The Witcher 2 first impressions

I'm a bit sad that my computer can't handle it well. It just feels bad to run this amazing game on low settings. Maybe I'll wait until I update my computer to play it. I'll just go back to playing TOEE for now…

I just ordered an MSI 6870 Hawk 1gb to replace my custom modded 4870 512mb - which ran the game but kept overheating due to my overzealous modifications to it.

It was all ohhh … ahhhhh …. nice ….. BLACK SCREEN.
Crysis 1 & 2 are the only other games which tripped it out. Dead Space 2, Bulletstorm etc were fine - probably due to the engines and console cross-platformness.

I shall play terraria until it arrives! Roll on weekend!

Hmm, I notice Polish voice overs are up now in the launcher. I'm going to grab them and try playing the game in the original Polish with English subs.

First impressions, alright, here goes:

I'm about 2.5 hours in, completed the first 4 steps of the prologue.

It looks great, no doubts, my computer can almost run high smoothly, just a tad jerky now and then but I had texture popping on medium and it drove me nuts. Just for reference, Phenom II x4 920 & a GTX 260.

Story is good so far.

Don't believe anything you read about this being exclusively a PC game, the UI was designed to work for a joystick on consoles, no doubt about it. The UI is not nearly as immersive as the originals. Big blank screens with boring circles to click on. Think Mass Effect or Alpha Protocol. No mouseovers for items or equipped comparisons. I'm not very far into the game but at first glance I like TW1's character skill development more, I liked the copper/silver/gold coin thing, it was unique and worked well.

Very limited keyboard remapping, I'm not sure the devs tried to play the game with mouse & keyboard. You can only see one usable item at a time despite having 5 "pockets" and you can only cycle "next" through them, no previous button. Very irritating. Pressing 5-9 immediately casts a sign, not selects it. Of course unless you're bigfoot you have to take your hands off the WASD to reach 7-9 for sure and that makes you a sitting duck. Inventory and character screens don't make a good use of the screen space available. No mouse wheel binding, would really like to have that to scroll through items in your pockets at the very least.

If you played TW1 with the zoomed out overhead camera, be prepared to be disappointed. You're tightly locked in a third-person view now and I have camera clipping issues and stuck on wall corners a lot because of it. Makes combat much less tactical and a lot more frenetic because it's essentially a first person view, you have no idea what's going on around you. Finishing moves feel really disjointed because it shifts the camera angle to show you how awesome you killed that guy, feels like having your camera cut when you're driving to show someone else crash in Burnout Paradise, yeah, everyone hated that too. By the time you've regained camera control, you're being stabbed in the back by the other 4 bad guys.

Combat is very hard even on normal. Prohibitively hard in my opinion. Just like most of you guys, I'm a hardcore gamer that's been playing RPGs for 20+ years and I can't remember the last time I died so many times on any single fight. Lots of running away, kiting opponents to fight them one on one. Run, run ,run, sign, whack, whack, run, run, run….you get the idea. Every knight you fight in the prologue is like trying to take out the orc scout before ever going into town in Gothic 2. The prologue very much believes the best way to teach you to swim is to throw you in the water. Well, I drowned, many, many times.

The QTEs are horrible, even the easy ones are just out of place. Left click as fast as possible to crank a ballista? Who came up with that idea and worse, who thought it was a good idea? Who thinks any QTE is a good gameplay mechanic?

Lots and lots of cutscenes, in the prologue at least, I'm starting to feel like I'm playing FF7 here.

Hard to loot items dropped by enemies, the bags that are dropped are hard to get the game to "focus" on so you can loot. Would also be nice if there was a "loot near me" key instead of having it being bound to the quick attack key, that's already happened a lot to me accidently in combat.

I sure hope the story and C&C make up for it once I get out of the prologue, but so far, I'm pretty disappointed. I've read people saying, "Finally, a PC game! It's not a console port!" I'd have to disagree, other than the not limited graphics, it feels very much like a console port in the UI, click spam combat and controls.

I've only played 20 min or so and I would have to agree the first thing I thought when I started playing was the game other than the graphic had a real console feel. The menus especially. Im only 20 min in though so we'll see.

I will say though that the game needs a jump option or at least the ability to jump over enemies like in the first one. Its very frustrating to get surrounded by enemies on one side and a knee high drop on the other with no way out but death. You can't even use a sign or knock them back because you keep getting hit and can't attack while staggering.

Originally Posted by sakichop
I've only played 20 min or so and I would have to agree the first thing I thought when I started playing was the game other than the graphic had a real console feel. The menus especially. Im only 20 min in though so we'll see.

I will say though that the game needs a jump option or at least the ability to jump over enemies like in the first one. Its very frustrating to get surrounded by enemies on one side and a knee high drop on the other with no way out but death. You can't even use a sign or knock them back because you keep getting hit and can't attack while staggering.

Hmm, I agree that a jump option would have been useful, but in fights I have always been fine with rolling (you can roll in all 4 directions.
Regarding combat difficulty - There was a definite learning curve but now I really enjoy the combat.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
Hmm, I agree that a jump option would have been useful, but in fights I have always been fine with rolling (you can roll in all 4 directions.
Regarding combat difficulty - There was a definite learning curve but now I really enjoy the combat.

Yeah but you can't roll through enemies so if your surounded on all sides and in back of you is a knee high drop that you can't go down your stuck. Its not the end of the world though I just wont back in to that situation in the future.

As for difficulty I'm glad its hard there has beena rash of games that are far to easy. I enjoy having a learning curve.

Originally Posted by LuckyCarbon
Every knight you fight in the prologue is like trying to take out the orc scout before ever going into town in Gothic 2.

Nah. You just need to use parries to get them out of balance and that is easy since they´re slow. If they´re in a group, getting rid of the weaker opponents first should be a sound approach.
Also, I´ve found Quen sign (shield) really useful for group fights.
One or two fights in the prologue are quite difficult, but only if you don´t add potions, bombs or traps into the mix.
Fighting the orc scout in G2 early is pretty much instant death unless you´re really skillful with controls or cheese it in some way.

Anyway, combat in The Witcher 2´s prologue is generally not piss-easy, but, unlike one or two QTE sequences, I´d say it´s fair throughout.

Quick question regarding talent points:

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
For big armored dudes: Yrden sign.

Exactly. It works great against groups, too. You can run into a corner (or into a choke point) and guard yourself with Yrden's while you group attack or cast igni or what have you. It was the best for those situations where you are strongly outnumbered in the first Witcher. Took out the huge group assassins in the sewers fairly easily this way without having to run away.

And thanks, Dart, for your very nice first impressions breakdown.

If you played TW1 with the zoomed out overhead camera, be prepared to be disappointed. You're tightly locked in a third-person view now and I have camera clipping issues and stuck on wall corners a lot because of it. Makes combat much less tactical and a lot more frenetic because it's essentially a first person view, you have no idea what's going on around you. Finishing moves feel really disjointed because it shifts the camera angle to show you how awesome you killed that guy, feels like having your camera cut when you're driving to show someone else crash in Burnout Paradise, yeah, everyone hated that too. By the time you've regained camera control, you're being stabbed in the back by the other 4 bad guys.

Big bummer. I won't be buying this any time soon.

Originally Posted by Maylander
Quick question regarding talent points:

Spoiler

When or how can I unlock the other specializations? I currently have piles of points to spend..

AFAIK, you need to spend 6 talent points in the "training" tree.

Originally Posted by Thrasher
Big bummer. I won't be buying this any time soon.

The overhead view is gone, yes, otherwise I can't agree with LC - the combat is action combat, and fast, but it controls nicely and is an interesting challenge, IMHO. Never had the described problems with the kill scenes so far either. I'd say if you liked combat in Risen and G3 (CP) you are likely to like this - but everybody is different of course. It also reminds me a bit of Jedi Outcast - and thats a big recommendation in my book.

So far, mostly good. I really like the difficulty. Positioning and use of skills/items are really important - you can't simply button mash and expect to win many an encounter.

My one big complaint thus far is walking into people's homes and looting everything they own without them saying a word…

Originally Posted by Drithius
So far, mostly good. I really like the difficulty. Positioning and use of skills/items are really important - you can't simply button mash and expect to win many an encounter.

My one big complaint thus far is walking into people's homes and looting everything they own without them saying a word…

You would tell the super mutant killing machine with a big sword to stop?

Not sure how I am feeling about the game so far…I have been playing RPGs since 84 and never died so much ….I am playing it on hard…but hard on the frist one once I got use to the feel wasn't so hard….I spend some time last night getting the feel of the game so I could get into it today… and not sure I should be…not to post a spoiler but in one point I died over 30 times for 5 seconds of play…groups of grards etc i don't mind backing off…running around a bit…but this point there is none of that…I am here postin as I have to re-think my game plan on how to get past this or drop down to normal…I don't see anyway of playing on insane….
As for all the blah blah blah is itgame is a x-box game…it is a Great game so far….is it a PC only game most likely unless they really break down the it down …I am running a brand new Alienware system built for this game and though it runs great on it…at times you can tell it still would like more…
I know there is no pleasing everyone as the frist was great…
Maybe better than great…
I feel for those that have older systems….as my wife caught me building a even new system online before work this morning….
Well that didn't go over well…
Happy gaming ..

Graphics are ok, I've been playing at max settings sans "ubersampling". My one complaint on that front is that cutscenes can really be pixelated/striated. It looks much better with ubersampling on, but my ATi 5870 only pulls off 15-20 fps then.

Originally Posted by LuckyCarbon
Combat is very hard even on normal. Prohibitively hard in my opinion.

I agree with most of your post, but particularly the combat. I don't mind dying if the combat is a genuine challenge, but often I've been left feeling cheated because the camera couldn't keep up or an invisible wall blocked me in.

When faced with 3+ NPC's my preferred strategy is to jog around them taking the odd swipe when one of them is dumb enough to wander away from his friends, and this is just exploiting the AI. The combat mechanic is pretty cool 1 on 1 or even 1 on 2, so I'd much prefer smaller groups of stronger opponents.

Reminds me of Risen - fighting humans mano-a-mano was lots of fun but for the most part you were forced to hack away at groups of brainless monsters.

Anyway there seems to be a great game waiting to be played if I can get past this uber-scripted prologue which keeps shunting poor Geralt around.

Can you guys tell me if you're also getting this pixelation during cutscenes? (look at Geralt's face)
http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9…5181911285.jpg

Originally Posted by Drithius
Can you guys tell me if you're also getting this pixelation during cutscenes? (look at Geralt's face)
http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/9…5181911285.jpg

Yeah I get that with an nVidia too, also in game when I get a close up look at the vegetation (because my camera has gotten lost in it).

I've seen it in a couple of recent games, Just Cause 2 comes to mind and actually the visuals are similar in a lot of ways.