The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

Game feels a little bit "old" when it comes to certain gameplay techniques, but it's still worth checking out for the story. Very much recommended to The Witcher fans, but also to people who dont mind checking out some older RPGs.

I played the original years ago and struggled badly with it, giving up after 10 or so hours. In the following years, I read the entire series of books (both the saga and the short story collections) and thus went into this with a lot more familarity and enthusiasm. Unfortunately...I hated it. The interminable backtracking through a dull environment. The voice acting (who on earth thought Dandelion should sound like that?!). The shallow combat, with dubious hit detection and strikingly limited animations. The performance (framerate drops on a GTX1080, with ubersampling off and at 1080p). The way you have to be angled just so to interact with objects. The drawn-out cutscenes. The QTEs. The cheap boss battles. Such a disappointment.

Do you know that feeling when you like a good B movie, with no much money in it, but which can still be cool and immersive, and then, there's an AAA hollywoodian sequel which is more spectacular but just sucks ? So welcome to TW2... the first game came a bit of nowhere, it wasn't jawbreaking, but it was fun, immersive, with a lot to do, you could just walk and enjoy the NPC's behavior... TW2 is no fun at all... the consolization was a massacre, not because it was "consolized", I don't care when it's well done, as it was with the Elder Scrolls or the Fallout series, with their deep but still smooth gameplay... but TW2 feels like a bad 90's game, no shortcuts, awful menus where you spend to much time doing too much little... not only the game is awfully unergonomic, but even the fighting system is outdated... CD Red wanted to do an action game, wich doesn't stand with 201x's action game's standards, when you come from games such as the Batman Arkham series, which also mix a lot of stuff, TW2 looks like a bad joke... Geralt weights a ton, simply walking around is a pain... When the first game was immersive, you could feel the thrill of anticipation as you prepared yourself for an exploration, in TW2, preparation is useless, and the most important battles come out of nowhere, so you haven't the time to prepare, and most time, you'll simply die just like that, you can't anticipate a thing... I just can't figure where the hype around this game came from, it's not a good game, at all, not only as a "the witcher" game, but as a game, bad gameplay, way too linear, bad balance of difficulty, as a game TW2 just sucks in every area, aside graphics (still great in this aspect) and story. Oh, and where's the link with the first game ? Where's Shani ? They didn't even took a line of dialog to invent an excuse for her being totally missing from the game's script... finally, using a TW1 gamesave is useless... I just can't figure how some people can give more than 2 stars to that thing...

I love this game.!!!!! I can play fine on medium settings resolution in my laptop with a radeon HD8850M .

If you liked Witcher 1, the story and RPG elements are along the same line. Great, in my opinion. If you haven't played Witcher 1, I strongly recommend that you do that first, as the story continues here. If you disliked in Witcher 1 that all young female characters are portrayed with large breasts and revealing cleavage (if you are a woman, I guess you might), that is still the case here. This would not be an issue if all male characters were equivalently portrayed as, say, tall and muscular, but there is plenty of variety on the male side, making the game appear sexist. One fundamental difference from Witcher 1 is the combat, including boss fights. IMHO this was a poor decision by the game makers. Unless you play on 'Easy' difficulty, you will die often in fights at the beginning (especially in boss fights). This works in action games (where you are expected to die to discover what enemies do), but not in RPGs where it is about gameplay immersion. Until you put sufficient points in the skill tree, the only way for Geralt to counter attacks by stronger foes is by rolling. Geralt has a sword on his back, another in his hand, and is wearing armor, yet he rolls like an Olympic gymnast. This may work in platform games, but ruins the RPG experience. As you advance, you can rely on signs/alchemy/combat skills to counter/absorb attacks (as you would expect from an RPG) rather than on silly acrobatics, but I estimate I was about midgame when my character was strong enough to stop using rolling. In summary, if you are a fan of The Witcher stories, I would recommend the game. The story is interesting, which is what matters. If you like more action-oriented RPGs (e.g. Dark Souls), you will probably enjoy all aspects of the game, including the combat. If, on the other hand, you don't have much interest in The Witcher story as such, but like RPGs, note that for me the combat style and the boss fights, at the least for the first part of the game, were ruining the experience.