Rating of
3/5
How Many Polacks Does it Take to Bungle a Sequel?
Nelson Schneider - wrote on 12/22/12
“The Witcher2: Assassins of Kings – Enhanced Edition” (“Witcher 2”) is the second game by CD Projekt, the Polish company that has been the driving force behind much of the DRM-Free movement and reasonable pricing movement for PC games. Their first game, “The Witcher,” was released in 2007 and ended in a cliffhanger. The follow-up, providing the continuation of the story of Geralt of Rivia, didn’t see the light of day until 2011. Not only that, but “Witcher 2” is the first game by CD Projekt built from the ground up using a proprietary game engine. Would the increased in-house development and four-year gestation period for this sequel result in an even better experience than the first game? Or would the Polack jokes that sat unused the last time around suddenly find a purpose?
Presentation
Unlike “The Witcher,” “Witcher 2” is built on an in-house engine by CD Projekt, called REDengine, created specifically for this game. As a result, “Witcher 2” looks spectacular. All of the uncanny valley weirdness, dead eyes, and copy/pasted character model issues from the first game are gone, replaced with characters that usually look and move very organically (there are still occasional hiccups, such as the drunken lout at a feast who, instead of standing up and walking over to a wall to take a piss, stood up, pissed on the table, then sat back down and continued eating as if nothing happened). The textures look great, the polygons are super smooth, and the environments are huge. There is still a bit of noticeable pop-in for small details, like grasses, and distant objects that noticeably change to higher-resolution models as the player draws nearer to them, but it’s nothing that wouldn’t also be found in the commonly-used Unreal Engine.
The non-game still cutscenes that were so eye-catching in “The Witcher,” with their impressionistic style, have been replaced with barely-animated comic-book style cutscenes that look stylistically similar to the “Watchmen” graphic novel. I don’t approve of this change, as it takes away one of the defining graphical characteristics of “The Witcher” and replaces it with a style that is neither complementary nor evocative of the rest of the game’s graphics or world.
Like the first game, “Witcher 2” features a pleasant (of not particularly memorable) soundtrack and high-quality voiceacting. While the first game had a few voiceacting related quirks, those are all gone in the sequel.
As a result of the incredible presentation that CD Projekt built into “Witcher 2,” the game requires a new-ish PC to run it. While I was able to get by with my 2007 laptop for “The Witcher” by turning off a few superfluous graphical settings, I had to go out and buy a dedicated gaming PC in order to play “Witcher 2.” While this game doesn’t require an obscene gaming PC with SLI’d top-tier nVidia cards, it does require a current, dedicated GPU (dating from 2010 or later) in order to not be a choppy, unplayable mess.
Story
“The Witcher,” which is based upon the stories by Poland’s most popular Fantasy writer (and tallest dwarf in Erebor), Andrzej Sapkowski, introduced us to Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher. In the first game, an amnesiac Geralt must relearn what it takes to be a Witcher, a specially-trained and alchemically-mutated warrior specially created to protect humanity from monsters, curses, and the undead (and to protect wenches from virginity).
The story of “Witcher 2” follows immediately upon the heels of the first game, which ended with Geralt finding himself in the service of King Foltest of Temeria with a brewing civil war between a variety of noble factions behaving ignobly and an oppressed population of non-humans (read: elves & dwarves) threatening to destabilize the region. During the ending of the first game, Geralt foils an assassination attempt upon King Foltest by a mysterious assailant whose feline eyes give him away as another Witcher. As “Witcher 2” opens, more mysterious Witchers continue the assassinations, first killing the king of a neighboring country, then making another – this time successful – attempt on Foltest. Geralt, as Foltest’s personal bodyguard, gets blamed for the kingslaying and ends up in jail. By cooperating with Foltest’s secret service, Geralt is able to escape from the Temerian dungeons and take up the trail of the titular Assassins of Kings.
While chasing down the kingslayers and clearing Geralt’s name is the primary motivation, the narrative in “Witcher 2” gets just as complicated and messy as the narrative in the first game. There are plenty of choices – neither good nor bad, but always with consequences – for Geralt to make, plenty of monsters to kill (but distressingly few wenches to bed), and plenty of interstitial mysteries to solve on the way to the game’s ultimate conclusion, which excitingly includes Geralt recovering his memory (a plot point that has been lingering unresolved since the very beginning of the first game). This narrative plays out across three chapters, along with a short prologue and shorter epilogue, culminating in about 40 hours worth of game time. One of the most consequential choices Geralt can make occurs at the end of Chapter 1 and results in Chapter 2 having two completely different layouts, which provides a small amount of replay value for those interested in experiencing the consequences of both choices.
Unfortunately, I found that a lot of the story elements in “Witcher 2” were too focused on the political minutia of the game’s world. There is a LOT of name dropping in this game, both of nations and people, yet a mere fraction of these importantly-named nouns actually make appearances in the game. This kind of background referencing strikes me as trivia that is merely included as fanservice for those who are obsessed with Sapkowski’s novels. Instead of building a solid core of concepts that are immediately important to the game’s central story and developing them, “Witcher 2” builds a delicate spiderweb of references to concepts unrelated to the central story, but which might be important later. As someone who played (and enjoyed) “The Witcher,” I was able to catch references back to the first game. But I pity the player who decides to skip “The Witcher” and jump straight into “Witcher 2,” as this sequel doesn’t include any kind of recap at the beginning. It is also possible to import a save file from the first game into this sequel, which keeps track of most of the choices Geralt made in the first game, and also imports a few of the top-tier weapons and armor from the first game (if the player found them in the first game)… which are almost immediately outclassed by the earliest equipment in Chapter 1.
Gameplay
Unlike “The Witcher,” “Witcher 2” fully supports both Xbox 360 and mouse/keyboard control schemas. I, naturally, opted for the superior option and went with the Xbox 360 controller. Anyone who played “The Witcher” using the over-the-shoulder camera will find that the gameplay in “Witcher 2” looks very familiar. Unfortunately, looks can be deceiving.
Instead of the click-based combo combat from “The Witcher,” “Witcher 2” has moved to a direct-control combat engine that feels distressingly similar to the clunky engine used in “Demon’s Souls.” X makes Geralt perform a fast attack, Y makes him perform a strong attack, A makes him ‘dodge’ by rolling around on the ground, and B makes him cast his currently-selected magic Sign (and like in the previous game, most of these are frustratingly useless). Holding the R trigger allows Geralt to block attacks, while holding the L trigger temporarily slows down (but doesn’t stop) time in order to allow Geralt to switch Signs or secondary weapons. The secondary weapon system from “The Witcher” has been replaced with throwing daggers, bombs, and traps that Geralt can use in combat by holding the R bumper to aim them. The L bumper activates a mostly-useless lock-on mechanic that allows Geralt to track a specific enemy.
This battle system might work well if Geralt had all of his Witcher powers from the outset. Instead, Geralt starts from scratch again, even when importing a save from the previous game, and must spend level-up ‘Talents’ in order to unlock basic abilities that were core elements of the original game or seem like they should be core elements of this sequel. The Fast and Strong attacks replace those respective fighting styles from “The Witcher,” while a Talent called ‘Whirl’ replaces the Group style from the previous game… but doesn’t become available through the Talent Tree until Geralt reaches a MINIMUM of level 10. The ability to throw daggers in battle requires a Talent (which can be spent very early on), but doesn’t seem to be an ability that’s really worth wasting one of the 35 precious Talents that Geralt can earn before hitting the level cap. Even worse is that plenty of things in combat don’t work the way it seems they should. While dodging, Geralt can still take damage (which doubles if an enemy hits him from behind… which is all but guaranteed while rolling around on the ground), and Geralt’s traps can actually KILL HIM if he’s standing too close to them when an enemy sets them off (which usually happens when Geralt sees an enemy, squats down to set a trap, and the enemy comes charging up and sets off the trap as soon as it’s set, but before Geralt even has a chance to move out of the way).
Aside from the clunky combat controls, “Witcher 2” also reworks the way Geralt meditates and uses potions. While Geralt no longer requires a campfire to meditate his way through level-ups and alchemy projects, he can now ONLY drink potions while meditating. And, despite the fact that he can meditate almost anywhere, he can’t do so in the middle of combat. Key potions, like White Rafford’s Deconcotion, that acted as invaluable healing items in the first game are all but worthless in the sequel. And Geralt seemingly needs to be psychic and able to predict when a dust-up will occur before the violence actually breaks out in order to sit around and drink a few potions (but no more than 3 at a time, as he still needs to worry about his Toxicity levels) that have lingering effects. Also, instead of collecting rare ingredient from boss monsters to provide himself with permanent Talents via unique potions, Geralt now simply takes the parts from boss monsters to armorers and has new suits of armor crafted from them.
The new crafting system lives alongside the old alchemy system, requiring Geralt to buy (or find) recipes for potions and diagrams for craftable items, the find or buy the ingredients. I found most crafting to be an utter waste of time, as there is ONE armor enhancement that is good (Diamond!) and a handful of craftable weapons that are better than those that Geralt can find. The crafting system mainly boils down to armor, along with any of the dangerous/useless traps/daggers that the player might want to use in battle. Even more annoying, Geralt can’t just ‘remember’ recipes that he has read anymore (or maybe he used to write them in his journal), but must keep a copy of every alchemy recipe or crafting diagram he intends to use.
The new map system also needs to be called out for its flaws. Because each environment in “Witcher 2” is huge, it’s very easy to get lost. In most games that include one, the mini-map that floats in the corner of the screen is supposed to prevent players from getting lost by providing a constant, static point of reference. The mini-map in “Witcher 2,” however, rotates. When Geralt turns in any direction, his little arrow on the map turns appropriately, but rotating the game camera results in the mini-map rotating to match it. The only way to keep the mini-map oriented in a specific direction is to NOT move the camera, or, in other words, to try to navigate Geralt through the game world by having him move in directions he’s not facing, leaving him unable to see what’s in front of him. Yes, the mini-map does include a compass point to show which way is North, but having to stop every 30 seconds to reorient the map while exploring a new area is just as tedious and non-fun as getting lost and running in circles for an hour.
Combining this clunky combat engine with a squirrely third-person camera, confusing mini-map, worthless potions, and stingy level-ups made me feel like I was controlling an incompetent buffoon (maybe Geralt’s bard friend, Dandelion) instead of the complete badass/one-man army that Geralt is supposed to be. As a result, this is the first game I’ve played in a long, LONG time where I’ve felt the need to play it on Easy rather than Normal in order to not pull out my hair. It annoys me when RPG makers try to pander to the ADHD generation by making battle systems progressively more actiony to the point that the game slips from being an Action-RPG into an Action/Adventure (with Stats!). “Witcher 2” comes dangerously close to the divide, and is much less fun to play because of it. I can’t imagine the mental dysfunction required to want to play the game on one of the harder difficulties (especially the one that adds permanent death to the list of ‘bonuses’).
Aside from the ruination of the basic gameplay, “Witcher 2” also includes a couple of stealth segments. While none of these are strictly mandatory, failing them can result in failed quests or trigger undesirable fights. The movement controls in these segments feel even clunkier than in normal exploration/combat, and safe areas as well as the correct path are frustratingly vague. I would have liked nothing better than the removal of these segments as the only ‘engaging’ gameplay in them is how quickly the player can reload a previous save.
Speaking of reloads, “Witcher 2” has an obtuse save system that doesn’t rely on save slots or overwrites, but simply creates a new save EVERY TIME. By the time I realized the game was doing this, I had to sit and manually delete dozens of old saves from earlier parts of the game. I really don’t know what CD Projekt was thinking when they designed this system.
The only improvement in the gameplay department that went into “Witcher 2” is the completely overhauled inventory system. Geralt can now carry an unlimited number of items of any type, provided their total weights don’t surpass his carrying capacity. It was nice to be able to carry lots of swords from fallen enemies to sell to vendors instead of running back and forth with a single ‘extra’ sword multiple times. It’s annoying that recipe/diagram papers actually have a weight (no matter how tiny), thus mandating that Geralt only carry a handful of most-used recipes, one or two secondary weapons, and little else in order to keep his inventory light enough to pick up all the ground clutter loot that is worthless aside from selling for cash. Quest-related items are, at least, weightless, but if they don’t get removed from Geralt’s inventory as part of their quest, he’s stuck carrying them around forever.
Overall
CD Projekt is a company that continues to surprise me: First with the excellence of “The Witcher,” and now with how badly they screwed up the sequel. “The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings – Enhanced Edition” still has a good story to tell and still has impressive production values. But it seems that CD Projekt wanted to stop making the series an RPG by only paying lip service to that genre while replacing the core gameplay with poorly-thought-out systems that would look more at home in a straight-up action game. The clunky combat engine, stingy distribution of Geralt’s signature powers, reworking of the meditation and alchemy systems, and horrible map make “Witcher 2” more of a chore to play than a joy. Despite the failings of “Witcher 2” as a game, the narrative setup for the third (and perhaps final?) chapter in this series has me really excited about it as a story. Hopefully it doesn’t take another four years to materialize, and hopefully its gameplay more closely resembles the first game than the second.
Presentation: 4.5/5
Story: 3.5/5
Gameplay: 2/5
Overall (not an average): 3/5
