The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

Witcher 1 was a beautiful game. Multiple playthroughs, so many branches. Easily have sunk 200 hours into it. 4.5 play throughs. Witcher 2 however, has.. been horrible. the storyline is shoehorned in many places, cutting you off from the variety of choices that where available in witcher 1. Difficulty is scaled poorly. Easy is too easy. Normal is,.. difficult. And many, many spots where you have no choice but to simply die and reload. Amnesia can only account for so much - you spent a large amount of time in witcher 1 getting yourself up to speed and learning. In witcher 2, you're back to being a weak rookie. The only moments of 'cool' are when a cutscene intervenes - not when you've just taken down somethign difficult yourself. An incredible dissapointment, almost dissapointing enough to demand my money and time played back. The witcher franchise is not Mass Effect. This was a woeful attempt to make Witcher 2 in the same manner as Mass Effect 2. Seneschul

I really enjoyed Witcher 1 and got a great deal here at GOG in buying W2EE. But this game is very frustrating. It has a horrid tendency to devolve to an arcade game where you have to execute exactly the moves they want in a long sequence that cannot be saved. This results in doing things over and over and over. And the slow long death animation means you have to wait a long time before you can even reload. Terrible design decisions on what is otherwise a really good game. Given the frustration will likely have me quit the game before finishing (already 20 attempts at the Kayran battle), I can only give it 2 stars.

THE GOOD: - graphics (for its time) - voice acting is superb - two branching paths - combat system improved (over THE WITCHER 1) - excellent story - superior Enhanced Edition that deserves its name (new content) - decisions with far reaching consequences - well-writen and believable characters - no simple "good vs. evil" story - branching skill tree - combat has tactical component with alchemy THE BAD: - lazy port from console/designed with consoles in mind (menues, controls) - Quick Time Events, especially in boss fights. - rushed third act - controls are wonky, input lag - stealth quests are poorly implemented - maze-like levels are not well designed BOTTOM LINE: A potentially great RPG ruined by Quick Time Events (QTE's should never be in any game. Ever. Especially not in an RPG!) and wonky controls that were designed with consoles in mind. Menues are a chore to navigate and Geralt's movements are imprecise and tank-like. This is especially frustrating since the game has a lot going for it: the story is fantastic and the characters are believable and well-writen. The is no black and white, something the series is known for and decisions have far-reaching consequences that don't allow for a quick reload. Alchemy is not just tacked on, in higher difficulties it is essential for survival, also there is no in-combat healing, so no spaming healing potions during a fight. Unfortunately boss fights are not fun at all, as they always are Quick Time Events. Do not recommend.

I was really enjoying the game at first until I got about half way through, then the game just falls apart. The quests get extremely repetitive and randomly scale up in difficulty. You can have a difficult game but don't just randomly throw the player into a cave full of 80 enemies and have all of them attack the player at once. Then there's the potion system.. Who thought this was a good idea? The game literally expects you to be able to see the future in order to use any of the potions properly. You have to drink various different types of potions BEFORE you enter a battle. How do you know a battles coming up? You don't. How do you know what type of enemy's your going to face? You don't. How you know what type of potion you should drink in order to properly deal with the enemy? You don't. I guess they expect you to save every five seconds and then reload your game once you know what's coming up next, which is complete bull. Then there's the ending. It was incredibly abrupt. I thought the game was just getting started and then all of the sudden the credits rolled. Without spoiling anything you get to an area that's completely unfinished, get an extremely overpowered set of armor for free and then just slaughter a ton of enemy's that where incredibly hard to kill only 10 minutes ago, kill one of the easiest boss's in the history of gaming and the credits roll. I don't even want to mention the consolized inventory or the quick time events.

Graphics - Huge jump up from TW1 in particular with vastly improved character models and animations, something a bit strange about the lighting or colour palette can't quite put my figure on I didn't particularly like though. Ran fine for me no major bugs or crashes to report. Story - Focused on politics and intrigue departing a bit from the Witcher's path narrative, again avoids clear villains and consequence free decisions with few right or wrong decisions just actions and consequences. Didn't quite enjoy the central story thread and antagonist as much as the first game. One major branching story I was happy with my choice, found the main companion and their growth along with your actions brilliantly done and really enjoyed the location and themes explored in chapter 2. Gameplay - Departing from the rhythm based combat of the TW1 for a more generic third person action combat system. Found the combat fairly bland and unengaging . Was quite difficult at the start but became quite easy by the end, this was playing on hard difficulty. I basically just kept up the shield spell and spammed roll constantly and enemies couldn't damage me. Feel like the talent system is a bit of a waste or at least in my play-through didn't feel like there were many really viable options. I though the potion system was a major step back from the first game I loved the alchemy in The Witcher 1 but here you cant consume potions in battle which right of the bat drastically reduces their usefulness and the potions themselves are much more limited, don't have the same sense of exploration you had with mixing them in TW1. Conclusion: Only 3 chapters with 3 locations although there is plenty to do. I again played over 50 hours and enjoyed myself although this time did feel it starting to drag near the end. A good game and would recommend for fans of TW1,its certainly more modern and probably more familiar to most although personally I didn't quite enjoy it as much as TW1.