The Witcher 2

[Machiavelli]

Don't waste your money. The plot might seem fun, but the gameplay is so clumsy and unbalanced it isn't even funny. I liked the first game, despite its weak gameplay... somehow they've managed to make the sequel far far harder and less satisfying to play.

[Thief Of Navarre]

I bought it already. Havnt had the time to play it yet since Im trying to get Sundren all updated again.

Ill let you know what I think once I've had a chance to have a go xD

[Saulus]

Combat is worthy of fork in eye. Way, way way too difficult. On normal it's like hardcore and easy is normal.

I imported a Witcher 1 save to get armor bonuses etc and it was still hard. It's playable but very unforgiving. Yes there were a few times I threw the controller against the wall after dying 30 times in the first 2 minutes of the game.

But it can be fixed... it's not beyond a patch helping resolve.

[Kaeldorn]

What's wrong with it being harder? I like the challenge, despite having to do some of the scenes over several times. Makes it feel like more of an accomplishment when you do succeed, which is something that has been sorely missing from the more recent single player games because they adopt the philosophy that easy = mass appeal = $.

The combat is pretty difficult because it's so fast, but thus far it's infinitely more fun than what I saw in DA2, and practice does make it more manageable. The focus on fast paced action in combat works pretty well, because the game doesn't pretend it to be something it's not.

Sure, the game does have its flaws. Here's my summary of the good, the bad and the ugly.

Good:
- Playing on Hard is an actual challenge for once
- Great atmosphere and attention to detail when it comes to everything that goes on around you (people talking and going about their business, trebuchets being loaded and firing in a siege camp)
- (interactive) cut-scenes are well-written
- Voice acting has had huge improvements over the previous game
- Good music
- The choice element of the first game is still there. So far (just a bit into chapter 1) it seems slightly more personal and of a moral nature
- Visuals are great even on medium settings on a 3 year old rig. Much thanks to the art style and creative area design. There are even some places on high ground where you can see far away mountains and oceans that are so well done they look almost as detailed as what's nearby (LOD works well here). Textures and lighting are quite impressive and variety in the environment and between character models is much better than in the original as well.
- The quick time events where you have to respond quickly to certain situations can make some scenes more tense and exciting. It's a good change of challenge from the usual combat.
- There's at least one part of the game that allows you to play "stealth light" instead of straight up combat, which was quite entertaining and challenging to get through without killing people.
- More features and complexity than the first game in general, as opposed to the excessive streamlining trend in other games (improved inventory with weight allowance and ability to carry more weapons with you, more armour and weapons to use, throwing/ranged weapons, more abilities and talents to learn, a crafting system, ability to add upgrades to your equipment, etc)
- Found 1 easter egg so far of a dead Altair who fell down on a broken cart in the city under siege. Don't care if it's been done before, it made me chuckle

The bad:
- It's nice that you can't just save whenever you want (i.e. you can't save during fights or when scripted events are taking place), but there are also times when this is extremely frustrating. When combat occurs right after a 10 minutes long scripted scene with dialogue and you happen to fail (and you likely WILL fail the first time at a lot of things), your last save will jump you back to before that scripted scene. You are able to skip the animation, but you can only skip it in steps and skipping isn't instant. So you might end up having to skip 5-6 times for a single scene and spend 20 seconds or more on that every single time you fail. This is annoying and it's just bad design.
- Saving often is rewarding, but if you prefer saving normally so that your saves don't overwrite eachother all the time (as is the case with quicksave), you will end up with a billion save games. There is no option to save over a specific file if you want to. I guess this makes the saving process quicker, and the save files don't take as much disk space as they did in TW1, but it's still annoying that I can't use my preferred saving method (which is having 20-30 or so save games which I overwrite depending on which points of the game I want to be able to jump back to and which I don't.)
- Quick time events where you have to spam click to accomplish something like loading a ballista. Luckily you can disable an option in the menu to make this stuff more easy on you
- I've come across one quick time event in dialogue so far, where you had to give an answer quickly. This seems a bit of a mixed bag because I just wasn't able to read all possible responses before my time was up. Not sure if the menu option improves this as I didn't try.
- In the (first) stealth part of the game, Geralt goes all MGS-like and moves with his back against the wall. Problem is, you can't really control it (or you aren't told how exactly it works) and so he sometimes does it when you don't want him to, and he sometimes doesn't do it when you do want him to. This causes unresponsive movement or early detection.
- The learning curve is non-existant. You're immediately thrown into tough situations and have to deal with it in what is supposed to be the tutorial, when you don't even know how half the game mechanics work and how to the AI fights (and there have been significant changes from the first game). For example, there was a really hard fight early in the game where you have to beat 3 heavily armoured knights and 3 additional soldiers in a courtyard on your own. I must've started that over like 10 times, but eventually I developed a strategy and managed it. Barely.
- When you get a lot of enemies thrown at you, the best way to live through it is to start by running around in circles and picking off a few of them before you start to fight normally. This is meh, but it happened in the first game as well I guess.

The ugly:
- Some typically European mistakes in the translated English text. "They're" instead of "their" and such. These don't occur too frequently and the voice actors got it right anyway.
- Some animations bug out when you do anything slightly unusual. For example, I came across a hatch which Geralt would open up and climb down/up through. When I decided to climb up and immediately go back down again after that, the hatch would shut itself while I was climbing back down and a clipping issue occurred.

[Saulus]

Combat is worthy of fork in eye. Way, way way too difficult. On normal it's like hardcore and easy is normal.

I imported a Witcher 1 save to get armor bonuses etc and it was still hard. It's playable but very unforgiving. Yes there were a few times I threw the controller against the wall after dying 30 times in the first 2 minutes of the game.

But it can be fixed... it's not beyond a patch helping resolve.

[Machiavelli]

Combat is worthy of fork in eye.

Just so. It doesn't require skill, it's just bad. I really want to like it, but to be honest the combat is a step down from the first one. Such a shame.

[Kaeldorn]

Saying it doesn't require skill and that it's too hard is kind of contradicting.

What I think is the case is that just skill won't be enough to beat the game. You need both skill and luck or too much patience (if you decide to run in circles and throw igni signs only ).

You'd have to be insane to play the insane difficulty, though.

[Kaizen]

Saying it doesn't require skill and that it's too hard is kind of contradicting.

pushing a 2-ton boulder up a hill doesn't require skill.

it's very hard to do.

which is what The Witcher 2 combat reminds me of.

[Kaeldorn]

Except beating fights in TW2 isn't physically impossible to man. A better comparison would be playing some FPS team game with random noobs against a clan with "pro's". You'll get stomped most of the time, but those few times you do manage to kill one of the buggers off it feels all the more rewarding.

Honestly, (single player) gamers have been pampered over the past decennium or so. If you find The Witcher too hard, you should look up a game called Out Of This World (also known as Another World). Now that's the epitome of difficult to the point of frustration

[Kangleton]

It doesn't require skill, it's just bad.

Fixed.

[Lucidity]

Domestic disturbance detected.

This thread is now about Mass Effect.




Diplomacy roll: 20 + base 43 = 63.

If you want number two for PC, gimme a holler. Looks much more promising than previous game(s) mentioned.

[Thief Of Navarre]

pushing a 2-ton boulder up a hill doesn't require skill.

it's very hard to do.

which is what The Witcher 2 combat reminds me of.

Yeah, the difference between Ninja gaiden 1 and Ninja gaiden 2 hard. The latter being just cheap unblockable and unavoidable enemy attacks. I dont like that kind of challenge :S

[Machiavelli]

If you find The Witcher too hard, you should look up a game called Out Of This World (also known as Another World). Now that's the epitome of difficult to the point of frustration

Another world was a great game! It wasn't hard exactly, you just had to find out what was coming with trial and error.

[Kaeldorn]

With the exact timing required and instant death with just a single misstep, I'd definitely call it hard. And it absolutely required a trial and error approach.

I'm taking the same approach with TW2 and it's working out for me at least. Using every tool at your disposal seems required now, unlike in its predecessor where you could just take a Swallow potion and ignore anything hitting you because of stupidly high parry and dodge chance. Dodging, parrying, signs (especially Quen, which is now a fantastic spell), traps, throwing daggers, bombs, potions.. There's a lot of downtime and preparation involved as well. I don't mind it, but I can see why people who just want to get on with the story without hiccups on their journey would find it frustrating.

[Saulus]

^ The problem is Kael they never took the time to intro any of the features properly. You figure it out by dying 20 times. If they had done a proper intro it might not have been so bad.

And yes I like all the traps, bombs, spells and upgrades being required to be effective, I'm being more careful now... it does have a nice side to it --- BUT at normal setting it's far too unforgiving. If what I was playing now was HARD, it would make more sense to me

You shouldn't have to get 4 or 5 hours into a game to start understanding the basics -- and thats only because you've been dying the whole time because you barely know the controls.