The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

It is AMAZING!!!!

the wither 2 good game

Classic RPG Game ! ! ! I love it ! ! !

I'm very said to rate this game the way I do, but I really can't do otherwise. I enjoyed the first Witcher and had big expectactions for the sequel. Unfortunately, it's not only worst than the first one, but almost impossible to play. After many days of frustration and no fun, I gave up. Here some reasons why: - those fights! The fighting mechanics changed from the first title, for the worst. I played the game at normal level, and died at least 5 times for every fight, finally winning by pure luck. Basically, fighting is now holding you defense all the time, hoping to be able to hit the enemy every now and then - a very boring and, again, frustrating thing compared to Witcher 1. Long range weapons, like throwing knives, are just a joke. - the animated sequences, where all you have to do is to push a button at the right time - not knowing when it is the right time. Oh god, that run on the bridge escaping a dragon! Again, I had to reload so many times and finally succeded by pure luck, that the pleasure of the story was gone. - the potion system also changed from the previous title. Now you have to drink the potions before an action. As you don't know what you will need, this force you, again, to die and reload many times. After days of "death and reload", I tried to start the game again at easy level, but it had already lost any interest. Having to go through all the first part again, where you practically can't make any decision but just have to execute the script, was too boring. If I wouldn't see the big effort the developers put in this title, I'd ask my money back. Such a pity!

I know this review is probably getting buried as, apparently, everyone on GOG is in love with this game and the whole Witcher franchise. But I feel obliged to write this review to show why The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is not the great game that everyone claims it to be. It's actually extremely overrated. Here, let me explain why: Pros: + The story The strongest point of The Witcher saga is it's characteristic dark, gritty story. CDPR succeeded in bringing again a mature story full of hard decisions for us to take. One particular decision affects what will we see and how much of the potential background on different characters will we learn. This offers quite a lot of replay-ability. + Great soundtrack CDPR never disappoints in this department. You can expect a true delight for your ears in TW2, just like you did on TW. + Beautiful graphics CDPR created a game with true next-gen graphics even before the next-gen consoles were announced. Even in the lowest graphic settings, The Witcher 2 looks wonderful. Cons: - Combat is a complete chore to play Confusing, unresponsive controls; no option to remap keys and the game practically forces you to play using a controller because playing with keyboard and mouse is a real pain in the arse. Those are some of the things that make you despise The Witcher 2's combat. Hell, I even got to appreciate the dull combat from the original Witcher a lot more. The Witcher 2's combat mechanics are completely different from it's predecessor. Attacking options were reduced to 2: LMB makes Geralt throw a light, acrobatic attack while RMB makes him throw a heavy attack. Attacks are no longer decided by luck and skills, every attack will connect. In fact, enemies will stand motionless when you attack them to receive it. Some of them shouldn't be attacked on the front, because they will block you and sometimes stun you, making you defenseless. You're forced, in those cases, to attack them on their front. You're also a lot weaker than in the past game. Even with the best armor available, you're going to die in 2-3 hits on Hard and Dark difficulties. Blocking was made entirely useless. If you ever manage to successfully block, you receive damage and lose stamina. You're forced to keep rolling to evade attacks and keep yourself out of range. Signs were also changed. Aard and Igni no longer do area damage unless you upgrade them. Quen is now a barrier that prevents your stamina from recovering while it's active but completely protects you from damage. The catch is, it goes down on 1 hit. Yrden doesn't do damage now, it just paralizes almost all enemies. Axii is still the same useless sign for converting enemies that nobody uses. Spot the problem yet? If you don't, let me explain. Due to the game forcing you to play in a skirmishing way, the combat ends up in a Quen spam combined with more rolling spam and an occasional attack followed by even more rolling spam. Aard, Igni, Yrden and Axii now became useless tools for Geralt unless you spend a lot of skill points on the magic path, which would mean that you entirely forget about the other 2 paths (swordsman and Alchemy) because of the limited total skillpoints. On TW2, survival relies in those constant rolls. Now, if you think rolling is like in Dark Souls where it penalizes you for doing it and you need to time them, it's not. You can roll all you want and nothing will happen. It's Rolling Simulator 2011. Keep rolling and spamming Quen for 20 minutes until the battle is over. I honestly don't know if CDPR just doesn't knows how to develop good combat mechanics or if they dumbed it down for the casual/console gamers. Either way, the result is a very tedious experience when fighting the limited number of enemies that exist in the game. Oh, yes, limited. There aren't even half the monsters that existed on The Witcher. - New potion mechanics that forces you to become a psychic and read the future to know which one to use To use potions, Geralt now needs to enter on Meditation menu. Meaning you can't prepare your potions and use them when the fight required it. You have to advance, die and then load so you know which potions to use. - No option to highlight stuff and people's names. Instead, you are forced to use your very range-limited, timed medallion to find objects to interact with. Pretty self explanatory. - Too short There are only 1 prologue, 3 acts and 1 epilogue and very limited secondary missions. In the highest difficulty, on my first playthrough, I ended the game in 20 hours. - Decisions and imported savegames from The Witcher were pretty much ignored. This is something that really pissed me off. CDPR decided to start The Witcher 2 on a completely new story and setting so new players (*cough* console players *cough*) would be able to understand the story. This is a giant middle finger to everyone who played the first game and were eager to see their decisions impacting the world and story on the second game. Just some of these decisions were picked up and they only change pointless dialogues with some characters. I honestly felt betrayed and, hearing how CDPR are again doing a whole new story and setting for The Witcher 3, I'm starting to think that this will end just like Mass Effect. - Horrible and impractical UI. Changing the classical CRPG grid inventory into a Fallout weight system was a complete mistake. You will find yourself scrolling and scrolling and scrolling to find one specific object out of the hundreds you got on your inventory. Not only that, but everything is so convoluted. The objective of an UI is to reduce the time that the player takes to find a specific object as much as possible. The Witcher 2 fails miserably, making you scroll for hours. - Useless map Watch this short video from YouTube: /watch?v=bunzBQdB9EI&feature=colike The commentator is a complete idiot, but his video does prove how useless and broken the map on TW2 is. Why the hell do I want to see the entire continent? No, actually, why didn't CDPR use the original 2 tabs for local/world maps? Map is just confusing as hell; there is just no reason to use it. CDPR have good intentions and The Witcher's story is amazing. Unfortunately, they tried to do something new and it didn't go well. I have good expectations for CDPR and I know they will learn from their mistakes and make The Witcher 3 a hell of a game. But that does not mean I can give The Witcher 2 more praise than it deserves. 5/10.