Friday 1 February 2013

Great Games That Actually Suck: The Witcher 2

I can't recall a game that received more hype than The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. No, not from the sycophantic gaming press (who will gush over anything, provided there's advertising revenue at stake), but from the fans, who will simply not shut up about its "brilliant" storytelling and the "mature" attitude the game takes towards the player. Hearing all the near-unanimous praise, I purchased The Witcher 2 for the same reason many did, I think - as an alternative to the wretchedly awful Dragon Age 2.

"I wanna be a durrrrgon..."

The Witcher 2 certainly seemed promising enough: it was developed by CD Projekt RED, an independent Polish developer who wouldn't have to bend knee to some clueless publisher like Electronic Arts. Furthermore, it would be developed for the PC first, laying to rest any fears of the game suffering from consolitis. We were promised a game that, unlike Dragon Age 2, would actually show the consequences of the choices our character made.

What I got, however, was a strikingly mediocre Action-RPG that committed many of the same sins that modern RPGs commit: the sacrifice of RPG mechanics for twitch-based action elements, an over-reliance on story and cutscenes as a crutch to prop up weak gameplay, a horrendously clumsy interface, and an exceedingly juvenile attempt at being "mature" by drenching the game in gore, violence, sex, profanity, and general nastiness. That last point is something I want to bring up later, because the world of The Witcher is so vile, so thoroughly miserable, that any emotional investment I had in the story evaporated by the time I reached the first town in the game.

The Witcher was originally a series of fantasy novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski that revolve around Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher. Witchers are genetically-engineered mutants (as far as anything can be "genetically engineered" in a fantasy setting) bred for the sole purpose of slaying monsters. On account of their mutations, however, Witchers are seen by the people as being something other than human, and are viewed with disgust and revulsion in spite of the valuable role they play. The Witcher games, naturally, place the player in the shoes of Geralt, whose entire personality can be predicted on account of his eternally constipated, po-faced expression.

"I think the stick up my ass has a stick up its ass."
Assassins of Kings begins with Geralt in the service of King Foltest, a lecherous, foul-mouthed lout of a man who happened to father a daughter with his own sister (get used to these kinds of people, The Witcher is absolutely full of them). But during a siege of a castle belonging to a traitorous lord, Foltest is slain by a mysterious assassin, a hulking brute who speaks with a southern drawl and who might be a witcher himself. Geralt ends up taking the blame for the regicide, and the quest to clear his name and discover the identity of the real assassin is where the game begins.

To be fair to the game, there's some good things here. The developers made a clear effort to show the consequences of choices of your actions, and sometimes those consequences can be totally unexpected. And unlike a typical BioWare or Bethesda game, the choices offered to the player do not fall squarely into "good" versus "evil;" instead they tends towards choosing whatever the player feels is the lesser of two evils. There is no asinine "morality meter" in The Witcher 2 - judgement of your decisions comes with the consequences, not with a number on a Good VS. Evil scale.

But when the introductory cutscenes come to an end and the rubber meets the road, The Witcher 2 stumbles badly. The gameplay, to be brutally honest, is awful. If anyone is considering purchasing the game thinking it's going to be a CRPG in the vein of classics of the genre, such as Fallout, Baldur's Gate, or Planescape: Torment, then you're going to be disappointed. This isn't a PC game, this a console game with PC graphics. The combat reminds me of Mass Effect 2 in that I can instantly tell what game the developers are ripping off. While Mass Effect 2 brazenly ripped off Gears of War, The Witcher 2 is clearly aiming for combat reminiscent of Batman: Arkham Asylum.

The problem is, Arkham Asylum masterfully captured the feeling of being the Dark Knight, who could smoothly flow from one attack to the next and strike multiple opponents at once. Geralt, on the other hand, has all the dexterity, responsiveness, and agility of an inebriated elephant. Simple actions such as blocking an incoming attack, or sheathing and unsheathing a sword, often fail inexplicably, attacks frequently fail to register, and sometimes the auto-targeting system decides that you really don't want to attack the bloke standing in your face and about to disembowel you and instead locks on to an enemy far away. The whole control scheme feels like it was designed for gamepads, not a mouse and keyboard, but I can't think that the controls would be any less clunky or unresponsive with that method of input. The abysmal controls in combat, combined with Geralt starting out as a Level 1 character, mean that many players are going to spend the game's prologue dying over and over.

Get used to seeing this.
My biggest issue with the combat, however, is that it doesn't know whether it wants to be RPG-like or Action-like. Outcomes in RPGs are based on the skills of whatever character whose role you are assuming (hence the presence of stats, skills, attributes, etc.), whereas outcomes in Actions games are based on the player's skills and reflexes. The two systems are completely orthogonal to one another (which is why I regard "Action-RPGs" as a thoroughly worthless genre), and nowhere is it more obvious than with The Witcher 2's combat. The inclusion of Quick Time Events (QTEs) is particularly baffling; I have to ask CD Projekt...what the hell were you thinking? Even worse, QTEs in The Witcher 2 are usually of the "fail and die" variety. If this doesn't convince you that this a console game masquerading as a CRPG, nothing will.

Of course, The Witcher 2 tries to present its combat as being "tactical" and requiring forethought. Geralt has access to things like traps, bombs, potions, and oils that can turn the tide of battle. The problem is, this is every bit as cumbersome as the combat itself. For instance, Geralt cannot drink potions in the middle of battle, oh no. He first has to enter "Meditation" which can only be done outside of combat! So, you might wonder, how do you determine which potions you ought to drink before battle? Well the answer is, you don't. You just rush in battle, get killed and reload, or you somehow possess clairvoyance and know exactly what the game is going to throw at you. Like so much else in the game, use of potions comes down to "guess what the developers were thinking."

Geralt also has access to "Signs," which are essentially spells. But since the game enjoys being obtuse, the Signs have non-indicative names like "Aard" or "Quen," and the menu system provides no hints as to what the signs actually do. Better hope you've read the manual and memorised what each one does! You might say that this is a quibbling point (and it is), but it's just one example of how the game seems to want to work against the player, rather than with him.

For example, the game's inventory system is atrocious. Why is it that no RPG developer uses the grid inventory any more? Consider the inventory screen of Baldur's Gate:


Notice how the entire inventory is presented as a 2x8 grid. There's no scrolling through lists required, the entire thing is visible at once. Items are represented by easily-recognisable images, so there's no hunting through a long list of items to find whatever it is you're looking for. The player is also capable of reorganising the inventory as he sees fit. I have to emphasise this: the inventory is a solved problem! So why are developers regressing to an incredibly clumsy list system that forces the player to scroll through a long list of items just to find whatever it is he wants? Skyrim is probably the biggest offender in this regard, but The Witcher 2 isn't far behind:


Using a list system necessitates breaking up the lists into separate pages, which goes against the maxim of good UI design, which is keeping to a minimum the number of mouse-clicks required to perform an action. And notice how the number of items displayed is pitifully small (just seven), requiring yet more scrolling. Oh, and did I mention that the menu system features a copious amount of mouse lag?

The map system is even worse, especially for cities, where it provides only a base approximation of how a city is actually laid out. Consider the map of Vergen:


The map fails to take into account the large degrees of elevation changes in the city, and completely fails to make any mention of obstacles or barriers that might be in your way. Should you try to zoom out and get a wider view of things, the map inexplicably transitions that of a world map view, which is completely useless. Just watch this angry YouTube video to see how bad the map system really is. I'm sure fans of the game will point out that The Witcher 2 "doesn't hold your hand" but there's a difference between letting the player find things out on his own and deliberately being obtuse. Getting lost in a city and having to transition between half a dozen loading screens is not something I would consider enjoyable any day of the week. And if the developers are so insistent on avoiding hand-holding, then why did they include that most damnable of mechanics, the quest marker? (Which is completely broken, anyway.)

Ah, you say, but I'm missing the point! The Witcher 2 isn't about such petty things like "gameplay," no, it's about its brilliantly-written story. Unfortunately, the method the game uses to tell its story is a heap of cutscenes, cutscenes, and yet more cutscenes. As much as Witcher fans would hate to admit it, the game is very similar to Dragon Age 2 in this regard in that the gameplay seems to serve no purpose but to act as filler between one cutscene in the next. As they might say over at RPGCodex, this is a storyfag game to the core.

And while I don't play games for the story, the world the The Witcher 2 is such an awful place that it saps any interest or emotional investment I might have had. It's not even all that terribly original - it's your generic "Dark and Gritty Fantasy" setting, set in wretched, crapsack world where the people are ignorant, filthy, and display of bigotry that would shame a Klansman, where the nobility send the common folk to die in pointless wars fought for hollow-sounding ideals, where life is nasty, brutish, and short, where rape, bloodshed, genocide, racism, and prejudice are the order of the day...oh fucking please! At one point this sort of world might have been a clever inversion of the cliched Tolkien-esque fantasy, but by now it's every bit as hackneyed and overdone as your typical Lord of the Rings clone. Geralt himself is one of the most generic protagonists I've encountered in a long while: the cynical, world-weary, gravelly-voiced anti-hero who does the right thing in spite of himself. How many times have we seen that before? He feels like something out a mid-nineties comic book.

But what really bothers me about the world The Witcher is how it does not celebrate the world it creates. Warhammer 40,000 might be the originator of Grimdark, but it revels in its absurdity. It's ridiculous and it knows it. The Witcher, on the other hand, doesn't revel in its world, it wallows in it. Consider Geralt's two swords; as a monster hunter, he carries one made of steel for use against men, and one made of silver for use against monsters. Ah, but as Geralt says, "both are for monsters." Do you get it? Humans are monsters. If you didn't catch that, the game will ram it down your throat against and again with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Poor Geralt can't swing a sword without hitting someone prattling on about "Hey, remember that time we raped/murdered/slaughtered that entire village? Good times, mate!" or spewing a stream of profanity that would make a sailor blush.

I'm constantly being told how "mature" The Witcher 2 is. Really? This game is the equivalent of a moody, foul-mouthed teenager who won't shut up about how much the world sucks, society sucks, people suck, so "Hey, fuck people, man! I'm so fucking DARK, man! Shitcock bastards fucknugget shitfucking pricks fuck fuck fuck..." The game tries so hard to be dark and edgy that I ended up rolling my eyes so often that they were in danger of falling out. Compare this to a game like Thief: The Dark Project or its sequels, which managed to be both dark and gritty without resorting to copious amounts of violence, sex, and vulgarity. The Witcher 2, on the other hand, is a like a child dressing in adult clothing, swearing at people left and right just to get some attention.

In the end, I found myself struggling to finish the game. Many times I would begin, get to the end of the prologue, and then stop in favour of playing something else. The best thing that I can say about it is that it is superior to Dragon Age 2, and that is damning with faint praise indeed.

47 comments:

  1. You and I seem to have similar roots in our preferences for RPGs, so it's kind of surprising that we seem to hold different opinions of The Witcher 2. I just finished a playthrough a few hours ago and enjoyed the experience. I have my own gripes and complaints, but the whole time I was thinking how much better and more enjoyable everything was compared to the latest Bethesda/BioWare games.

    For starters, I was in no way offended by the "maturity" of The Witcher 2 and at no point did it seem to me like a juvenile cry for attention. It's got a lot of adult themes but nothing felt in excess to me -- everything felt fairly natural in that world and never broke my immersion. If anything, TW2's "maturity" is actually a lot less "juvenile" than the first game's because everything is actually far more subtle.

    You condemn the combat claiming the blend of action and RPG mechanics doesn't work, but never actually explain how this pertains specifically to TW2. Obvious, inexcusable problems aside (like the bogus auto-targeting, inability to consume potions while in combat, etc), I enjoyed the combat and thought it was a nice balance between character statistics and player skill. The skill trees unlock a bunch of maneuvers to keep the combat evolving throughout the game; allocating skill points has a significant effect on your combat experience/success, but you also have to be able to use the skills effectively.

    As a matter of fact, I found the combat rather tactical, especially compared to the likes of Skyrim. I encountered a lot of tough, challenging situations that became far easier and more satisfying when I tried employing different strategies. I focused heavily on the magic skilltree, so I was actively juggling spells with swordplay and footwork, depending on the situation, and occasionally throwing bombs and potions into the mix as well. Quite frankly, the game is prone to kick your butt if you treat it like a mindless hack n' slasher, especially in the higher difficulties.

    Basically, most of your complaints feel like simple nitpicking and don't convince me of your ultimate point. Yeah, the map system is sometimes dumb, but it only was a passing annoyance for me. Yeah, the inventory system is kind of rubbish, but it's serviceable (and superficial to actual gameplay). Yeah, the game doesn't explain the spells very thoroughly (or even at all?), but it's not very taxing to spend a few seconds trying them out to see what they do. Yeah, the QTEs are lame as hell, but you only spend like 0.5% of the game in QTEs anyway.

    Honestly, I agree with most of your criticisms, but you kind of glazed over all of the stuff that I would find important in critiquing the game: the specific nature of combat, the character development system, the effect of choices/consequences, the quest design, world design and exploration, the actual story (not just its atmosphere/style), and so on. I get the impression this was a thoroughly dislikable game for you, but except for your disdain for its so-called maturity and finding various aspects of the combat clunky, I don't really see why. If there's nothing bad to say about the stuff I've just mentioned, then that would signify a decent game in my book.

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  2. Hey man, I'm glad to see I'm not the only one who thought this game got WAAAY more praise than it deserved.

    The broken map/waypoint mechanics nearly made the game unplayable for me, and for a game that was constantly touted using such choice phrases as "epic", "massive", "massively epic", "epically massive", and "big", I found it was over way too quickly.

    I think I went into the game expecting something along the lines of Zelda or Skyrim; something that would give me free reign to explore a rich world, interact with characters & monsters, and discover secrets. Instead, I was confined to 3 confusing villages...and then the game ended.

    On one hand, I WILL say that I found the story & characters intriguing; I wanted very much to love this game and to delve into this rich fantasy world. I was intrigued by the politics of...Whatever-this-Kingdom-Is-Called, and I would have loved to know more about it. I think that they should have left this story as a book series (which I'm sure is really good) and called it a day.

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  3. I cut my loses at the first true boss fight, the Kayran. By that point I had already sat through hours of cinematic crap and still didn't give a rats behind about anyone or anything in the game. Then I get mostly quicktime boss event. I was very glad I waited until this game was 7 dollars on Steam.

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  4. I find it very very hard to like this game. Even Witcher 1 to me had better game play. The article author is right the inventory system is a quagmire of crap. The constant cut scenes are enough to drive me to distraction. They do allow you to cut them short well at least some of them others your left to repeatedly view them through when you get the all to often GAME OVER screen. As a person who likes FPS games with RPG's a far distant 2nd or even third place Witcher 2 is just plain awful. Is auto targeting really necessary? When pressing the backup button why does the character do a 180 and run toward the camera its just bizarre when using strafe keys he turns 90 right or left. What were they thinking? As a combined RPG/FPS game Skyrim was a far better game as far as the fight mechanics. Alas as the author pointed out it's menu system also sucks. Still didn't keep me from playing Skyrim for 700 plus hours. Witcher 2 may keep my attention for 5 that is if I don't delete it first. Thank God I only paid seven dollars for it on a steam sale.

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  5. This review seems fairly spot-on to me. I think I have about 8 hours into this game and I don't know if I'm going to continue. I just recently got to Flotsam (they even have a town named after garbage!) and, all other gripes aside, it's just not that much fun. Everything seems to cumbersome. I found this review when doing a Google search for "combat system in witcher 2 sucks", because I was curious if other people thought that it does. I've read so much praise of this game (as you say, from fans) that I figured I must be missing something or that the game just hadn't started getting good yet. Nope! It looks like the combat system really does in fact suck, which for me, takes most of the enjoyment out of the game right off the bat. And when I got to this town I realized I was going to actually have to learn a crafting system, etc. and that I had to do it on these lame-ass menus and just everything that was cumbersome and lame about the game started becoming even more obvious. And as you say, the story isn't even really that good! I found myself skipping the cut-scenes, many of which require you to make ALL the choices before you can proceed anyways! There was one where I only had one choice and that choice was like.. to tell the guy to go F~ck himself or something like that. I was like "seriously, you're actually going to make me click the button to tell the guy to go f~ck himself??" One other thing I feel you didn't mention - the game is BLOATED as hell. It takes up over twice as much space on my hard drive Borderlands 2 (apples, and oranges, I know, but still), and I feel like it just doesn't even play that well as a result. There is TOO much detail in certain areas that don't even matter. They created this lush world that you can't even explore because you hit an invisible barrier every time you try to walk off the path. As another poster here said, I'm really glad I waited til this was $7 on Steam.

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  6. One thing I disagree with totally in this review is that the game is in any way a rip on arkham asylum combat. AA does not require preparation before fights of any kind nor is there a combo counter in witcher 2. Also where arkham asylums enemies are dumb as hell witcher 2's enemies are challenging enough to pose a threat as individuals and even more so in groups. I agree the game is cumbersome in terms of menus but fights hardly require clairevoyance. All you have to do is keep ensuring that one or two specific every-situation-potions are always active for you while you're on a mission (which is not as hard as you make it sound given that meditation is accessed by two button presses on a gamepad which is much clunkier than mouse and board I must add) these potions being golden oriole and swallow. Also every boss fight in the game and every monster hunting quest tell you exactly what your up against before you go to fight them giving you the opportunity to prepare potions, oils and bombs before hand. Even if you hate potions it is still possible to survive the game by using just oils, bombs, throwing knifes, and traps which can be used mid-combat. I agree the menus really are cumbersome as hell but I find this is exacerbated by the gamepad which requires rifling through the entire list to reach an item. BTW I think a reviewer shouldn't mention that they plainly don't like the genre of a game they are reviewing if they want to be convincing. It would have sufficed to say you don't like ARPGS but saying that you think they are BS is going too far. Nonetheless I found the comments on this page both positive and negative and your review illuminated some critical problems in the game though a lot of your review is frankly nitpicking and exaggeration.

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  7. I bought the game on the first day it was out here and was on the hype train till the 2nd day when I realized nothing except once choice I did mattered in the game. Kill the king or let him live? Doesn't matter, you're going to the next section anyway. Kill the town ruler? Has no influence, you'll continue to the next part afterall. The combat was clumsy and consisted of spamming rollings, the controls were none responsive, fights are consisted of cutscene and QTE, but when I was still hyped I could ignore all those faults... shame on me.

    Enemies in Witcher 2 don't have good AIs, it's like calling dynasty warriors having godly AI. It (Witcher 2) just has enemies having extremely high damage to make it "challenging."

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  8. Thank goodness there are people out that share my same opinion of the combat.

    I just got to the Kayran,died about 8 times,and just said "fuck this shit!"

    This game,for me,has the absolute worst combat for and "action" game that I've ever played.It's so clunky that just picking up loot is a chore sometimes.

    I know that probably the majority of gamers play games like this for the story,but the one thing that I've always said is that if the controls suck in a game,I don't give a fiddler's fuck how good the story is,I'm not going to like it.

    The controls are the equivalent of tires on your car.Without them,you aren't going anywhere,and if they are bad,then getting to your destination is usually not a pleasant experience.It is THE direct link from you in the real world,to your character in the game.When that link isn't smooth,or extremely clunky in this case,pretty much all immersion is lost for me.

    I'm glad I got this game for only 5 buck on the Steam Sale,because I honestly don't know if I'm going to be able to even want to play it anymore.

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  9. Lmfao This game is terrible, I just bought it in steam for 5 dolars but I regret it unlike most people in here. I too fell for the over hypeness this game has had and bought this crap. Bad voice acting, bad combat system, bad inventory and the genius that thought having TONS of lootable craps all over the place. Genius.

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  11. Hey. I have also noticed that fact even in W1, that the gameplay serves as a filler between cutscenes especially in the last two chapters(when fights get more boring).

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  12. But, honestly, I don't think that the game has a juvenile maturity.

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  14. And the world exploration element of the game isn't that good, cause the world consists of not too many locations connected one to other. There isn't much freedom like we have seen in the elder scrolls series, Geralt even can't jump(and get upon the rooftops).(in Morrowind it was the best - the entire map with cities and even levitation spell allows you to get even in the flying objects)

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  15. I agree, interface is bad, and as the author said, there are no hints for signs using, that came in my view too.

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  16. And I also don't think that Action-RPG is totally worthless. Your sentence is going too far.

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  18. I think there were some good ideas buried somewhere in that mess we call Dragon Age II, but the game should have built upon what the development team had already done so well with Dragon Age: Origins/ Awakening. The combat system in the first game was fine and didn't need to be completely overhauled into the ridiculous and over-the-top button mash we got; changing up the animations would have been sufficient. Similarly, tweaking the textures and character models a bit would have been fine. There are noticeable improvements between each installment of Mass Effect, but one never gets the sense that they went back to the drawing board the way they did with DA II. BioWare should have trusted in the strengths of the first game and listened less to whiny fans kvetching about crap like "slow, clunk, undynamic combat" and EA shouldn't have forced BW to rush the game out like they did. The development cycle for DA III was pitifully short.

    Oh, and yes Witcher 2 is extremely overrated and I found playing it to be a thoroughly joyless experience.

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  19. Yeah I`ve only played for about 3 hours now, but I`m just not seeing what got this game so much praise. Everyone talks about these deep morally grey choices you have to make that effect the story. When do those start cause I haven`t noticed anything yet.
    And like sparkeyjames already said, as a person used to fps type movement this game just feels clunky as hell. the autotargeting battle system doesn`t feel natural to me and I even though I rarely die in combat it generally just feels like I`m just pointing the camera in the direction of he enemy and button mashing.
    Maybe the fighting gets more interesting once you unlock some more of the skill trees but after 3 hours I`m just feeling really bored.
    Is it worth pressing on? Or if I don`t like it now is it likely I won`t like it further on either?

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  20. I got sucked in too. The reviews were so gushing and it sounded like my type of game but it's terrible. I then read some forums where people kept saying that the game is dull in the beginning but gets good after a few hours but it never did. Dr Atomic nailed it in this blog.

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  21. Very good read - Glad to see I am not alone - I waited a long time to have a PC that could run this and I have tried to play it twice now but could not even make it past the prologue.

    This runs Dragon Age 2 close as my biggest PC disappointment ever.

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  22. Excellent article. I couldn't agree more. I thought I was alone in being utterly disappointed and bored by this game, but it seems I am not. Besides an impressive looking opening cut scene; the characters I came across were poe-faced and dull, the world itself was gloomy and miserable, and the combat and the god-awful user interface were as obtuse as they come.

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  23. Wow, I too was into this mess about 4 hours and decided to Google "The Witcher 2 PC controls suck" to see whether it was just me (a veteran gamer) that was having problems or what. The good doctor covered all the main things about the gameplay that pissed me off, and some of the great comments by the other contributors covered my other impressions. It DID play like a bad console to PC port and The Witcher 1 was better by a bunch, and that is just pisspoor especially given all the "Great" ratings and the hype. But I did get a kick out of the "Angry" YouTube guy video, it made me feel better about my reactions (cussing, screaming etc) to some of this "gameplay" and the horrific mechanics!
    Happy Holidays! The Guzmonster

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  24. I've slogged about 25 hrs through, and like Witcher 1 my biggest beef with Witcher 2 is ... you're a monster hunter yet you're stuck in Game of Thrones political intrigue plot hell. It's really a shame. I bought these games based on Geralt. He's a monster hunter. I thought there'd be interesting stories about monsters and plots to hunt them. Instead, I'm stuck chasing tails around in a political drama... in both games! I feel like they mis-used the IP like the way Duke Nukem was mis-used in Duke Nukem Forever (IE: an "Action" hero was dumped in the middle of a Half Life 2 puzzle/platformer clone.)

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  25. Quote: "Consider Geralt's two swords; as a monster hunter, he carries one made of steel for use against men, and one made of silver for use against monsters. Ah, but as Geralt says, "both are for monsters." Do you get it? Humans are monsters. If you didn't catch that, the game will ram it down your throat against and again with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer."
    Кретин блядь на хуй, ёбаный в рот!
    "Оба для монстров" - вовсе не означает, что люди - монстры, долбоёб сука. Вывод совсем не тот, блядь на хуй, и если бы ты не был таким долбоёбом и понял мысль автора
    Я думаю, что автор этим хотел сказать, что не люди - монстры, а те люди, которых убивает ведьмак - монстры. Т.е. всякая шушваль и мразь. Т.е. он убивает только монстров и это вовсе не означает, что в представлении Геральта все люди - монстры, ёбаный в рот. Как можно так облажаться с пониманием авторских мыслей?

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  26. You don't understand it and you say it has a juvenile maturity.

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  27. Я думаю, этим автор этим высказыванием показал какую-то справедливость как качество ведьмака или презрение к всякой мрази, которая встречается в его мире среди людей, а вовсе не то, что ведьмак считает людей монстрами. Ведь просто так в книгах Сапковского он никого не убивал.

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  28. Мне бы было стыдно, если бы я так непонимал автора.

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  29. И говорил, что его книги имеют "juvenile maturity".

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  30. 100% percent agree and to be honest, id never play witcher 2 again rather than just play fable 2. smoother game with better combat more rpg and less anal cramming of the thick hard rod of story

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  31. Just played the witcher 3, its even worse !

    Example of action rpg done right though:
    Dragons Dogma Dark Arisen

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  32. I like this guy. He compared The Witcher series to Warhammer 40k. That's the first thing i do when i see something is trying very very hard to impress me with a setting along with these lines "LOOK at this shit, isn't it miserable? Now look at this shit, ain't it dark? How about this? Sad, right? Much maturity, no hope, life sucks. Its okay be be an asshole like yourself, see - we made all our characters assholes in one way or another, and killed off the rest in process, so you could relate with winning party for change.". And when i scale it to 40k, all i see is pseudo-realism with reality and laws of probability bended so hard, that no one, absolutely no one, is allowed to have fun and be happy in front of the reader/viewer/player and not die for it shortly after as some sort of divine punishment.
    Grimdark is like gravity. Bigger medium means stronger pull. Small medium, like the world of the witcher game series, has a pull of fist sized rock in the orbit of the earth, where the earth is a 40k one's medium in comparison. Also can compare it within economy. With a base price for a "one fuck to give" to be exactly one human soul, and the universe have like few billions of fucks to give before inflation will hit it hard to begin with.

    З.Ы. Эй, доблоеб, который решил высказаться в чужом монастыре на этом языке - это не читательский клуб, тут книги и их авторов никто не обсуждал до тебя. А твое понимание действий протаганиста можно свернуть в трубочку и засунуть тебе же жопу в тот же миг, когда аватар в игре, Гералт, убил первого безимянного солдата (то есть хуеву тучу людей).

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  33. 1. If you do not like arpg and lie rpg then this is not the game for you. Complaining how it is arpg and not another style is stupid.
    2. the signs and basic combat is explained in the game tutorial . basically you have a few guided fights in the arena that do not add to your stats.
    3. the sign names are not that strange: igni means fire and aard probably coes from ward s in ward off.
    4.you know what to expect from each mission if you listen to what people tell you and read the books that are for sale.
    5.the inventory is done this way because you can have lots of loot at a time.
    6. monsters are part of quests and designed not to be used very effectively for farming as they drop less and less xp as you advance. You can still farm ingredients from them.
    7. Yes the fights in the first chapter are hard but that is because you forgot almost everything and gave the worse armor/weapons. As you increase xp it will be far easier unless you want to fight more than 4 persons at once in close quarters.
    8. you say the characters are not realistic... read some history , learn about real world and then we will talk.
    9. blocking does not fail inexplicabily : you have a finite amount of vigor. if you just parry at some time you will become to tired to defend yourself and unable to actually parry. I agree that 1 vigor unit per parry is much but that is another discussion.
    10. it is just your opinion stats and player skills are orhogonal. Stats do help just as in real life if you have better training, better weapons, etc you have a better chance of winning. But standing there just swinging your sword as in some rpg's will do nothing for you. what is interesting is that you complain it is too realistic for your taste.
    11. did anyone claim the witcher world is original? Is based on a part of human history known as middle ages with magic elements sprinkled about. Since there are many games inspired by the same period is natural they look similar.
    12. the reason those basic spells are called signs is because the conjurer makes discreet hand signs to cast the spell . This is visible when you cast AXii but is the same for every sign.
    13. you cannot drink potions during fight because you cannot do this in real life either. Also the potions cause pain and for a few minutes the witcher is incapacitated. Meditation is used to take away some of the pain.
    14. It is easy to determine which potions to drink. Depending on the branch you choose there will be basically the same potions every time. You can learn more powerful versions of them but that is it.
    15. This is how a map looks in real world before computers. You cannot infinite zoom and usually does not show too much detail.
    16. ok so nobles never sent peasants into their own petty fights. Oh wait, that is what they totally did throughout the entire frickin human history. Amd is gritty because it is a land ravaged by war.
    PS: Tolkien created a unrealistic world. Read "The Last Ringbearer" for a more realistic viewpoint on his world.
    17. Some humans are worse than monsters. This is the reality. Monsters have no sense of right of wrong just instincts so you cannot blame them. You just kill them and that is it. Not the same can be said for some humans.
    18. It is not teenager like mature . For that look at the reboot of DMC. It is realistic.
    19. Interesting you judge a game by the prologue. The game in prologue just fills you in wit the story. In chapter 1 you learn basic fight methods and so on. Basically until Chapter 2 you are just at the beginner stage.
    20. yes the bosses are very hard until end of ch 1 and most fights because you are amnesic and just starting to remember how to fight. Most people remember the way from before the amnesia and expect you to be the same and fiht the same. You just do not.

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  34. Conclusion: Apparently your main problem with the game is that is too much like real life. Of course since you just compare it to other games it seems weird and off. But if you compared it with real life (try reading about it!!!) you see things are very realistic. And I have responded hopefully all your complaints.

    PS: did not read the books or the manual it. All this is inferred just by playing this game. (did not play Witcher 1)

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  35. Ещё одно, о чём не написали: графических эффектов в ведьмаке 2 накрутили столько, что картинка кажется какой-то замыленной. Создаёт неприятное впечатление.

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  36. "Consider Geralt's two swords; as a monster hunter, he carries one made of steel for use against men, and one made of silver for use against monsters. Ah, but as Geralt says, "both are for monsters." Do you get it? Humans are monsters. If you didn't catch that, the game will ram it down your throat against and again with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer." - THIS IS WHERE YOUR LOGIC FAILS! You've made a false conclusion.

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  38. I just can get how people could have played TW1 and say "TW2 is an improvement inevery aspect"...

    TW2 may be the worst game sequel I've ever played in my 30+ years of gaming... simple, take everything that worked on TW1, and just throw it away : nice and original A-RPG gameplay, nice story-telling, good atmosphere, thanks to many details which makes the game utterly immersive, good diversity and balance in gameplay, it was a near perfect shot... then, add a pseudo console subpar action gameplay, make the story-telling looking more like a B movie than a enjoyable interactive book, make most of the stuff useless (potions, craft etc, it has almost no incidence on fights), make it near non playable with painful combats, painful interface, and then you'll have TW2...

    To be honest, I'm somewhere after the Vergen mines (looking for the female troll), and all the way up there was painful and boring, I didn't have any fun at all, besides great graphics, I've never had any pleasure in exploring or fighting or doing anything... and where are the quests ?

    I mean, the interesting ones ?

    TW1 had a cool "detective" side, looking for the werewolf, for the girl abducted by vampires, saving (or not) Abigail etc...

    It seems that with TW2, they created a game engine, but they forgot to do the actual game, as if they were doing a movie, then someone said like "hey oh, it's supposed to be a game, let's put some gameplay !" and voilà...

    There's no excuse, as I read above such as "it's realistic", no it isn't more "realistic", it's all the contrary, maybe you have lost your memory/powers etc, but that's no reason to make it awful even against the weakest basic monsters, in TW1, it was no 100% action gameplay, but at least, you had the feeling to be a real badass while fighing weaker ennemies, thanks to the cool animations.

    TW2 just sucks, it isn't good enough for a RPG, and it isn't good enough for a action game/beat'em all à la Dark Souls, they just failed in every ways, and not to mention the amount of bugs, the crappy AI (worse than it was in TW1) and so on.

    TW2 is a game designed for console-playing teenagers, that's not what you want when you come from TW1, at least, that's not what I wanted, I wantend nothing but the atmosphere, diversity, fun, enjoyability of TW1 with TW2 graphics, which are the only cool thing about that game.

    I hope TW3 isn't as much overrated as TW2 is... before playing TW2, I was sure that TW3 was 2015's best game, but now that I'm actually playing TW2 and so much disapointed, I'll wait to have TW3 in hands before claiming it's such a great game...

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  39. Horrible ass game. Waste of 3 bucks.

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  40. If you thought this was going to be a turn based game, you must have not researched thoroughly.

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  41. Loved W3, I thought I'd absorb more of the great story but the combat system sucks in W2. PC controls were awful, so I hooked up my PS4 controller via steam support, game play was a little less annoying...but still annoying. I deleted it. Glad it was only $3.

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  42. I play games to have fun.

    This The Witcher 2 game is not fun at all.

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  43. I just installed and deleted Witcher 2 today. Between waiting for all the cutscenes to play, spending a major amount of time going through the arena tutorial and getting through that mostly by luck, (because the game controls are so laggy, don't work consistently, and require you to hit multiple keys that you have to remember on one reading), I gave up before the king even got assassinated because I was just so fed up. This game wasn't fun, it was just frustrating. I don't care about all the swearing and background nastiness, but I HATED the game controls where you had to go through multiple screens and too many mouse clicks just to drink a potion.

    I agree with the original blogger. This is a piece of crap. Lousy controls, terrible gameplay, truly awful interface, and too much deus ex machina in the form of cutscene after cutscene. And the parts of the action you did get to play, you had to first figure out the mechanic available, because the tutorial was gone before you could read it, then you might actually get to play a little before the next cut scene. I gave up when the dragon killed me after I got a QTE that gave me a picture of a mouse and said something about "do this to evade" but unfortunately, game me no idea WHEN I should be pressing that mouse button. I don't have a lot of patience for games that require you to die 5 or 10 or even 20 times, replay from your last save, and then die again, just so you can finally figure out how to run a gamut and click all the right buttons at the right time.

    I'm sure there might be a lot of players that enjoy testing their reflexes and reaction time like this, but I'm not one of them. Given how much fun Witcher was, I at least thought Witcher 2 would be more of the same. It isn't and I will just ignore it. I'll try Witcher 3 because I've already bought it (like Witcher 2, I bought 3 on the strength of the Witcher experience), but I am now wondering if it will have been just as much a waste of my money, despite all the hype to the contrary.

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  44. Late to the game, but wanted to try the Witcher series since all the "praise" it's always received. So let me start by saying I LOVED Dragon Age: Origins. Though dated now, that was superb. A TRUE PC developed RPG game. DA2 was a console game and sucked. I liked DA3, but not as much as Origins. OK, so now onto the Witcher. I'm about half way through 1 and it is so crap. Not just because of how old it is, it's truly NOT fun at all, and is just plain shit. I just decided to quit the game and wanted to look up why people thought it was so great in case I was missing something so I "googled" something like why is the witcher 1 bad and found this old thread about how the witcher 2 is bad. I'm skipping the witcher 2 now and will just dive into Wild Hunt. Maybe that one's good...

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