The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

Witcher 2 is a very good game. Compared to the first game it is much shorter, but intended for multiple playthroughs with some interesting choices. The atmosphere is quite dark, there are more politics and intrigue, less adventures and exploring. It is more cinematic with QTE and epic monsters, with more arcade combat (dodge-roll for the win). The main story is the focus, but from a certain point the ending is a bit predictable. The itemization is more interesting and has much more options, though the character progression is a bit bland. In general, a very good experience, not much worse than the previous game.

Wow, combat is just WOW /s On normal difficulty, I failed defending the ballista in the first battle, because the game wants me to memorise and press 100 different keys at the same time. Using a gamepad isn't fun either, because WHAT DO ALL THE F-ING BUTTONS DO?!?! No, "git gud" is as much an option as "grow more hands and fingers". The tutorial only _showed_ me which button to press when, but it didn't _teach_ me Witcher 2 combat in any way. How the F are combat and the difficulty setting so different from any other action RPG out there?! Oh well, easy difficulty it is for me then. Thanks, game, for not teaching me how to fight at all! Hm ... what this? On easy, combat is no challenge at all? How is the difference between easy and normal that big?! So, the actual difficulty choices are: - Terribly boring - Frustratingly difficult to master without countless replaying the same fight - Totally impossible for anyone who can't "git gud" Damn :-(

Even though The Witcher parts 1, 2, and 3 are a continuous trilogy, the three games are quite different in many ways, especially in story length and size of the game worlds. Nevertheless, I think it’s hard not to enjoy any of the three. The Witcher 2 unsurprisingly fits in the middle in most areas. Its story is longer than TW1 but shorter than TW3. Fittingly, game world feels larger than TW1 but is much smaller than TW3. So if your introduction to the series was “Wild Hunt,” and you figure you’d check out the rest of the series, the more constrained world might surprise you. But don’t let that get in the way of what is a good story filled with twists and turns. That being said… one spoiler-free piece of advice I’ll give you: if you want to finish any side quests in the game, you have to finish them BEFORE leaving the area and moving on to the next chapter. Once the story moved forward to the next chapter you can’t go back. So keep that in mind when playing through. Also keep in mind there are multiple endings possible, so there is plenty of replayability here. You can import a TW1 save into a new game if you have one, which affects a few parts of the game. If you don’t, however, it defaults to specific storyline; there is no Q&A at the beginning of the game like TW3 (or you can import your completed TW2 save instead). Overall, I enjoyed this game very much. It still looks good, sounds good, and has a good storyline. It does have its flaws, of course, but nothing that ruined the overall experience for me.

Tirss bath.

Combat is a pain in the early levels, but otherwise fun.