The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Review

[frobisher]

There's a biiig difference between the quest's failure being tied to my choices in the world and it being tied to a progression that I could have just as well done after I finished it.

Quick reply - but that is the thing: if you talk to random set of people, quest will autocomplete itself. If you choose to talk to *right* set of people quest will provide multiple branches. In the first case you will get an equivalent of failure - in second one: long chain of events - both are triggered by things you are hardly aware of when playing for the first time. Just as that thing when you cannot "complete" another quest after Iorveth leaves the city. Thats why I claim the only difference is having X in questlog.

 

[Choppaduel]

Play, don't show.

It's, "Do, Don't show." Which is an extension of "Show, don't tell."

Also, I'd love to pick your brain about the plot & mechanics; let me know when you finish the game.
[hr]

I've done two play throughs, first one rushing on easy to get to the juicy, albeit incomplete, story, and one sight seeing tour, doing all the side quests on normal.

I found that....

on easy: the prologue is easy, you don't need quen even when you don't know what your doing. Later though, chapter 2 gets pretty hard, because I was undergeared from not doing anything but pushing through the main story.(the draug fight was very tough cause I didn't have the dodge talent & i forgot about yrden lol) By the final boss, I was doing minimal damage on strong attacks so I had reload an earlier save and do a side quest to get a sword so I could actually do some damage.

on normal: the prologue fucked my shit up, even with quen. enemies now block most of your attacks, and when you don't yet have the talent points to put into blocking & dodging & riposte it gets very challenging (the last group before opening the wooden gate for Foltest took a couple retries) The difficulty continues to increase in Chapter 1, the endrega queens took minimal damage from strong attacks (fortunately I had points in dodging or I never would have been able to do this one) and drowners rape you if you try to fight them. (fortunately you can just back up and let Triss do all the work) After that you start getting nice items & points and the game gets progressively easier, (I killed the draug in about 6 heavy attacks, fight took less than a minute) chapter 2 & 3 are a "Sunday stroll down easy street," even the final boss dealt little damage to me, I had over 100% on all resistances 600 hp & 65 armor & a lot more vigor for quen.

So based on my experience, its not how much strategy you put into a fight, its how well you specd + how good your gear is & if you did all the side quests it will be pretty fucking good.

The game has a lot of balancing to do, mainly reversing the difficulty curve. However, this isn't a deal breaker & its not so far off to be infuriating (for me at least.) Riposte makes things super easy, once you figure out how the mechanic actually works (a tutorial window would have be nice to explain that, but is sadly missing)

One more thing... the feature where you can turn off all the QTE's is the single greatest design choice of all time.

EDIT: Both plays were on the unpatched version of the game.

 

[Kahunaburger]

Also, I'd love to pick your brain about the plot & mechanics; let me know when you finish the game.

Will do - I've been travelling on vacation so haven't had a chance to play it in a while, but I'll get back to you when I do!

So based on my experience, its not how much strategy you put into a fight, its how well you specd + how good your gear is & if you did all the side quests it will be pretty fucking good.

I'll have to keep an eye out for this on the later levels then - I'm not very far in (playing on hard), so I'm still on the stuff that everyone says is the more difficult part of the game. I'll have to see if everything gets easy even on hard or if on that difficulty level you still need strategy when your build starts to get powerful. Based on what you and others have been saying, it might be like the first game haha - in the first area you have to carefully prep every fight with barghests but in the last area you're basically insta-killing everything with your abilities.

I'll also keep an eye out for how bosses are vs. everything else - see if it follows a Morrowind difficulty curve where everything gets easier or a Super Metroid difficulty curve where basic enemies get easier and bosses stay hard. Sounds like bosses aren't that many steps up from minions in terms of difficulty on normal from what you're saying, though.

One more thing... the feature where you can turn off all the QTE's is the single greatest design choice of all time.

^Haha seriously.

 

[nbamaniac]

(the draug fight was very tough cause I didn't have the dodge talent & i forgot about yrden lol)

But wouldn't you agree as a fellow warrior that defeating the draug without Yrden has a more rewarding feel? xD

So based on my experience, its not how much strategy you put into a fight, its how well you specd + how good your gear is & if you did all the side quests it will be pretty fucking good.

I can't give an opinion of this in normal; I started on hard and then insane on my 2nd playthough which i haven't finished yet..

In hard, having good gear will certainly make things easier, but only by a hair. The game world will definitely f*ck you up when you take things for granted (on a side note, the harpies were batshit easy; kinda dissapointing). Strategy (battle preparation + tactics) > gear in this difficulty.

On insane though, it's a completely different story. Knowing that 'when you're dead, you're dead', you seriously can't let things go wrong. In this case, stategy >>> gear (or rather strategy FIRST before worrying about gear). It becomes a batshit serious fight for survival out there. I stopped playing for a while now since I was going to face the Kayran, and I REALLY don't want to f*ck that up.

One more thing... the feature where you can turn off all the QTE's is the single greatest design choice of all time.

Though I didn't find QTE's to be annoyances here, I certainly agree about the devs adding such an option.

All in all, the game was superb and the only gripes I have about this game are the stealth parts (not polished enough imo, just like every other stealth in non-stealth games), the lack of a junk tab in the inventory, a short Act 3, and HUGE save games. Other issues are minor annoyances at least to me.

 

[abija]

Of course. But I wasn't the only one having problems with it, and in general the prologue is pretty hard compared to later chapters.

For me prologue wasn't hard compared to later chapters. It just had very few "trash" encounters and the mechanics were new. And the hardest encounter in the game was towards the very end for me.
Also, one thing this tutorial accomplishes is teach you how the fighting works in most scenarios. You could argue that it does it rough and lets you experiment and fail but that doesn't mean is broken, just different. And plenty of people enjoy it far more than the standard one step at a time tutorials.

By then you have a bit more freedom to plan out your moves. For instance, covering the area with traps turns the fight into an easy win.

Preparing versus an encounter that's supposed to surprise you is one of the worst kinds of cheesing the game.

Doesn't mean the game doesn't get easier and easier as you advance in chapters. My build was a swordmaster, and by the end I was utterly ignoring everything the enemy threw at me and 80% of the time just mashing left-click. My friend was an alchemist who said he was feeling sorry for the monsters he was killing in the late-game when he thought about how much trouble he had at the start. And I heard the helitrope sign is a game-changer and works against bosses, so... that's pretty much every angle covered as far as my stance goes.

Geralt slaughtering every normal foe towards the end of the game is intended design and no, it isn't broken.
Just as the level scaling used in other games is not broken. They're both viable design choices and have their pros and cons.

 

[mindlesspuppet]

I love that people tend to be overlooking that fact that this is a sequel. To a large degree the developer should expect people to know what they are doing from playing the predecessor. Yes, I understand that new players are bound to start with the sequel, however there's also a large risk of annoying veteran players by recapping too much shit.

Meanwhile, there is absolutely nothing stopping people from buying The Witcher before playing the sequel (seriously you can get it for like 5 bucks). Not only does it have a more informative opening sequence that goes through the basics of battle, alchemy, etc, but pretty much everything is explained throughout the game via dialog. Don't blame the developers if you skipped past the dialog that tells you that you'll need a book containing info on a plant to harvest it because you wanted to dive into action. Also don't blame the developer if you don't have the commonsense to deduce that the same rules would apply to other areas of the game; eg. loot from monsters, alchemy, etc.

Nearly everyone, including the reviewer, praise The Witcher 2's immersion... then complain about lack of a tutorial? That there's no voice actor holding your hand for the first 6 damn hours of gameplay? Sorry, but tutorials kill immersion, there's really very little way around it. No one complained about this sort of thing back in the days of Planescape Torment.

Also, I find it baffling that people complain about the moral choice system here. People dislike it because choices actually have consequences? I think these people have absolutely no clue what the letters RPG stand for.

BioWare RPGs annoy me to no end because all of the choices amount to absolutely nothing but a different ending cinematic -- can people really prefer this? What's the point of choices then. What's the point of morality if you color code lines of dialog so I know "this makes me good, this makes me bad", there's no moral choice here. You either go in thinking "I want to be an evil badass" or not, players aren't really making a choice because the story compels them to or because they are afraid of reprisal.

I'm not trying to single out BioWare here, pretty much every game these days with a moral choice system is guilty of it, BioWare is just an easy example because pretty much everyone is familiar with them.

And I stand by what I said - game should be punishing if you are choosing a challenge level you are not able to withstand. If you are unable to withstand Normal while still learning the mechanics, choose Easy instead complaining about inaccessibility. Because Easy is meant for everyone learning the game - Normal is not - and again, no player can be excused if he is reading the description, ignoring it due to expecting "it will be DA 2 Normal" and ... dying a lot. If someone refuses to choose Easy because of some pride ("I have been playing games for decades, sheesh") then it's not devs' responsibility - they let people to change difficulty levels instead and to choose Easy after realising "I am not getting this mechanics yet". They describe Normal as the level where alchemy is needed and Easy as level similar to Normal in other games. What's players' excuse? Is it because of pride, so the simple way out of it for CDPR is to rename difficulty levels to Normal, Hard, Insane, Godlike?

This. Though in all fairness, I've grown so accustom to games being overly simplified that I generally start with a harder difficulty. As you said though, there's nothing stopping one from changing the difficulty upon realizing that The Witcher is not the same as every other game.

 

[nbamaniac]

Also, I find it baffling that people complain about the moral choice system here. People dislike it because choices actually have consequences? I think these people have absolutely no clue what the letters RPG stand for.

I found it quite baffling too. I found that this style of choice system is much more subtle and appealing. The subtleness was the key, I like how some of the decisions impact you hours after you made your choice. The consequences were not directly shoved to your face after choosing; there were actual build-ups which even change the way you think about your choice. Heck I actually had the feeling of regret at some instances.

 

[Gametek]

Ok, this is offboard. This post is 15 long page of ranting beetwen the DA2 fanboi and the TW2 one. And the scariest thing is that most of the argument of the DA2 are mostly stupid.

Seriusly, yes, this game have not tutorial intro. Ok. Later in the game the difficult is destroyed by the overpower talent. Definitly true. But the rest? Void. As for a start, it's not a good idea to compare it with DA2. Maybe with DA:O or DA:A, but da2 was simply a bad game. [Long list of rant are. Mostly about the ending]
But the strange point is that all the bad designer choice that was pointed to DA2 are now point to TW2! By the very same DA fanboi that forgive them on DA2! This is not crittical evalueation of a game, it's blindly protecting the faction that we choose! Absolutly non costructive. And not mature, that is, just in case someone forgot, what bot the game claime to be.

OT: as for the TW fan, or even the one that liked the game, please don't post anymore. This thread is a flame starter since the first post of the reviewer. He should have know that after give a round 5/5 to DA2 give a lesser vote to any other game would have started a flame war. Expecially after...

But the strange point is that all the bad designer choice that was pointed to DA2 are now point to TW2!

 

[Edli1]

I wouldn't have any problems with the prologue if it wasn't punishing. One error in combat takes away at least 1/3 of your HP, with either no way of regenerating it or very small regen that Swallow provides. Yet you have to do those errors if you want to experiment.
But my initial point was that people complained that the reviewer sucked at the game, which is not necessarily true. The prologue IS both harder and a lot more punishing than your standard game nowadays. Objectively.

It is not true that one hit takes at least 1/3 of your HP, maybe only in hard. Swallow provides a lot of regen in the lower levels. Since you have a small health pool it fills faster. Swallow becomes obsolete only later in the game when you have a much bigger health pool.

Prologue is not harder. The player is just inexperienced, that's all. What prologue lacked was a proper tutorial. In my second playthrough it was a cake walk even in hard.

 

[DarkhoIlow]

The difficulty curve plummets to the ground after chapter 1 and after you get some decent gear.With quen maxxed and Swordsmanship filled I had 5 bars of Vigor and most of the times I was forgetting or didn't bother with using potions or quen for that matter.I was just cleaving(whirl 2/2 is ftw)through the game without any issues.

As for "combination" of what potions to use,if you're not an alchemist: Gadwall(-40% dmg reduce and a lot of Vitality regen)+Thunderbolt and Virga(resistances + 20% armor) made me an unkillable machine.Throw in a Blade Oil or Falka's blood to even out the dmg loss from Gadwall and you're golden.

PS: That playthrough(Roche side)I went with normal,will probably try Hard after I try finishing the first Witcher and siding with the Scoia'tel so I can get all the "goodies" that come from importing the saved games(story wise of course).

 

[Turing '88]

Here's a quote from John Feil and Mark Scattergood's "Beginning Game Level Design":

The end challenge has probably been fairly predictable for some time by the climax.
The player will have a general idea of whom or what he'll be facing and be raring to
go. For this reason, it's usually best to make your climax straightforward, but tough.
Don't try to throw in any unexpected gameplay or tricks at this time that you haven't
already used. The finale should be the culmination of everything that has come
before, not a step in a new direction.
Finishing a good finale should leave the player sweaty and joyful.He has achieved victory
after a hard-fought battle. An easy success here would be disappointing to the
player.

So again, do not justify bad game design as a stylistic choice.

Here's the point though, you can quote whatever game design manuals you like,but in RPG's story and immersion are more important to a lot of people than challange. Oblivion was a textbook example of consistant difficulty, with enemies scaling to your level, and I hated it for that, I downloaded mods so that every enemy was a set level regardless of yours. This meant early game I died often but by late game I could destroy almost any enemy I came across - and it was brilliant.

And my main point is that every genre's different. What you've quoted is true for FPS's, RTS's, Racing and other genre's but not for RPG's!! We RPG fans do not want that!

Remember the fallout games, and the infinity engine games? They have ridiculous difficulty curves, and can become incredibly easy later on or nearly impossible depending on how you build your character - that is unless you do that unforgivable act and change the difficulty slider.
So before you try to argue with me, please admit that you think Baldur's gate 1 & 2, Planescape Torment and Fallout 1 & 2 are badly designed games.

Because the guy who made Star Wars: Battle for Naboo told you so...

 

[abija]

on the graphical side... I was impressed BUUUUUUT I think we all know that graphics don't make the game.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/3201-Graphics-vs-Aesthetics

That's exactly what makes Witcher 2 so impressive visually so your "BUUUUUUT" got it all wrong.

 

[abija]

All Infinity Engine games had a constant difficulty curve. ESPECIALLY Baldur's Gate 2. It was easier or harder depending on class, party composition and what order you did the quests in, but at no point would you ever go "this is too easy" or ever need to change the difficulty slider unless you shouldn't have chosen that difficulty in the first place.

How can the game be easier/harder if you chose wrong quest order and have constant difficulty curve at the same time? If you do it in "wrong" order you break the limited level scaling and game gets easier in later parts.
On top of it all of their games "break" if you do proper builds and at some point in game fights become trivial. And usually when they do, not even changing difficulty helps.

Game design books also happen to have the expert opinions of people with much more experience than you.

If you read different books you get different opinions or you can see successful games that totally ignore the "rules".
And those 2 names don't exactly scream expert game designer.

 

[abija]

This might surprise you but the concept of a difficulty curve is not especially strict. As long as BG2 doesn't make you fight Firkraag in the first dungeon and ends up with some oversized hp-bloated goblins as the last sets of enemies, it should be okay. There is still the element of challenge that is present throughout most of the game.

Especially in BG2 and in DA:O which uses the exact same type of limited level scaling you could have gone different routes which totally reversed your difficulty curve.

And in ALL of their games, regardless if you had the previous problem or not, when your build was starting to flesh out the game became trivial and the element of challenge disappeared. Those broken characters gave players a sense of accomplishment and that's why Oblivion's level scaling is so hated.

Also witcher adheres to that "not so strict but we call it broken whenever it's not exactly the same" concept you imply in BG2. The human opponents are stronger, new tougher monsters added in each new chapter, even slightly bigger numbers (only exception are probably harpies which for some reason turned out to be cannon fodder). For example you start with endrega queens, then an arachas then you fight 2 arachas at once, 3rd act letho has twice the armor and probably 3 times the hp of first act version, soldiers in last act could probably 1 shot a Geralt with prologue stats and so on.
Just that the hero "scales better" which is exactly what happens in above mentioned games for example and the whole point of it.

 

[Turing '88]

This might surprise you but the concept of a difficulty curve is not especially strict. As long as BG2 doesn't make you fight Firkraag in the first dungeon and...
The Witcher doesn't afford a "wrong quest order" with its closed-off chapter-based progression.

All true, except my point was that if you do things 'right' in BG2 the game can become trivially easy, at least on normal difficulty with no mods, and this is still fun. The game was still enjoyable for me even when I knew how to beat combat easily.

most of the books are similar. And just because they haven't designed blockbusters doesn't mean they don't know what they're talking about.

Agreed, the books in general tend to say the same things. Maybe I was a little too flippant about John Feil's abilities, he's obviously much better at making games than anyone here. EDIT: Just to add here, I was more pointing out the massive differences between genres than quality of game. I haven't played the game in question so can't comment on that. I was just trying to say however that the people who developed these games whose design you are critising are also pretty awesome developers with different ideas in this case about whats more important to a game.

One thing all those game design books say though is that at the end of the day games are made to create an experience for the player. All the other rules and guides are just advice on how to better accomplish this aim. That's why if something 'works' but contradicts a rule then guess what, you leave it in.

The Art of Game Design by Jesse Schell sums it up best for me, I'll just quote a part from the opening section:

Unfortunately, at present, there is no unified theory of game design, no simple formula that shows us how to make good games. So what can we do?[...]

Good game design happens when you view your game from as many perspectives as possible. I refer to these perspectives as lenses, because each one is a way of viewing your design. The lenses are small sets of questions you should ask yourself about your design. They are not blueprints or recipes, but tools for examining your design[...]

None of the lenses are perfect, and none are complete, but each is useful in one context or another, for each gives a unique perspective on your design. The idea is that even though we can?t have one complete picture, by taking all of these small imperfect lenses and using them to view your problem from many different perspectives, you will be able to use your discretion to figure out the best design.

and from the accompanying deck of lenses:

Lens 47 - The Lens of Balance
There are many types of game balance, and each is important. However, it is easy to get lost in the details and forget the big picture. Use this simple lens to get out of the mire, and ask yourself:
Does my game feel right?