Today is my birthday – thirty-six, if you must know – and my brother Marcus (whose fifth novel comes out on June 9, don’t forget!) loaded me down with a mountain of treasures, including CD Projekt’s latest, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. I own the original Witcher, on account of a Steam sale, but I never got more than ten minutes into it. Many a positive review of this sequel landed it on my List of Things to Play, so I’m grateful to old Marquez for his gift. I’ve been in need of an RPG since I lost interest in Dragon Age 2.
That’s a good place to start, actually, comparisons to Dragon Age. The two games are very dissimilar. Whereas DA is a tactical exercise, lots of pausing and contemplating of orders, The Witcher 2 is action-packed, even moreso than its predecessor. You roll, you dodge, you parry, you cast, and you do it all in real time. This unabashedly for-the-PC RPG integrates a hardcore, reflex-intensive combat model with a traditionally stat and inventory heavy dynamic that should appeal to all but the most slowgoing of players.
I’ll just say: The Witcher 2 is hard. It’s really hard. You will die constantly as you get the hang of the game’s unforgiving combat, and you’ll become very close with the Quicksave key. Death during the tutorial isn’t something we typically see – it’s a tutorial after all, it’s supposed to hold your hand – but die you will. It’s not frustrating. In fact, so far The Witcher 2 lives up to the positive reviews in every way.
Once again playing as Geralt of Rivia, the monster-hunting hero of Polish novelist Andrzej Sapkowski’s Witcher saga, you find yourself in a gritty, scarified, filled-with-nudity fantasy world of asshole kings, terrifying monsters, gallons of blood, hot chicks, and violence galore. I’ve not read any of the Witcher novels (I’ve got one on the Kindle, though, it’s in line), and not having played the original game, I was a bit lost at first. Geralt knows a lot of people I don’t. But as time goes on it becomes clear that playing the original Witcher is quite optional; like all huge-world RPGs, this one is disorienting at first and it takes a few hours to get a feel for the place.
Eastern European developers have a long love affair with the PC, and its from this region that you’re most likely to see PC-only games. The tradeoff for a smaller market share is that designers can take advantage of the inherent superiority of a gaming PC, and The Witcher 2 is no exception. All around you are signs of a very handcrafted world. You’ll see little or no repetition of objects or textures here, and the whole place is loaded with ambient dialogue and background action that brings the world to life. CD Projekt’s decision to open the game in a busy military camp getting ready to launch an assault on a besieged city allows them to show off the best right away – as you run around trying to figure out where stuff is, trebuchets creak and rumble, soldiers drill, sergeants curse their recruits, pikemen play a last game of dice, camp followers gossip. Once the assault begins in earnest there’s little time to stop and admire the background activity, but it’s all still there, and you’ll sense it even if you can’t absorb every second.
Combat is quick, busy, and brutal. Gone are the click-and-then-click-again battles of the first Witcher, here we see real-time combat that demands a lot of skill to master. Dodging and blocking are as crucial to Geralt’s survival as a strong sword arm, and once you remap those controls to thumb buttons on your mouse you’ll be better off. Even then, it’ll only take a few deaths before you start quicksaving between every battle.
What impresses me most is that the combat, though hard, isn’t frustrating. Unlike Dragon Age 2’s obnoxious camera, it’s rare here to not be able to see what you need to see, and you’ll learn to apply tactics such as drawing individual enemies away from their friends to avoid getting ganged up on. Plenty of reloads may be in your future, but the bloody, brutal combat choreography and general sense of awesomeness takes any edge off the frustration. There are instances where the controls don’t react quite as fast as I’d like, but this is a relatively minor issue. In most cases the game ignores you if you try to switch actions in midstream – if you decide to block halfway through a roll, for example. It might bug some people but ultimately it’s just realistic.
The game does little to introduce sound tactics, preferring to let you muddle through on your own. At 1680×1050 the tutorial windows are a little hard to read and disappear too fast anyway, but it’s all stored in your journal for later review. Similarly, the game makes no effort to explain the magic runes Geralt uses, or even how to drink potions or improve his stats, until comparatively late in the tutorial. The Witcher 2 strikes me as a game that wants you to figure out how to play it, and the result is that when you do, you feel all the more awesome for having bested its challenges.
CD Projekt’s proprietary Red Engine is simply stunning. At the game’s suggestion I turned down a few of the more graphically punishing items, but most of the features are maxed out and I’m getting plenty of frames even in very busy sequences. It’s funny that The Witcher was criticized for long load times and bad performance, because you see none of that in this sequel. The only technical complaint I can come up with is that you can’t map your keys within the game, and it doesn’t explain what some of the high-end graphic features do, or what you’ll be missing if you turn them off. You’ll just have to experiment. It’s interesting, though, that some of the most traditionally punishing features – Screen Space Ambient Occlusion is an example, most gamers turn it off as a matter of course – don’t affect the frame rate much at all. Signs of a well-optimized engine from a tech team that knows what it’s doing.
If you’re a roleplayer who doesn’t mind action-heavy combat in your games, you can’t go wrong with Assassins of Kings. It’s well-written, well-localized, well-optimized, and blisteringly fun to play. The game world gives us a new perspective on the fantasy genre without carrying it too far, and the storyline promises a complex, nuanced adventure that I, for one, am eager to get back into. Check it out.
Send an email to the author of this post at steerpike@tap-repeatedly.com.
This is absolutely next on my list of games to play. I loved the first one through one and a half plays and, fingers crossed, will love this one too. Your description of real time combat smacks of Gothic 2 and if that turns out to be true, I will truly be delighted. The one part of the first one I had trouble with was the odd mouse driven combat and it looks like CD Projekt has addressed that.
From what I know from the first Witcher, quaffing potions gives you a huge leg up in combat, turning you into a sword swinging, casting machine so it would probably do to keep that in mind. This was one of the few games where I was able to sink into my character and play the role. Geralt wasn’t all good or all bad. He was a flawed, vivid character, not a cartoon.
Also good to see Geralt is looking like himself in-game and not the goofy character on the box art.
Thanks for the first impressions on this, Steerpike and happy birthday old man.
Oh and three cheers for improving the load times from the first one.
A very happy birthday to you. Live long. Play long.
I enjoyed the first one, though I never finished. I found the game fun and interesting while you had your wits about you and were playing, but had the most enormous time restarting the thing once I quit. The potion making system was a step too complicated for the inventory system (I had a spreadsheet to keep track of all the permutations) and I just couldn’t get past wandering the veldt in chapter 4.
Fill us in, dear leader, on the following items:
– Any way to sort items in your inventory? By essence (or whatever it was)
– Combat mechanics. The combat in the first one was pretty redundant and not very interesting by half way through.
Had the Rapture been on time you would have been ripped off totally. Happy Birthday and I’ll keep the silo sludges particularly dredged tonight.
Did you enjoy Stevie Wonder, Steerpike?:)
Thanks for this. I’m playing The Witcher now and not particularly enjoying it. I’m hoping to finish it though and move on to the sequal, it sounds good 🙂
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SIR MATTHEW OF SAKEY!
Nice impressions, too. I have to say though, my only familiarity with The Witcher is listening to Lewis whinge about not being able to burn down picket fences.
Haha jump over Mat, JUMP OVER!
Curse you picket fence, how you rail road me so!
I listened to the entirety of Stevie Wonder, Lewis, twice! It was a lovely birthday sentiment. : )
@Helmut: inventory is sorted via category – weapons, armor, potions, stuff, etc. You can swap between these easily. I didn’t see manual sorting, but honestly I haven’t spent much time in the menus, as the first several hours are very action-packed.
The combat mechanics are almost console-inspired: LMB and RMB map to “fast” and “strong” attack; by default the E key is a parry (reduces but doesn’t eliminate damage, you can’t move while doing it, and it takes a second to pull off so it’s not an interrupt); Spacebar is dodge/roll in conjunction with a direction key.
I remapped block and cast spell to the two thumb buttons on my mouse.
One odd interface complaint: the “hit areas” for certain interactivities, such as looting objects, opening doors, jumping off stuff, and so on are too small. You need to align yourself more than should be necessary to get the prompt. LMB is contextual, essentially “use,” depending on where you are.
Another: I can’t explain this one, but in menus the mouse feels… strange. I can’t describe it exactly. Almost like there’s a disconnect between my hand movements and the movement of the cursor. This is very minor and will likely disappear as I get used to it, but it did strike me as odd.
Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone!
Hippo birdies two ewes, Steerpike!
I watched the first 15 minutes of Witcher 2 over the weekend, I’m intrigued.
Happy Birthday, Sir Sakey!
Maybe I’ll check this one out. I didn’t like what I read about the original, but I appreciate hard games and I like cool choreography. Is there blood? Decapitations? I need those things. You know, when I’m not petting puppies and bathing children.
Plenty of blood, plenty of decapitations. In fact, Dobry, your specific complaint about the combat in the first one (click, wait for the cursor to change, click again) is replaced completely with a realtime combat system. It’s sort of a high-speed Mount & Blade that’s less forgiving of midstream changes. Little bit of Prince of Persia in there too, with less liquidity.
Happy Birthday Steerpike! May you have many more and blah blah… you know the drill.
I so freaking want this game, but my desire for it is only trumped by my meager bank account. Guess I’ll be waiting on this. Loved the original though, and this looks lovely.
Based on this…
That’s a good place to start, actually, comparisons to Dragon Age. The two games are very dissimilar. Whereas DA is a tactical exercise, lots of pausing and contemplating of orders, The Witcher 2 is action-packed, even moreso than its predecessor. You roll, you dodge, you parry, you cast, and you do it all in real time.
And this…
I’ll just say: The Witcher 2 is hard. It’s really hard. You will die constantly as you get the hang of the game’s unforgiving combat….
I think I will be happily sticking with my Dragon Age 2.
I may pick up “Witcher 2” when it is available on a super Steam sale for $5.99. I think I bought the original for a similar price. I can’t remember. The holiday sale era is mostly a blur…
Jeez….thirty freakin’ six?!? For some reason I thought our new tap-repeatedly co-leader was a younger man. Speaking of co-leaders, where is Mr. Lipid? Haven’t seem him around lately…
Back to my original point, you’re only 2 1/2 years younger than me. As they say, misrey loves company, har har har.
But don’t worry, I make up for being closer to 40 than 30 by acting like I’m still 21. 🙂 Right now I’m scheming at ways to convince my boss I need to take a “field trip” for a few days for work purposes while really just driving down Olympic Blvd. and checking out the E3. All these years I’ve worked just a stone’s throw away from the convention but never actually attended one. Or did they now move it to a different place?
Matt, to celebrate your birthday I’ve just sent you a Stevie Wonder video of my own.
“I just called, to say..”
There was a time, not long ago, when I was a younger man! That time is past. It’s amazing how the years creep up on you. 22 year olds think I’m “old” now.
MrLipid is the secret power, he fixes things when I break them so spectacularly that my own limited skills aren’t enough. He’s working super hard on an exciting new technology startup too, and that takes a lot of the poor guy’s time. But he’s here! As active as ever, just more subtle than me. 🙂
@Mat – that’s two Stevie Wonder birthday gifts! Thank you very much – it made my day!
hey you guys hit up on a question or issue i have and that is “The only technical complaint I can come up with is that you can’t map your keys within the game, and it doesn’t explain what some of the high-end graphic features do, or what you’ll be missing if you turn them off. ” i want to know the same my pc does not run well on highest settings but i want to know what i gain or lose by lower or higher. thanks guys
Hi James,
Regarding controls: I almost posted an addendum because this is actually a very annoying issue. You can’t map OR look at your key bindings in-game – you need to use the Witcher 2 Launcher’s Video and Game Settings. You can’t run this while the game is running, so every time you want to review or change controls you’ve got to quit out, make your change, and start again. This is especially annoying since Witcher 2 is a complex game with a lot of controls. It’s easy to forget stuff.
Another irritant: very few tooltips. It’d be nice if a popup told me what each Sign (spells, basically) does when I mouse over it. Instead, that info is in the Tutorial section of the journal, and it’s not sorted – you get each entry the first time you cast the Sign, so they’re all over the place.
Regarding graphics: I have a Core 2 Quad Q9450 with 8GB RAM and a 1GB GeForce 460 running Windows 7 x64. I’m consistently amazed at how well it performs – I’m usually in the mid-40s per second at 1680×1050 with nearly everything maxxed out.
I turned off “Ubersampling,” whatever that is, because it seemed to heavily impact performance. I also turned off “Cinematic Motion Blur” – it has a major performance hit but I also just didn’t like it.
This is a beautiful game, and I think it would still be beautiful at mid-level graphics settings. As always, you’ll get the biggest performance increase by lowering your resolution. If you prefer not to do that, I’d recommend turning off Ubersampling, SSAO, and Cinematic Motion Blur, and reducing Texture LOD, Shadow Quality, and Draw Distance.
One point five and six years ago Mrs. Sakey brought forth, upon this continent, a new baby, conceived in…. Better stop right there.
Happy Birthday Mr. ‘Pike. May we all be together on T-R to celebrate your day for many years to come.
Hard? Brutally difficult? Real time combat requiring quick reflexes? Dying often? Yuck, those descriptors aren’t my brand of fun. 🙁
Happy Birthday!
Thanks for the impressions. I’m definitely going to get this game, but haven’t got around to it.
I’ve been watching a Let’s Play of Fable 3 in the last few days, and it really turns me off, to the point that there is no chance I’ll buy it. The most repugnant thing for me is the obsessive hand-holding, which goes as far as to literally give you a trail of sparkles on the ground showing you where to go. The game seems to treat you like a six-year old from the get-go and never lets up.
By comparison, the Witcher 2 seems to treat you like an adult, lets you figure things out on your own, lets you make mistakes. I think this is ultimately the way to go, because it forces you to use your *brain*. With games that hold your hand too much, I’ve found that, after awhile, I just switch off and if something unexpectedly difficult comes up, I’m suddenly feeling ill-equipped to deal with it.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Thank you, PyroCat, and welcome to the site!
I couldn’t get into Fable 2 on the 360 for basically the same reason you describe: the sparkle trails, the endless necessity-farming, the need to eat vegetables, etc. “Hand-holding” is the best way to describe it. And despite my hand being held, I felt lost at times, usually because the menus took so long to open that I’d forgotten what I’d gone in there for.
Witcher 2 treats you like an adult without brutalizing you. I’m very pleased that it hasn’t frustrated me with its difficulty, it’s just really challenged me. Very fast load times help too.
Aside from basic and easily patchable interface complaints – the aforementioned inability to check keybindings in-game; the too-small “hit spots” for some interactivities like opening doors or examining loot; the ignoring of clicks/keypresses when a lot’s going on, it’s a triumph of a game. I hope you enjoy it!
Patch incoming, BTW, probably this evening: so says RPS.
I didn’t see my specific complaints in the partial list of fixes, but hey. And if it really does improve performance by 5-30%, that’s just insane. It already performs great. Ubersampling, here I come! I may not know what you are, but I want you.
Triumph of a game? Oh man, must get this soon.
A little behind as usual. A belated happy birthday to our intrepid leader Matt. Matt, from my age, you are still a youngin just entering your prime. Enjoy it.
Kay Thomas
Happy Belated Birthday Steerpike – grats on level 36!
Silly question – will Witcher 2 make an appearance on the PS3?
I’m playing this game right now, this is awesome…
Finally started this game yesterday. I’m getting the hang of combat without too much trouble. I did read up bit on the forums then jumped right in. Finally figured out how to fire that ballista gizmo and made it to the tower part. Had to stop cause I was getting sore fingers from all the mad key mashing it takes to stay out of harm’s way. I’m mostly casting Quen, then doing a lot of rolling past the soldiers, coming up behind them and, when lucky, getting in a good backstab. Things sure move fast, at least after over 300 hours of Skyrim which I finally had to put aside. Will be going back later but Witcher 2 looks like good fun. And yeah, those hot spots are too frickking tiny!
Scout, I believe there’s to be (if there hasn’t already been) a gigantonormous update to Witcher 2 that includes an all new tutorial plus a zillion other fixes. I read about it on RPS maybe a month ago. If you’re playing on Steam it should auto-patch. Do you happen to know if that content’s already in there?
Best of luck. I was really impressed by the game.
There was a very simple tutorial separate from the Prologue so I think I have the updated version. I bought it back in November off Steam but only installed it a couple of days ago. It’s great to return to the further adventures of Geralt and Triss. It’s quite the palate cleaner after almost 3 months of Skyrim (which I loved but just grew weary of…) I read that they are releasing an Enhanced Edition for this one in April. That what you speak of?
Probably is, they mentioned that they were doing a huge new tutorial, having been receptive to earlier complaints that the game doesn’t give you much to work with at the outset. Still a damn fine experience. Enjoy!
I have half a leg up on Witcher 2 from all the time I put in playing the first game. The combat takes adjusting and I’m keeping it simple for now, just rolling and swinging and tossing down Quen as a shield. But I know to drink potions when possible and use oils and pick herbs to make potions. Though I don’t think I can drink potions during combat now which is sort of annoying. I know how I like to play Geralt too, neutral as long as possible, help the helpless and have absolutely no mercy for the strong and powerful of either faction. Except for kings but who in their right mind fucks with kings. From the one fistfight I’ve had I know I will loathe the Quick Time key mashing. Ugh! It wasn’t like that in the first one, was it? Push Q. Now push A. What are people thinking? That this is someone’s idea of fun?
Dude, someone somewhere at some big publisher must thing Quick Time Events are like totally the gr8est thing evar. They drive me crazy.
I remember once I was at a conference and one of the combat designers from Bioware was giving a great lecture on… well, on combat design. And I asked what he thought of QREs. He paused for a long second and the whole audience went “…..ooooOOOOOOOO” like I’d asked him some gotcha question, which made me feel bad. Then he said, “they’re very… pretty to watch.”
Which was a great answer. Watching a QTE game get played can be visually stunning, but actually playing them? No thanks.
Sounds like you’ve got combat down, Scout. The “pushback” glyph (begins with an A I think) is also great. It took me a while to incorporate using those into my combat. Like you, I was a big fan of rolling – it’s much easier to pull off than a block. I almost never successfully blocked things, because your character can’t be mid-animation when you try to block.
Rolling also seems to kinda baffle guards. I notice they sort of just stand there while I roll to the far corner. It gives me time to heal a bit, get some vigor back hopefully and toss down another shield. I’m in Chapter 1 now and out of the castle/dungeons. Hopefully I will be able to control the field a bit more from here on out. I also like how the game shows you what you are going to be facing soon enough. The giant slimy thing and the meat mountain guy. I am so going to level up.
Just finished the first two boss fights in this game, Kayran and Letho, aka “the giant slimy thing” and the “meat mountain”. As a rule I hate boss fights cause the devs seem to cheap out and just poist some dumb gimmick that has squat to do with the other 99% of the game. Sadly, CDP did not break the mold with either of these fights. Brain dead QTE crap for the squid and a rigged character for Letho, the meat mountain. Poking around the internet, it seems most gamers (except for the freaks and the trolls) agree with this opinion. For me, every inane boss fight I encounter in a game deducts half a rating point regardless of the the over all quality. Witcher 2 has plummeted from a gold star to a thumbs up rating. Much more of this and it’s heading for a “meh.” Is it really that hard to design an intelligent, organic boss fight?