Just pre-ordered The Witcher 2

[=KoS= Eldragon]

My copy was just delivered to my door. Sadly I'm at work and won't be able to play until tonight. However I took tomorrow off work. I'll post my thoughts tomorrow night for those who are interested.

[[IPA] Thalamus]

I've seen a review today on gamestar.de; the review was favorably and they ganve an impressive 87/100. They only criticzed the somewhat "weak" ending.

I'll have to wait another 3 days until my copy will be shipped; on the plus side, by that time some quest guides might be online so I can be sure I don't skip quests.

[=KoS= Eldragon]

Played about 10-12 hours or so yesterday. Thoughts so far:

* Its much better than the original Witcher. Graphics, story, environments, all good. Voice acting and/or script gets a little funny at times, but still solid. It really puts Dragon Age 2 to shame.

* The new crafting system is great. Being able to craft weapons and armor is nice.

* The skill  tree is varied and interesting, lots of hard choices to make.

* You need to drink potions before going into combat. While on paper I like the change. In practice what happens is I wait until I get killed a few times then I pull out the potions. So I end up drinking potions right before I need them, but only because I have the foresight given to me via Save/Reload.

* Combat is hard. REALLY hard. Even on Normal difficulty I had to reload the game on what should have been an easy fight. The difficulty stems from several factors.  Enemies do a lot of damage, and the dodge/parry keys are not always responsive.  I commonly would try to roll away from an attack, bump into a tiny rock, my roll doesn't happen and so I get stabbed simultaneously by 3 guys. In other words, one mistake and you're dead. You end up having to kite enemies a lot. Personally I hate kiting, cause its just abusing the crappy pathfinding AI. I think the game is balanced around the assumption the player will kite.

* Some boss fights are just lessons in aggravation. e.g. 1 hit and your dead from certain monsters. Not too bad except you need to hit the monster 100+ times to kill it. Which means you need to successfully dodge 50+ times.

* Your starting sign powers are really weak. practically anemic. And you can't upgrade them until you hit level 7 or so. Stuns often don't last long enough to take advantage of them, fire does less damage than a throwing dagger, etc. I want to upgrade my signs ASAP, but I need more swordfighting defense boosts just to survive (see above).

[[IPA] Thalamus]

I've bought the Premium Edition today. Saw it in a store for 45€ and immediately cancelled my online-order (which would have arrived saturday and would have cost 52€).


Together with the book came 1 "cursed coin", the making of+ soundtrack, a detailed game guide, a dlc voucher for some stuff, a "pamphlet" insulting a king, 2 paper thingys that you can glue together (should be a miniature of something), a map of the gameworld. Also, the store gave every premium-buyer a Witcher-comicbook (!). The premium edition has no ugly PEGI 18-sticker or company labels; those are printed onto a seperate paper that is wrapped around the box and can be removed.

Overall, this really seems to be a very well-equipped premium edition. The company must have put a lot of thought into that. And all that for a mere 5€(?) extra. You don't see that very often!



Currently installing.

[=KoS= Eldragon]

Yeah, the premium edition contents are great. Its like an old school PC game box.

Game guide doesn't really offer any tips on how to get through a hard section. I have not read it in detail to avoid spoilers. Rather just read the sections for quests I had trouble with or had already completed. But it would be very useful to a casual RPG gamer who isn't used to the standard CRPG tropes of collecting items, finding quests, and talking to everyone and exploring everywhere.

[[IPA] Thalamus]

It freezes.

First time froze when the first prologue dialogue ended and gameplay began. Had to reboot.


Second try: it froze after approx. 3 minutes of walking around in the camp, while dialogue.



Searched the web, only suggestion I find is: download new drivers. I'll try that, but that isn't really a promising solution to me.


Does anyone have an idea?

[=KoS= Eldragon]

I have not run into any crashing/gfx problems at all, but you may want to look at the video settings options. They have some stuff in there that will make most video cards cry for mercy. Even my overclocked GTX580 couldn't handle "Uber-sampling" (or was it Ultra sampling) mode.

So my only real advice is set all graphics to low, and turn them up one at a time till you hit the one that causes the crash.

[[IPA] Thalamus]

I installed the new drivers and switched to low, then back to high; it froze one single time since then, but after that no more. I hope it stopped crashing once and for all; would be the first time a driver update helped me, though.




So far I've progressed until the beginning of Chapter 1. I had to repeat the prologue which made that all a bit longer


I imported my Witcher 1 savegame (fun fact: neither manual nor game guide lost any word about importing savegames, I found that on the www) and I think I got better starting gear thanks to that. The first time I played on normal difficulty, just as Witcher 1, but I couldn't stand a chance. During the prologue, I died about a dozen times. The reason is that I didn't know how to how to switch swords, when dodging is possible, how to aim at enemies etc. These things are mentioned in the tutorial, but the messages pop up right during the action and they're so small and unsalient that they're almost unreadable and get neglected. I had a girl read from the manual to me instead (yes, that sounds weird, I'll have to explain myself on toast). But that observation is (unfortunately) in line with the rest of the GUI and handling: it's just horrible. It took a couple of minutes until I figured out how I could find and use the meditation menu; CD project, in all honesty, should reeeeally consider a course in user-centered design or cognitive ergonomics; The Witcher 2 ruthlessly neglects all guidelines and standards of ergonomics and usability that might have ever been produced. Though that's an achievement in its own right
So after I had finished the prologue, I started over with easy difficulty. This time I figured out how to brawl well and now it has become too easy xD But I'm not going to do it a third time.


Story, Characters and Dialogue are excelling on the other hand. Long time gone since I have seen a similar performance - that similar performance might have been The Witcher 1. Mass Effect, Dragon Age and Fahrenheit come close, but it's not the same: the Witcher 2 people are swearing, hating, loving, joking, fapping and betraying. And bragging about their balls. In contrast to many movies, this makes them more believable. Also the places and the atmosphere is unique. It feels very real, dense because it tries to depict people in both their awesomeness and awefulness. A good example is the beginning of act 1 imo: you meet the guard captain of a small town, and while you're arguing with him, he walks across a gallow and kicks open a trap door, laughing as the girl falls through it and dies and then continues arguing, "just like that". And you have to just watch because this is none of your business and besides, there's much worse happening any second. Gives goosebumbs.


IMO until now Witcher 2 is a very worthy sequel to Witcher 1. I can't think of a reason not to want that game, other than that you hate everything except shooters.

[AoP]

Wow, seems like I'm the only one who's downright disappointed by this game. I got horribly frustrated with it and don't even feel like finishing it at this time. Yes, it has excellent story, pretty good atmosphere and many great ideas, but those, to me at least, are utterly outweighed by the technical shortcomings.

• The railway character in the first game's outdoor settings was annoying, but in TW2 it's just horrible. "Open World Environment"? Haha, that joke's on me apparently. Also, having to stand in a certain angle when opening doors or climbing onto/off of ridges makes me cringe. I mean, seriously, wtf?
• No markers on the map to help find people, locations, items for a number of quests.
• No quicktravel options. Yessir, I love running around boring tunnels and other labyrinths over and over and over again. Awesome. Not.
• Weight-based inventory system as opposed to a number-based system just doesn't work out for me. Yes, it's more realistic, but it also makes inventory management tedious.
• Parts of the interface feel just horrible and vastly counter-intuitive to me.
• Animations that aren't worth being called that.
• Streaming problems: blurry textures loading several seconds into a cutscene.
• Many, many portals between locations, artificially and unnecessarily interrupting gameflow.

you meet the guard captain of a small town, and while you're arguing with him, he walks across a gallow and kicks open a trap door, laughing as the girl falls through it and dies and then continues arguing, "just like that". And you have to just watch because this is none of your business and besides, there's much worse happening any second. Gives goosebumbs.

Yes, it's a very intense moment, but this, like several other scenes, has been "inspired" by other games. There's a very similar scene involving Zaeed in Mass Effect 2 for example.

* Its much better than the original Witcher. Graphics, story, environments, all good. Voice acting and/or script gets a little funny at times, but still solid. It really puts Dragon Age 2 to shame.

I thought DA2's voice acting is awesome. Be it the Arishok declaring the unworthiness of the townspeople or the hilarious party banter... DA2's voice acting carried a lot of the game. What's not to like about it?

* Some boss fights are just lessons in aggravation. e.g. 1 hit and your dead from certain monsters. Not too bad except you need to hit the monster 100+ times to kill it. Which means you need to successfully dodge 50+ times.

Yes, the "attack on the death star" syndrome. Joe Average doesn't hit the ventilation shaft, Luke Skywalker does. Unfortunately, I'm neither Luke nor Geralt of Rivia. If I was interested in a Jump n Run game, I'd be playing one. I wanted an RPG and while I don't mind movement in fight, there's a limit to how much I'm willing to take. All the dodging reminds me of people in shooters who excessively bunny hop. It just looks and feels utterly stupid and wrong. If my alter ego can't handle large groups on his own, give him some support or reconsider your balancing. Hopping around like a toad on coffee shouldn't be an answer to that.

[=KoS= Eldragon]

* Its much better than the original Witcher. Graphics, story, environments, all good. Voice acting and/or script gets a little funny at times, but still solid. It really puts Dragon Age 2 to shame.

I thought DA2's voice acting is awesome. Be it the Arishok declaring the unworthiness of the townspeople or the hilarious party banter... DA2's voice acting carried a lot of the game. What's not to like about it?

I meant to compare Witcher 2 to DA2 as a whole. DA2 certainly has better voice acting, but as far as I'm concerned, its the only redeeming quality. I hated DA2's combat and the repetition in environments.  Not to mention your decisions in DA2 don't make a difference.

* Some boss fights are just lessons in aggravation. e.g. 1 hit and your dead from certain monsters. Not too bad except you need to hit the monster 100+ times to kill it. Which means you need to successfully dodge 50+ times.

Yes, the "attack on the death star" syndrome. Joe Average doesn't hit the ventilation shaft, Luke Skywalker does. Unfortunately, I'm neither Luke nor Geralt of Rivia. If I was interested in a Jump n Run game, I'd be playing one. I wanted an RPG and while I don't mind movement in fight, there's a limit to how much I'm willing to take. All the dodging reminds me of people in shooters who excessively bunny hop. It just looks and feels utterly stupid and wrong. If my alter ego can't handle large groups on his own, give him some support or reconsider your balancing. Hopping around like a toad on coffee shouldn't be an answer to that.

Yes, the game is overly hard at the beginning that's for sure. No shame in setting the game to easy. The early difficulty is a combination of getting used to the combat mechanics and the Witcher missing some key group fighting abilities at the start. It also took a lot of practice to quit button mashing and time my attacks properly. By the end of chapter 1, I had mastered combat. My signs hit multiple targets and I can block blows from any direction. I don't use the duck and roll much at all anymore.  I can wade into a group of 3-5 guys, and AOE them down then parry and riposte anything they throw at me.

[Bill]

May sound odd, but some of the negative points you listed AoP (obvious bugs aside) actually appeal to me a little.

I've grown a little tired of the protagonists in my games being ultra He-man time travel ninjas (basically any rpg I've played since... Morrowind most likely), so the idea of actually getting the shit kicked out of me frequently (at least initially) sort of appeals.

I'm going to be holding off on playing this for a while anyway, at least until the engine and navigation issues are resolved.

Cheers for the honest opinion btw AoP, it's greatly appreciated.

[AoP]

This 4-minute video review actually sums up perfectly how I - and some others - feel about the game.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/reviews/3316-The-Witcher-2-Assassins-of-Kings-Video-Review

[(TLL)CapperDeluxe]

I've been enjoying it, though its not very accessible as others have mentioned, it is pretty rewarding. Plus if you find yourself dying a lot usually just setting it to Easy difficulty temporarily is enough to get through the spot, since the Normal difficulty mode will kill you if you're not very careful.

[=CJW= Namarah (W)]

Also I'm amused with the amount of welsh accents in the game so far. I was trying not to laugh too much through some scenes due to the accent. The welsh accent can't be that intimidting at all its too singsong. lol

[~SJ~ Blhurr]

I have about two hours played on the witcher enhanced and was immediately bored.