The Witcher 2

[eot]

Yeah, I found that the game booted slower the more saves I had. If I remember correctly the game autosaves a ton, so you need to clear that stuff out. Or maybe it doesn't overwrite quicksaves? Either way it adds up somehow.

[Erkki]

Yeah, it's the autosaves. Quicksaves get replaced, as I remember. Deleting the files manually worked fine, even as the game was started and in the main menu. All crashing problems disappeared and loading a game upon death was 10 times faster.

 

So I finished it a second time and a here are a few thoughts.

 

The combat is all about dodging. Realizing this made the hard difficulty level playable. I still died a lot in some fights, but even the

Letho

fight in the ruins wasn't that bad. Also, in the tougher fight throwable weapons help a lot.

 

The crafting system wasn't that bad, and the economy seems extraordinarily well balanced for an RPG. In most games, you amass a huge fortune by the end (or middle) of the game, but here the good armors and weapons really cost a lot and even as I tried to have most expensive things crafted instead of buying ready-made products, I mostly had to pick either an armor, a silver sword or a steel sword, but could never just buy all new gear. However, this was before I realized how much of a fortune I had gathered in ingredients and miscellania. I didn't really sell any of that stuff until Chapter 3, where I finally started feeling short on money (I think I had 800 or so when entering Chapter 3). Then I decided to sell as much as I needed to buy the expensive gear and made 3 or 4 thousand orens. In that way, maybe the magic storage chests that carry your stuff between chapters weren't such a great addition, but on the other hand it would also suck to just see that expensive armor there, but not be able to buy it at all. I think it would be better if rewards for destroying monsters were bigger, but you couldn't pick up that much random junk everywhere (and the way you can just go and clean up a king's chest while he is standing right next to you is ridiculous).

 

Finally, I played differently this time just to see what the other path had in store. Had I played the way I wanted, I would have made different choices. I hope the only way to carry my choices to the next game will not be a save game, because I think I lost the ones from the original playthrough (does the game even save at the very end

after you decide what to do with Letho?

). I wouldn't mind if it actually didn't carry any of my choices forward -- then I would be fine with whatever they chose. If they do carry them, then I want them to be the right choices, but I don't think I'd play through both Witcher 1 and 2 again just to make sure. But maybe it doesn't matter that much -- I'm sure the choices will not have a really big effect in an open world game.

[Moosferatu]

I finally got a computer that's capable of running this game properly, and completed it yesterday.  It was enjoyable, but, honestly, I was a bit disappointed.  It's been years since I played the first game, but I remember enjoying it so much more.  My biggest beef with it was the story, and the game's story telling techniques.  It was a confusing, epic storyline that was ultimately generic and uninteresting.  I don't give a shit about the kings of such-and-such or who owns what.  There was all of this political crap at the expense of standard witcher monster hunting and investigation.

 

Additionally, the banal plot was presented in such a weird incongruous fashion.  Sometimes there are rendered cutscenes.  Sometimes it's graphic novel panels.  Sometimes Danilion is narrating weird transition scenes.  Sometimes, for no apparent reason, you're controlling a character that isn't Geralt.  The game is all over the map.  It doesn't have a single unified point-of-view.  What's more the game seems intentionally cryptic about who people are and what's going on for the first part of the game, and then you just sit down with Letho at the end and have him read off an extended plot summary for you.  That was only necessary because the game does such a poor job of unfolding the plot.

 

Anyway, it was fun.  I enjoyed the combat, and some of the side quests.  I'm looking forward to the next one, and hope there's more witching to it.

[Moosferatu]

It would be fun if the games were episodic, and more similar to the short stories.  The Witcher reminds me a lot of Hellboy, which is also prime material for an episodic game.  It would be awesome if Telltale did it for their next graphic novel adaptation.

[melmer]

Reminds you of Hellboy. Are you aware of the newly announced comic with art from BPRDs Joe Querio or is this a crazy coincidence

Also an episodic Hellboy adventure game would be mint

[Erkki]

If you have a chance to play The Witcher 2 in 3D, do it! Looks awesome, as if the game was made with 3D in mind. I noticed details I had never noticed before (even though the resolution got smaller), and some of the sign effects looked really nice.

[Roderick]

I've started playing The Witcher 2 after the Steam free weekend and discount (bloody hell that's an effective way to lure people in - a developer friend says he always rakes in players and cash whenever they score a weekend). I like a ton of things about it, though I'm surprised that it plays more like Fable than Elder Scrolls. I had been expecting something open-worldy, but instead it's quite prescribed, both in story and environment.

After a dozen hours I'm still messing about in Flotsam and its environs. It's mostly fun, but the rough edges do annoy me every now and then. There are moments the game does things or doesn't let you do things (like draw a sword when the game has decided you're in a stealth section) that dampen my enthusiasm. The battle against the Kayran was also more of a nuisance than enjoyable. As it is, I feel the combat gameplay isn't very fun, and a great deal of that is on the one hand in polish, and on the other basic context: in a world where Dark Souls exists, The Witcher 2 falls noticeably short.

I'm also not completely charmed by the crafting and potion drinking, which seems more of a hassle than anything else.

But, the world is refreshingly low for high fantasy, it's doesn't smack me around the ears with binary morality systems, and the quandaries it puts before you are therefore even vaguely intruiging.

[Erkki]

The Witcher's heritage is largely on the Baldur's Gate side of the family, I would say. And each game seems to be an evolutionary step towards more modern open world games.

[feelthedarkness]

The magic and potions don't really show their full usefulness until you push higher difficulty levels where you really need some advantages. 

[youmeyou]

They were also a more interesting mechanic than pressing pause and eating 50 potions in Skyrim. The ritualization of the act of self-preservation is fascinating to me. It could use more complexity though. Dark Souls has similar ritualization in terms of eating humanities vs not or that part where you have to eat ghost parts in New Londo ruins to fight ghosts.

[Jutranjo]

They were also a more interesting mechanic than pressing pause and eating 50 potions in Skyrim. The ritualization of the act of self-preservation is fascinating to me. It could use more complexity though. Dark Souls has similar ritualization in terms of eating humanities vs not or that part where you have to eat ghost parts in New Londo ruins to fight ghosts.

 

I felt W1 had more involved potion mechanics than W2. You could drink them in combat though, but you could adapt without reloading. But W2 makes a lot more sense for the setting.

[eot]

I liked TW2 but I think the potion mechanics were bad, straight up. It's hard to know when you're going to need them in advance and boss battles are often preceded by cutscenes, even dialogue trees sometimes. At the same time they vastly reduced the duration of them so if you pre-apply them they might run out in the middle of combat. It's got some gameplay issues in general though, the difficulty curve is inverted (combat becomes so trivial that it gets boring later on), Quen is overpowered while being boring to use (stops vigor regen), upgraded roll is silly good vs blocking which is pointless. I'm not sure I could replay the game now that I've played Dark Souls.

 

I still like it for its world and story though. What they did with chapter 2 is kind of amazing.

[youmeyou]

Yeah, all great points. Chapter 2's choices were interesting enough to make me play the game twice. (This was also after the combat overhaul which smoothed some things out) The two fights at the end of Flotsam are still the most difficult in the game by a mile.

[Twig]

Man guys I really liked the combat. D: It's been way too long since I played the game though (the week it launched!) so I can't really come up with any reasons to disagree. THIS MAKES ME MAD!

 

Ah well.

[Brannigan]

I was fine with the combat, but the 2 boss fights in flotsam are ridiculous

[Erkki]

Yes, the one particular fight in the Flotsam chapter was utterly ridiculously hard the first time I played!

 

I mean the fight with Letho.

 

But it did actually create an astonishing (in hindsight) situation later on. I have probably mentioned this before but for some reason I just now realized that maybe this could have been intentional...

 

At the end of the game, when you meet Letho again and have a long talk with him, you then get the choice whether to fight him or not. Well, I chose not to, although part of me badly wanted to kill him. I think it was mostly because I didn't want to go through *that* again! So the character Letho actually managed to intimidate me, the player!

 

PS

I don't even remember if I fought him when I played for the second time, but most likely the final fight is actually a lot easier than the first one?

[Nappi]

Yes, the one particular fight in the Flotsam chapter was utterly ridiculously hard the first time I played!

 

I mean the fight with Letho.

 

But it did actually create an astonishing (in hindsight) situation later on. I have probably mentioned this before but for some reason I just now realized that maybe this could have been intentional...

 

At the end of the game, when you meet Letho again and have a long talk with him, you then get the choice whether to fight him or not. Well, I chose not to, although part of me badly wanted to kill him. I think it was mostly because I didn't want to go through *that* again! So the character Letho actually managed to intimidate me, the player!

 

PS

I don't even remember if I fought him when I played for the second time, but most likely the final fight is actually a lot easier than the first one?

 

That final choice was incredibly effective for me for a different reason:

 

I had some difficulty with Letho in the first fight, but after that - due to some serious leveling up and crafting good gear - had it relatively easy for the rest of the game. When I was given the option to fight Letho again, I decided to go for it, not because I wanted revenge or because I felt that I had to prove to myself that I could take him out easily this time, but because the whole thing felt so insignificant and pointless after everything that had taken place. I don't remember ever going to the "final" boss thinking "Why the fuck not. It doesn't really matter one way or another."

[mikemariano]

Apparently merchandise from this game was an official gift to President Obama:

 

From entries made since 2009 to the U.S. Protocol Gift Unit Federal Register Report, which records items given by foreign dignitaries to federal employees.

 

...

 

“Witcher 2” playing cards and five wooden dice in black sack with “Witcher” emblem, to Barack Obama from Poland.