The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

[Liverandbacon]

While looking at the GOG page, thinking about whether to take a risk, preorder, and get the 10% discount, I saw the following 1-star review: "No bonus DLC with the gog purchase? In that case, I will purchase elsewhere"

 

I hope that was a joke, but have a sneaking suspicion it isn't. Why someone would see more value in a few items (that a modder could throw together in minutes), than they do in a DRM-free game, and a free copy of an older game (Among the choices the rather excellent Gothic 2), is beyond me.

 

A warning for Oz buyers of TW2 - GOG is about to jack up the price as part of the retarded publisher-driven region price setting policy, so you'll want to get it quick if you were planning on buying it from there. Steam has already put the price up. Also, the Oz version has some minor censorship in one of the quests, which the digital versions will adhere to apparently.

 

Of course, now a user's region location is based on an 'honor system' and they're totally absolutely 100% sure that no Australians will take advantage of this to get the cheaper, uncensored game, since that is not their intention at all. They didn't make this change in order to help Australian buyers have a little more choice in the matter, and get around publisher restrictions, oh no sir.

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/10/er-australia-gog-drops-geo-ip-check/

[Mav]

A warning for Oz buyers of TW2 - GOG is about to jack up the price as part of the retarded publisher-driven region price setting policy, so you'll want to get it quick if you were planning on buying it from there. Steam has already put the price up. Also, the Oz version has some minor censorship in one of the quests, which the digital versions will adhere to apparently.

 

Btw, speaking of GOG, they will have TW1 for $5 next week - http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/the_witcher It's the "director's cut" of the Enhanced Edition apparently, which from what I can determine is just the re-inclusion of nudity that was originally cut out of the US version (so the European version essentially).

 

EDIT: Also, just saw this video over at GT. Shows a full day/night cycle and how NPCs react - http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-gameplay-the-witcher/713622 Reminds me of the sort of thing Bethesda promised for Oblivion. I guess we'll see if CDPR can actually realise it.

With respect to the whole region pricing GOG.com thing, GOG recently changed their policy so that users can actually select which region to purchase their game from now... No doubt a little bit of an underhanded strike back at the whole Australian censorship/pricing thing.

[DarthParametric]

Lol, I'm sure the publisher will throw a hissy fit over that (and the OFLC as well). If only Steam would institute the same practice.

[Mav]

Lol, I'm sure the publisher will throw a hissy fit over that (and the OFLC as well). If only Steam would institute the same practice.

Steam has it's own form of region circumvention, getting a friend from another region to "gift" you the game XD.

[DarthParametric]

Yeah I did that with Shogun 2 - got a friend in the US to gift it to me and paid him the $50 via PayPal.

 

EDIT: Some more new videos:

 

[youtube=hd]HedLjjlSy3Y

 

 

[youtube=hd]jk5r1mP6om8

 

 

EDIT: Just bought it on GOG after changing the region in my account to US. With PayPal's current exchange rate the list price of US$44.99 worked out to be AU$43.68. Should have bought it a week ago when the Oz dollar topped out at US$1.10. Ah well, c'est la vie.

[igyman]

Here's another pretty cool trailer that showed up a few days ago:

http://www.gametrailers.com/video/exclusive-hope-the-witcher/713859

 

Seriously looking forward to this game. One day to go...

[Liverandbacon]

Ok, I broke down. I'm going to pre-order. CDProjekt, don't let me down on the first video game preorder I've placed in my 28 years on this planet. If it's fun, I'll be happy. If it's mediocre, I'll be disappointed. If it's terrible, I'll launch a new invasion of Potatoland. History tells me that's the normal thing to do, and isn't too hard.

[Wookiee Rrudolf]

If it's terrible, I'll launch a new invasion of Potatoland. History tells me that's the normal thing to do, and isn't too hard.

 

You don't want to start a flame war with some Pole who might just wander here (like myself), do you? Poles can be very sensitive about invasions (yeeess, just a little closer and you'll be in the reach of my lightsaber...). Besides launching invasion is easy, surviving it is another matter.

 

On topic: received my Collector's Edition last Friday and it's fabulous. Too bad I have to wait to play it until tonight (activation at the time of premiere, antypiracy policy bla bla bla... worst thing they could do).

[DarthParametric]

People that bought the boxed CE version got it unlocked a day early. All the accounts that I've seen from them so far seem pretty favourable. I'm still a bit sketchy on the combat, but I guess I'll be able to make a first-hand determination in about 13 hours.

[Wookiee Rrudolf]

People that bought the boxed CE version got it unlocked a day early. All the accounts that I've seen from them so far seem pretty favourable. I'm still a bit sketchy on the combat, but I guess I'll be able to make a first-hand determination in about 13 hours.

 

You're right! Damn job... I lose my sense of time

 

So sorry folks, no flame wars I'm going to play.

[Liverandbacon]

You don't want to start a flame war with some Pole who might just wander here (like myself), do you? Poles can be very sensitive about invasions (yeeess, just a little closer and you'll be in the reach of my lightsaber...). Besides launching invasion is easy, surviving it is another matter.

 

On topic: received my Collector's Edition last Friday and it's fabulous. Too bad I have to wait to play it until tonight (activation at the time of premiere, antypiracy policy bla bla bla... worst thing they could do).

 

Sorry about that, I came to this thread straight from reading related stuff on the codex, and forgot that the back and forth Pole vs. Non-Pole friendly mockery that exists there is not present here.

 

Example Pole mockery of non-Poles on that site: "Of course, as a true Sarmatian patriot I have to add that The Witcher did everything Gothic 2 did well ten times better and was firm on its way to become the beacon of light in the desolate darklands of the doomed genre, but the evil foreign publishers effectively killed it by enforcing stupid design decisions to cater for the mentally & morally degenerate Western markets, thus adding another one to the list of Polish martyrs who sacrificed their well-being for the good of us all."

 

My more serious opinion on Poland getting invaded so often is that it stems from issues of geography, and is in no way caused by any lack of fighting skills or bravery on the part of the Polish people. I actually quite like your country.

 

So no flamewar needed, I hope.

[DarthParametric]

So I've finished the prologue and, as I feared, the combat is pretty clunky. Certainly seems to be more actiony than the first game, although even on normal you can't take many hits and multiple enemies equal death, so you spend your entire time running away trying to get a quick hit or two on a lone enemy then running away again before you get swamped by his mates.

 

Oh, and as several of the previews indicated, the stealth is pretty naff.

[Liverandbacon]

So I've finished the prologue and, as I feared, the combat is pretty clunky. Certainly seems to be more actiony than the first game, although even on normal you can't take many hits and multiple enemies equal death, so you spend your entire time running away trying to get a quick hit or two on a lone enemy then running away again before you get swamped by his mates.

 

Oh, and as several of the previews indicated, the stealth is pretty naff.

 

I haven't got a chance to play yet, but hopefully the other aspects of the game will make up for the combat+stealth. I loved PS:T, despite its absolutely dreadful combat. While I doubt TW2 will equal that particular game, hopefully it too will make up for its lows with some very high highs.

[igyman]

Started playing last night. After my initial troubles with TW2 failing to detect my TW1 save games, when I finally managed to create a save that TW2 could detect and I actually started playing, the impressions became a lot more positive. The visuals are superb and the performance is fairly smooth. As for the combat, I agree that it takes some getting used to, but I'm glad it's real-time stat based, instead of turn-based stat based. That's about it for now - I've got to the jailbreak part we've seen in some of the gameplay videos so testing out the stealth aspect is up next on the agenda.

[Taak Farst]

Haven't played the first, nor do I REALLY want to.. Worth getting the second?

[DarthParametric]

They said they will release a demo as I recall. You should probably wait for that to make up your mind.

[Wookiee Rrudolf]

Sorry about that, I came to this thread straight from reading related stuff on the codex, and forgot that the back and forth Pole vs. Non-Pole friendly mockery that exists there is not present here.

 

No hard feelings here It's just upsetting that many people see us through stereotypes. And it's sometimes hard to tell if someone is joking or being serious... I've seen people surprised when they heard that we don't have polar bears on our streets

 

Back on topic. As I suspected my computer has too low specs to play the game smoothly. Plus work takes me too much time at the moment. So no playing until the end of June when I plan to buy a new machine.

But I can say something about parts of the game that don't require smooth animation (like combat). Dialogues are as good as in the first game, or even better. They're now really cinematic in the feel. I immediately got sucked into the world and it's climate (but I'm die-hard Sapkowski's reader, so it may be the cause). I like how you can now use medallion to highlight important things in the surroundings. But the best change is in the journal. I have never seen quests and NPCs described in a journal as if someone was writing a chronicle about them (Planescape Torment doesn't count, it's not the same ). That's something fresh.

 

What I didn't like so far is the equipment. Sword +3, Armour +1, it just seems too typical. In the first game damage depended on the fighting style and different weapons gave different critical effects and chances of them occurring. But maybe the equipment will be more unique and original later.

[DarthParametric]

Dialogues are as good as in the first game, or even better.

Yeah they have been pretty good so far (I'm at the start of Chapter 2) and there have been some genuinely funny laugh out loud moments, but there are also a few bombs in there. The Lord of the Rings jokes are particularly groan-inducing. Subtle nods to it would have been fine, but overt references and even direct quoting of lines is a bit much.

[Achilles]

Yeah they have been pretty good so far (I'm at the start of Chapter 2) and there have been some genuinely funny laugh out loud moments, but there are also a few bombs in there. The Lord of the Rings jokes are particularly groan-inducing. Subtle nods to it would have been fine, but overt references and even direct quoting of lines is a bit much.

:facepalm: I hated that they did that in TW1. The "Rusty Dan" = Dan Brown/Arthurian legend mashup chapter was painful.

[DarthParametric]

Just finished my first playthrough. There's no log of playtime that I can see, but I'd put a rough guestimate on it at around 40 hours. That's doing everything including all side-quests (those that I found and that weren't mutually exclusive anyway). Less than what I was expecting given comments pre-release, which is a tad disappointing. I'm glad there weren't too many filler Fedex quests though, maybe only 10 or so across the 3 main chapters. Nothing like what I remember TW1 having. Still, I'd much rather have a shorter game overall with a focus on quality narrative quests than a load of mindless collection quests to pad out the length. I imagine a big part of the length being what it is revolves around Chapter 2. I'll have to confirm the extent in my second playthrough, but I understand that the major portion of Chapter 2 is different depending on the mutually exclusive choice you make at the end of Chapter 1. Presumably this precluded a 4th chapter (or extending the length of Chapter 3, which was fairly short).

 

On the subject of narrative, the game relies very heavily on the player having a thorough knowledge of Sapkowski's world and characters. The first game used the amnesia gimmick to side-step this somewhat and help you out a lot of the time, but there's much less of that this time around. There is a heavy focus on Geralt regaining his memory and discussing events that happened between the books and the first game. Having never read any of Sapkowski's work (most of it is still untranslated, last I checked), I have to say that most of the time, especially early on, I didn't know WTF was going on. It's a shame as there is very obviously a whole other level to the story that I was excluded from, not being privy to the full back story.

 

Mechanics-wise, there are certainly a number of things I didn't like. The combat did improve slightly as the game went on and skills opened up, but I can't say I ever really enjoyed it. The game continually swamps you with multiple opponents, but even maxing out the sword talent tree you are never really equipped to deal head-to-head with more than one opponent at a time. Fights boil down to a game of dodging and hit and run tactics, which really didn't float my boat. And the end of chapter boss fights - ugh. Even with quick-time events turned off in the options you still have to endure some QTEs during these fights. I don't know why devs persist with that stuff.

 

The inventory was subject to some odd and frustrating quirks. Books weigh nothing and get transcribed to your journal, so you can sell them again without issue (although they weigh nothing, so there's no need). Recipes, on the other hand, despite presumably being only a single sheet of paper weigh 0.1lbs (I surmise that is the unit of measurement) and whilst they are transcribed to your journal, once the originals are no longer in your inventory you can no longer brew the potion or make the item they describe. Which was a fun fact I discovered at the start of chapter 2 when I realised I had no Cat recipe and that nobody (throughout the rest of the game no less) sold a copy, leaving me to judiciously portion out the ever dwindling stock of potions I'd brewed in Chapter 1 (before I sold all my recipes to lighten the load, thinking them safely transcribed in my journal).

 

Overall I'd say it was pretty good, but not quite the second coming of RPGs that some people were hyping it up as.

[igyman]

Just finished mine, so I'll chip in some impressions too.

 

Length-wise, I agree somewhere between 40 and 45 hours, but 40-45 awesome hours.

 

Now, the important stuff - the story. I'd say it was rather well done, with lots of interesting characters and various tough and less tough decisions across all chapters. Certain quests are mutually exclusive and certain areas (or rather parts of areas) won't be available for you to visit depending on your previous choices, so there's definitely quite a bit of replay value.

The things I found weird and a bit disappointing are the very ending - which does resolve the current story pretty nicely, but has no narrated epilogue that hints on what happens in the aftermath (like TW1 had) - and the fact that the fate of some characters remains unresolved (i.e. Ves - disappears near the end of chapter 2, Saskia - same).

 

Now as for the gameplay, again, I liked it overall. An excellent example of how an action RPG should be made. The combat did feel a bit weird at first, as I mentioned in my previous post, but after I got used to it, built up Geralt a little and figured out just how useful the Quen sign is, most regular enemies started dropping like flies. It could use some tweaking to make certain controls more responsive (ugh, the word somehow leaves a bad taste), but overall I really enjoyed the combat aspect.

The skill tree was pretty extensive, but allowed me to build a powerful witcher without restricting myself solely to one of three paths. Each ability can be upgraded to level 2 and some of them can even be mutated, which I didn't bother to figure out until I was near the end of chapter 2, but it was certainly a nice touch.

As for the dialogues, I was pleasantly surprised to see the addition of persuade/intimidate and especially the Hex option, which more or less is the equivalent of a Jedi Mind trick and ended up being the one I used the most when presented with the chance.

I liked how they implemented the inventory with appropriate categorization and filtering and "inventory capacity" that allowed you to carry as much stuff as you want, but if you pass a certain limit, you will be restricted to walking instead of running around and it also affects your combat performance with rolling and leaping around being out of the picture. I do wish however that there were more opportunities to increase the weight limit as I only found one piece of equipment in chapter 3 which had that effect. I do agree with DP above about the potion formulae and equipment diagrams thing.

 

The graphics are just pure eye-candy, whether you're walking around during the day, or by night. Not really too important for me, but I was pleasantly surprised nonetheless to see that the "virtually no loading times" marketing line holds true. More importantly the game worked smoothly 99% of the time on settings slightly above their High preset and I encountered no bugs while playing. I did find one oversight in the final stages of chapter 3, but nothing you'll notice, unless you really really like trying to enter "locked" areas when you're not supposed to.

The voice acting and music are awesome too, but that should go without saying for a sequel as high profile as this one.

 

Overall, it's definitely a game worth playing and, like I said, an excellent example of how action RPGs should be made.

[DarthParametric]

Ves - disappears near the end of chapter 2, Saskia - same)

I assume that you sided with

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Roche at the end of Chapter 1 then? If you side with Iorveth, as I did, then Saskia plays a prominent role in Chapter 3.

 

figured out just how useful the Quen sign is

While I was doing my first playthrough I stayed away from most forums discussing it to avoid spoilers, but going back now and doing some reading I can see the general consensus is Quen makes combat a hell of a lot easier. Which figures - I basically never used it first time through. Might have to rectify that second time around.

[swphreak]

I'm still in the first hour of the game. All I have to say at the moment is that I suck ass at combat. I'm gonna have to drop it down to easy next time I play.

[DarthParametric]

Yeah combat is pretty brutal for the first couple of hours when you have no skills. There's no gentle introduction or hand-holding. Balance-wise they probably got it back-to-front in that regard. It does get a bit easier as you level up and learn through trial and error how to approach various scenarios.

 

EDIT: A nice (spoiler free) overview here - http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/05/18/pc-review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings/ Seems he didn't like the LOTR bits either.

[igyman]

I assume that you sided with

Show spoiler

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Roche at the end of Chapter 1 then? If you side with Iorveth, as I did, then Saskia plays a prominent role in Chapter 3.

 

I did indeed.

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The way I figured was - Geralt's goal is to clear his name and ditching Vernon wouldn't help his case. I did my best to stay in good relations with the other side too, though I'm not sure it made much difference.

 

While I was doing my first playthrough I stayed away from most forums discussing it to avoid spoilers, but going back now and doing some reading I can see the general consensus is Quen makes combat a hell of a lot easier. Which figures - I basically never used it first time through. Might have to rectify that second time around.

 

I hear you, I only needed help with a couple of monster-hunting sidequests so I googled that after I spent (IMO) more than enough time trying to figure out the solution by myself (damn nekker nests), but other than those I tried to play the game my own way. The way I figured was - I have all these signs, so at least one must be useful for my style of combat and it turned out to be Quen, especially after I upgraded it.