The Witcher 2 - v2.0 Review @ GameBanshee
 

GameBanshee reviews the v2.0 release of The Witcher 2. They describe the Arena addition as the centre-piece but I'm going to take a quote on the balance and control changes:
More information.

Oh, what horse hockey! What planet are these guys on, anyway?

I dove straight into the arena first off. I found it completely unbalanced. And I still had to sometimes pound the dodge key repeatedly to get Geralt to move. What new responsiveness? You also still have the idiotic occurance where you get the insta-kill animation, but when it ends, you get brutalized before you can roll away.

In the first few rounds, at lvl 1, you get swarmed so fast that the moment you try to mount an attack on the lead guy, you get surrounded and pounded by his buddies. It's like an insane sacrafice - attack to cause some damage to one guy, but get clobbered in the procees. All you're left to do is dodge and retreat. Yeah sure, I'm gonna stand there and parry the guy in front while getting hit from all sides? Instant death sentance.

I just don't want to spend my gaming time retreating and rolling/dodging ad nausium. Sure, I won the first few rounds after numerous tries, but oh, what an unbearable grind… and this is only the first few rounds. This is not fun.

Venting complete. Hey, that feels better…

Quite helpful review, the new modes should be pretty much what one would expect. Loved the Gothic pun.

I'm not sure this part is well-explained though:

I Love the the witcher….
Let me state this clearly I love the witcher one and two.
I love the fact that this is all free…
But I went to update yesterday and blah, blah blah….it didn't work….
I am running a top of the line Alienware system with ever upgrade you could want.
And if they want me to do this or that to get their upgrade to work, I am sorry I am not.
I loved the game but if their upgrades are not going to blend into what I have then I don't want what they have…
Fukk me I feel bitter….this isn't 1989 when I need 15 different boot disc to get a game to load….

See the hoops
Spot doesn't hop through hoops
Run spot run

I'm using the Steam version… no updates yet.

I'm not really sure if I want the update, though. The Steam version of this game had several 9gb updates, you know.

"Alienware" is just hardware dude, it's all Windows in the end. I had no issues getting the patch to work, so it's not a universal issue. With PC gaming you have to troubleshoot and work around issues sometimes, that's just the platform.

I started a new game to check out 2.0 and dark mode specifically. The tutorial was very… tutorial-y. I can't really complain about it of course but when they said the tutorial was some new quests in a small village I thought it would be more than just walking 20 feet and then a round in the arena.

In any case, dark mode doesn't seem very hard so far. I only played through the opening siege section though, maybe it gets harder later. I have some epic gear for no apparent reason, maybe that is a dark mode thing?

After 15 minutes of working the installer told me I needed 4.89 GB space free on the drive the game is installed on and that it won't continue. Just putting this here so that other people don't lose their 15 minutes.

Also, make sure you are patched up to version 3.5 already before you apply the patch because if you're not, the installer won't tell you and it will sit there 'finalizing' indefinitely.

I'm going to predict that people will generally hate this update.

You should really have way more free space than that normally anyway. It's best to keep 10% of your HDD empty at all times, if not 20%.

I waited for this update to play the game, so I can't comment on how it compares to before. I have no interest in Dark Mode or Arena. I only waited because of the combat changes, which sounded great. So far I am very pleased with the combat its way better than in the first game, which was my main issue with Witcher 1.

Couldn't agree more. Arena frustrated the hell out of me as well!

I'm going to say this and will probably get flamed for it but oh well.

I really don't see the point of the arena. Are there not enough action games out there? There's even that Witcher Vs flash game already if someone absolutely must play as Geralt mindlessly fighting enemies with no real story.

Free is free and developers are certainly free to do as they wish. I absolutely don't except anyone to cater to my every whim. That said, I personally am really disappointed in what I see as CD Projekt's further and further push into action. It's not why I play games and it's not why I play Witcher games.

Maybe I just need to accept this franchise isn't for me anymore and move on, just as I have done with Dragon Age. *sigh*

Many rpgs have arena's (like Oblivion and Gothic 3) so it is a common feature of rpgs.

Yes but those are integrated into the game and the story, not released later as some completely separate mode of play.

FLAMFLAMFLAM
;)

Now we're talking! :)

Oh and… It's not the last free addition we're getting according to the interview with someone from CDprojekt.

I love free stuff but as more and more games go this route isn't it going to hurt new game sales. I've always been a day 1 buyer and even i'm starting to think about just waiting for all the dlc and enhanced editions before I buy.

The worst part is I want to support good games but i'm not a big replay guy. I don't want to play a game through and then when I finish an update comes out to vastly improve it.

I bought 3 copies of the witcher 2 on day 1 for me and my sons. I played about 10 hours then shelved it because I knew the update were coming. I don't want to make that a habit.

That doesn't mean it's a good feature. :)

Personally, I just find the concept of arenas to be very cliche at this point. Even when the arena is integrated into the main game, it rarely adds anything other than more combat and loot.

Oblivion, Dragon Age, Gothic 3, TW II, etc… it's simply been used too many times imo.