TW2 EE is a great RPG. Bold quest design, mature story telling, mature choices and most importantly consequential choices are very prominently present throughout game play. I would also go as far as saying that out of 3 games in the series, this is by far the best game in terms of choices and story. CDPR must be given credit to make the second half of the game entirely different based on decisions, I mean i haven't at least come across a game that does this. Main quests , Side quests, endings all differ based on 1 very important decision. To me it's a special value add. Makes you play the game at least twice. Which will compensate for game's short play time. But there are certain flaws which make the game to not fully satisfy the gamer. 1. Lack of fast travel. : The game world is not huge like sand box games but still big enough to make running through the map tedious at times. Geralt simply wouldn't run fast. No mount to his help too. It's a design choice but question is why? 2. Clunky Alchemy controls and Overall Alchemy design : Potion drinking animation is tedious to watch. The whole potion mechanic makes it useless for first playthrough. I can understand the mechanics adhere to the lore but game doesn't do good job in hinting you in advance what kind of foes you'd encounter in which areas. You'll have to take a guess or drink standard set of potions every single time like Rook, Swallow etc. which kind of makes other potions pointless for first playthrough. Similar things with traps, barring a couple of quests you'd hardly ever need them. The crafting of potions is horrible too. You'll have to do farming to have decent number of potions because to put simply game economy doesn't allow you to be rich enough to just buy them. If those potions have use for only witchers (according to lore and tutorial, those potions can outright kill normal humans), i have question that why are they so costly if their buyers are very limited. 3. Not so much of witchering : While the story is a political drama and gripping tale of assassinations of kings. you'll feel that Geralt isn't doing much of witchering which by the way is his bread and butter. He's not some political lackey and traditionally witchers are neutral. So they could have added bit more contracts in the game to allow Geralt make some money to buy cool gear. 4. Abrupt Act 3 and epilogue. : While the game is gritty from its prologue itself, the end game feels abrupt. Especially whole of act 3 can be over in as many as 2 quests. Epilogue is just 1 fight that too is a choice. For a story that's so elaborately told, i can't help but feel that they could have fleshed out act 3 and prologue to match the the first 2 acts. 5. QTEs for fistfights : Fisfights and wrestling are interesting distractions that are not so exciting and not so well paying either. QTEs make fistfights a chore rather than action. 6. Reallocation of skill points. : While it's possible in interesting way to re allocate your skill points in act 3, that quest is not available for only one branch. I feel it should have been available easily and should not be dependent on player's choice. Also the game forces you t try and master 1 tree, so making players put their first 6 points in training tree wasn't really great i dea considering there's a level cap of 35. Once you hit it you stop leveling so skill points are precious and players should have been given more flexibility to chose what they want to invest in and their in game decision should not be making them miss reallocation entirely. So barring these points and a few minor ones, TW2 is a great game. Definitely one of all time great RPGs.
