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The Witcher 2

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  • The game menu now loads at a markedly accelerated pace.
  • A number of game balance fixes have been introduced in the Prologue.
  • Lock on targets is not lost when the distance to targets increases.
  • A number of fixes have been made in blocking functionality during combat. Also, player character responsiveness in combat has been improved, and Geralt can attack more than one target during normal combat.

All these. Important. No resolution ratio fix though!

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I just installed the new patch and for some reason I got a bunch of new items when I loaded my game. Stuff like way better armor, trousers, and gloves. Is that normal?

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I just installed the new patch and for some reason I got a bunch of new items when I loaded my game. Stuff like way better armor, trousers, and gloves. Is that normal?

yeah those were various pre-order bonuses and such. basically they just unlocked all of it for everyone (which was cute because i found myself out in a field, overburdened, upon loading).

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I just installed the new patch and for some reason I got a bunch of new items when I loaded my game. Stuff like way better armor, trousers, and gloves. Is that normal?

How far were you in the game? I entered the Amazon pre-order code and was informed that I'll find the armor at appropriate time in the game. I hope it will be like that with the patch as well, so that my efforts to craft good stuff aren't completely invalidated.

I'm all for free preorder stuff though..

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By the way, is there a way to change the order in which different items are used for alchemy by default? It's kind of annoying when the game offers to consume quest and crafting items before those that are only useful for alchemy.

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How far were you in the game?

Very early. Currently, I just have time to play a couple hours a week.

The new alchemy system is pretty annoying, as is the inventory. How many potions do I already have? Don't know. How many of the ingredient I'm currently using do I have left? Don't know. What direction is that fucking symbol pointing? Don't know. Also, why'd they get rid of the alcohol collecting? That was a blast. Way more entertaining than lugging around timber and cloth.

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What the... Steam is downloading the whole game yet again. I thought they (were supposed to) fix that.

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Just finished this. What a great game even if it played little hard to get at first!

I think this game has the best implementation of Choice™ I have seen in a video game. You don't get a halo or grow horns, and most often you don't even know if you have been "good" or "bad". Choices affect the plot in ways that you can't really predict and you just have to live with it. At the very end of the game,

I decided to kill Letho on a whim even though I didn't really hate him anymore

. Being left with a strong feeling of "what's the point either way" was actually a very satisfying way to end the game.

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Some good armor and weapons, I guess.

I didn't really have to hunt for materials for most of the items I crafted, so it wasn't all that painful in my opinion.

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TW2 looks awesome. Maybe I should play it... but TW1 didn't really leave a good impression on me. It didn't really click, not sure why, but it's probably the rather complex interaction stuff. In TW2 more arcade-like like the TES games?

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The Witcher 2 feels very much like The Witcher 1, except with a clumsier UI.

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TW2 looks awesome. Maybe I should play it... but TW1 didn't really leave a good impression on me. It didn't really click, not sure why, but it's probably the rather complex interaction stuff. In TW2 more arcade-like like the TES games?

CD Projekt defiantly streamlined some stuff from TW1 but not a whole lot. Crafting and potion making are similar to TW1 but you can meditate anywhere, not just a campfire. You still need to read books and prepare before you fight monsters and the combat is more complex(and better, in my opinion). If you liked the setting of TW1, which seemed to be its main draw, you will find a lot to love in TW2 but expect lots of politics. I would recommend trying it, but try to finish TW1 first.

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Damn it... TW1s fighting was probably what I hated the most. It's like a continuous QTE.

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Damn it... TW1s fighting was probably what I hated the most. It's like a continuous QTE.

Yeah, I could not get into the witcher, one part combat, other part in the fiction/characters completely not clicking with me.

I tried the Witcher 2, the combat seemed better but still semi impossible to play to me and the fiction is pretty much the same. I appreciate the production value and really want to like the game, but I don't get it, if Witcher 1 didn't win me over and then very little time I tried Witcher 2 didn't click, I'm pretty sure this game just isn't for me.

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Damn it... TW1s fighting was probably what I hated the most. It's like a continuous QTE.

The combat is totally different. I still wouldn't necessary call it a good combat system, but it has nothing to do with the QTE-esque clickery that embodied the first game. Fair warning: the combat in TW2 is significantly improved by using a gamepad, and it is unfairly hard at the beginning of the game (unless that has been patched out).

Overall it's more polished, has a less ridiculously stupid inventory system, and better voice acting, visuals and sound. It's still kind of eastern European janky at times, and the first few hours of the game are definitely its weakest parts as it barely explains its systems while still expecting them to be fully utilised. If you like the world of the Witcher, it's pretty similar, if you didn't... it's pretty similar.

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I'd recommend you to buy it especially because it should be pretty cheap by now. The combat felt really good in my opinion and the overall package was excellent. Best game I have played all year, and I have played like two or three.

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So the 2.0 patch is out. It somehow screwed up my installation and now I'm downloading the whole game again. I think my problem was not running Steam as administrator, which no other game has ever had a problem with.

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Second time's the charm. Ran Steam as admin for the duration of the installation steps and it was successfully auto-patched. Some initial thoughts below.

4:3 resolution works :tup:

Tutorial: :tup: that it's there, but :tdown: that it has hints constantly in the middle of the fucking screen that can't be turned off. :tmeh: that it feels kind of tacked on, but hey, it was tacked on so that's understandable.

Arena: This seems the most promising thing about the patch :tup:, except that it seems to have no save mode :tdown:. Does that mean every time I want to play it I start from Level 1? That is not what I expected, but maybe there's a different system of saving progress here.

The other stuff doesn't really interest me much -- the Dark Mode or the extra items -- but I might decide to restart my second playthrough (on Normal) as I haven't gotten very far yet, just started with the Kayran quest. I'll see what changes the patch brings to the main game, but maybe some later day.

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Bah. The Arena is so much missed potential.

I would really like to save. The point of AN ARENA MODE should not to make you play for hours and hours straight. Even the main game can be played in short sessions, but if you are doing seriously good in the Arena, it will last hours! And you can't save.

With the normal mode I last maybe 15 minutes, but in easy mode I was close to death only a couple of times, got to the end, and THEN IT GOES BACK TO THE BEGINNING! Idiocy. It really sends the same weaklings from the start of Arena against you, but now you've levelled up and have all this awesome gear. And I assume it just keeps going endlessly like that. Well, it would be kind of cool if you could just level up endlessly as well until Geralt becomes a superhuman with every ability in the skill tree, but no, you are capped at level 35, which is about enough to fill just one of the 3 skill tree paths.

:tup::tmeh::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tdown::tup:

But it's still really fun for a while at least, so might be still worth playing it now and then.

I really hope they listen to users regarding this as well and everyone else shares my opinion and they release a 3.0 patch which fixes the Arena.

[hahaha, the forum said]"You have included 16 images in your message. You are limited to using 15 images so please go back and correct the problem and then continue again" I had to remove one thumb down.

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So I finally finished this. I completed the prologue and chapter 1 on my old computer in the early patches (unfortunate on both counts), and then played chapters 2 and 3 and of course the epilogue on my new computer, and in version 2.0. I like that game. I like it much more than I did when I started. I really feel like the first hour or two of it is very hit and miss gameplay-wise, and the story doesn't really start going until the end of the first chapter either. It's definitely not a game you can pick up and be hooked immediately. Some of the gameplay concerns, at least, may have been addressed by the version 2.0 stuff - I'm not sure, having not tried it.

The last chapter and the epilogue were indeed pretty short, but I didn't really mind because it seemed like the correct place to end it. All of the main questions had been answered and the game was pretty well set up for the seemingly inevitable third entry. I like the fact that there were three big live or die choices at the end, and I hope they have consequences for the aforementioned third game.

For those who've finished at least chapter 2,

how did the other Witchers of the Viper die? At some point in my journal it said the two who were with Letho were dead, but either that happened in chapter 1 and I'd forgotten by the time I came back to the game or it was never really explained for me.

I feel like I immediately want to jump back to the end of chapter 1 and take the other main path and see how different it is, but I could probably do with a break from the game and there are plenty of other things coming out soon that will distract me anyway. Still, I think I might genuinely do a second playthrough of this - probably skipping chapter 1 if I actually have a viable save for it. Side note: goddamn that game takes up a lot of space with saves, it never deletes any of them as far as I can tell and they're not all that small either. I've pruned out most of them myself, but it's still sort of bizarre.

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I took a long break, and just tried to come back to it. I've died so many times on that damn Kraken. I realize that it's not even that difficult of a fight, but the controls are so unresponsive, and what's truly perplexing, not to mention utterly infuriating, is even the load screen after I die is unresponsive. The cursor jerkily moves over to the "Yes" button, and I sit there clicking it till the game decides that's it's good and ready to consider letting me have another go. Back at the Kraken once again (after hammering the right mouse button to encourage it to think about skipping the cutscene once again). I know nothing about making games (just boring J2EE apps), but it seems like every action or input in the game is processed through some single threaded event queue (maybe it is). "Whoops, I know you really want to cast Yarden right now, but, you see, you've already queued two more dashes forward and the Kraken has a tentacle smashing that needs executed. If you're still alive after that we'll see about the Yarden." :frusty:

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So the Enhanced Edition is out, all 10 gigs of it. I for one plan to hang out with my pal, and best character in the game, Vernon Roche and relive the golden age of my first play through. Also I plan to do it on "dark mode" or whatever is the hardest difficulty because people who complain about combat don't know how to roll.

And apparently this is now out on the Xbox 360 as well and I wholeheartedly encourage everyone to try it out. And when you do remember, Vernon Roche is your friend.

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