The Witcher 2 - Reviews, Roundup #4

A flurry of activiity surrounding The Witcher 2 with the release, of course, but most people are going to be interested in the reviews. It seems some of the major sites got retail discs subject to the release activation (comments from IGN, GameSpot). A couple of smaller sites have reviews out, so here they are.

Bit-tech has a rather short article, so it's hard to tell how far they played. Still, the score is 95%:

The Witcher 2 overcomes these flaws with ease, however, and the overall impression we had was that CD Projekt’s game design ethic is on par with the company’s attitude to DRM in the way that it respects players' abilities to think for themselves. It’s obviously a risky strategy – just as the lack of DRM opens the title to piracy, the lack of guidance and level of challenge paves the way for complaints for ill-prepared players. Personally, we find it’s an approach that has paid off in spades.

It’s true that you could likely boot up The Witcher 2 with no idea of what it was, hacking and slashing your way through without a care, but doing so would be a travesty. The Witcher 2 is one of the most exciting and involving RPGs we’ve seen in a long, long time. It forms a logical competitor to more action-orientated titles, such as Mass Effect, and succeeds where previous pretenders, such as Dragon Age 2, have failed. Those who can bear the QTEs and practice finding hotspots, who take the time to immerse themselves in the world and understand the characters will find an experience that’ll be tough to beat - not just for future RPGs, but all future titles.

GameReactor.eu is the second review we've seen (thanks Zohaib) and the score is 9/10:

As mentioned above, the voice acting holds a very high standard. Most of the characters have a thick British accent, that is much more Cockney than the Queen's English, and it fits the low fantasy perfectly. Some characters, like Geralt himself and especially the witch Triss Merigold, speak with an obvious American accent though, and early on that doesn't really fit in, but you get used to it rather quickly. Mostly because of the dialogue - the script is engaging, the dialogues flow naturally and there's a couple of comments that had me smiling and laughing. At the same time the humour never gets too much, so the more serious atmosphere is never threatened and it never feels misplaced.

Several readers pointed out a recent GameStop Facebook interview/promo that revealed a likely expansion but DLC will be free. Those who have registered may know Troll Trouble is already available. From Eurogamer:

Polish developer CD Projekt has revealed the first downloadable content for fantasy role-playing game The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.

It's a side-quest called Troll Trouble, and launches day and date with the game.

Meanwhile, CD Projekt has promised its fans that all The Witcher 2 downloadable content will be free, including Troll Trouble.

"Let me announce that all our DLCs will be FREE," a CD Projekt developer wrote on US shop GameStop's Facebook page. "All of them. If anything will be for purchase, those will be expansion packs. First DLC will launch together with the game release."

GameBanshee writes they have a Talent Trees and Equipment Database.

RPS writes about some driver problems playing the game.

Gamasutra has a feature titled How We Combined Story and Freedom in The Witcher 2.

VG247 references the article about at Gamasutra to break out CD Projekt spent a year-and-a-half design Geralt.

...and GameSpot looks at some Key Characters.