The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition

having played the first game, and watched a lot of gameplay of the third, i thought that 2 would be worth getting- if merely for the sake of havin the whole collection... it was not worth it. (having also played the third game now, the second game makes even less sense) lets start with the positive- from the first game, i've been surprised by how much i enjoy the lore of the lore and setting of the witcher universe. the world is written in a clever and convincing way, where things like magic and monsters are accepted as 'normal' (or at least real), but still regarded with fear and suspicion. lore isn't dumped directly at the camera, in a way that feels long winded or fourth-wall-ish. it shows a good amount of trust in the audience's ability to immerse themselves. the visuals are nice IF you turn off the over-zealous SSAO and adjust the gamma/brightness. now the gross- controls and UI: the controls of the game seem to be a new engine, clinging onto the control format of the first game (it barely made sense then, and it doesnt make ANY sense now). the game has "controller support" in the loosest sense, but is extremely stiff, and clearly designed primarily for KBMS (downvote on account of my carpal tunnel, lol). the UI looks nice and sharp, but does not lend itself conveniently to quick/instinctive play... again, very hitchy. level construction: the play spaces give an initial impression of open-world, but you quickly find that the whole game is very spatially linear. RPGs typically feel better in larger spaces, but i do understand that the game is actually a choreographed experience (which leads into my next point)... story content: when the dialogue is good, its great (primarily Geralts lines), when its bad, its aweful. some of the writing strikes me as translation errors, that come accross as needlessly foul in english. nudity is not optional, and while the context sometimes makes sense- other times it does not, and frankly- dawg, what if a kid saw it? gross

I like palying dark sinical sword wieldin magic spwing kinda kill anyone anything guy, and he looks good graphicaly and the stories that told are allrite magic kingdom blah save blah, its all good, i'd give 5 star for that, gone the stupid stance changes and combat livined up a bit which is welcome sight, if anything it is empowering, but then game breaker for me promptous game section where you have to press a button when your character fighing, im not feking space monkey!! i want to control my sword wieelding brute sinister killer the way i used to at the first sections of the game not being stuck at stupid fist fights with some idiotic guard and watch my character being thrashed by a beerbelly only because i missed a button feking promt, thank you for folowing the feking console give me promt CDproject i thout u ware special i gues u won't, good effort but for that part who ever put thos prompts in the pc game should have been made top play this horror himself. Good effort from everything else, and ofcource GoG too for releasing this without DRM i gues those guys who pirate this game wont go much further then me............

Not a true PC game and it handles like a Console to PC port. The GFX are console-ish so is the game play. It has all kinds of bugs and all the fun options that The Witcher 1 had are gone most likely because of the Console games. Don't buy this until they improve it to be as good as the 1st Witcher

I left a negative review about the first Witcher game. I stand by what I said there, and I'll let it be read as is. Witcher 2 was made in 2012, and is worse in many important ways. First of all, it took up TWENTY GIGABYTES on my hard drive! I can handle the capacity easily, but I have yet to see another game take up even half that space. While the graphics looked better than Witcher 1 when I eventually saw them, the game decided my system was not up to snuff and dialed everything down to rock bottom. Despite this adjustment, the game was laggy, choppy, and slow to respond. I have newer and more graphics-intensive games that perform BETTER than this one with their settings at medium or higher. I can see why some other reviewers complained about headaches. I could take a meclizine (motion sickness pill) and try to deal with it, except that the terrible performance also affects the gameplay. Motions flail wildly out of control, while the mouse pointer creeps along painfully in menus. THEN I got to the combat scenes--my absolute dealbreaker for Witcher 1. Moving the attack types to the mouse was good, but I have to hit ALT, SPACE, and move my character in some sequence or at the same time to parry and dodge. NO! Because, aside from not wanting to dance my hand awkwardly all over my keyboard just to play a fricking this game, I can't even time anything like that effectively due to the awful lag and jerkiness described above. It's probably yet another of too many games originally meant for controllers that was translated poorly to keyboard. Last but not least, the character takes up way too much space in the view, as other reviewers have described. I can't recommend this or Witcher 1 at all to other PC users. Don't pay more than $3 for this title.

Since everyone seems to love this game series I thought that I would give it another try. I played Witcher 1 but quit after about an hour due to clunky controls, bad camera angles, and horrible consolesque combat. This Witcher was no different. Very cool looking graphics, but the experience is absolutely ruined by the primitive interface. I find games like this fine as long as they port over from consoles well. If they keep the depth of control afforded to PC gamers from being restricted by gamepad-tuned combat and movement it's all good. However this game feels horrible when played with a mouse and keyboard. I don't like gamepads either, so in the vault it goes.