The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

I wanted to love this game, especially after falling in love with the charming first entry in the series and the many hours I put into the third.

Everything I loved about the first Witcher is gone, from the most basic of game design, to the writing and characters.
Everything you probably liked about Witcher 3 is not yet realised here. Interesting side quests? Very few, mostly in the first half. You're given these choices that the game presents as having a grand impact on the world, and yet asides from choosing between Iorveth or Roche, I felt like they amounted to nothing in the grand scheme of things, unlike its predecessor and successor.

Charming characters? The dialogue spewed is expositionary and the whole game takes itself too seriously for its own good. Character development is nonexistent and everyone's motive is obscure, making it incredibly difficult to care on top of the fact that everyone in this game is both humourless and emotionless, a far cry from the books, the show, and other two games. The first Witcher may have had wooden voice acting but it had light years more soul and personality than this game.

The anticlimactic ending only makes the extremely linear, QTE filled journey feel worse in retrospect.
I sided with Iorveth for my first playthrough, and while I originally intended on playing through the game twice, I'd rather not waste my time any further with this game.

The first chapter offers a solid challenge on normal difficulty, but as time goes on, the rest of the game is easy to the point of becoming a button mashing bore. Not as a result of any player skill gained but inevitable XP and armor upgrades. The difficulty spikes once more with the final boss, but only because of how easily you are stun locked. I came so close to giving up on this game due to the fact it would crash and freeze Steam every time I reloaded my save.

It seems that whatever technical issues the majority have with Cyberpunk and other CDPR games have all landed on this one for me. The constant crashing in its final hours made what was a slog to get through an utter nightmare.

Supposedly the developers were inspired by Demons Souls combat. I can see it, but imagine if you could only heal outside of combat, rolling was useless and instead of manually locking onto enemies, strafing and feeling in control the way you do in the Witcher 3 (or 1 for that matter), your character randomly switches directions and randomizes his attacks based on proximity to the enemies.

Not being able to ingest potions outside of meditation is a nice idea in theory but truly awful in the actual game, especially during certain segments with the horrible autosave, or lack thereof combined with the inability to meditate and save during combat - - something I don't have a problem with in other games for the record.

The overall game design here has aged considerably worse than the first Witcher. Geralt moves annoyingly slow, combat is clunky, level design is consistently linear yet often confusing thanks to the full map and minimap both being useless.
The UI is an eyesore and menus in particular are a "console-fied", claustrophobic nightmare to traverse: inventory management is some of the worst I've dealt with in any game as a result and lead me to barely crafting anything throughout. Even the ridiculous bloom is a telling sign of this games age and the era it comes from, although it still looks amazing if you turn it off.

The music, something the Witcher games are known for, has little to offer. Not least because of how repetitive and grating it becomes, but the bombastic orchestral compositions here are about as generic as everything else this game has to offer, which is just sad considering the quality of the music in 1 & 3. The entire game feels more LOTR/Game of Thrones rip off than Witcher.

If you loved the first and third Witcher, there's a good chance this one will let you down, as this game contains none of the qualities of either. I still think it's worth going through at least once, but *only* if you're deeply into the series. Otherwise you'll be struggling to follow the story and its characters even more than I did, as someone who's genuinely interested in the lore. This game made me not give a shit.

Seriously, when I first bought this on steam, like I had zero idea what I was going to get myself into with this game. Many people, including myself found the elements of the game's combat to quite literally be the worst part of the game, none of the moves connected right and sometimes you would just straight up from a enemy 15 feet away. I spent well over 30 minutes trying to fight the enemies in the prologue, and let me tell you how rage inducing that was. Despite the lack of a coherent tutorial, the game makes it up with it's fantastic story which becomes a nice bridge between the first and third game. If you love the Witcher series a lot, including reading the books, do play this game with a guide, cause you'll need it a lot

Witcher 2 is how you do a sequel right, Witcher 1, while a competent game in its own right, just didn't play well, the combat was clunky and mindless, all you did was time button presses, the inventory was awkward and you often found yourself with tons of useless items and other crap you just never needed to use, plus the game didn't exactly know whether it wanted to be an open World RPG or a linear adventure story experience so you had awkward maps where you had open World mixed in with more limited sized maps and missions that seemed to flow in a linear fashion. Witcher despite having a decent atmosphere and story really suffered due to the poor gameplay and frustrating moments, but this game fixed most of what was wrong with the game. The combat system is completely revamped to where you have full control and it plays like a typical action adventure type game, the game has much more well-designed maps that are more structured and have less awkward dead space like the maps in the first Witcher, and probably the biggest improvement, there are less mindless missions. I actually felt like the side quests in this had substance and you had interesting characters, where the first Witcher the game just threw generic side quests that were mostly a chore to complete. Don't get me wrong there are the annoying fist fight and dice game side quests plus there are the repetitive Witcher contracts of killing mindless monsters, but they aren't as pervasive in this. Speaking of which the fist fighting in this game is just mindless you basically go through a quick time event. The other thing about this is you don't sleep with as many women, the first game you basically could get in almost any woman's pants who wasn't a generic villager, this game I think there are only 5 women you can sleep with, plus there are actual scenes not some silly card you collect, although the sex scenes in this are pretty bad and awkward.

I mean there are some flaws though, the game is a bit difficult and even on normal enemies can swarm and destroy you pretty fast, and you'll find yourself running around with your magic shield or fire magic and trying to get in cheap hits. Plus there is some repetition to the quests, which again mostly consist of fighting generic monsters and collecting items for people. The story of this game is solid, but feels more like a bridge between the first game and third with a story that almost feels like its a teaser for Witcher 3. Plus the end game of this isn't too great, I felt the final area in this game was rushed and you don't have as many side quests or story progression, and I feel the story wasn't fleshed out enough during the final chapter of the game, plus you don't get enough time to get acquainted to the new characters or get a good feel for the area, and the final quest in this is just so rushed and feels like its over before you even begin it, I know there's an epilogue thats nice to give closure, but the main story line left me wanting more and hardly gave me enough when it all concluded especially since it spent so long building the World and characters up in the previous areas.

Still, the best part of Witcher 2 is the different outcomes and paths you can take. There are 2 factions you can side with and if you choose one over the other it gives you completely different quests, different characters you interact with, different romance options, different locations, plus a different outcome and the way the story concludes and plays out. I've rarely seen this much effort put into a game where you can make multiple choices and that definitely adds replay since the game itself isn't too long and shorter than the first game. On the other hand, Witcher 3 improved almost everything wrong with this and is a much more immersive experience, but Witcher 2 improved so much and actually put the Witcher series on the map and brought it the much needed attention it needed.

Such a massive quality leap from the first game. I liked the lore of the first game but couldnt get that far because the combat system is terrible. This one actually offers a reasonable combat system. Now the combat system isnt masterful, it still has plenty of clunky moments, terrible hit detection, and over reliance on rolling in order to escape enemy attacks. But its satisfying enough to put up with the game. And it only gets better has you unlock more skills and get better weaponry. The lack of a jumping button is an annoying, which means that something has small has a branch in your path can half your march.

Visually the game is a treat, with a big variety of locations and colour.

Story telling is masterful, offering choices that have immediate and long term consequences, often on a scale that is pretty impressive. There is a lot of lore in the game should you opt to digest it.

The world is not completly open, more like it is divided in several small hubs, which incentivizes the player to explore each of these carefully as they are more limited in size. For me this has always been the best reason to play the game, the world is very rewarding to explore, both in terms of loot on offer, but also in terms of the sheer entertainment of completing quirky sidequests.

Really enjoyed my 30 hours with this one, one of the best RPGs out there that is pretty accessible to players that would normally play action focused games.

Pros
+Important choices that actually shape the outcome of the game. Choices that you make in the first chapter can result in you being in an entirely different area in chapter 2 depending on what you did.
+The choices are plentiful and veiled in such a way that it isn't overtly obvious what is important and game changing and what is not. I have no idea which of my decisions lead to me being where I ended up in chapter 2.
+Sex scenes that aren't almost embarrassing to watch. Nudity aside, even if there wasn't any, they actually look like real people interacting rather than two puppets awkwardly knocking together like BioWare's recent games.

Cons
-The menu system is a bit strange, needing to sit and meditate to do things like drinking a potion. And since you can only drink potions or apply oils to weapons outside combat you have to expect a boss battle or reload a checkpoint to get their help.
-The tutorial doesn't do a great job of teaching you all the abilities you need and will often have to go back to the journal for entries you missed since they often show up while you are in combat. It also doesn't help that it lets you do the tutorial backwards (or in any order) without telling you that is what you're doing, so you could end up learning the basics last. The game just overall can be vague or poorly explain things which can lead you to things like not knowing you need a certain type of bomb (which you also need to find a recipe for) to complete a quest.

In Summary
The game is punishing if you don't take full advantage of all the combat tools and abilities given to you even at the start of the game, which is a problem for people who are still in the process of learning combat abilities and how to use all the items given to them. But the game does have a lot to do, seemingly more quests than most people would even bother to complete in each chapter.