The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings - Pleasantly surprised.

[Baneat]

+ it looks amazing
+ OP's "passion" thing is dead on
+ It's not afraid to be stupidly difficult
+ It's part of a realised world, I just don't have the background
+ Scottish dwarves are awesome, much better than WoW's pitiful attempt (Keep yer feet, on the ground!)
+ Combat has loads of depth to it

- The main character sucks, he's tropified to the max, you've seen every single element of his character before
- Similarly, the whole mis-accused hero with the ostracisation from race, done before, blah blah. The story looks like something that was fresh when Shakespeare did it (I don't know much shakespeare, but I bet he did a story very like this)
- It explains fuck-all to you regarding story, based on the assumption you played their (shitty to me) first game or read (shitty from translation) the books.
- Facial expressions are worse than Half-Life 2's. HL2's were great, but that was a long time ago and they should really be doing better.
- Fannying about with ores and shit is just frustrating, long and pointless.
- The difficulty curve sucks, it's absurdly hard at the first 5 encounters, then it gets piss easy for an hour or two, then difficult, really difficult, easy then hard again.
- Some GFX must be turned off because they are shit. Bloom is horrid, Ubersampling requires an SLI-system, which is cool but don't forget to turn if off unless you're a serious enthusiast.

Despite the negs, it's worth playing if you are a hardcore gamer that likes RPG's, has a Crysis-level PC (I wouldn't bother if not) and don't mind heavy story. I'm not kidding about the hardcore thing, this game makes no excuses for Fable-pros.

 

[Wolfram23]

I skipped most of this for fear of spoilers... but... are you telling me you finished the game already? After 2 days? Seriously?

That's obsurd. I wish I had that kind of free time.

I'm not even done the prologue.

 

[AllLagNoFrag]

Some may hate me for this but, I did not play The Witcher (the first game, for many reasons) and decided to start on The Witcher 2:AoK. So those reading this will get my opinion as somebody who takes TW2 as a standalone game, not knowing what to expect.

As far as my RPG game experience goes, I have played DA:O/2, FO series, FF series, and a number of others.

TW2 by itself is quite a decent game with the main character as an anti-hero, who does despite being a born killer, have a heart and morales. I didn't know exactly what happens in the first game at all but, this is what I could tell from the second. As far as the story goes, its a bearable but not one that I will remember for a long time.

The combat mechanics was good with a nice amount of moves to pull off, however, Geralt is not as swift/nimble as I wouldve liked him to be. The cast time of the spells along with the attack speed is a little annoying at times with me going "why couldnt he cast that a little faster?" All this can be overlooked by the fact that it is definitely one of the better RPG combat systems out there.

The environments were awesome! Just from the prologue I could tell the heavy amount of detail put in, right into where a catapult's rock smashes into a castle wall and the variety of colours used in the forests and towns.

I would reccomend this game to those that enjoy a good RPG game to play whilst waiting for Skyrim/Diablo3/ME3

 

[Bires]

I respect the shit out of this game and probably way overrate it because of one thing: it's actually mature. Compared to the rest of the games media, anyway, it's the single most mature game I've ever played and by far.

The environments and the visuals overall - top notch. The tutorial of the game is far more impressive and simply better made than the entirety of Dragon Age 2 (which has to be mentioned being an RPG everyone is blindly forgiving almost every faults for just because it's made by a certain company), and this is not even an exaggeration.

I do have a problem with the combat and its in the way it works on the most basic level. You can't hit anything other than what your target is, even if your sword swings go straight through other enemies. That's just annoying.

Also, the lip-syncing is incredibly robotic and the characters are almost always stuck with expressionless faces.

I think they are using one of those new voice patterrn-sync engines for the lips, which needs work, since that also means the characters faces can't move.

As far as the game, I LOVED the first Witcher. I felt it was a clinic on how to make a good, story-driven rpg.

You're exactly right about the game being mature. It's not a gritty like many American RPGs or angst-ridden like jRPGs, it just feels... *real*. The NPCs act like they SHOULD act, not as they are programmed to act.

 

[Tarkand]

Hm. Some people are objecting to the Mary Sue remark.

I should make it clear that I do not have all the background. I have not read the books. I did try to play the first game, but, well... oh dear, I wish there was a gentle way to say this... it was a festering pile of crap. I barely made it through the intro.

Heh, the intro/tutorial of the Witcher 1 really came off as a really really bad fan fiction. It was sad.

And I totally agree with you on the Mary Sue part... He is walking pill of cliché. All his drama can really be summed up to 'Nobody understands me because of how awesome I am!'. Him being such an uninteresting character was a big part of why I never finished the first Witcher - I simply didn't care about his story.

One of the thing people need to realise is that it's not because it's popular in Poland that it's good ... There's a serie of fantasy book that's huge here in Canada, especially among the french community - Les Chevalier D'Emerauld/The Knights of Emerald - and it's pure drivel really.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I never played the first Witcher till earlier this week and am still playing it. All I have to say is HOW THE HELL DID I MISS THIS WHEN IT WAS RELEASED?! Seriously, gotta be one of the best rpg's I've played in this generation bugs and minor crashes aside(Though there's not much to compare to since this generation kinda sucked..). I'm working to finish it, I have my copy of 2 sitting on my desk, waiting to be installed.

 

[Waaghpowa]

CD Projekt RED have a real passion for their games, they care about their users like almost no-one else.

Considering their game has no DRM, I have to agree.

 

[Trolldor]

Wall-o-text incoming.

So... The Witcher 2: Awkward Subtitle, an action-RPG game by a Polish studio called CDProject.

Sequel to The Witcher, in case that wasn't obvious.

I actually want to give a positive impression with this post, so I'll get the bad stuff out of the way now:

The story is very average by video game standards. Which means it's garbage by the standards of other media. The voice acting is rather lacklustre, not bad exactly, but decidedly flat. The supporting characters are nothing special.

Then there's the main character... eaarg. Yeah. See, in The Witcher 2 you play a pre-made character, a fellow name Geralt. This is not an inherently bad thing, I have no problem playing as a set character.

Thing is, Geralt is the most blatant Mary Sue I have seen in quite some time. He's a tough, cynical badass with platinum hair and exotic eyes (gold with feline pupils in case you were wondering) who travels the world slaying monsters while being constantly pursued by amorous women. Also, he's an amnesiac with a tragic past. Oh yeah, and he has a slash scar across one eye, because apparently the developers were working off some sort of cliche checklist. His one saving grace is that he's generally a fairly nice guy.

Okay, now that's out of my system, the good stuff:

The combat. At it's core you have a third-person hack-and-slasher. Light attack, heavy attack, parry, dodge etc. Behind that you have some robust RPG elements. And around the edges you have five basic spells and a bevy of thrown weapons, traps and bombs. Lastly, you can get high on buff yourself with an almost worrying amount of potions, oils and incense. What I really like about all this is that none of the various elements feel secondary or useless. Instead, they end up complementing each other nicely.

The environments. Oh good God, the environments. They are gorgeous. They are detailed. It would probably be an exaggeration to say they are the best I have ever seen, after all, the Bioshock games and Metro 2033 still exist. But The Witcher 2 is most definitely up there. Suffice to say, an early area features a small forest and I was more than happy to explore said forest purely based on how pretty and detailed it was. Not many games can achieve that.

The setting. Well... it's a sword & sorcery game. Set in medieval Europe. With monsters. And dwarves who like mining. And elves who like forests. So yeah, we're not exactly staring down the barrel of originality here. However, it's all exceptionally well realized. The forests are leafy (and gorgeous, did I mention that?), the swamps are murky and the towns are bustling and alive.

That last point deserves some elaboration. Here, have a promo video:


When I first watched that I was a bit suspicious. After all, it's marketing. And how many developers don't claim that their digital worlds are vibrant and dynamic and all that? Well, turns out these guys aren't kidding. There are numerous examples of the detail that has been put into this game.

The one failure in this department is the NPC conversation. They have that Bethesda problem where you hear them again and again. For example, in the video you saw a guy trying to extort protection fees from a blacksmith. Yeah... I've heard that exchange at least five times while playing.

Lastly, there is, for lack of a better term, the passion. And no, I'm not talking about the sex scenes. Witcher 2 is quite clearly a labour of love. Sure, the people who made it wanted to collect a paycheck, but they wanted to do that by making a really good game. I'm not one to say that passion is all you need, but it certainly helps and in this case, it shows.

...

OH GOD SO MANY WORDS. I CANT BREATH.

TL;DR:

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings isn't perfect. It's not even great. It isn't a game I can unconditionally recommend to absolutely anyone. However, it is good. If anything in the above torrent of text has piqued your interest then I would strongly suggest that you look into it.

you know what my main point of critique for this game is?
Visually it's shite for some reason nobody has been able to touch the scale of epicness that was Oblivions graphics in a rpg since then

Nothing is scaling up to that

The characters were way to bland for me .
The combat is shaky at best
And the story is just a big pile of doggy doodoo


Maraveno out!

Witcher 2's environments are vastly superior to Oblivion's.

For starters, they have character.

 

[Zhukov]

you know what my main point of critique for this game is?
Visually it's shite for some reason nobody has been able to touch the scale of epicness that was Oblivions graphics in a rpg since then

Nothing is scaling up to that

Oh man, that made me laugh. Funniest thing I've heard in a while.

 

[ChupathingyX]

you know what my main point of critique for this game is?
Visually it's shite for some reason nobody has been able to touch the scale of epicness that was Oblivions graphics in a rpg since then

Nothing is scaling up to that

The characters were way to bland for me .
The combat is shaky at best
And the story is just a big pile of doggy doodoo

Maraveno out!

Oblivion, in particular Tamriel, had boring level design. Yeah sure it looked pretty but there was nothing unique going on.

1. Oblivion had boring characters who had bland design and that Bethesda stare.
2. Oblivion's combat was just slash, slash, block.
3. Oblivion's storyline was evil demon taking over world and now you need to go find a bunch of holy grail's so that someone else can take on the antagonist for you.

You should do comedy, 'cause you're hilarious.

 

[Gametek]

Thing is, Geralt is the most blatant Mary Sue I have seen in quite some time. He's a tough, cynical badass with platinum hair and exotic eyes (gold with feline pupils in case you were wondering) who travels the world slaying monsters while being constantly pursued by amorous women. Also, he's an amnesiac with a tragic past. Oh yeah, and he has a slash scar across one eye, because apparently the developers were working off some sort of cliche checklist. His one saving grace is that he's generally a fairly nice guy.

***************SPOILER********

He have no tragic past. He died fighting against a "pogrom" against non human, killed by a mere no one. with a fork. He still have this scare on the chest. Tha, a witch stole his dead body and stole gis soul from the dead itself, ressurectin him, but taking away his memory. For I don't remember the reson. Enough deep?

As for the story being shit on other media, it's a reap of from a book. Like harry potter videogame. And the book was good. As any fanboy will tell you.

 

[Ironic Pirate]

Man, this game makes me wish I liked PC gaming better.

I think I read they were considering a console port, is that at all likely?

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

I think I read they were considering a console port, is that at all likely?

They've said they'd be happy to do one once the PC version hit the shelves. They've already gotten the tech to downscale for consoles, so it's just a matter of getting someone to pay to have CD Projekt RED spend a few months cutting things up to fit on consoles (stuff like cutting maps up into smaller discrete sets of maps and shit like that because consoles are RAMtarded). CD Projekt themselves will probably foot the bill if they can get enough interest from distributors.

 

[PopcornAvenger]

So far it hasn't seemed to make any kind of a splash here on the Escapist. A bit sad for such a stellar game. Is it because it's a PC exclusive release?

 

[Kahunaburger]

I wonder why people misuse the term "Mary Sue" so often? A Mary Sue is primarily author wish fulfillment. A Michael Moorecock reference with questionable people skills and terrible parenting skills who is essentially a bad-luck charm and on a semi-regular basis makes extremely bad judgment calls is not a Mary Sue.

In other words, in Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, Blomqvist is a borderline Mary Sue, but Salander is not. It's okay to have a skilled, strong, and reasonably smart character, people.