Anyone have it yet? I am trying to figure out if I should save money for it or that keyboard I have been eying for a while. I loved the first Witcher game. It was immersive and well made once they remade it with the EE. I read reviews of this one and the reviews are well mixed. Most are enthusiastically supportive of the game, but there are plenty saying they ruined the original in the sequel. What are your thoughts?
I haven't played it yet though I hear it's better than the first in almost every way. Problem is I hated the animations/camera and to a point combat in the first even though I loved everything else. I'd probably want to watch a LP of the first so I wouldn't lose out on the story I guess.
It looks like buying a copy of the original "The Witcher 2" is $30 and the prepatched EE version is an additional $20. I can patch it using the freely available patch here. That saves me $20. In case anyone has the game, here is the manual patch link. http://en.thewitcher.com/ee_manual/
Imo, the only things that kept the witcher 2 from being the best RPG I ever played (and i have played a lot, believe me) was the recurrence of a lot clunky game design issues that shouldn't have been there. The other big issue was that the ending, in comparison to the rest of the game, was anti-climatic. The enhanced edition irons out a lot of these problems, so you are now looking at a game that every RPG fan should play, IMO. The alchemy tree doesn't not sound like it does much on paper, but takes game breaking proportions faster than you can say - "That seems a bit overpowered".
Crafting breaking the game is a trend in western RPGs lately it seems. Skyrim crafting can make you a god, Amalur's gets you weapons better than anything you'll find, and from what you say alchemy in the Witcher 2. Regardless I'm gonna pick it up soon.
I've seen crafting break games as well, but the impact of Alchemy in the Witcher 2 still left me floored. For most intents and purposes, as long as you are willing to put up with the inconvenience of having to craft stuff/drink potions before going into combat (both of which were quite tedious in the non-enhanced version, btw), Alchemy lets you have the benefits of both Sword and Magic trees. Without the penalties (limited useage, casting times, only good at higher levels, etc), might I add. To put it simply, Alchemy will let you bring bombs to a swordfight. Bombs that stun/poison/slow/incinerate or just outright kill multiple targets. Alchemy also let you increase their effective aoe and damage, and stockpile ludicrous amounts of them. Very early.
Might be some mods that fix that, I was looking at http://witcher.nexusmods.com/mods/89 though it doesn't seem to affect crafting. I bet there's some rebalances out there that will be updated though.
It may make me sound like the Skyrim fanboy (which I am), but crafting in Skyrim only breaks the game if you let it. It's a sandbox game, not a competitive thing, so there's nothing broken. If that's how you want to play the game, so be it. If you don't have the willpower to avoid overexploiting crafting, well, there are mods for that.
I disagree with that, even though its an open world where you are free it is not a "sandbox" game. It's still purely an action RPG with a lot of freedom. Anyway, all elder scrolls since Morrowind have always had broken difficulty at some point.
When it comes to the game-play? Not exactly rip-off, but it's close enough for some people to think like that. Not that I mind, with the TES series having a rather pleasant game-play for people who want to fool around. When it comes to the story? Not really, though I would be happier if the story of any of the Witcher games allowed us to play through the story from the books (but then again, that would be difficult for them to do, seeing as the story of "The Witcher" doesn't really revolve around Geralt).
I tried playing The Witcher 2 and gave up on it about a half hour into the start of the game. It's fight mechanics defied my hand-eye coordination to such a frustrating extent that I immediately wrote that game up as a loss. By comparison, I have just a few more hours invested in Skyrim than I do with DoD (and I have over 500 hours invested in DoD). I find it to be a much more accessible game.
Well, it's similar in that you have swords and you hit things. That's really about it. The Witcher, whether it's the first or second, has a more strategic approach with higher difficulties requiring a lot more investment from the player in terms of potions and so on. As for what you've said, Haldurson? Yup. The Witcher 2's combat pisses me off to no end. I've not tried it since the EE patch landed, but I'm not particularly champing at the bit to do so, either. Gonna give it another go at some point - I remember The Witcher's combat grating with me at first, but I came to love it. And I do.
I hated the first's combat so I wonder if I'll like the second's. Watched some videos and it seemed better (to me)
The combat in the first one is fine if you can get into the rhythm of it. I mean it's not perfect, far from it, with longer sessions of combat being a bit tedious, but I found it quite engaging. Unlike TW2, which feels clumsy.
I felt that the story of the game was handled quite well, giving you more meaningful choice than pretty much any RPG I'd ever played. The combat on the other hand can be a bit clumsy and the difficulty of the game is completely unforgiving. Expect to die frequently. Save often.
