The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

The Witcher 2 truly is the sequel the first game deserved. True, the UI isn't perfect, the game doesn't do a very good job of getting the player started in the beginning and difficulty of combat suffers from slight imbalances. In the end though, none of those problems do matter or detract from the overall experience. You'll meet old and new faces, all memorable, throughout the entirety of the grim story in this grim world. Your choices have actual impact on how things play out, moreso even than in the first game. Often you'll have to chose the lesser of two evils and the only one to judge whether it was right or wrong are you yourself and some of the people around you. Combat will be difficult, especially in the beginning, and without making use of all of your Witcher's tools, preparing for combat by reading up on the Monsters you'll be fighting, brewing potions and building traps you'll be having a hard time. The actual combat then is fun and rewarding, though a bit clunky at times. And of course the game looks gorgeous, but that's just the icing on the cake. As good games, films and books sometimes do, The Witcher 2 left me wanting more once I was finished. It also left me wondering about the fate of some of the characters, as well as miss others at the credits already. And since there were a lot of points at which I knew things could have turned out very differently I started over right away. Which I have never done with any game, ever. Not right away. But I couldn't help it, as I knew that what I had just experienced was one of the greatest if not the greatest RPG of all time period.

This game has its annoyances: as in Oblivion, or Fallout 3, or the Witcher 1, you will sometimes walk past three or four NPCs who all make the same remark about your character. Yes, lady, I lose my swords all the time: didn't you hear the last person point that out? It ticks me off that, like in the first game, combat that begins after loading (following a cutscene) seems to give the AI enemy a huge head start. And I haven't figured out an obvious way to see the quantity of items I have in my "pocket" slots (without putting them back in general inventory). Nonetheless, this has very quickly become one of my favorite games ever played. It does three things incredibly well: 1) The graphics are amazing, and I don't even have them turned up all the way; 2) The combat can be very frustrating, but never feels unfair. I hope the aim system can be improved, but apart from that this is my favorite combat system in any game I've played. 3) As in the first game, the atmosphere and general feeling of moral ambiguity make this an incredibly compelling story. Anyone who bothered to read this far needs to buy this game.

I love that GOG made this DRM free, I love the world this game is set in with all the monster lore, sorcery, alchemy, and such. But... it's just bad at the same time. My greatest complaint is that some of the strengths of the first game are gone, and combat can just be frustrating in a bad way. No longer can you pop a potion in mid fight, but rather a ridiculous mediation mechanic is required that is absurd. Some might say that's more sensible, but why I can oil my sword from the item menu and not take a potion? Arguably that's more time consuming. In addition, dodging doesn't really work that well, hit/collision detection is abysmal, the ridiculous sword flourishes leave you exposed, and sometimes when you restart a fight it will literally start up with you taking a hit before you can move. There's so much I love about this game and it's potential... maybe it's because it was developed in mind for consoles, but so many of the faulty aspects just make me all the more frustrated because a truly great game was not properly realized.

I totally enjoyed the first Witcher, but the second was a big disappointment. The fighting mechanics has changed; while the idea to make the witcher to actually fence seemed neat, the execution was very awkward, so you always run in the wrong direction, sick in corners, and fight the wrong guy. There's lots of stupid restrictions like not being able to quickly take a potion before a battle, you have to meditate, and you cannot meditate in certain places (although they're perfectly safe) so sometimes you have to walk back a couple of locations where you can finally take the drug. As a result the game is absurdly hard even on easy levels; you just keep dying. And these "click-click" sequences to aim a ballista nearly drove me crazy; this is one of stupidiest things I saw in games. Gosh, I even failed to pass the tutorial: it insisted on me charming a monster, but for some reason the charming spell didn't work and other weapons or spells were disabled. The tutorial I skipped, but the rest I cannot skip, can I? So I gave up near the end of the prologue. I don't think I'm going to play it. Also, the sound is much worse; the first game had very nice music and effects, but here they are kind of harsher and much more repeatable and boring. The only thing that looks better compared to the first part are the cutscenes, but that's all.

I came to this game a little late, because I wanted a boxed edition and then waited for the DRM-free patch before even installing it. I finished the boxed premium edition a couple of nights ago (so no EE extras) and was left with that empty "what am I going to do now?" feeling that follows a great game. This would be a very long review if I detailed all the things I like, so I'll just list the things I didn't like so much; take it as read that I loved everything else. 1. First thing was the non-functioning launcher, even though the desktop links to the launcher. Took me quite a while to figure out that I had to run the .exe file to launch the game. This bothers me because I wonder how many people returned boxed copies because they "didn't work." 2. Still more console than PC. - No saved game management, not even the ability to delete games, let alone name them. This is unbelievable in 2011/12 for a PC game. - still suffers from 'Keep Off The Grass' syndrome (follow-the-path/invisible barriers) though it didn't feel anywhere near as restrictive as The Witcher (TW.) The climb points helped a bit. Maybe I'm being a bit unfair though, as this isn't meant to be a sandbox game. - QTEs (though these weren't all bad.) 3. Some annoying boss fights. I shouldn't really whine about this because I usually whine about PC games being too unchallenging now. I did find the Kayran and Letho fights very frustrating though. This wasn't helped by the QTEs and the unresponsiveness of the keyboard & mouse. Very annoying, for example, to stop to cast a sign, press the sign key and nothing happens. 4. The final chapter seemed very short to me, not helped by the fact that I was informed at its start that I was nearing the end of the story. Geralt had pretty good gear and skills by then and I couldn't stop myself from rushing through to see how the story unfolded. 5. The rich detail behind alchemical ingredients (mixing different components in different ratios) didn't have any impact on alchemy for me. I just used the same 3 potions throughout the game and never ran short on ingredients. Some how I feel an opportunity was missed with alchemy. 6. Very minor point, but I noticed "routed" (as in rout rather than route) pronounced as "rooted" twice. I guess it shows how polished I thought the game was overall when I bother to point out something like that. Some positive things I just have to mention: 1. A huge improvement over TW for me. TW didn't impress me very much to be honest. Grats to CDPR on their new engine, its delivery was vastly superior to the BioWare engine used in TW. More European accents was a big plus too, they just seem more 'right' in this type of game. Overall TW2 felt more 'matured' than TW. 2. The quality of writing and story-telling is really excellent and the main plot is complex. Great job from the writers. 3. Great characters and voice-acting. My favourite line is "F***ing idiot actually went in there" which was delievered with such passionate exasperation that it almost made me choke on my coke. It said so much about the relationship between Geralt and Dandelion and is a good example of how voice acting can add so much more to a simple line of dialogue. I really hope that the story is concluded (or better still, continues) in The Witcher 3, rather than a TW2 expansion. I certainly wouldn't turn my nose up at a TW2 expansion though.