Witcher 2

Platform	OVERALL
Xbox 360	7.70

Overall

7.70

We console only folk waited a long time to finally play a game in the highly respected Witcher series, well Witcher 2 finally hit the 360. I was very excited to try the game out as it looked to be right up my alley and at the start I was impressed. Graphically it is a marvel, amazing vistas with a super detailed world to explore. Certain elements made it feel more like an action/adventure game with RPG elements which is something I welcome very much. But as the game went on I felt it hit wall where I did not feel the gameplay ever improved and repetition set it.

Make no mistake this is a very cool interesting game and I recommend any RPG fan to try it out. What it does well it does very well, like the way the game makes choices matter. There is no "good" or "evil" path here, it is far more real with its choices than almost any game I have seen. Plus your choices have major impact on the game, not just the story, you literally play an entire different second act depending on your choices. Boss fights change, locations change, NPCs change, quests change, it is very impressive. Now I only finished the game once so I have yet to see the other act I missed (maybe it is better than the one I chose, who knows.

At first I was really impressed with the combat and overall gameplay in Witcher 2. The combat demands your attention cause one mistake can lead to a very quick death. Against other sword wielding enemies a battle involves careful blocks and parries with timely attacks. Geralt begins the game with five spells, these are the only spells you will get the entire game, of course you may upgrade them. These spells give you most of the skills needed to manage crowds. One spell creates a sort of magic mine that will freeze an opponent in place for a time. Another one is basically a force blast which can knock or stun an opponent. You also has access to traps which are kind of useful at first but totally unnecessary.

The first 10 hours or so you will be making use of all skills at your disposal to survive some very tough battles. I decided to level up Geralts sword skills, after a certain point I earned some skills which made him a killing machine. Now he can spin like a whirlwind hitting enemies on all sides. He has instant super kill moves after a meter fills up. Plus my equipment reached godly levels where I was laying waste to nearly everything in my path. The combat never evolved with your character. Essentially you fight the same type of enemies from the start to the end with a few exceptions, none really pose much a challenge. The final half was mostly a cake walk and I played the game on hard. I found very simple strategies that worked in almost all battles, just rinse and repeat. It is up to the game to make the player use different strategies, to engage them in new ways and this game simply stopped doing that.

The games structure didn't rub me the right way either. This is no giant open world game, instead you usually have a hub town or city with branching paths that lead out to woods or caves. You go to new locations but that structure never changes, one town with branching paths. Also each act (of which there are three, each taking place in a new location) kind of progresses the same way. You start the act with a big action sequence, you end up in a town where you gather a bunch of quests, then you head out on the paths to solve them and you end with another action moment and a boss. With the first act it was all very interesting, but by the time the third act came around it felt like deja vu.

Thankfully many of the quests were interesting my favorites being ones with puzzles, almost investigative missions. One mission required you to retrace your steps after getting so drunk that you wake up naked on a river. Another has you trying to solve the murder mystery of a ghost and a soldier that claims to be innocent. These kinds of missions require you to locate clues, many times in books and be smart with your dialogue choices. I really wish there were more of these major side missions but there are maybe 12 in the whole game. There are also lesser side missions which repeat in every location, these involve mini games or hunting missions which are fun but mostly time killers.

Main missions usually involve more combat or action setpieces. Once again in the first act I was impressed with how it felt like an action game. One segment had you protecting a mage who created a protective bubble to ward off arrows and you had to protect the mage against melee enemies running in. There is a sort of stealth missions with stealth kills. One segment was almost a platformer forcing you to avoid dragon fire using timely running. Then comes the second act and you once again have a protect the mage in the bubble missions. By the last act every big sequence felt like a blocked off area with swarms of enemies being thrown at you, I don't know what happened to the more interesting missions.

There are a host of other issues which bugged me like some bugs. Certain missions would have your map guide freak out. I got this crazy bug that made me invincible for a while, I had to reset the game myself when I was supposed to die to give myself a challenge. The potion system is very strange where you have to drink potions before a battle so that you are buffed for a time. Problem is you don't always know when a battle is coming so many times you get locked into a boss battle without the ability to use any potions, wtf. This game also suffers from useless item syndrome which I won't get into much since I already did that in my blog. I swear I thought the game would be twice as long just cause of the amount of items I was gathering, but no most of it just all goes to waste. Boss battles range from amazingly Zelda like awesome(In the first act) to simple one on one battles or boring repetitive ones (toward the end of the game).

Then there is the story which is told in a way that simply did not engage me. The game does not do that great of a job of recapping you on the last game so I had to youtube it. None of the characters weren't all that interesting, maybe they were going for a more subdued cast of characters, I didn't care for any of them. I also never felt any excitement, there were some cool moments but the way the it was presented never got me going. It is not like a game like Mass Effect which hits all the right buttons to make you feel something at the moment it wants you too. It is an interesting world with some interesting characters but it is missing something which didn't get me engaged emotionally.

Witcher 2 feels to me like a game with some great ideas but it didn't quite nail the execution. It has combat that could have had great depth but doesn't give you the enemies or situations to really use it. It could have this very exciting story but it all feels very dry. It feels like a game that simply loses steam as it goes on and strangely it still feels like it was short and much more could have been done with it. This game is a confusing one, overall though it is a very good game, one that I will probably go back to and play again in time. I never hated it, I really enjoyed my 25 hours. I think this has massive potential it simply doesn't match the best games of this gen for me.

Posted by Dvader Tue, 29 May 2012 00:11:29

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Archangel3371

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 01:53:29

Now now just because I like Too Human more doesn't mean I didn't like this game.

gamingeek

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:35:48

Foolz

Thu, 14 Jun 2012 13:43:37

Archie, if you don't like the game just say so. There's no reason to drag it through the dirt.

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