The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

For The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, CD Projekt RED developed their own game engine. And with it they created one of the most beautiful PC games there are -- at least if your machine is up to the task. Mine was not.

After tweaking the settings, I got the game running well enough, but my playthrough was definitely lacking in the eye candy department. They must have optimized a whole lot of things to make the game playable on the Xbox.

They clearly had the Xbox in mind from the start too (or maybe the user interface was changed in the Enhanced Edition that came out with the console release?), because the game gave me a first impression of a console port; the default keybindings were awkward, grid inventory was replaced by messy lists, and generally everything felt designed for a gamepad. Also, tab was not rebindable for whatever reason even though it was not used for anything, as far as I could tell.

And they added the one thing whose absence was the only positive thing in the first Witcher's combat -- manual parry. However, it turned out Geralt does not even have parry unless you spec into it. Seriously, the tutorial exists only to cause confusion, telling you to hold and press all these different keys for all kinds of actions that are actually very much optional, depending on how you spend your talent points. One should really just jump right into the story and learn things as they come up.

Thus, I avoided parry and decided to rely on combat rolls instead. The double tap rolling had been replaced by the more pleasant spacebar (like in Mass Effect), of which I was thankful. Combat in general felt vastly improved from the first game, although it always seemed like enemies could recover from sword combos any time. And I never learned how to take down shield-wielders elegantly with a sword. Maybe it was because I specialized heavily into Signs, I do not know. But at least the timed clicks and stance-dancing had been removed, and the camera was now directly behind Geralt's back.

I liked how they had kept (or recreated) the attack animations; Geralt goes through all the familiar sword combo attacks when pressing on the same opponent. The executions moves were also still there, but instead of being simple sync-kill animations, the game always played a short cutscene, which often felt out of place. But they were not that common -- the Aard sign did not stun enemies as often as it used to. Throwing a good twenty guys off Vergen's walls with it was entertaining enough, though.

With Aard having been nerfed, the Igni sign became my new favorite, especially after I put second point in the talent that made it an AoE attack. Towards the end, it burned down enemy groups so very quickly and brought the new adrenaline bar back to full within the same fight I had emptied it to lay down the (also new) Heliotrop sign. Casting Igni while combat rolling made many fights trivial.

And thus, the second witcher game suffers from the same issue as the first in that it becomes easier the further you are into the game (at least on Normal anyway). The first act definitely had the game's most difficult battles with the Kayran and Letho fights, and later on very few things actually challenged me. I did die a whole lot due to stabs in the back throughout the game, though. I should have put two points into the talent that reduces damage taken from those from 200 to 100% right away. Distance increase for combat rolls was also a pretty nice place to invest in the sword tree.

To my disappointment I also found they had not increased the frequency of autosaving, at least not during side quests. At one point, I had to replay an hour's worth in the first act because neither me nor the game had done a save. The Polish fellows should also learn from BioWare and add save slots for autosaves, quick saves, chapter start saves, and such because making a new save file for everything ends you up with several hundred by the end of the game.

Quick time events brought some diversion and their own challenges. There is an option to turn off difficult QTEs, which I did after hearing "Look, the dragon's back!" for the tenth time because Geralt did not simply want to dodge the damn dragon. After I did that, the amount of QTEs was greatly reduced, which I actually did not mind at all.

A kind of QTEs were also the few times when you have limited time to pick a dialog option. Those I liked, especially the one where you have to decide do you want to throw Iorveth a sword. I wonder how much that changed things, though. Choosing between the elf and Roche later on definitely has a large effect on what you get from the game, however. After pondering a long time, I decided to side with Iorverth. Neither of the options were really perfect but I was mostly satisfied with mine in the end. I am not sure if it was because of my choices, but Triss was pretty much played out of the story after her capture, only returning in the epilogue to say couple words. And that felt lame.

Generally, the story's theme was much like the first game's. The bigger picture was largely lost on me, though. I never quite catched perfectly who ruled what and where. And why not have proper language on the map during the chapter movies? That would have helped a lot. At least Geralt's own story progressed pretty nicely and he regained most of his memory. And I liked how regardless what you choose, it always fits Geralt. He does not go from a pleasant fellow to a douchebag and back in seconds like Commander Shepard does when you mix paragon and renegade dialogue options.

I got the feeling that much work went into creating the engine and the length of the story suffered from that. The Witcher 2 is quite long, no doubt, but I am quite sure The Witcher was longer by far. They did a add whole lot of items and loot, though. And because of that, Geralt looks pretty much the whole game like a character leveling up in World of Warcraft. He is always wearing all kinds of random gear pieces that do not fit together at all. I am not sure if I liked the increased amount of crafting either; it felt tad unnecessary.

All in all, I would say The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is a solid RPG title but it did not feel all that special after the previous game. Also, there never was a feeling of a huge build-up to anything; excitement level always stayed the same. Even the epilogue had an odd feeling about it, giving you the option to let Letho go without a fight, which I did. I am sure I could have defeated him easily, cheesing him up with the Igni sign, but I actually liked the guy and how he succeeded in his task to plunge the northern realms into chaos to ease the Empire's upcoming conquest.

However, this time around, replaying the game is actually tempting since the combat was so much better. And it would be interesting to see how Roche's storyline plays out. But I think I'm done with witchers for the time being. I guess a third game is coming eventually but that is probably going to happen after CD Projekt gets their Cyberpunk title out.