The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011)

I liked this game a lot. The story and characters are amazing—easily among the best in gaming. It does a great job continuing the narrative from The Witcher 1 while also setting up The Witcher 3 in a meaningful way.

It has everything: romance, betrayal, conspiracies, plot twists, and multiple factions all fighting for power and outsmarting each other. The writing is excellent, with strong dialogue and solid world-building. Honestly, the story alone is worth playing the game.

Where the game shows its age is in the technical side. Performance can be inconsistent, even on modern hardware at high settings (I recommend disabling features like ubersampling and cinematic depth of field). There’s also some jank in transitions between cutscenes and gameplay, along with stiff animations and inconsistent hitboxes.

And speaking of combat—it’s probably the weakest part of the game. It sits somewhere between The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 3, but doesn’t feel as good as either. On higher difficulties especially, the inconsistent hitboxes and awkward animations can make fights frustrating. I also didn’t find alchemy very useful, mainly because you can’t use it during combat, which limits its practicality.

Overall, a good game that’s absolutely worth playing for its story and characters, even if some of its systems haven’t aged well.

The second Witcher title (and the very first Witcher game that I've ever played) is a mature, story-driven RPG that significantly improved upon its predecessor in both gameplay and presentation. And I got to admit that I couldn't finish the first title because of it's clunky mechanics, and this one is a very good improvement in comparison. Set in a dark, politically charged fantasy world, the MC is Geralt of Rivia as he becomes entangled in a web of assassinations, war, and moral ambiguity.

The branching narrative offers meaningful choices and consequences, supported by excellent dialogue and voice acting. Combat is more refined but can be punishing early on. Visually impressive for its time, the game also features a rich atmosphere and complex characters. It’s a standout RPG that rewards patience and thoughtful decision-making.

This game has amazing characters, though the story is indeed very good too, is not like the characters are carrying the quality of the main story, everything is very well written, implemented and the pacing is one of the best I've experienced in any RPG. I think that this is one of the reasons why this franchise is praised among even communities that are not very into RPGs, it is a very accessible franchise to get into, from anybody's perspective. I highly recommend not skipping this one since it'll help a lot with the immersion and backstory of the subsequent entries in the series, in my opinion, going straight to Witcher 3 is a disservice to yourself.

Game takes place in 1271, one year after the first game. King Foltest has appointed Geralt, who saved him from an assassin, as his personal bodyguard. The king is also at war with his mistress mary louisa la valette. For those who are new to the RPG genre, I recommend you to read the tutorial section of the game carefully. The tutorial will give you clues about the mechanics and gameplay system. I don't recommend skipping it if you are new. There is also a playable part of the game called "arena" outside the main story. Here you can develop Geralt with various monsters and bandits and take on challenging fighting tournaments by taking followers with you.

Those who played the previous game may find Witcher 2 a bit complicated. Because the fighting mechanics are very detailed this time. Everything has been made much more difficult, for example, you need to be skilled to use things like melee combat, potions, signs, bombs, traps, etc. Efficiently against your opponents. Gameplay changes include strong and weak hit combinations, the elimination of potions during combat, the ability to meditate without needing a campfire, and a quick select button for spells and traps. You just need to press CTRL to access this area of the game and there is joystick support as well.

As for the graphics, the character modeling, environment and landscape designs are close to perfect for the era the game came out. I can say that they still look good even today. However, you will need a powerful system to fully enjoy this experience. For some of the experimental graphics settings, you need to have a system above the recommended system requirement. Don't forget that if you have a finished save from the previous game, you can transfer it to Witcher 2.

However, you may encounter some of the choices you made in the first game and some of your old items may appear in your inventory. Compared to the first game, Witcher 2 is a much better action role-playing game that challenges you with visual quality, new twists, new surprises, a more immersive story and gameplay mechanics. It is a must buy and must play. The game offers an average of 35 hours of gameplay.

The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings picks up very shortly after the first game, and you can import your save file from 1 into 2 that does make some pretty significant changes based on decisions you made in 1. The story here is by far the highlight of the game, and your decisions here really do feel like they help shape the world around you. There is a lot of lore here that you can either skip past side missions or reading the in game content, or really immerse yourself in the world. The problem is for every great idea The Witcher 2 has, there is at least one shortcoming that sets it back. The story is great, but the combat is pretty terrible. You have the option of light attack with left mouse, or heavy attack with right, dodge rolling, and then bombs/traps. The bombs and traps help some, but I rarely found them to be all that reliant, instead just spamming left click with the occasional right click. The game does not do a great job explaining everything, from mission structure, effectively using enhancements, or how some missions play out. I failed several missions because the objective told me to "wait for events to unfold". I would go off doing other missions, then get rewarded with a "mission failed" for that prior mission, without knowing what or how I had failed it. The game is split into 3 "acts", with each one taking place in a different major hub city. The cities are bustling with people and side activities to do, and really do often feel like a living city. The first two acts all have a good amount of missions and activities to keep you entertained without overstaying the welcome. The third act though is where you can really tell the development of this game was rushed. The third act is maybe 1/8th of the content of either of the other two acts, and it really pushes you along to the end. Due to this, it gets a bit confusing as it's trying to wrap up this grand lore together too quickly.

This may all sound like I really did not enjoy my time with the game. I admit, it took me several attempts at restarting the game (hence completing it finally in 2022) before I got hooked. This is mostly due to the very steep learning curve to the game, in part from the lackluster tutorial. If you can get past that though, the story here and characters are well fleshed out and very engrossing. So far I've only played the first two games, but I unfortunately feel the first Witcher game was a better experience. The Witcher 2 though is still worth playing through for the story alone, as long as you can go into it with some patience.

TLDR in the last two paragraphs. Apologies in advance for the long post.

After arriving in Velen, having spent about 10hrs with the game, I started to finally fall in love with The Witcher 3 when I first played it last year. It did take a while, but once the game opened up and I began to familiarise myself with its world and characters, I simply couldn't get enough of it. Wild Hunt quickly made its way into my Top 3 GOAT list, and I still look back very fondly at the 130 hours I spent with both the base game and the two incredible DLC expansions.

I mention this because my love for The Witcher 3 made me reticent to try The Witcher 2. I had read the game hadn’t aged very well and had its fair share of issues (most of which I ended up experiencing firsthand). Above all, I wondered if what I already knew about the story wouldn’t make my going back to the previous game an exercise in futility.

As it usually happens in these cases, I couldn’t be more wrong. To be sure, and mainly because it’s almost impossible to not look at TW2 under the weight of its sequel, the problems I had read about are all there, and then some (especially on the unoptimised console port): the movement jank is real; there is a lack of polish permeating the entire playthrough, sometimes resulting in frustrating glitches (one of which borderline game breaking); QoL aspects are clearly missing (less streamlined menus, no sprinting, jumping, side stepping, swimming, etc); most side quests aren’t as memorable; obvious difficulty balancing issues make the game feel - and play - weirder than TW3; and at the epicentre of all issues, combat was much clunkier, artificially difficult, harder to get used to, and especially painful in close quarters due to unreliable enemy targeting, invisible walling, weird hit boxes, getting stuck and unresponsiveness to prompts. All of these were things I encountered on my playthrough, and they began to conspire under a united front which seemed destined to ultimately crush my enjoyment of the game.

They failed spectacularly. A big part of that was because of all the things TW2 does masterfully, which I will get around to in a minute. But another part was because of one thing the game doesn’t tell you, but you likely figure out during the course of your playthrough: the combat, which is a system you naturally spend a ton of time engaged with, doesn’t need to feel that bad. In fact, once you get the hang of the - mostly technical challenges - they present, fights are still able to offer a feeling of potent swordplay, to the point of becoming even somewhat enjoyable. I finally realised this once I took both the Position and Footwork perks. Position, at least partially and on your end, sorts out the problem with enemy targeting and getting stuck, since getting unfairly ‘backstabbed’ doesn’t make much of a dent anymore. Footwork, on the other hand, evens out the playing field as it allows to dodge roll much farther, thus reducing issues associated with hit boxes, enemy reach and, in a way, the feeling of clunkiness which would be a lot more noticeable otherwise. In a tandem, these perks also negate the unbalancing feel to the difficulty: before I took these perks, Easy felt way too easy, Normal felt absurdly hard on some fights, and between Normal and Hard I couldn’t tell much of a difference. With Position and Footwork, however, the difference becomes much more logically progressive between all three levels. As a consequence, my enjoyment of the game went up considerably after taking these perks. This, of course, doesn’t excuse the game’s poor combat execution - not only should you not need to choose specific perks to solve mechanical problems, this also raises a whole new debate on build viability -, but it’s nonetheless a very effective bandaid that I wish I had found out sooner. Because holy damn, this game is absolutely awesome underneath all that.

TW2’s main pull, bar none, is its excellence in storytelling, more specifically story branching. I can’t remember the last time playing the same game felt so different depending on the choices you make. This is another thing about TW2 I hadn’t come across with when looking into it - granted, I always stay clear of any potential spoilers, so the fact that I missed it isn’t exactly surprising. At the end of Chapter 1, you are given a choice. What you decide to do completely affects the course of the game as a result, meaning storyline, character interactions, side quests, locations. Nearly everything changes. In this narrow sense, I count TW2 amongst the games that form the pinnacle of choice-consequence branching. It is a fantastic achievement to be able to pull off something like this within the same game, and at the same time, a tragic reminder of how much we haven’t been getting this in action RPGs. As these types of games become much more expensive to make, a commitment to truly meaningful story branching becomes an increasingly unlikely investment for most devs. This is particularly true of open world RPGs, since creating these alternative paths brings about its own set of issues and financial hurdles. Unlike so many people, I truly - still - love open world games. I also personally think TW3 has struck a quasi-perfect compromise between choice-consequence systems and open world design. But I would happily exchange 80% of today’s open world experiences for something along the lines of TW2’s formula: a world consisting of smaller, rich, detailed hubs, that either mutate or get downright replaced with others, depending on your decisions as you play through the game.

As a rule, I never advocate for people to do multiple playthroughs. It’s not something I can easily do myself, since I often have a hard time going through the same content (which is why I have such a hard time with time loop mechanics or games where you learn by death and repetition), so it’s only natural I wouldn’t recommend it to other people. But in this case I have to break my own rule, because you end up having two completely different experiences if you play through the game twice. If you so choose, however (not that I consider this a spoiler but I’ll tag it just in case), do yourself a favour and and play through Roche’s path first. You won’t regret it. Not only does it offer a great deal of hindsight once you go through Ioverth’s path, it is IMO nowhere near as good as the latter. Save the best for last and all that. Which is also another way of saying that, if you can only bring yourself to play through the game once, then Ioverth’s path is the one to take. Though again, I can’t stress enough how much, in this particular case, you enrich your experience with TW2 by playing through Chapters 2 and 3 twice. A very easy way to bypass the prologue and Chapter 1, which are essentially the same no matter what you do, is to create a save at the end of it (you’ll know when), and then simply reload it after your first playthrough.

But even though story branching, anchored in an excellent (and often weighty) choice-consequence process, is easily its calling card, it is far from being TW2's sole accomplishment. For all its problems, there is a lot that the game gets right, at times even surpassing the brilliance of its sequel. The fantastic cinematic intro at the very beginning pulls you into a web of political intrigue from the very beginning, into a universe filled with captivating, superiorly voiced, multidimensional characters. And the more you let yourself be invested in The Witcher’s lore, the more satisfying your experience will be. Playing a game after playing its sequel often comes with obvious drawbacks, but in this specific case, it also functions as a retroactive dose of perspective over some characters and events that you become familiar with in TW3, bringing about superb world linkage. The over-reliance on cutscenes in the prologue is noteworthy and perhaps even worthy of criticism, but at the same time it is an effectively used tool in order to establish world and narrative, even though the storytelling specifics come across as a bit illogical on a couple of occasions. There is also an epic sense of scale in the first mission, something that makes it more memorable and is clearly missing from TW3’s starting point. Additionally, I’d say TW2 definitely presents a better, much more intricate main story than its sequel, something that was simultaneously unexpected and very enjoyable.

The atmosphere is another thing TW2 absolutely nails in almost every aspect. Audiovisual design is always appropriately evocative, even though, from a pure qualitative standpoint, I can’t in good conscience say it is better than what we get in TW3. It is still an impressively looking game however, even this long after release, and whether you’re walking through the fairytale-like forest in the outskirts of Flotsam, the ancient mountainous fortress that is Vergen, or the ominous elven ruins of Loc Muinne, you never feel like there’s anything out of place, with its aesthetics serving as an excellent world building tool. This notion is transferable to monster design as well, which is of course paramount in a Witcher title. Here, too, I think TW2 takes the cake when compared to TW3. I’m not entirely sure what it is or why that is, but the execution seems more impactful in Assassins of Kings. They may not be as visually detailed, but they look and sound scarier, especially at night when combined with the darker atmosphere (as an example, my first encounters with both endregas and harpies happened around midnight and completely took me by surprise with how creepy they felt).

Few other mentions of things TW2 does in a good, bad or mixed manner: character interaction consistency outside the main narrative is still strong, but it sometimes seems a bit ‘looser’ - maybe more amateurish? - than the sequel, or at least not as refined; I unequivocally love the much more subtle and esoteric way hand gestures for signs are presented in conversations, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why they felt the need to change it; I also much rather have the throwing daggers than a crossbow as a ranged weapon, as IMO it befits a witcher’s persona a lot more; potions, on the other hand, and in fact the whole alchemy path, feel less impactful and more useless than in TW3, especially as you progress through the game; mission design isn’t as solid either, suffering from the occasional lack of clarity, though here I’ll happily admit that the line between unnecessary vagueness and handholding is never an easy one to walk; the glossary, in typical Witcher fashion, is a joy to read through, though it clearly lacks detail in comparison to the sequel; finally, the stealth sections are weird - they’re very sparsely used throughout the game (it’s basically a Chapter 1 thing), but because the system isn’t technically refined, they always feel like a bit of a chore to get through, highlighting a real missed opportunity for added mechanical depth.

I obviously look at - and ‘rate’ - games based not on how objectively good they are (since to me that’s just a silly, pie-in-the-sky metric), but on how much I personally enjoyed them. I know TW3 has a significant number of problems, and I’ll be the first to list them. Yet I still rank it as my #2 favourite game of all time. The same logic applies to TW2. I’ve listed as many issues with the game as I could remember - some of which literally had me curse at the TV -, and there will undoubtedly be others that went unmentioned. However, TW2 also took me on a strong emotional journey, which is ultimately my main reason to play video games: if a game is able to competently evoke - or provoke - feelings, in any way, I’ll always value them above and beyond their problems, frustrating as they may be. At its core, TW2 paints a nostalgic picture of narrative branching done to perfection, which along with its complex political entanglements and wonderful world building aesthetics, lore and characters, easily turns it into one of the most fulfilling RPG experiences I’ve had in recent memory.

Being a patient gamer has been working out wonderfully for me this year. For the first time in my life I have played - and beaten - the Mass Effect trilogy and Fallout: New Vegas, which I would count amongst the definitive action RPG experiences well worthy of their epic status. After my experience with Assassins of Kings, I can confidently place it on the same plateau. 9.5

After this game you really need to play the 3rd part, but I feel you need this part to understand the third fully.

Gameplay can't really score 'cause I used a LOT of mods, made the game a lot more playable maybe?

The story is just stellar in every way but the ending, won't spoil anything.

This game is better in every single way compared to the prior title that's for sure.

On to play the third and final game hope it ends with a bang.

A big improvement in this game is the combat, much more modern and fast, but it is very punishing. I loved the fact that you can import your decision from the first game to this one is neat! Makes you feel that you impacted the world and now is just following the story that you began, it really feels amazing. The story is a great mystery with a lot of thing to discover, and twists to unravel, all in all a very good story that feels grounded in this universe but still it is not as memorable or as good as the first one.

It's definitely not bad, grandeur and with more worldly impacts but less personal in a sense. The music and sound keeps the same beat as the first one. The voice-acting in this series is top notch and every character feels himself in this universe. The graphics are the second biggest improvement, with more money to spend after the first one the team could focus a bit more on this aspect and makes this game a lot better to watch and appreciate. The biggest improvement is definitely just a well-rounded more Polish-ed game. Sorry..

A lot of risks were taken in the first one, and a lot could just barely be done to be noticeable, in this one all of them were continued and had much more time to develop. The details of everyday life or simply what already exists and will keep existing after Geralt are what makes this universe so appealing. The only biggest problem is that Geralt has a wide range of animations for fast attack and another for strong attack and the game decides which one to choose randomly! But I forgive most of it because of the epic story I enjoyed..

Wow, this game just hit 10 years old! I really loved it when it came out on console. As a mature fantasy game full of politics, violence, interesting societal dynamics, and genuinely separated branching paths, it hit many of the things I loved about Dragon Age: Origins, which at the time was one of my very favorite games. In some ways, it was even cooler. Even if it’s not the greatest, gameplay-wise, the world and story were amazing.

If any game from that generation needs the kind of reworked treatment that NieR Replicant just got, this is the one. Very underappreciated and overshadowed. It could really use a small leap forward mechanically and visually to help people appreciate it after the popularity of Wild Hunt and Netflix’s Witcher series. Would help rehab CD Projekt’s image a bit too maybe...

Recommended Mods

TW2 is a bad game too, but it's pretty short (20 hours) so not as painful as the first.

• Intro logo removal - Skips most intro movies when booting.

• Weightless Enhanced Edition - Sets your weight limit to 99999 so you won't have to deal with that nonsense.

• Fix Dice Poker and Arm Wrestling - Always win - Dice Poker is a terrible game (always try to go for 3 of a kind) and this lets you complete related quests more easily. Didn't install the arm wrestling part, it's not a problem.

• Extra talents per Lv - Combat is pretty boring already but with this mod you can actually try both magic and melee so it sucks a tiny bit less.

The Witcher 2 is a much needed improvement from the first game in terms of storytelling. It also improves upon the characters, level design, combat, voice acting (thank god), and certain social aspects such as the blatant misogyny of the first. Unfortunately, with the decision to expand the world into multiple cities, they were unable to give the same densely populated and lively feel of Vizima in The Witcher 1. This made the game almost unenjoyable at times, as exploration is my favorite aspect of RPGs. Some mechanical faults also found their way into the game like being blocked off by unmovable character and the atrocious mini-map tracking system. Overall though, I enjoyed playing this game far more and would recommend it to anyone eager to learn more backstory before playing The Witcher 3.

See my full review here! https://watchreadgame.com/the-witcher-2/

The Witcher 3 is considered a great game, even people living under rocks have been made aware of that fact. While I enjoyed it & the lore and world building of the Witcher’s world, I was wary of playing the first two entries in the series because I heard they had some old school RPG jank to them. Well, with this one on sale and a bunch of mods that help correct the issues, I decided to give Witcher 2 a try.

Speaking of the mods, I’m a little worried that my review will not be entirely accurate because many of the mods I have installed warp how the gameplay work and how the world looks. I think this was more due to my version being the Enhanced Edition vs mods, but the game looks really good given it’s age. It’s not cutting edge, but for a game that came out during the PS3 era, it could pass for being an early PS4 title. There are a few hiccups that tell it’s age though; everyone has a case of early BioWare face, especially Triss, where they don’t really emote as they talk, and sometimes the lip syncing is a bit off.

Another thing effected by mods was the combat. This is the big complaint I had heard about this game, the combat was janky and unintentionally difficult. With the mods, combat wasn’t that bad at all, I actually enjoyed some aspects of it over the Witcher 3’s fighting. Your adrenaline meter can be built up to unleash a finishing move to dispatch grunts quickly and you get treated to a nice little cutscene. The magic signs work a little different too, I used almost exclusively Quen, the shield sign, because it is a little OP in this game. It can take more hits than the Witcher 3 variation can, and it electrocutes anyone who attacks you. One of the big differences in Witcher 2 is if you want to use potions or oils it requires you use those before the battle as a sort of prepping stage. I kinda like it for the realism it provides, you wouldn’t be trying to lather up your blade in the middle of a fight, but from a gameplay perspective it does sorta interrupt the flow stopping before every fight to go into menus and sometimes it requires you to know what type of monster you are about to come up against, which you don’t always get that luxury.

This game is also frought with mini games. Whereas Witcher 3 had only GWent, this one has dice poker, arm wrestling, and fight clubs. These are decent enough little games that involve quick time events or the such and make Witcher 2 feel a bit more gamey over all. There’s also a monster contract per level usually, but they are no where at the level that the monster contracts in Witcher 3 were. There’s usually no little story or investigation connected to them, you just have to go kill the monsters and burn 3 nests and then collect your reward, very MMORPGy.

This game also isn’t open world game either, which makes sense as the story drags you across the whole of the Northern Kingdoms. Instead it is broken up into linear chapters, each set at a certain locale. The first big one is the trade town of Flotsam, a backwater port town in the middle of dense woods that is under constant threat from rebel elves. It feels like Witcher 3’s Velen with dense swampy forests and a small peasent village. You aren’t able to move around as freely though as walls of trees and rocks funnel you down certain paths. After that you head to a battlefield near the town of Vergen and all the rocky outcroppings give it a Skelliege feel. Finally the last area is an ancient city that you don’t spend much time in and is a bit tedious to navigate as you have to either go through a bunch of doors or climb up the walls and fight harpies. And I hope you like backtracking, because this game sure does. It makes up at least 50% of the play time. A fast travel system was sorely missed here.

We do get some more good music here, there are some tunes here that would return in Witcher 3 and a few tunes unique to this game. They are as well produced as the Witcher 3's score, but I'm still impartial to Witcher 3. There's no good hurdy gurdy tavern tunes. It could've been my sound mixing being off, but occasionally the music would overpower dramatic conversations.

Now onto the story and characters. This time around Geralt is still under amensia from his time riding with the Hunt, so a lot of the conversations start with “Hey Geralt, how are you?” “Who are you?”. I’m not a huge fan of amensia stories, but I could see why CD Project Red may have done this so they could pick and choose what they wanted to carry over from the books and put Geralt on the same knowledge level with the player. Zoltan and Dandelion show up of course, and their characters are pretty consistent from the other game. This game does feel a little hornier than the Witcher 3, Dandelion & Geralt shoot the shit a couple times about some of the prostitues, which are all stacked, and women in general. It made them feel more like long time friends vs close business partners that I felt you got in Witcher 3.

Then there’s the characters of Vernon Roche and Letho. I followed Roche through the game because he was a cool, medieval spec ops soldier. As we go through the adventure, Geralt and Roche become sorta friends. It’s a uniquely weird dynamic. You are both friendly with each other, but in the end, you are both using each other to help yourselves. Still by the time you two arrive at the ancient city, the game does treat you like two rogue buddy cops. On his own, Roche is an interesting character. He seems like just a soldier who loves his country and wants to do anything to save it, a noble enough cause, but he’s also the royal spymaster, so he has done some less than honorable things for that cause. I want to like him for his dedication to his country and to his men, but he also gets in his own way sometimes. It was his attempt to overthrow a foreign king that got his men killed. Roche lives in that grey area of morality where you can sympathize with his beliefs, but not all his methods.

And there’s Letho. He’s a fellow witcher that Geralt has some history with. He looks like a big, dumb guy and he uses that to his advantage. People underestimate him, when he’s actually the smartest guy in the room. He treats Geralt as a friend and is only at odds with him because it’s a job, but he makes it clear he has no beef with our Witcher. He played the Kingslayer to see his Witcher school be restored. The end of the game really sold me on Letho as a character. Every other character is usually much more black and white, the kings are all jerks, but the game tries to rationalize that they are actually good leaders. It doesn’t work as well as the Bloody Baron of Witcher 3 did.

I would say the Witcher 3’s story is simple. Sure it’s long, but at the heart of it, it’s about a “father” searching for/protecting his “daughter”. The Witcher 2’s story is complex. That fact doesn’t necessarily make it better though. This game is less focused on Geralt and more on world politics. The focus of this game is not on one man’s quest, but on the shifting political climate of a world where kings are dropping like flies. You definitely have to pay attention or you could start losing the plot. There’s lots of moving parts, with kings conspiring against kings, spies double and triple crossing each other and people out for their own interests. I’ll admit I lost track of some of the threads, but I don’t think the game ever had a point where someone’s secret plan seemed counter-intuitive to their motives. This high political thriller can leave you feeling a bit cold and distant. Geralt tries to remain neutral and none of it really feels like it will effect him as Witchers sort of float around outside of any particular king’s rule. The only reason Geralt got into this mess is because he was accused of killing a king and he needed to clear his name, even though he sorta commits regicide on the way to do it in my playthrough.

At the ending, so spoiler time, it turns out that both a secret cabal of sorceresses and the Nilfgaardins were trying to destabilize the North. Letho was hired by Nilfgaard to help the sorceresses assassinate the kings and use them as a convient patsy. The game’s cheery ending is an all out massacre of mages after the sorceresses’ plot is revealed. This is where we meet Letho, who divulges Nilfgaard’s involvement. Geralt and Letho share a bottle of vodka and there’s professional courtesy in the air as Geralt decides if he wants to kill Letho or let him walk. Your lover Triss is also involved in this cabal of sorceresses, but she, conviently for the story, gets kicked out before they start planning the kingslayings. For a series that revels in characters that are less than squeky clean, it feels like a cop out that Triss isn’t part of the plots. Just to show that she has some edge to her and isn’t the goody two shoes we expect, though being responsible for regicide might be a mark on her record hard to look past.

The closest Geralt does to Witcher’s work is in the second chapter where he must lift a curse that reawoken spectral soldiers who reenact their final battle. This section is kind of neat with Geralt collecting objects of importance from a battle 3 years ago that was especially brutal. You learn the story of units and people who fought valiantly and the writing feels good here. For me only playing the Witcher 3, it was also a shift to see Geralt part of an active war vs tromping around the war torn battlefields left behind. You reenact this battle with the spirits and the design of the draugr spirits is cool, being a bunch of shields and armor strapped together by ghostly bonds.

All of Chapter 2 can play out differently though if you decide to leave from Flotsam with Iorveth and the eleven rebels. Which that’s some commitment on CD Project Red’s side to have such a large chunk of game that may never be seen if someone doesn’t go for the second playthrough.

All in all, this one feels more gamey than the Witcher 3; with the finishing moves, mini games, QTEs, and uninteresting monster hunts. This feels almost Ubisoft in execution. It’s a competent fantasy game and you can see the little hints of the greatness that will be on full display in Witcher 3. They just aren’t their yet. Still it’s always fun to be back in the boots of Geralt and with a few mods to make life easier, I can recommend this to a series fan.

It took me two years to slog through this thing. Every time I went back I swore I would just rip the bandaid off and finish it. Finally it’s done, and I hope the Witcher 3 can make up for it’s dreary predecessors.

Clunky gameplay, glitchy graphics and audio, bland and underdeveloped characters all keep me from wanting to play it through again, though maybe I just picked the worse of the two branches.

Like Witcher 1 the gameplay is extremely linear, swordplay is slow and not very nuanced, but at least it’s not as upsettingly sexist as the first iteration that has you sleeping with women to earn their collectible pinup cards.

The Witcher 2 is better than The Witcher in every way.... but The Witcher has something special that The Witcher 2 does not. I guess that the first love it is special forever :)

Anyways you must play it. It is an incredible game.

Special mention to the credits. They are extremely long. I understand they made a great effort and they want us to know that but... do I really need to see half an hour of credits in every ***** country? REALLY???? I just want to move on with my life.

In almost all respects, The Witcher 2 takes the solid foundation of The Witcher 1 and expands it into a faster-paced and more polished game. I was having such a good time playing this game I actually ended up staying up all night to finish the final act before my relatives started arriving for Christmas. I did have a few small quibbles, so I'll get those out of the way before getting into what made this game great.

As I had mentioned in my impressions post, the menus and interfaces in this game felt like a step backward, at least for those playing with mouse and keyboard, when compared to Witcher 1. While I eventually got used to them, the layout of multi-layer menus and sub-menus was less than intuitive and made getting the info I needed more of hassle than it needed to be. Especially glaring was the fact that when buying weapons and armor, there is no way to directly compare the currently equipped gear with what you're about to buy. Thus, I found myself having to perform the following procedure many times: open the equipment screen, note the specs of all my equipped gear, close the equipment screen, talk to a merchant, and then compare the specs of his/her wares to those I noted down from the equipped gear. Why is this so cumbersome? Most Super Nintendo RPGs I've played handled this better. On a related note, for some reason the game's auto-map doesn't label landmarks and some of the side quest text can be fairly cryptic, so I had to consult a guide several times in order to be able to do everything. Another confounding change is that unlike Witcher 1, Geralt can no longer drink potions (The Witcher's version of buffs) during combat, meaning that the player must predict when a big boss battle is about to happen and drink the potions in advance. This seems counter-intuitive to me. Lastly, the dice poker and fist-fighting mini games return from the first game, but at this point have gotten pretty stale.

For the positives, I'll start out with the most obvious upgrade: combat. The battles in the Witcher 2 are much faster and more dynamic than they were in Witcher 1. Geralt has a much larger variety of weapons and moves at his disposal allowing for the player to pick a combat style that suits their tastes. For me, playing on Normal, I found that rolling around like a crazy person, doing back attacks, and using the Aard (stun) spell to break an enemy's guard, got me through pretty much every enemy encounter. However, it's nice that other options such as ranged weapons and parrying are there, even if I personally didn't find much use for them. There were also several epic boss fights that were a real treat, though I could do without the mid-battle QTEs. Plot was another strong suite of The Witcher 2; after having done a good job establishing the characters in its predecessor, this game further fleshes out the world of warring kingdoms and political intrigue in grand Game of Thrones-esque style. Furthermore, this tale of alliances and betrayal forces the player to make some very difficult decisions that seem to have real impact on events going forward. I probably won't replay the whole game to explore the alternate paths I could've taken, but just knowing that opening one door in The Witcher 2 closes several others definitely gave the decision-making some real weight. On top of these positive features, the thing that kept me hooked the most was how well the overall flow of the game is handled. Gaining access to new areas, meeting new characters, and completing a variety of quests is a formula that never gets old to me, especially when it's pulled off as well as it is in this game.

Overall, in spite of a few technical/design hang-ups, I found that The Witcher 2 was a hard game to put down and a really satisfying experience from start to finish. I'd highly recommend it to any fantasy or RPG fan as long as they can handle some of the graphic imagery. After playing parts 1 & 2 this year, I'm really looking forward to playing The Witcher 3 at some point in 2017!

For more content like this, check out my blog: Tales from the Backlog