The Witcher 2 Official Review

Every so often a game comes along that doesn't simply live up to expectations, doesn't even simply exceed those expectations, it completely redefines a genre.  That is what The Witcher 2 has done, it has established itself as the new Standard for Action RPGs.  The graphics, the sound, the storyline, the depth of characters and incredibly meaningful decisions that you make throughout the game, make this not just a great game, but truly an Epic Win.

 You are Geralt, the fellow on the right in this picture, with his significant other Triss, on the left.  Geralt is a famous Witcher, which is someone who has three major abilities, sword, magic, and alchemy, the latter being the ability to create and drink potions which temporarily improve your stats.  During the course of the game you'll use all of those abilities and more, although as you level up you'll choose which 'skill tree' or trees you'll be investing your ability points into.  Would you rather focus on your swordplay abilities, or maybe get some of both the swordplay and magic abilities?  The choices are yours, a theme that will be on powerful display throughout the game.  Choices and decisions are a huge part of what makes RPGs great, and you won't find better than TW2.  From very early in the game you'll make important decisions that can make a major difference in the gaming world.  Who lives and who dies is often up to you, and sometimes, like in one particularly important decision late in Chapter One, your decision will have a VERY profound effect on the world going forward, so much so that the second Chapter of the game plays out completely differently depending on that choice, from which town you end up in to which side of an upcoming war you side with, and all the consequences that naturally flow from all those things.  I know of no other game that has ever packed anywhere near this much power into the choices that you the player are allowed to make, the consequences are profound, and you really feel like you're making a huge difference in the world, because you are.

Whether you're on the side of this beautiful lady, Saskia, in her battle for Freedom and Independence is entirely up to you, your choices determine which side you end up on, hers or the king who seeks to crush her and her peasant-army.  But that isn't until Chapter Two, you've got a lot to do and accomplish before then Witcher!  And that, of course, includes romance.  Geralt begins the game with Triss (which, strangely, is even true if you import a save from TW1 in which you romanced Shani instead), a very attractive red-haired sorceress who is very much in love with you.  You, of course, can be in love with her as well, or not.  As this game is all about choices, you can choose to be faithful to Triss, or to stray with a number of different women.  In fact, as the game progresses another major love interest from Geralt's past is repeatedly mentioned and eluded to, and presumably you'll meet her either in a future DLC or Expansion for TW2, or in TW3.  But there are certainly enough women around already to test your committment to Triss.  Also, while on the topic of romances, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the Love Scenes.  These aren't super-mild events like in Dragon Age 2, they aren't even tame-but-'controversial' like in Mass Effect.  These are very detailed scenes, tastefully done, but still quite graphic.  Overall they're a major improvement over the likes of DAO/DA2 and ME2, but they might be a bit much for some folks, so if you choose to share an intimate moment with the lady of your choice, be prepared for far more than anything you've seen in Ferelden or on the Normandy.

As you can see from the pictures, this game is a graphical masterpiece, a truly beautiful sight to behold.  The sounds, including the voice acting, are also awesome.  No game is without its faults, and TW2 does have a few, most notably that while Geralt is a fine Hero of the game, he isn't customizable at all.  You can't play as a female character, something that most folks would probably like to be able to do.  You can't change the skin color, hair color, eye color, etc. of the character in any way either.  The complete lack of customizing options is a letdown, and stands in stark contrast to most major RPGs these days, for whom character creation options are standard.  Hopefully the next TW game will have the same character customization options as games like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Fallout, and Fable, just to name a few.  As fun as it is playing as a generic male, white haired Witcher, it would probably be a lot more fun playing as a Witcher who looks like Triss or Saskia.  Also on the negative side, there's an over-abundance of bad language in the game.  I don't understand why they felt the need for so much bad language, there's certainly no need for it, its a shame they allowed so much bad language to pollute the beautiful environment of this game.

There's never been a game quite like The Witcher 2, it is simply incredible from start to finish.  From the challenging yet fun combat, to the beautiful characters and scenery, to the extremely impactful decisions you make that effect so much of the gaming world and the people in it, this game is quite simply a masterpiece.  The Witcher 2 gets a score of 98 out of 100.  A point off for all the bad language, a point off for the lack of Character Customization, other than that a perfect score!  I encourage everyone to buy and enjoy The Witcher 2 today!

More Witcher 2 Impressions

As you know, I've been playing the hit new game The Witcher 2, the most anticipated game since Dragon Age 2, and a possible contender for Game of the Year.  Since my early impressions, I've had the opportunity to play some more, and having done so I must say that while my initial impressions were overall positive, my subsequent impressions have been overwhelmingly positive.  There's just so much to like about this huge, huge world and the fascinating characters and situations.  As a fan of RPGs, this has got to be the deepest game I've played in a long, long time.  It rivals the Final Fantasy series, and I would argue that it even surpasses it.  I'm currently in Chapter Two, and I must say the storyline is still a fascinating mystery.  I don't know what's going on, I don't know what's going to happen next, and I'm loving every minute of this game.  The graphics are unbelievably awesome, the combat is incredibly difficult, which is still very frustrating at times, but better that than too easy I suppose :) .  Also, I should mention that I eventually got to one of the Love Scenes, later in Chapter one.  It featured Triss, and well, let's just say that I didn't know that a game could have a Love Scene that....detailed, let's say, and still have an M rating.  Certainly it makes the Mass Effect Love Scene, the one that got all that controversy at the time, look SUPER tame by comparison.  Ironically, since the original Mass Effect, Bioware's Love Scenes have gotten progressively more and more tame.  TW2 goes VERY much in the opposite direction, and we'll have to see which one the fans like better (I would imagine the vast majority of fans will prefer TW2's version).  

The Witcher 2 totally puts Dragon Age 2 to shame.  I wanted, and fully expected, DA2 to be the Game of the Year, to be amazingly awesome, to follow in Dragon Age Origin's footsteps and be even better than the original.  Instead, DA2 was a disappointment, and TW2 is the real deal, WAY beyond my expectations.  It's so vastly far ahead of DA2 in almost every way.  The graphics are much better, the combat, the storyline (some might ask, in regard to DA2, 'What storyline?'), the characters, TW2 has it all hands down.  DA2 still has the edge in terms of Character Creation, no doubt TW2 would be even better if you could create your own Hero instead of using a generic one, it makes every game so much more fun when you can do that, TW2 really should have that feature.  But that's about the only thing missing from this truly impressive game.  That, and Shani.  She's still nowhere to be seen, which is especially strange given that, again, if you played the original you actually had the chance to basicly marry her (you can buy her, or Triss, whichever one you choose, a ring, and you basicly adopt an orphan as well, so you're like one big happy family).  Obviously Triss is a central figure in the game, as she should be.  Shani should be equally so, instead she's like, totally gone, its very strange.  But its not like the game is short on interesting characters, there are a ton!  I'm enjoying the amazing exploration possibilities, the super awesome Main and Side Quests, it's just super awesome.  I look forward to tons more awesome adventures as I progress in the world of The Witcher 2!

The Witcher 2 Early Impressions

I must say, my early impressions of The Witcher 2 weren't really what I expected them to be.  The game is far more different from the original than I expected, I know that there was some talk that they were making changes to help them one day sell a Console version, and they denied that, but it didn't take very long to come to the conclusion that the folks who surmised that were in fact entirely correct.  The changes 'have' to have been made for that reason, because the game is far too different for them to have just decided to make all these changes for no reason.

First, the game plays VERY differently, for starters there is NO mouse cursor!  Of course the cursor was an integral part of what made the original game so great.  In its place is a more conventional, and inferior, system whereby you have to make your character stand in a certain area to see if there's anything there, such as something to pick up.  It is MUCH harder now to find things that you need to pick up, especially the 'alchemy' items, because there's so much (very beautiful) scenery, flowers, bushes, etc. it's very hard to at times to tell whether a certain part contains something you can pick up or not, and you can't click on it from a distance, you have to walk over to it and see if something comes up that says you can pick it up.  That is extremely annoying at first, eventually you get used to it, but obviously it would be better if things had stayed the same from the original, where you can tell from far away what's what, and you can click on it from anywhere to pick it up.

The combat is also radically changed, with no cursor that means the entire TW combat system is right out the window.  The new combat system is very reminiscent of Gothic 3, for those of you who played that.  In fact the game overall has a major Gothic 3 sort of feel, from the combat to the music.  Of course the graphics are much nicer in TW2, which is a major plus, and for their sakes hopefully the fact that it looks so much nicer than G3 will prevent too many comparisons between the two games.  The combat in TW was a combination of action based and turn based, sort of.  It was highly unique stuff, and quite cool.  That has been replaced by a pure hack and slash style combat, which again is extremely similar to Gothic 3's system, but it should be noted that TW2's combat is MUCH harder than G3's, and that's on 'normal' mode!  There are actually two higher level modes, I can't even fathom how difficult they must be.  It is extremely important to save VERY VERY often, because you're probably going to die a WHOLE lot, and it's going to be extremely frustrating.  Minimize that frustration by hitting the F5 button with extreme regularity. 

The single worst change from TW to TW2 is in the extremely bad language.  There's just a tremendous amount of horrible language in TW2, obviously TW had a bit of bad language as well, but nothing remotely like this, its just unfathomably bad.  To give you some idea, I'm still in Chapter 1, and I probably have LITERALLY heard the f word spoken more than 100 times.  Its WAY WAY WAY overboard with the bad language, just no excuse for something like that.  Also, on a more subjective note, you may or may not like the idea of nudity in games, and there is very little of it so far, it's not at all avoidable like in a game like Mass Effect, where you can see the love scene or not.  In the very beginning of the game, your character's girlfriend/wife/whatever (its somewhat undefined) Triss is in bed with the Main Character, and she's naked.  And I do mean naked.  She's very attractive, surprisingly so in fact, but the fact that seeing her au natural isn't at all optional might upset some folks.  Of course a strong case can be made that its a lot like a regular movie in that regard, an argument I would be sympathetic toward personally, but everybody will have their own opinion on that.  The bottom line on this is that TW2 goes WAY out of its way to earn its 'M' rating, completely unnecessarily in the case of the vulgar language, far less extremely in the case of the very brief nudity, but make no mistake, you MUST be 18 or older to play this game.

Back to the graphics, they really are impressive.  TW's graphics were awesome, and TW2's graphics are even moreso.  Such beautiful scenery, and plenty of it.  From the trees and plants and such, to the lifelike people, the VERY well designed monsters, it's truly a feast for the eyes.  On the downside, the main character, who was always a generic and bland looking sort of character, really doesn't look any better at all.  There's still zero customization, not only can you not play as a male or female character, you can't even customize the character's face at all.  The lack of customization options, which are so well done in games like Mass Effect, Fallout, Dragon Age, and Fable, is especially unfortunate since clearly the graphics are so impressive that the character you would design could be a MILLION times better than the one you're stuck with.  But certainly the other characters are very nicely done, whether you're talking about the previously mentioned Triss, or any of the other multitude of characters in the game.  There's tremendous individuality and uniqueness about them, they're so well done.  Hopefully eventually they'll get the message that fans like the ability to create their own character, there is so much potential there, the graphics simply blow other RPGs out of the water, it's time they let us use them to create our own character.

As I mentioned earlier, I'm still in Chapter 1, I've played quite a long time, and I feel like I may be nearing the end of the Chapter, but the story is already pretty interesting.  One thing missing is that I'm still hoping to define my relationship with Triss in some way, obviously she's my character's girlfriend at a minimum, but exactly how close they are isn't something I've really had the chance to figure out or influence at all.  In the original, you had the chance to basicly marry either her or one other woman in the game.  So is she the one your character married by default?  Certanily the other woman, Shani, is nowhere to be seen so far in the sequel, inexplicably so, which makes you wonder what the exact default nature of those relationships truly is.  Also, while I've had no chance to influence my character's relationship with Triss or any other woman in the game, I've also had very little to no opportunity to influence the storyline so far either, something that was a very strong point in the original TW as well, but certainly in that one the major decisions didn't come until later also, so hopefully that will still happen in a big way.

The bottom line right now is that I'm quite impressed in certain ways, unbelievably underwhelmed/disappointed in others, but overall it's been a lot of fun, the storyline is interesting, the combat takes a LOT of getting used to but once you do its at least tolerable, and hopefully it'll only get better and better as the game goes on!  In the meantime, have fun everybody!  I've got some more TW2 to play :) .