Witcher 2

[SadExchange]

I had a bad experience last night where I stopped collecting XP, from quests or killing and it affected all of my saves, so I've since deleted and now have started over and find the beginning part to be quite easy as compared to my first time.

[Orogun01]

The .exe from gog.com seems to perform much better than other .exes out there, for those who have problems, Orogun. (Though not that I think about it, if you only bought retail version, I'm not sure how you'd get hold of that.)

 

The 1.1 patch is coming soon though.

quick google search and found that someone else had posted and exe. file online.

 

On the Witcher: someone should hit whomever designed the targeting system on the face with a bat. hit only one guy at a time, then buddies surround me and it's pin ball time.

Edited May 22, 2011 by Orogun01

[Zoraptor]

I'm hunting down the spectre in the asylum or whatever that is, and I get beaten by two wraths. With easy difficulty.

 

Either I'm too lazy to put up a real fight or I just plainly suck.

Spectre Oil and Swallow. You also go past a bunch of Places of Power on the way there so can get even more health& vigour regen and armour. Quen, then 2-3 quick strikes at a time, roll out of the way and repeat.

[Tigranes]

Yep, those bonuses really make a huge difference. It's also worth noting that there's an Alchemy skill that gives 30/20% bonus to traps/bombs, then 100% to both on the second level - worth the two talents IMO for many builds, as alchemical/crafting ingredients are strewn about aplenty.

 

The first wraiths were hugely challenging for me too but nearing the end of Ch2 they are now mostly a walkover. I was hoping to see more enemies that use their own skills and abilities as the game progressed - bandits with bombs, monsters that can cast basic magical abilites, etc - but sadly not too much of that yet, though trolls throw rocks and rotfiends explode upon death, etc.

[Tale]

And alchemy ingredients have no weight, so stock up.

[HoonDing]

I imported a level 30+ Geralt who killed drowners and ghouls by just glaring at them at the end of TW1, but now my Geralt is a noob again.

 

Maybe CD Projekt should've had Geralt himself assassinated in the beginning, ME2 style, and have the Lodge of Sorceresses revive him or something. It doesn't make sense.

[Tigranes]

Meh. That's one video game trope that makes perfect sense, I feel it's kind of pointless to be bothered about it. I don't want every single game to have to fit a hackneyed explanation into their plots - how many can you do? Amnesia? Augmentation? Magic? You really want every RPG sequel to start with "and then your hero was castrated in this way"?

 

One thing TW2 would benefit from is the ability to kill minor NPCs to solve your problems, with appropriate repercussions - same with stealing from their houses. Doesn't need to be a kill anyone you want deal, but right now it's pretty guided.

[Orchomene]

Even with qte disabled, there remain some, like in the first boss fight of chapter 1.

With the wraith in the asylum, I've used a lot of dodge to maneuver such that both wraiths are at the same side. Having an enemy in the back is a real killer since you get double damage if you don't have a certain ability.

[Slowtrain]

Out of curiosity, for those who played both, if I can bother you for a moment of your time, a question: which is better? 1 or 2? But not including the graphics, since that isn't much of a concern for me one way or the other.

[Tigranes]

2. Pretty much same game but with a rejiggle of some features/functions mostly for the better, bit more meat to the urban areas, better writing, improved combat.

[Lexx]

Yeh, like the second game more as well. Especially because I stopped the first game in the swamps. :>

 

But Witcher 2 also has some elements that feel unneeded for me. As example,

to the end of chapter 1, you take over Vernon Roche for a short battle and at the beginning of chapter 2, you walk as a king to some place, just like that. Both scenes could have been done in a nonplayable sequence as well and I am pretty sure it would have felt better and it wouldn't have annoyed me.

 

Edited May 22, 2011 by Lexx

[Tigranes]

There are a couple more like that coming up Lexx, but they're equally short. I think they just did it so that the player isn't watching cutscenes all day. Of course, it's barely an improvement.

 

Blazing through the game, at Chapter 3 now which I hear is the shorter, final one. Feels a little short to me if that's the case - maybe they were conscious of TW1 being a bit bloated, but some more sidequests would have been nice. We will see. Had a lot of free time this week.

[sorophx]

content probably will be added with DLCs and maybe an expansion. hard to believe this is the end result of 5 years of work

[Majek]

And the DLCs will be free! \o/

[Wombat]

Finally, I had my hands on the game (got it at gog.com with pre-order, yea, since it is still a PC game). Playing with everything maxed out with the exception of motion blur effect, which looks nice but I'm not thankful to it in combat. I don't have frame rate but the performance so far doesn't make me feel that I need to do check it at all. After all, I made the current PC with this game and Deus Ex: Human Revolution in my eyes. I put a single file from the achieved saves I kept from the Witcher since the designers told us that they would reflect the choices in the original long time ago. Since I'm on Windows 7, I reproduced the folders to the file, which may not be necessary. So far, Foltes seems to remember Gelart had saved his daughter. I'm yet to know how other things affected, though.

 

Out of curiosity, for those who played both, if I can bother you for a moment of your time, a question: which is better? 1 or 2? But not including the graphics, since that isn't much of a concern for me one way or the other.

So far, 2 is more likely to be what CD Projekt Red was trying to achieve, in terms of visual quality with decent C&C story-telling. No-top down view anymore but it makes QTE much less abrupt and stream-lined. Game-play feels more like for gamepad rather than mouse & keyboard. Currently, I'm using m&k, which feels slightly clunky.

 

Blazing through the game, at Chapter 3 now which I hear is the shorter, final one. Feels a little short to me if that's the case - maybe they were conscious of TW1 being a bit bloated, but some more sidequests would have been nice. We will see. Had a lot of free time this week.

I just started but I suspect that it is more likely the syndrome which is common in modern video game development. Development got its weight on visuals/3D rendering and their bug fixing that a game won't get much content. Have you read an interview with Ziet on The development of Dungeons Siege III, where he ramented the size of the writing staff had been dramatically reduced compare when he was working on Neverwinter Night 2: Mask of the Betaryer? Generally in that interview, I was surprised to find how his line of thought is similar to mine but the condition in modern game industry is quite for a company like Obsidian to satisfy the modern demands while keeping some writing standard. I'm quite happy with the visual nowadays which enables the expression we can see films/movies but I guess non-sandbox story-focused RPG suffers a lot here. Guess its you canot always get what you want scenario.

 

In any case, so far, I'm quite happy with the game while I fear it won't end too abruptly as some reviews imply.

[Lexx]

Hope that CDP will release some mod tools anytime soon. I am tensed to do something. :>

[Orchomene]

You can mod a bit using this :

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/...zip_for_modders

[HoonDing]

Has anyone managed to beat the final arm wrestler?

[sorophx]

Has anyone managed to beat the final arm wrestler?

 

he's cheating. I read on somethingawful that you can either use the same steroids and even it out or kick his ass in a fist fight and make him wrestle you fair

[Lexx]

Finished it. I think I needed approx 30 to 40 hours and it was fun. So for me it was worth the money that I've spend on it. The ending wasn't as bad as I've imagined after all the chatting from other folks.

 

 

I liked that there is a pretty long dialog at the end, which can help to bring everything together.

 

What I don't like was the fight with a dragon-- Because you don't fight dragons, you run away. It felt a bit meh that Geralt now can kill a dragon, regardless of how hard it was. Dragons should remain unkilled, imo.

 

 

Also it is true that chapter 3 is very short. But I'll have to say that I like it that way- The chapter has a very tense and "hurry up!"-feeling. So adding more fillerstuff in here would have just ended badly and annoying.

 

Can't say much about the choice & consequence now. The game definitive has a lot of it, but I am not sure how big the impact is. Guess I'll have to play the game again, at least once.

 

The game really was hard. The hardest game I've played since years. At the end of chapter 1 I've actually switched from "normal" to "easy" because I just couldn't stand all that reloading anymore. :>

 

Though, I think the game is much better on "normal," when you have to prepare better- oils and potions, etc. But this also requires a deeper need of research *and* luck. I've tried hard, but often I couldn't figure out what enemies I might face in the next step, so I couldn't really prepare for that... and then you simply fail, as the enemy is pwning you like the whimp you are. On easy-mode, you barely need anything of that- like in Witcher 1, a sword and lots of jumping and clicking is enough, which is a bit sad.

 

Graphics are nice. The area that was stressing my computer the most was the forest in Floatsam. Everything after this was running pretty good, with only some stuttering when the game was loading the next part of an area and textures. The gameworld has a really nice atmosphere and the sound / ambient music is really great too. It's just strange that you hear dogs and ducks and stuff here and there, but never see any (or maybe I am just blind... at least *I* never saw any).

 

Last but not least, the obvious: Generally I think Witcher 2 is a great game. Cinematic and story-driven, which also makes it look pretty linear in times, though. Don't expect the next super fancy big roleplaying game when playing Witcher 2, because it just isn't. Feels to me more like a better Mass Effect.... But here again, I don't see anything bad in it. It's just how it is.

Edited May 22, 2011 by Lexx

[Tigranes]

I've finished too, I'd say 25-30 hours. That makes it slightly shorter than DAO or F:NV. The difference is that whereas those two games were threatening to outstay their welcome by the end (even though I went on to replay them), TW2 feels a tad short. I think it really needs a good old expansion pack, perhaps between the end of Chapter 2 and 3. Certainly there are so many characters and plot threads packed in there that could be explored further.

 

Lexx - I agree that the final battle with

the dragon was silly, I could deal with the Kayran and the Draug but the dragon was just silly. The game's best fights are against humans - Letho fights, Dethmold & Mercenary, etc. It is really disappointing how you only ever have ~5 battles against mobs that include mages, you never really fight a sorceress, etc.

 

 

Will post full review/impressions soon, but definitely the best non-Obsidian RPG since... well, since Risen.

[sorophx]

the best non-Obsidian RPG since... well, since Risen.

so it's better than Risen? but not better than Obsidian's games, right?

Edited May 22, 2011 by sorophx

[Starwars]

I'm only in Chapter 1 so far but I'm not really crazy about it so far. I prefer it to the first game (which is not saying a lot for me though) but I think it suffers from similar problems. The good stuff in the game is really rather good. The atmosphere shines once again and puts most other games to complete shame. The writing and voiceacting also work much better than in the first game.

 

But I feel that once again, the combat is... not good. I can appreciate certain parts of it, especially something that was true of Risen as well which is that combat is deadly. Geralt can really get slaughtered if you're not careful. Plus, the game does provide you with fun tools in traps, throwing daggers and so forth.

 

But I can't shake the fact that the controls feel so damn clunky. Whether it's just moving Geralt around, anticipating just when an animation ends in combat so you can start up a new action, looting stuff. The funky QTEs, unnecessary ladders which take several seconds to climb only to lead to a completely useless and empty location, really crappy stealth sections. The fact that I have to meditate to down a potion, or that I can seemingly only craft one potion at a time, crappy inventory. The fact that the whole meditate action just takes longer than it should.

For a title that's developed for PC I'm finding the controls and overall playability to... well, suck really.

 

Again, I've only really just started to dig into the story and I think the whole "who can you trust, who will you choose to support?" will be the real meat of the game. CD Projekt does that exceptionally well, and while there is some silliness, the whole "mature" schtick works really well in the Witcher 2. Despite how extreme it can be sometimes, it never feels like the game is pointing at itself going "look at me, I'm so mature!". It feels like everything is there for a reason, to build up the gameworld.

 

So yeah, mixed feelings so far really. I suspect that it will end up occupying a similar spot as the first game in my mind. I'll stick with it for the first playthrough because of the excellent atmosphere and intriguing characters but will probably have a really hard time replaying the game because of how much I dislike a lot of the other stuff.

[Orogun01]

BTW is this game hard or do I just suck?

I mean it seems they are trying to bring back the days when games were actually challenging, but seems i'm out of shape.

[Labadal]

The game is hard. I'm playing on normal, but have lowered the difficulty in some fights.