The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

[MournelitheCalix]

On phase three right now and this game continues to impress.  I upgraded aerondite and my armor (phase three was getting way too hard to not do this).  I am also experimenting alot with the mutagen system.  Its interesting but I am not noticing a whole lot of difference right now other than with the adrenaline rush ability.



On Dragons and Challenges (Warning Big Mega Spoiler)
 

[Lakov_Sanite]

Interesting, did you ide with Roche? Because that sounds like a completely different dragon fight than I had.

[MournelitheCalix]

Interesting, did you ide with Roche? Because that sounds like a completely different dragon fight than I had.

Yes, details in spoilers:

[AcidCat]

Started Chapter 1 and got to the first proper town last night. I have a giant hardon for this game, I haven't played an RPG this satisfying in years.

[Morfiend]

I want to go back to something someone said earlier in the W2 vs DA2 comments. After playing a bit of chapter 1, one of the things that really stands out is how the conversations feel much more organic in W2. Often I am not sure if the dialog I am about to select is to advance the quest, or just give me lore words. In DA2 the dialog felt almost like a minigame. I think the voice acting in DA2 was better, but the way dialog is presented in W2 feels more like real conversations. Also, I like that a lot of the conversations are with groups of people. Mostly in DA2 you where only talking 1 on 1, which in hindsight seems unrealistic now.

[Gunzwei]

On Dragons and Challenges (Warning Big Mega Spoiler)
 

[kildorn]

On Dragons and Challenges (Warning Big Mega Spoiler)
 

[tmp]

Patch 1.1 is out at http://en.thewitcher.com/patch/

they're having some issues with their file servers atm so it won't be retrieved automatically by the launcher.

[Minvaren]

On the other hand, Steam seems perfectly content to patch it by downloading the 9GB dzip file again...   

[ffc]

The patch removes SecuROM activation for retail/DD copies and apparently brings increased performance as a result. 

[Amaron]

...removes SecuROM ... brings increased performance  ...

What a surprising revelation this must be to everyone  .

[Zetor]

There's so much random 'oh, this might be useful for alchemy/upgrades/selling' crap scattered around and dropped by enemies (up to 6-7 items per monster!) that I can't imagine playing without an inventory mod. I'm kind of puzzled by enemies being unable to pass "zonelines", though it's useful to cheese super-annoying fights -- such as the endrega queens, or that cave with 7-8 neekers before I discovered the uberness of quen.

Dialogues still have that 'trying too hard' feeling in act2, though the plot's better than the original game so far IMO.

[Ard]

[Mazakiel]

[Trouble]

I die whenever I go out into the woods.

[Xuri]

This method worked for me when all else failed :P
Apply Quen -> Attack with sword -> Roll away when timer for quen drops below 10 seconds -> Run around until you regain vigor -> Repeat

Alternatively, if it's something big:
Apply Quen -> Drop an Yrden trap > Roll back so monster goes into trap -> Attack with sword -> Roll away when trap effect vanishes/timer for quen drops below 10 seconds -> Run around rolling until you regain vigor -> Repeat

If you upgrade the Quen, this will get you through every non-boss fight in the game. More or less.

[Trouble]

I understand their desire to make a difficult game and agree that most of these types of games kind of hand it to you on a silver platter. The problem is that at low levels you don't have the tools. You basically end up having to cheese it by running around like a retard while waiting for cooldowns. It doesn't exactly feel skillful to beat things that way.

[PalmTrees]

But they didn't make it a truly difficult game. True difficulty coming from having to think and plan out strategies. For me all the difficulty came from the awkwardness of the controls, so its all bullshit difficulty.  Figuring out who to attack, how to attack, the strategy, was not difficult. Getting the bastard targeting to comply was another matter.

Finished the game and the ending is unsatisfying. So many things obviously going to resolved in 3.

Also wth was the point of the sword recipe that uses a dragon scale if they don't even let you loot the dragon?

The Eternal Battle sequence where you have to play as a guy without secondary weapons, signs or the ability to roll and fight multiple opponents? The guy that decided on that needs to drawn and quartered Nilfgardian style in the town square. Had to cheese it with agro range pulling singles/duos.

I'm a bit curious how other choices would play out, but then I think how I'd have to do all that crap combat again and my motivation wanes.

I loaded one of my witcher 1 saves at the beginning, couldn't tell who my ally was from the load, and didn't really seem to effect anything.

[tmp]

Also wth was the point of the sword recipe that uses a dragon scale if they don't even let you loot the dragon?

There's couple spots where you have literally a second to click on the body and hit space to get the stuff before the cutscene triggers, because after the cutscene the body/loot is no longer there. Don't know if it's a bug or just oversight (or if that's even one of these situations) but it can be irritating to say the least.

[Xuri]

It's a feature, not a bug? :P Intended to make the game more challenging, obviously.

[AcidCat]

I understand their desire to make a difficult game and agree that most of these types of games kind of hand it to you on a silver platter. The problem is that at low levels you don't have the tools. You basically end up having to cheese it by running around like a retard while waiting for cooldowns. It doesn't exactly feel skillful to beat things that way.

I have to so disagree with this. Yes the prologue, specifically the ballista courtyard fight, was the crucible in which I learned the basics and yeah it took a few deaths. The first cave near Flotsam you come to where you're swarmed by Nekkers was another reminder of how the game plays that slapped me with a few deaths, as well as the wraiths in the abandoned insane asylum, which was by the way an awesome quest with a nice choice at the end. Pretty much since these encounters I'm a badass in the woods around Flotsam, with a ridiculous surplus of bombs to soften up any situation and Quen to hold my hand in dark times and make me feel better. There's a whole parry/block system I'm not even using because I prefer rollin' like a boss around fools. If I can get one enemy isolated I can poke the fucker full of holes with ad hoc combos that flow easily. The Witcher works best with an economy of movement, every input considered, and if I click once in excess and hit dead air after an enemy has already gone back to the mud I'm a little disappointed to put Geralt out for that pointless swing.  I'm almost level 9 and I'm hoping for some more challenging combat at some point, because right now shit like Nekkers and those tree crabs are trivial for such a badass, let alone any humans with a deathwish that are fool enough to step up to Geralt.

On a side note I kept getting the feeling that the world itself is set up similar to Fable, but comparing this game to any Fable title (as much as I've liked them in the past) really just highlights how infantile Fable is in every way, from NPC interaction to combat. Could one even imagine Geralt ripping farts in NPC faces? Witcher 2 is a huge reality check for what a game like this can be.

[Trouble]

Also I just have to complain. Inventory management is fucking ass. Beyond ass. About the worst I've ever seen. Somehow notably worse than the first game's. I have old quest items I can't get rid of, no way to sort the inventory, all my recipes show up in the inventory as items and must be kept to be used. No recipe book or memorization. No reliable way to store the assloads of crafting materials eating up all my weight. No idea if I need them or not.

I do love the world and the characters, and the story is ok. Overall I agree with assessment that it's a great game with some deep flaws (most of which I expect will be patched).

[amiable]

To reiterate a few points here, playing through on hard:

1.   The inventory system is an abortion.  I am forced to save the game every time I go to the store in case I miss-click one and have to buy back an item for 10 times its costs.  There is no rhyme of reason to the crafting and i never know what is useless crap and what are important reagents (like for example nekker hearts which are used in rune crafting runes, need to keep those!).  there is no "junk" tab so i have to wade through the entire inventory to get rid of useless crap, also books and designs add to the clutter, and there is no indicator reminding you whether or not you may have already read a particular book.  Also, there is no storage.  Normally I have a hard and fast rule of no modding on my first run through, but I made an exception here and downloaded a reduced item weight mod because I was getting so annoyed.

2.  Combat is terrible.  I'm sorry, but it is.  Its incredibly frustrating and finicky, with target switching for no apparent reason and no default to add "keep hitting the same target" option.  Yes, I know alt locks you onto one target, but if you go a certain distance away from your locked target (not very far) you lose target lock...  Grrrrr..... This is made worse by the inability to pause so you can tactically assess the situation.  This all changes when you hit about level 12 and can invest 6 points into the magic tree to upgrade quen and get a few points of vigor.  At that point every combat is a total joke, including mini-bosses as quen turns you into Jesus McAwesome.  Boss fights are still difficult, but mostly because they are full of "OMG click here right now or you will instantly die!!!" mechanics.

3.  Story is pretty interesting, but to be honest all of these characters run together.  Which king are we talking about now, who is that dude that everyone should act like I know?

4.  Choosing logical conversation options can make folks angry and cause you to fail quests:

eg..

i will probably play through once, but there is no way in hell I would ever buy dlc for this and I most likely will not play through again.

[tmp]

2.  Combat is terrible.  I'm sorry, but it is.  Its incredibly frustrating and finicky, with target switching for no apparent reason and no default to add "keep hitting the same target" option.

As i play more i find the dynamic targetting a bonus rather than obstacle, since in 1 vs a bunch situations switching targets frequently allows to effectively keep them stagger-locked and unable to hit you. So that target switching is something you want to do, most of the time. Plus, targetting a guy at distance and moving to hit them works just as well as rolling away in terms of dodging, with bonus of actually doing some damage.

The target doesn't switch for no reason btw, but it selects whoever happens to be in the center of your view. Some sort of reticle could probably help people here.

Anyway all this becomes quite moot after you invest a point in the talent which unlocks hitting more than single target (since these additional hits work for stagger too, and it no longer really matters who exactly you hit)  It turns fights like 1 vs 10 on a staircase into bloodbaths in which you rarely take any damage, and that's without any shield signs (which means you have some accumulated vigor to hit for more than minimal damage, which also helps)

i will probably play through once, but there is no way in hell I would ever buy dlc for this

They say all DLC is going to be free

[Lakov_Sanite]

There a dragon scale in Phillipa's room in the last chapter and the battle where you don't have any abilities as a ghost? You still get parry, a skill people never use so they forget it works and it works like a motherfucker in that fight.

[MournelitheCalix]

O'k I have beaten it now doing both Roche and Iorveth's path on normal.  Just some observations, first off its amazing how well the writers blended both paths together.  The only conflict I noticed came during a sequence with a certain sorcerous at the end.  She said several things that weren't right and Geralt said one thing that was pretty dumb since it assumed an even did n't happen that did just moments before.  Other than this one sequence, this was a fantastic job.  Roche's path in my opinion is not as good as Iorveth's path.  While Roche was definitely more polished, I enjoyed Iorveth's path a lot more and it felt a lot more epic.  Now one more thing on dragons and this is a huge spoiler so don't look if you don't want to be spoiled:

On Dragons Pt 2
  

[Gunzwei]

O'k I have beaten it now doing both Roche and Iorveth's path on normal.  Just some observations, first off its amazing how well the writers blended both paths together.  The only conflict I noticed came during a sequence with a certain sorcerous at the end.  She said several things that weren't right and Geralt said one thing that was pretty dumb since it assumed an even did n't happen that did just moments before.  Other than this one sequence, this was a fantastic job.  Roche's path in my opinion is not as good as Iorveth's path.  While Roche was definitely more polished, I enjoyed Iorveth's path a lot more and it felt a lot more epic.  Now one more thing on dragons and this is a huge spoiler so don't look if you don't want to be spoiled:

On Dragons Pt 2
  

Agree about Iorveth's path. The highlight of Roche's path was really the end of Act 2 which seemed to really influence Act 3 a lot. Having said that Iorveth is what DA has been needing.

[NiX]

How significant was the performance increase from the patch? I wasted a lot of bandwidth only to find out it looks like crap on my computer when I finally get it to a runnable framerate.

[Lakov_Sanite]

The single most satisfying moment in the game was while on Ioverth's path in act3...

[Ginaz]

So far its been kind of meh for me.  Story is good and I've banged a few whores but theres way too many cut scenes and the combat is pretty bad.  A better tutorial would have helped too.  Overall, I've enjoyed DA2 more.

[Zetor]

Yeah, I ran out of steam around mid-act2 due to overall "meh" / repetitiveness / annoyance (QTEs? seriously?), and fired up... Wizardry 8, of all games. When a 10-year-old oldschool dungeon crawler feels more fun and immersive than the most recent crpg blockbuster, I know that something is wrong... either with the game or myself.

I'll eventually finish TW2, but just not feeling it atm.

[rk47]

Fuck the industry, this is how you present yourself to the gamers

CD Projekt announces a new game:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-72e5v_hnjo

[tmp]

hah; well, that's one way to announce you have a job opening

[Riggswolfe]

hah; well, that's one way to announce you have a job opening

Lol. Love the fine print on the M rating!

[Furiously]

President Obama got the game....

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/110469-Polish-Prime-Minister-Gives-Obama-Witcher-2