The Witcher 2 First Impressions Thread

[Sunder845]

Seeing as it is really unlikely anyone has finished the game yet I wanted to make a thread so people could post their first impressions.

Right off the bat I'll say the game is absolutely stunning in the visual department even by modern standards. The environments and characters are intricately detailed and the settings obviously have a lot of thought behind them. However I can't speak to the quality on the lower settings; I have been running it on a mix of "High" and "Ultra" and have been steering clear of the scary-sounding "Ubersampling" as well as whatever "Dangling object limit" is... Considering the amount of nudity in this game I am frightened at the implications of that last setting.

The voice acting seems alright if just a little on the stale side. One little thing I noticed is it seems that they have different voice actors in the finished version than were in the trailers, anyone else notice this?

Also, the learning curve is... well, it reminded me a lot of this: http://www.flickr.com/photos/23579228@N04/2335016192/

My inital thoughts is that the game is very challenging, I recall dying several times in the prolouge before I got the hang of it. I finally came to my senses and read the manual so things got a lot better from there.

So, what do you guys think?

**Anyone else have a hell of a time downloading this from Steam? My speeds were down around 200kbps for a hour or two there.

 

[Tigurus]

I still want to buy the collectors edition but here it will be release on friday and no-one knows if they will get the collectors edition

Hope it will be awesome though
As the collectors edition is pretty expensive but only the soundtrack and artbook will be awesome

 

[Kevlar Eater]

I've had no problems downloading the game at all because I pre-ordered and pre-downloaded the game via GoG.

Also, I love this game so far, and I can say that I kept dying a lot in the prologue because of the combat controls. I still haven't gotten used to them yet, but once I do...

 

[Wolfram23]

Well I just wrote this in another thread, so I'll copy/paste it:

I played for around 2 or 2.5hrs last night. I like it, but playing on Hard is... well, Hard. Died many, many times just in the assault portion although I learned pretty quickly haha.

I have to say, the graphics are a bit below what I expected and a lot more demanding than they should be. This is so far the ONLY game I cannot play on Ultra - but maybe a driver update will fix that. On high settings it runs very smoothly, around 40-50fps. I noticed that character animations are quite... awkward. I've also seen some small glitches - one time Gerault's hair was sticking straight out and twiching very stiffly and another time he puts on a boot and his leg is sticking right through it. Small stuff like that. The graphics aren't bad though, and the aesthetics (thanks Extra Credits) are very well done thus far.

Combat is a bit awkward. I expected the WASD keys to select the target based on which direction I was pressing, but instead it's actually camera related. The camera though is very twitchy, and also to properly aim you can't really do much of a top-down view. It's probably not as bad as I'm making it sound right now, but it definitely takes getting used to.

I also am not a fan of left click being used for all actions - combat swings, climbing, talking, picking up loot. And in regards to loot, it's annoying to not have hotkeys to "take all" or "discard all". Instead you have to use the mouse, which can appear anywhere on screen. If they at least made it appear inside the loot box it would be so much better.

Anyway, so far it's pretty sweet. Got to see Triss's nice big boobies lol... She looks better than in the first game IMO.

 

[teh_gunslinger]

Well I just wrote this in another thread, so I'll copy/paste it:

I played for around 2 or 2.5hrs last night. I like it, but playing on Hard is... well, Hard. Died many, many times just in the assault portion although I learned pretty quickly haha.

I have to say, the graphics are a bit below what I expected and a lot more demanding than they should be. This is so far the ONLY game I cannot play on Ultra - but maybe a driver update will fix that. On high settings it runs very smoothly, around 40-50fps. I noticed that character animations are quite... awkward. I've also seen some small glitches - one time Gerault's hair was sticking straight out and twiching very stiffly and another time he puts on a boot and his leg is sticking right through it. Small stuff like that. The graphics aren't bad though, and the aesthetics (thanks Extra Credits) are very well done thus far.

Combat is a bit awkward. I expected the WASD keys to select the target based on which direction I was pressing, but instead it's actually camera related. The camera though is very twitchy, and also to properly aim you can't really do much of a top-down view. It's probably not as bad as I'm making it sound right now, but it definitely takes getting used to.

I also am not a fan of left click being used for all actions - combat swings, climbing, talking, picking up loot. And in regards to loot, it's annoying to not have hotkeys to "take all" or "discard all". Instead you have to use the mouse, which can appear anywhere on screen. If they at least made it appear inside the loot box it would be so much better.

Anyway, so far it's pretty sweet. Got to see Triss's nice big boobies lol... She looks better than in the first game IMO.

I press space when looting. That seems to pick it all up. That said, the inventory system as well as the map is rubbish. Aside from that, I'm having a blast!

Whoever was behind the art direction and environments deserve a medal!

 

[Sunder845]

Also, I love this game so far, and I can say that I kept dying a lot in the prologue because of the combat controls. I still haven't gotten used to them yet, but once I do...

I have found the combat controls to be finicky myself, the lock-on shifts really easily is a big problem with this. Too often am I attacking a guy and the next thing I know my character is doing a sprinting, twirling, backflip-jump attack on some guy 30 yards away.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I downloaded from Good Old Games and their servers pre-downloaded at excellent rates for me (plus it is drm free, yay!). So far I like the game, the learning curve was pretty steep but it quickly evened out as I got the hang off constantly evading.

My main issue is the same that I have with most open-ended RPGs, namely that as soon as the prologue was done and Chapter 1 started you quickly loose track off the plot. The game does a decent job at keeping things somewhat coherent and constantly reminding you what your main objective is, but it is still way too easy to get sidetracked.

On the other hand, the journal is great (the whole "Written by Dandelion"-thing is a nice touch and makes even quest logs amusing to read) and I found that the tutorial bubbles are quite helpful. Most of the choices, whatever they are sidequest or main quest related are also well done and seems to offer mostly gray options as opposed to pure black and white.

In conclusion, I'm still only six or so hours into a game that promises over 40 hours of gaming. But my initial impression is very favorable.

 

[Irridium]

I'm loving it. Playing on med-low settings, and the game still looks pretty damn amazing(I really need an upgrade...).

Combat is also very, very much improved over the first. I actually use all the items I have now instead of just clicking enemies until they die. Plus just standing in one place spamming group attacks isn't an option anymore. Now you gotta actually move around and think about stuff.

Targeting via camera is pretty iffy though. And I'm really, really annoyed that its a 16:9 game and doesn't support 4:3, so I have to play with huge black bars on the top and bottom of my screen.

But other then that, this game is awesome.

 

[Sunder845]

I hope it's shit.

So I don't have to dig my copy of Witcher out and finish it >_>

You know, I didn't play the first one at all, and I have to admit I regretted it because I had NO IDEA what was going on until I went and read the wiki.

 

[Wolfram23]

I hope it's shit.

So I don't have to dig my copy of Witcher out and finish it >_>

You know, I didn't play the first one at all, and I have to admit I regretted it because I had NO IDEA what was going on until I went and read the wiki.

Firstly: my avatar is better than yours.

Second: the first one bored me so much. I really don't wanna have to read a wiki wall of text or suffer through the first again.

I played a lot of the first one, I think around... 40 hours? I don't know, I as pretty far but also lost interest. I honestly don't think there's much point in finishing it unless you're really anal about that sort of thing - particularily since you can import the save.

But this game is quite improved over the first, and if you at least played some of the first one you'll know enough to get into Witcher 2. Namely that Geralt gets a lot of ass...

 

[veloper]

Had no trouble Dling it.
The game is very challenging. This is good. Combat is a huge improvement over the original gameplay wise and visually.

 

[Turing '88]

Installing it now. The case for the £25 premium edition is just amazing though, it takes me back to the days when games had cases I actually wanted, with nice manuals, maps..etc. Most games I just register with steam and/or rip disk to hard drive and discard the case, not this one though (and still one of the cheapest games I've bought in a while).

 

[linwolf]

I love it, even though I am one of the few people that find that the combat was more fun in the first.

 

[gmaverick019_v1legacy]

i still have like an hour or two left to beat the first game and then i'm going to import that save this afternoon..

i did manage to get the 2nd one downloaded and tried the first 10 minutes or so to see it, it's fucking beautiful, the sound and video visuals are amazing, whoever did those deserves to flaunt their shit around for a while.

 

[Woodsey]

Love it, but there's a bug that hits in the first town of Chapter 1, the came will simply close at random points if I meditate or open the map or inventory (as if I were pressing alt + F4). This is... very fucking annoying.

So now I'm going to have to wait for it to get patched, because its driving me fucking insane.

I set aside several hours worth of play time, and the majority of it was spent having it simply quit to desktop and me looking for a fix.

 

[-Seraph-]

I love everything about it so far. Got past the prologue and a good chunk of chapter One before hitting the sack. I did have a few tech issues with the game, and about 40 minutes of trying to get my activation code to work because...it just wouldn't. Then got some graphical issues where everything looks inverted but that was fixed when I reinstalled my drivers.

On the presentation side of things, the visuals are beautiful and full of color and life. Character models are excellent, even if some of em still do suffer from wooden hair syndrome. Music is awesome, some of the best I've seen in a game recently. Listened to the sound track while installing the game and "Howl of the White Wolf" is turning out to be one of those themes I'll listen to over and over.

Gameplay side, structure is more or less the same as the first game with a few tweaks so the learning curve of everything wasn't as steep for me. The revamped combat is real fun, and due to the difficulty (I'm playing on hard), I'm really making use of my entire arsenal in the game. Constantly shifting signs, potion prep, traps, crowd control ect... unlike the last game where I found you could get by without a lot of that stuff because of how OP you can be if you build your character right. And the new character growth tree is interesting, dunno what I'm gonna do with all these mutagens...so much choice...

The story and writing so far are excellent and look forward to where it all leads. Glad I imported my save file from the first game too, got to start off with Ravens armor which is bad ass.

So far the game gets a big two thumbs up from me, and I'm interested to see how it will all pan out. Looks like the sort of game that people who were disappointed din DA2 should look to.

 

[Ascarus]

Second: the first one bored me so much. I really don't wanna have to read a wiki wall of text or suffer through the first again.

this .. so much this. i could never bring myself to finish the first installment, so if i have to read a wiki of witcher 1 to understand what is going on in witcher 2, i will be greatly annoyed.