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This thread has been linked to the game 'The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings'.
The Witcher 2 is role playing game based on the Witcher book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. This game is more mature than its predecessor, as it no longer gives you sex cards for each female encounter teaching you to tally your encounters and brag about them, like mature people do. Its maturity comes from its strong political themes along with murder, racism and betrayal, but it has an immature side with a liberal approach with boobies and a cringingly bad Lord of the Rings reference.
The game features your standard fantasy characters like Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Sorceresses and Dragons but they all play a role in the political theme and show racial prejudice to each other like most other RPGs today.
The game’s protagonist is Geralt of Rivia, one of a rare breed of Witchers who are genetically modified, have magical powers and have glowing yellow eyes like a kitty at night. He starts off in an interrogation room in a prison in the Kingdom of Temeria, where he is accused of slaying the Temarian King, Foltest. Geralt tells his story of how the king was assassinated as Geralt was the King’s bodyguard at the time; job well done right? His Interrogator, Vernon Roche commander of Temerain Special Forces, is convinced by his story and helps him break out of prison to go after the real King Slayer and your journey begins.
The patch version I played is 2.0, which includes a tutorial for the game, which is essential as the beginning of the game is the most challenging part in terms of regular enemies. The tutorial shows you the basic controls for moving about, inventory, quest tracking and meditation before putting you in an arena and showing the controls for blocking, attack countering (riposte), spell casting, using bombs/traps and understanding your two types of swords. Geralt has a steel sword for humans and a silver sword for monsters, requiring a joke to be made about how humans are the biggest monsters on the planet. If you get it wrong, you will be told your blows are ineffective and you can remedy it by pressing the corresponding key (1 – Steel, 2- Silver)
The game manual provided with the disk doesn’t tell you which keys are bound to which spell and without the tutorial you would have been forgiven for thinking there are no spells. I don’t understand why the game couldn’t run through the controls before you are thrown into battle, other than it being seen as an immersion killer. The game’s spells all have wacky names: Aard (Stun/Knockback projectile), Yrden (Flame trap), Igni (Fireball nuke), Quen (Shield) and Axii (Charm).
Combat is at its most engaging at the beginning of the game as you are required to position yourself correctly and use your spell shield to safely pick off a large number of guards one by one. If you try to run in and rapidly left click the mouse like a noob, you won’t get very far. This keeps you on your toes, which is a good thing considering there isn’t much to think about. I say this because it takes little thought to decide which blade to use and the only other preparations that can be made such as oiling up your blade or drinking potions, can only be done outside of battle. Once you have the basics down, you shouldn’t find the start of the game difficult. I can’t say if that was the case in previous patches as the prologue as been made easier in most of the patches leading up to 2.0.
As the game goes on you can unlock abilities to attack multiple enemies at once and because you stagger enemies that you hit (unless they block), you can begin to let your mind wander and spam attacks at groups of enemies which is less engaging to me. You also can unlock the ability to perform adrenaline moves to kill groups of enemies, provide temporary damage buffs and slow all your enemies. However, I had the option of picking from a wide selection of other abilities. The game gives you three skill trees to specialize in: Magic, Alchemy and Swordsmanship. Magic improves the power and range of your signs and also gives you additional “Vigor” which is best thought of as mana. Swordsmanship increases your blocking skills, critical hits, gives you group attacks and finishers. Alchemy increases the duration of your oils and potions, gives you more herbs when you pick them, increases damage from your bombs and traps and increases effectiveness of “Mutagens”. Mutagens are stat boosters that you can attach to certain abilities on your skill tree and they are found as drops from the enemies that you face.
The boss battles are very engaging and fun once you have figured out what to do and what potions to use. Because Potions and Oils can only be used before battle, I see this as a problem of trial and error. For the first major boss battle you are told what potion to drink, but you aren’t told how far you have to go before the cut scene triggers and you are thrown into battle and forced to load from a previous save. Luckily the game keeps a collection of all your auto saves so you can find a specific time to roll back to. For every boss that I faced I rolled back to a previous save to be able to use oils and potions as they are tough without them. On top of that, bosses nearly always attack just as a cut scene has ended allowing you less than a second to react.
Another gripe I have is that there is no fast travel in the game, as you do spend a fair amount of time walking back and forth and even when you go deep into dungeons and collect what you need you have to find your way out again checking the map every time you get lost. I have enough trouble with a sat-nav in the real world. You could argue that fast travel is an immersion killer and I can imagine someone telling me to man up because games shouldn't hold you by the hand,but walking back to a quest giver without a single challenge along the way is a waste of time in my eyes.
The graphics in the Witcher 2 are gorgeous, as the developers CDProject created their own engine and tried to push graphics to the maximum without understanding the concept of optimization. I consider this a good thing, but it does mean that it alienates potential customers who don’t have a decent pc to run it on. There were times where I stopped to stare at the scenery, such as the waterfalls, landscapes and mountains.
The choices that you have to make in the game are personal ones such as who to side with, who to kill or who to save and they don’t seem to make a major impact to the overall story. The choice where you take sides between two individuals is the choice that affects what you will be doing in a whole chapter but the story will resume its normal course when it is over. The back of the box states that there are 16 endings, but there is only one cut scene at the end of the main game. The different endings refer to how the kingdom is split, who lives/dies and how certain side quests are ended due to your decisions.
Each sidequest in the game has a story driving it which makes them feel more purposeful than standard fetch quests in some games. In the few Inns that you visit you can take part in arm wrestling, dice poker and prize fighting. Prize fighting is a series of QTEs using the WASD keys which never seem to become challenging, but it earns good money and experience. Arm Wrestling involves you using the mouse to keep a circle within a moving bar until it gets to the right side of the screen. Arm Wrestling gets quite difficult when you face the champion of the area, which makes it feel a bit more rewarding than prize fighting.
In most buildings you walk into, you will find plenty of resources to pick up to sell or craft which gives the game a sort of klepto addictive quality. I felt the same way when playing Fallout: New Vegas, but I prefer it in the Witcher 2 as there is no karma system making you feel guilty for doing it.
I like how the choices in this game are more ambiguous than the typical karma morality good/bad, paragon/renegade choices. On each of the main choices I had to think for a while and wondered what the consequences would be.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the Witcher 2. Its flaws are likely to put some people off the game, but if you are looking for an engaging RPG that doesn’t hold your hand then I recommend it to you.
7.8/10
The game features your standard fantasy characters like Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Sorceresses and Dragons but they all play a role in the political theme and show racial prejudice to each other like most other RPGs today.
The game’s protagonist is Geralt of Rivia, one of a rare breed of Witchers who are genetically modified, have magical powers and have glowing yellow eyes like a kitty at night. He starts off in an interrogation room in a prison in the Kingdom of Temeria, where he is accused of slaying the Temarian King, Foltest. Geralt tells his story of how the king was assassinated as Geralt was the King’s bodyguard at the time; job well done right? His Interrogator, Vernon Roche commander of Temerain Special Forces, is convinced by his story and helps him break out of prison to go after the real King Slayer and your journey begins.
The patch version I played is 2.0, which includes a tutorial for the game, which is essential as the beginning of the game is the most challenging part in terms of regular enemies. The tutorial shows you the basic controls for moving about, inventory, quest tracking and meditation before putting you in an arena and showing the controls for blocking, attack countering (riposte), spell casting, using bombs/traps and understanding your two types of swords. Geralt has a steel sword for humans and a silver sword for monsters, requiring a joke to be made about how humans are the biggest monsters on the planet. If you get it wrong, you will be told your blows are ineffective and you can remedy it by pressing the corresponding key (1 – Steel, 2- Silver)
The game manual provided with the disk doesn’t tell you which keys are bound to which spell and without the tutorial you would have been forgiven for thinking there are no spells. I don’t understand why the game couldn’t run through the controls before you are thrown into battle, other than it being seen as an immersion killer. The game’s spells all have wacky names: Aard (Stun/Knockback projectile), Yrden (Flame trap), Igni (Fireball nuke), Quen (Shield) and Axii (Charm).
Combat is at its most engaging at the beginning of the game as you are required to position yourself correctly and use your spell shield to safely pick off a large number of guards one by one. If you try to run in and rapidly left click the mouse like a noob, you won’t get very far. This keeps you on your toes, which is a good thing considering there isn’t much to think about. I say this because it takes little thought to decide which blade to use and the only other preparations that can be made such as oiling up your blade or drinking potions, can only be done outside of battle. Once you have the basics down, you shouldn’t find the start of the game difficult. I can’t say if that was the case in previous patches as the prologue as been made easier in most of the patches leading up to 2.0.
As the game goes on you can unlock abilities to attack multiple enemies at once and because you stagger enemies that you hit (unless they block), you can begin to let your mind wander and spam attacks at groups of enemies which is less engaging to me. You also can unlock the ability to perform adrenaline moves to kill groups of enemies, provide temporary damage buffs and slow all your enemies. However, I had the option of picking from a wide selection of other abilities. The game gives you three skill trees to specialize in: Magic, Alchemy and Swordsmanship. Magic improves the power and range of your signs and also gives you additional “Vigor” which is best thought of as mana. Swordsmanship increases your blocking skills, critical hits, gives you group attacks and finishers. Alchemy increases the duration of your oils and potions, gives you more herbs when you pick them, increases damage from your bombs and traps and increases effectiveness of “Mutagens”. Mutagens are stat boosters that you can attach to certain abilities on your skill tree and they are found as drops from the enemies that you face.
The boss battles are very engaging and fun once you have figured out what to do and what potions to use. Because Potions and Oils can only be used before battle, I see this as a problem of trial and error. For the first major boss battle you are told what potion to drink, but you aren’t told how far you have to go before the cut scene triggers and you are thrown into battle and forced to load from a previous save. Luckily the game keeps a collection of all your auto saves so you can find a specific time to roll back to. For every boss that I faced I rolled back to a previous save to be able to use oils and potions as they are tough without them. On top of that, bosses nearly always attack just as a cut scene has ended allowing you less than a second to react.
Another gripe I have is that there is no fast travel in the game, as you do spend a fair amount of time walking back and forth and even when you go deep into dungeons and collect what you need you have to find your way out again checking the map every time you get lost. I have enough trouble with a sat-nav in the real world. You could argue that fast travel is an immersion killer and I can imagine someone telling me to man up because games shouldn't hold you by the hand,but walking back to a quest giver without a single challenge along the way is a waste of time in my eyes.
The graphics in the Witcher 2 are gorgeous, as the developers CDProject created their own engine and tried to push graphics to the maximum without understanding the concept of optimization. I consider this a good thing, but it does mean that it alienates potential customers who don’t have a decent pc to run it on. There were times where I stopped to stare at the scenery, such as the waterfalls, landscapes and mountains.
The choices that you have to make in the game are personal ones such as who to side with, who to kill or who to save and they don’t seem to make a major impact to the overall story. The choice where you take sides between two individuals is the choice that affects what you will be doing in a whole chapter but the story will resume its normal course when it is over. The back of the box states that there are 16 endings, but there is only one cut scene at the end of the main game. The different endings refer to how the kingdom is split, who lives/dies and how certain side quests are ended due to your decisions.
Each sidequest in the game has a story driving it which makes them feel more purposeful than standard fetch quests in some games. In the few Inns that you visit you can take part in arm wrestling, dice poker and prize fighting. Prize fighting is a series of QTEs using the WASD keys which never seem to become challenging, but it earns good money and experience. Arm Wrestling involves you using the mouse to keep a circle within a moving bar until it gets to the right side of the screen. Arm Wrestling gets quite difficult when you face the champion of the area, which makes it feel a bit more rewarding than prize fighting.
In most buildings you walk into, you will find plenty of resources to pick up to sell or craft which gives the game a sort of klepto addictive quality. I felt the same way when playing Fallout: New Vegas, but I prefer it in the Witcher 2 as there is no karma system making you feel guilty for doing it.
I like how the choices in this game are more ambiguous than the typical karma morality good/bad, paragon/renegade choices. On each of the main choices I had to think for a while and wondered what the consequences would be.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the Witcher 2. Its flaws are likely to put some people off the game, but if you are looking for an engaging RPG that doesn’t hold your hand then I recommend it to you.
7.8/10
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The Witcher 2 is role playing game based on the Witcher book series by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski. This game is more mature than its predecessor, as it no longer gives you sex cards for each female encounter teaching you to tally your encounters and brag about them, like mature people do. Its maturity comes from its strong political themes along with murder, racism and betrayal, but it has an immature side with a liberal approach with boobies and a cringingly bad Lord of the Rings reference.
The game features your standard fantasy characters like Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Sorceresses and Dragons but they all play a role in the political theme and show racial prejudice to each other like most other RPGs today.
The game’s protagonist is Geralt of Rivia, one of a rare breed of Witchers who are genetically modified, have magical powers and have glowing yellow eyes like a kitty at night. He starts off in an interrogation room in a prison in the Kingdom of Temeria, where he is accused of slaying the Temarian King, Foltest. Geralt tells his story of how the king was assassinated as Geralt was the King’s bodyguard at the time; job well done right? His Interrogator, Vernon Roche commander of Temerain Special Forces, is convinced by his story and helps him break out of prison to go after the real King Slayer and your journey begins.
The patch version I played is 2.0, which includes a tutorial for the game, which is essential as the beginning of the game is the most challenging part in terms of regular enemies. The tutorial shows you the basic controls for moving about, inventory, quest tracking and meditation before putting you in an arena and showing the controls for blocking, attack countering (riposte), spell casting, using bombs/traps and understanding your two types of swords. Geralt has a steel sword for humans and a silver sword for monsters, requiring a joke to be made about how humans are the biggest monsters on the planet. If you get it wrong, you will be told your blows are ineffective and you can remedy it by pressing the corresponding key (1 – Steel, 2- Silver)
The game manual provided with the disk doesn’t tell you which keys are bound to which spell and without the tutorial you would have been forgiven for thinking there are no spells. I don’t understand why the game couldn’t run through the controls before you are thrown into battle, other than it being seen as an immersion killer. The game’s spells all have wacky names: Aard (Stun/Knockback projectile), Yrden (Flame trap), Igni (Fireball nuke), Quen (Shield) and Axii (Charm).
Combat is at its most engaging at the beginning of the game as you are required to position yourself correctly and use your spell shield to safely pick off a large number of guards one by one. If you try to run in and rapidly left click the mouse like a noob, you won’t get very far. This keeps you on your toes, which is a good thing considering there isn’t much to think about. I say this because it takes little thought to decide which blade to use and the only other preparations that can be made such as oiling up your blade or drinking potions, can only be done outside of battle. Once you have the basics down, you shouldn’t find the start of the game difficult. I can’t say if that was the case in previous patches as the prologue as been made easier in most of the patches leading up to 2.0.
As the game goes on you can unlock abilities to attack multiple enemies at once and because you stagger enemies that you hit (unless they block), you can begin to let your mind wander and spam attacks at groups of enemies which is less engaging to me. You also can unlock the ability to perform adrenaline moves to kill groups of enemies, provide temporary damage buffs and slow all your enemies. However, I had the option of picking from a wide selection of other abilities. The game gives you three skill trees to specialize in: Magic, Alchemy and Swordsmanship. Magic improves the power and range of your signs and also gives you additional “Vigor” which is best thought of as mana. Swordsmanship increases your blocking skills, critical hits, gives you group attacks and finishers. Alchemy increases the duration of your oils and potions, gives you more herbs when you pick them, increases damage from your bombs and traps and increases effectiveness of “Mutagens”. Mutagens are stat boosters that you can attach to certain abilities on your skill tree and they are found as drops from the enemies that you face.
The boss battles are very engaging and fun once you have figured out what to do and what potions to use. Because Potions and Oils can only be used before battle, I see this as a problem of trial and error. For the first major boss battle you are told what potion to drink, but you aren’t told how far you have to go before the cut scene triggers and you are thrown into battle and forced to load from a previous save. Luckily the game keeps a collection of all your auto saves so you can find a specific time to roll back to. For every boss that I faced I rolled back to a previous save to be able to use oils and potions as they are tough without them. On top of that, bosses nearly always attack just as a cut scene has ended allowing you less than a second to react.
Another gripe I have is that there is no fast travel in the game, as you do spend a fair amount of time walking back and forth and even when you go deep into dungeons and collect what you need you have to find your way out again checking the map every time you get lost. I have enough trouble with a sat-nav in the real world. You could argue that fast travel is an immersion killer and I can imagine someone telling me to man up because games shouldn't hold you by the hand,but walking back to a quest giver without a single challenge along the way is a waste of time in my eyes.
The graphics in the Witcher 2 are gorgeous, as the developers CDProject created their own engine and tried to push graphics to the maximum without understanding the concept of optimization. I consider this a good thing, but it does mean that it alienates potential customers who don’t have a decent pc to run it on. There were times where I stopped to stare at the scenery, such as the waterfalls, landscapes and mountains.
The choices that you have to make in the game are personal ones such as who to side with, who to kill or who to save and they don’t seem to make a major impact to the overall story. The choice where you take sides between two individuals is the choice that affects what you will be doing in a whole chapter but the story will resume its normal course when it is over. The back of the box states that there are 16 endings, but there is only one cut scene at the end of the main game. The different endings refer to how the kingdom is split, who lives/dies and how certain side quests are ended due to your decisions.
Each sidequest in the game has a story driving it which makes them feel more purposeful than standard fetch quests in some games. In the few Inns that you visit you can take part in arm wrestling, dice poker and prize fighting. Prize fighting is a series of QTEs using the WASD keys which never seem to become challenging, but it earns good money and experience. Arm Wrestling involves you using the mouse to keep a circle within a moving bar until it gets to the right side of the screen. Arm Wrestling gets quite difficult when you face the champion of the area, which makes it feel a bit more rewarding than prize fighting.
In most buildings you walk into, you will find plenty of resources to pick up to sell or craft which gives the game a sort of klepto addictive quality. I felt the same way when playing Fallout: New Vegas, but I prefer it in the Witcher 2 as there is no karma system making you feel guilty for doing it.
I like how the choices in this game are more ambiguous than the typical karma morality good/bad, paragon/renegade choices. On each of the main choices I had to think for a while and wondered what the consequences would be.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the Witcher 2. Its flaws are likely to put some people off the game, but if you are looking for an engaging RPG that doesn’t hold your hand then I recommend it to you.
7.8/10
The game features your standard fantasy characters like Elves, Dwarves, Trolls, Sorceresses and Dragons but they all play a role in the political theme and show racial prejudice to each other like most other RPGs today.
The game’s protagonist is Geralt of Rivia, one of a rare breed of Witchers who are genetically modified, have magical powers and have glowing yellow eyes like a kitty at night. He starts off in an interrogation room in a prison in the Kingdom of Temeria, where he is accused of slaying the Temarian King, Foltest. Geralt tells his story of how the king was assassinated as Geralt was the King’s bodyguard at the time; job well done right? His Interrogator, Vernon Roche commander of Temerain Special Forces, is convinced by his story and helps him break out of prison to go after the real King Slayer and your journey begins.
The patch version I played is 2.0, which includes a tutorial for the game, which is essential as the beginning of the game is the most challenging part in terms of regular enemies. The tutorial shows you the basic controls for moving about, inventory, quest tracking and meditation before putting you in an arena and showing the controls for blocking, attack countering (riposte), spell casting, using bombs/traps and understanding your two types of swords. Geralt has a steel sword for humans and a silver sword for monsters, requiring a joke to be made about how humans are the biggest monsters on the planet. If you get it wrong, you will be told your blows are ineffective and you can remedy it by pressing the corresponding key (1 – Steel, 2- Silver)
The game manual provided with the disk doesn’t tell you which keys are bound to which spell and without the tutorial you would have been forgiven for thinking there are no spells. I don’t understand why the game couldn’t run through the controls before you are thrown into battle, other than it being seen as an immersion killer. The game’s spells all have wacky names: Aard (Stun/Knockback projectile), Yrden (Flame trap), Igni (Fireball nuke), Quen (Shield) and Axii (Charm).
Combat is at its most engaging at the beginning of the game as you are required to position yourself correctly and use your spell shield to safely pick off a large number of guards one by one. If you try to run in and rapidly left click the mouse like a noob, you won’t get very far. This keeps you on your toes, which is a good thing considering there isn’t much to think about. I say this because it takes little thought to decide which blade to use and the only other preparations that can be made such as oiling up your blade or drinking potions, can only be done outside of battle. Once you have the basics down, you shouldn’t find the start of the game difficult. I can’t say if that was the case in previous patches as the prologue as been made easier in most of the patches leading up to 2.0.
As the game goes on you can unlock abilities to attack multiple enemies at once and because you stagger enemies that you hit (unless they block), you can begin to let your mind wander and spam attacks at groups of enemies which is less engaging to me. You also can unlock the ability to perform adrenaline moves to kill groups of enemies, provide temporary damage buffs and slow all your enemies. However, I had the option of picking from a wide selection of other abilities. The game gives you three skill trees to specialize in: Magic, Alchemy and Swordsmanship. Magic improves the power and range of your signs and also gives you additional “Vigor” which is best thought of as mana. Swordsmanship increases your blocking skills, critical hits, gives you group attacks and finishers. Alchemy increases the duration of your oils and potions, gives you more herbs when you pick them, increases damage from your bombs and traps and increases effectiveness of “Mutagens”. Mutagens are stat boosters that you can attach to certain abilities on your skill tree and they are found as drops from the enemies that you face.
The boss battles are very engaging and fun once you have figured out what to do and what potions to use. Because Potions and Oils can only be used before battle, I see this as a problem of trial and error. For the first major boss battle you are told what potion to drink, but you aren’t told how far you have to go before the cut scene triggers and you are thrown into battle and forced to load from a previous save. Luckily the game keeps a collection of all your auto saves so you can find a specific time to roll back to. For every boss that I faced I rolled back to a previous save to be able to use oils and potions as they are tough without them. On top of that, bosses nearly always attack just as a cut scene has ended allowing you less than a second to react.
Another gripe I have is that there is no fast travel in the game, as you do spend a fair amount of time walking back and forth and even when you go deep into dungeons and collect what you need you have to find your way out again checking the map every time you get lost. I have enough trouble with a sat-nav in the real world. You could argue that fast travel is an immersion killer and I can imagine someone telling me to man up because games shouldn't hold you by the hand,but walking back to a quest giver without a single challenge along the way is a waste of time in my eyes.
The graphics in the Witcher 2 are gorgeous, as the developers CDProject created their own engine and tried to push graphics to the maximum without understanding the concept of optimization. I consider this a good thing, but it does mean that it alienates potential customers who don’t have a decent pc to run it on. There were times where I stopped to stare at the scenery, such as the waterfalls, landscapes and mountains.
The choices that you have to make in the game are personal ones such as who to side with, who to kill or who to save and they don’t seem to make a major impact to the overall story. The choice where you take sides between two individuals is the choice that affects what you will be doing in a whole chapter but the story will resume its normal course when it is over. The back of the box states that there are 16 endings, but there is only one cut scene at the end of the main game. The different endings refer to how the kingdom is split, who lives/dies and how certain side quests are ended due to your decisions.
Each sidequest in the game has a story driving it which makes them feel more purposeful than standard fetch quests in some games. In the few Inns that you visit you can take part in arm wrestling, dice poker and prize fighting. Prize fighting is a series of QTEs using the WASD keys which never seem to become challenging, but it earns good money and experience. Arm Wrestling involves you using the mouse to keep a circle within a moving bar until it gets to the right side of the screen. Arm Wrestling gets quite difficult when you face the champion of the area, which makes it feel a bit more rewarding than prize fighting.
In most buildings you walk into, you will find plenty of resources to pick up to sell or craft which gives the game a sort of klepto addictive quality. I felt the same way when playing Fallout: New Vegas, but I prefer it in the Witcher 2 as there is no karma system making you feel guilty for doing it.
I like how the choices in this game are more ambiguous than the typical karma morality good/bad, paragon/renegade choices. On each of the main choices I had to think for a while and wondered what the consequences would be.
Ultimately, I enjoyed the Witcher 2. Its flaws are likely to put some people off the game, but if you are looking for an engaging RPG that doesn’t hold your hand then I recommend it to you.
7.8/10