Witcher 2 The Witcher 2 first impressions

It may not be realistic to drink them in a melee battle, but it's also pretty unrealistic that you'd sit down and zone out for a while and "meditate" in the middle of what amounts to hostile territory. Wraiths, stuff everywhere - "hold on a second everyone, I'm gonna chill out for a few and meditate, K? Namaste, yall"

I usually pound a potion (and he always had the little pockets on his witchery jacket for easy access) not in the middle of a fight, but when I saw trouble on the way, or an NPC suddenly lets loose an unexpected horde on ya.

JonNik said:

Yep that is what I meant (find a spot to meditate after they stop chasing you).

Pretty much like the Gothics then. Cant see that I will have a problem with it
as I don't find backing out of a difficult fight unrealistic the way I described it…

Click to expand...

Actually, the very reason why alchemy (potions) fails in this game.

Combat is about management of space, as expected and they duly deliver on that feature.

And alchemy falls into circular unnecessity.

If you have space to run, you have space to outmanoeuver the enemies. Space and little skills allows to perform decently in combat, therefore voiding the necessity of drinking potions. You can of course run away and drink potions to get more of what you could get without drinking potions. Still unnecessary.

If you do not have space to run away, situations that happen in this game, the character is a situation of dependence on alchemy (potions) but can not drink them.

It grows circular: in situations you need alchemy (potions), you cant use alchemy. In situations you dont need alchemy, you can use alchemy. Bad.

Scouting has to be forgotten on the same ground. Close space calling for potions use also negate the possibility of scouting. For example, it can be that narrow rooms locked by doors. You enter the room, monsters appear, you cant open doors during battle. Scouting annihilated.

Alchemy is nothing more than a support field for the other two specialities.

Other specialities have out of the box solutions to deal with variations on space. Alchemy has not.

An alchemist has to mimick permanent benefit by drinking potions any time he goes hunting. You do not conceive the strategy by adapting to potential enemies but you build the strategy from what you know for sure: yourself. If you want to inflict incineration, you equip in gear to incinerate, drink the relevant potions and lets go. No matter the enemy, you deal with them the same way or attempt to it if they are immune to incineration.

Alchemy is all about optimization of the character expected damage effects, not about adaptation to enemies.

ChienAboyeur said:

It grows circular: in situations you need alchemy (potions), you cant use alchemy. In situations you dont need alchemy, you can use alchemy. Bad.

Click to expand...

I actually agree with this - the few times where I felt like I needed potions, I couldn't use them, and vice versa. I did use the one that increases regeneration from time to time though, but that's about it.

ChienAboyeur said:

Scouting has to be forgotten on the same ground. Close space calling for potions use also negate the possibility of scouting. For example, it can be that narrow rooms locked by doors. You enter the room, monsters appear, you cant open doors during battle. Scouting annihilated.

Click to expand...

Hmm I dislike when games do that to me… I hope its not done too often because it becomes a tiresome gimmick…

ChienAboyeur said:

Alchemy is nothing more than a support field for the other two specialities.

Click to expand...

tbh that is how I viewed it for the first game too… I do not believe a "pure" alchemist is
possible or desirable (or in character). This is not a problem for me.

ChienAboyeur said:

An alchemist has to mimick permanent benefit by drinking potions any time he goes hunting. You do not conceive the strategy by adapting to potential enemies but you build the strategy from what you know for sure: yourself. If you want to inflict incineration, you equip in gear to incinerate, drink the relevant potions and lets go. No matter the enemy, you deal with them the same way or attempt to it if they are immune to incineration.

Click to expand...

Also pretty much how I played #1 (swallow and tawny owl were a given at all times)…
I would like to be able to at least back out from a fight and prepare though, like I said
and if the game takes that away too often from you I can see it becoming annoying
and forcing you into an immersion breaking reloading routine… Hmm…

I wouldn't worry about it too much, JonNik. TW2 is a great game, despite a few minor flaws. You'll most likely enjoy it.

I certainly hope so (I am not too worried really).

Still having too much fun with my G1 replay to be tempted to install though.
And as I waited up to this point, I might as well squeeze a G2+NOTR one in there
and give CDPR some time to address the last technical issues (16:10 support would
also be nice), before I dive in.

JonNik said:

Hmm I dislike when games do that to me… I hope its not done too often because it becomes a tiresome gimmick…

Click to expand...

If you consider alchemy as a support field for a specialization in either signs or swordsplay, it is virtually impossible you experience this on the scale a full alchemist is.

Because both signs and swordsmanship have out of the box solutions to deal with closed space situations. In other words, you dont need to gather intelligence on what is going to appear next (no scouting requirement), all you have to do is admit you are in a closed space situation and be efficient with the out of the box solutions provided by the two specialities.

Scouting could only be of essential importance for potions drinking. As a full alchemist, you do not need to drink potions in open space situations and cant drink them in closed space situations.

As a swordsman or a signer, you have other solutions, immediately available to deal with both open and closed space situations. Drinking potions is just cosmetics for those specialized witchers, even more than for alchemist witchers.

it's also expensive to roll w/ a permanent Swallow buzz, nothing I hate more than burning potions left and right and nothing happens. The hoarder in me screams out in pain every time my Swallow buzz wears off and I've encountered literally no resistance

I hate the potion implementation in this game, by the way ='.'=

Re the running away to then drink your potions thing: not only are you sometimes trapped in W2, but oftentime a cutscene will kick in when you reach a certain spot, which then forces you on and often throws you right into combat. Nothing for it in such a case than to die, and drink potions the next time before you approach the spot…

Not sure why people prefer TW2 combat and alchemy mechanics, but nevermind, I might personally enjoy the first game's alchemy because I enjoy complexity and like having to fiddle with stuff, whereas other people like to simply get in there and fight and experience the story and finish the game.

RivianWitch said:

not only are you sometimes trapped in W2, but oftentime a cutscene will kick in when you reach a certain spot, which then forces you on and often throws you right into combat.

Click to expand...

Yep, and did you also notice that potion timers continue to run during cutscenes? It doesn't show it onscreen, but after the cutscene is over you'll have that much time less on your potion effect.

I guess it's more realistic that way, but I'd have preferred that the time it takes to watch a cutscene didn't count against your potions.

RivianWitch said:

Not sure why people prefer TW2 combat and alchemy mechanics, but nevermind, I might personally enjoy the first game's alchemy because I enjoy complexity and like having to fiddle with stuff, whereas other people like to simply get in there and fight and experience the story and finish the game.

Click to expand...

Ungrounded to put combat and alchemy on the same level.

I chose a pure alchemist path because of TW1 alchemy system.

Alchemy could have been the highly distinctive feature for this series as not that many games offer similar possibilities.

I thought they would better the system when they messed it eventually. They removed the capability to customize potions for example.

I found TW1's system to be more straightforward, it is transparent and the use of potions is flexible.

TW2 system requires for example to be able to ditch ingredients without knowing if they will be useful as ingredients can be quest items too. The interface is poor, impossible to brew several potions in one swoop on the same ingredients.

Hm, for me the fact one has to predict combat occurrences generally wasn´t much of a problem since I thought that usually (not always though) this was easy to do. I didn´t mind wasting a potion here and there.
Later, non-alchemists don´t need potions for common encounters, upcoming potentially more difficult encounters are telegraphed or easy to run away from (gargoyles) and for alchemists it shouldn´t be a problem to run with some basic potions drunk most of the time since they last longer and ingredients are plentiful.
And for specific monsters there are also oils which can be applied any time.

That said, for me the main problems of this implementation are:
a) the drinking animation is fucking long
b) timer doesn´t stop in cutscenes
c) player chosen ingredients don´t stick when brewing multiple potions
d) sometimes player gets "cheated" out of drinking before an encounter, which may work as a design decision forced on non-alchemists, but alchemists are put into severe disatvantage by this
e) sometimes one has to use metaknowledge and drink potions before stepping on cutscene trigger

All in all, given the above issues and the fact there´s already an element which prevents potion spamming (toxicity) this solution ended up being less of an "strategy"/immersion enhancer and more of an unnecessary gameplay annoyance.

I think that currently the best solution for those who find this to be a PITA might be one of the mods which make potions last longer, though it doesn´t solve all of the problems and may also introduce unneeded imbalances.

I try not to rely on them much. I hardly ever used them in W1, except for cat, and a few boss fights.

It's also kinda lame how they nixed the secondary ingredient thing from the original game, where if you matched those up you could actually tweak your potions a bit. Or am I being lame, and the Alchemist path unlocks these secondary ingredients?

While I'm complaining, I'll just also state that it's a total pain in the ass to not be able to see what potions you already have while brewing. Again, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic here, and the times that I shared w/ the prior inventory system - seeing my potion count go up as I made them, knowing exactly what i had, never having to leave meditation to check, that was wonderful. Again, it's really easy to accidentally make a potion out of a quest item, you have to watch every potion made or youre libel to make a swallow out of a troll tongue or green mold or something.

Whatever, I'm done whining. The alchemy/potion angle in W2 is a mere shadow of what it was in the original game, and they fact that they chose to focus an entire development path on it boggles the mind. Case closed.

xSamhainx said:

It's also kinda lame how they nixed the secondary ingredient thing from the original game, where if you matched those up you could actually tweak your potions a bit. Or am I being lame, and the Alchemist path unlocks these secondary ingredients?

While I'm complaining, I'll just also state that it's a total pain in the ass to not be able to see what potions you already have while brewing. Again, I'm feeling a bit nostalgic here, and the times that I shared w/ the prior inventory system - seeing my potion count go up as I made them, knowing exactly what i had, never having to leave meditation to check, that was wonderful. Again, it's really easy to accidentally make a potion out of a quest item, you have to watch every potion made or youre libel to make a swallow out of a troll tongue or green mold or something.

Whatever, I'm done whining. The alchemy/potion angle in W2 is a mere shadow of what it was in the original game, and they fact that they chose to focus an entire development path on it boggles the mind. Case closed.

Click to expand...

Yeah, the whole alchemy system was a bit of a downgrade, I'd say. I also thought of the "secondary constituent" thing, and how the actual constituents of ingredients such as albedo, rubedo and so on (your choices of "sources" for these are less in the second game, as a result), was a bit less fun and less complex in the second game if you enjoy alchemy tinkering.

Like Sammy says, though - time to quit the whining. People who enjoy messing around with alchemy to this extent of detail might be in the minority, and who knows, Witcher 3 might get it right again.

Anyway, I took a bit of a break from TW universe, but am thinking of going for another playthrough on a different path again. (Once the new patch is released! )

At least that's one aspect where this game seems to have gotten it mostly right - the replayability - though more significant differences for different choices right at the very end of the game might have been good.
On the other hand, that might have made it harder to have a focal point for TW3 to take off on.

I have no interest in playing Witcher 2 again after finishing it. It overall just wasnt as good as the original, and too many interface annoyances that made gameplay a chore at times.

I'm definitely going to replay TW2 sometime in the near future, especially with all the tweaks that have been added in the last couple of patches. I replayed Chapter 3 twice immediately after finishing the first time just to see the results from different decisions, but I still want to play the game following Iorveth's path.

I agree about TW1 though. It was a slightly better overall game imo. The only aspect that I felt was improved in TW2 was combat.

I'd have to say the visuals were FAR beyond TW1 as well

How much better was the combat? and is gameplay better? those things really sucked in TW1.....

You never give that up, do you GG