeting around and talking to each other, its not very professional but I guess they were tired after doing a billion takes of the same scene, they swear alot too. The story is a total mess. I bet they didnt even use a script, you can tell because the actors just talk to each other about crap all the time. They stuffed up the characters REAL bad, its impossible to tell who's on your side. The writers are trying to copy Mass Effect where good guys turn to bad guys and vice versa, but they cant pull it off because its impossible to tell which are the good guys and bad guys in the first place. Dont expect an awesome story like Mass Effect where you actually get *surprised* when a character totally changes halfway through from good to evil because they never acted like that in the first place. They are writing a book based on Mass Effect, perhaps the CDPR writers could get some tips from that? Overall I'm dissapointed with this game.

See title