The Witcher 2 first impressions

Originally Posted by kalniel
SSAO - the darkening/shadows around characters and in the corners of things (ambient occlusion). It's not a bad effect in TW2 actually, and cheaper than shadows.

The cloth like artefact is called dithering - it's very visible from foliage shadows on the ground. The shadows should be transparent, but I'd guess there is probably a shader bug/driver bug for some cards that dithers instead of using proper transparency. I get it with my 4870.

Very impressed with the performance otherwise - set to high preset and it's great. I've turned off motion blur out of personal preference though, don't like it.

ATI 4870? That's my card! And I am running on low! Damn my slow CPU!

Yeah this is pretty amazing. My video cards are less than a year old, and I'm using two of them for Pete's sake! Never had to turn down settings until now. Never figured my processor would be the weakest link.

Finished chapter 1.

I like almost every major element of this game so far.
World design, story, characters, quests, combat, you name it.

Flotsam is one of the liveliest towns in a computer game ever, the forest is simply effin´ awesome, z-axis got sufficient amount of love this time.
The game sports superb visuals, a lot of work went into details like clutter or armors, ambience is very, eh, immersive.

Just about every quest offers more than one resolution, just about none is of simple fedex type and all feel unique and often imaginative.

Character development has enough abilities which really make a difference. There´s a lot of possibilities how to approach combat encounters and the system encourages players to be pro-active and observant to opponents´ movements which is good in an action RPG.
Stealth sequences are somewhat limited, but good for gameplay variety and multiple quest solutions enrichment.

Difficulty has been spot on so far on hard. There have been some difficulty spikes here and there, but, well, I happen to be a big fan of difficulty spikes .

Quest entries are fun reads and journal has shitload of progressively updated background info - lore was well taken care of.
Social skills enhance dialogues/questing quite nicely.
Cinematic presentation is very good.
The game has obviously great replay value, both from character building and especially story perspective.


Most of what I perceive as shortcomings are relatively minor things.

I miss the more complex alchemy system from the first game - with the need for alcohol and secondary substances gone it lost a bit of its character.

I´m alright with limited carrying capacity since it makes me pay more attention to items and introduces minor C&C in this regard, but I think it slightly clashes with crafting and loot systems - some ingredients/components are rather heavy - I think it would be better to either make them lighter or put less of them into the world and at the same time make crafted items require less amount of same components to craft. Some kind of storage capacity would be most straightforward solution though.

Inventory interface is quite ok, but "junk" category is needed and there´s one bigger flaw in the form of item descriptions - not all is always readable right away and having to wait for slow scrolling text is rather annoying when buying diagrams and such.
Speaking of UI, its art direction and design is a bit plain for my tastes, at least when it comes to journal. Functionality of journal and quest log is good though, maybe even better than in the first game since reading requires less scrolling.
There´s no option to switch directly between journal, character screen and inventory which is a minor nuisance.

Music is mostly relatively generic. It certainly isn´t bad and there are some nice tunes but it no longer is such an atmosphere enhancer as it was in the first game, though fortunately it did retain quite similar tone.
Ambient sounds, however, are great.

Minimap sorely lacks "north" indicator and as such is pretty much useless.

Minigames are hit and miss for me.
Dice poker is just boring, which I think has mostly to do with the chosen perspective and the fact there´s only one round.
Boxing is fun to watch and keeps player on his toes but the QTE scheme doesn´t manage well to connect Geralt´s actions with player´s. Still, I think it´s an improvement over the iteration in the first game at least.
I like arm wrestling. It´s simple but captures the feeling quite well I think.

Implementation of QTEs is in general questionable.
Sometimes they give the game way to arcade-y feel, sometimes they´re not well communicated, some just feel silly and often bring character/player disconnection. Can´t say I really dislike them though - they bring more gameplay variety and make me more attentive to what´s happening on screen.
The one in the battle was quite nasty and it took about 5 attempts till I finally noticed the blinking icon. I hope boss battles will stay clear of them as much as possible, the chapter 1´s second boss battle had none and it was an brilliant encounter.
Good thing some can be switched off (though I haven´ t done so).

Prologue is a great introduction from story/scenery/C&C standpoints, but it´s very skewed proportionally gameplay-wise. There´s way to many scripted sequences and QTE moments which create wrong first impressions.
The game opens up greatly in the first chapter and the ratio between elements is much more in favor of "normal" gameplay.
The first game´s prologue fared similarly on the first impressions front, but, at least to me, it felt more fluid and less all over the place gameplay-wise.

Save game system is pretty ridiculous in how little control of management it gives to player. No quickload, no deleting saves in-game, quicksaves and autosaves don´t seem to overwrite. I have to delete saves manually from the save folder to avert needless bloat.


Anyway, every game has its set of shortcomings and since I consider none of The Witcher 2´s to be "game breaking" or even major, while on the other hand I find all it´s core elements satisfying or simply superb, the game is a winner for me.
It has a lot of unique character, good wealth of intrigue, good amount of gameplay variety, sports sophisticated art direction and big production values, takes good care of replay value and isn´t afraid of being difficult.
So far it certainly has been a worthy successor to The Witcher and an excellent game overall.

All hail the quads I still may buy a better card for this game just for grins. Can somebody tell me a good Nvidia card that's under $200 bucks? I haven't bought a video card in many years, but I've always liked Nvidia. I'm sure ATI is just as good nowadays

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
ATI 4870? That's my card! And I am running on low! Damn my slow CPU!

This game is much more cpu dependent than any other I've played in recent memory.

Put it this way, this game runs much better on my laptop with only a GTX 420 video card but an i5 cpu than it does on my desktop with a new GTX 560ti video card but an old Athlon 64 400+ cpu. Most games I play are much more VPU dependent and it is the total opposite.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
All hail the quads I still may buy a better card for this game just for grins. Can somebody tell me a good Nvidia card that's under $200 bucks? I haven't bought a video card in many years, but I've always liked Nvidia. I'm sure ATI is just as good nowadays

I've been really happy with the above mentioned GTX 560ti I got in February. It's a little over $200 though. I've seen it on the low end for $220-$240-ish if you shop around. It runs most games really, really well. Don't expect miracles on TW2 if you have a slow cpu though.

There's a new non-ti version GTX 560 (I hate how they name their cards) that just came out. It's a little slower (few less cores and clocked slightly lower) but also retails around $199.

Originally Posted by GhanBuriGhan
ATI 4870? That's my card! And I am running on low! Damn my slow CPU!

Mine's only the 512mb version as well. This game really is all about the CPU (I recently purchased an i7 950). Which makes perfect sense if you're writing an engine to one day run on consoles as well - they're also quite CPU heavy compared to their graphics.

Originally Posted by Motoki
On the key mappings, it looks like you may be able to change them in the file \The Witcher 2\bin\config\Input_QWERTY.ini

Like, say, swap the IK_UP and IK_W values, for instance.

Can anybody out there confirm for me if it actually is possible to keymap the arrow keys for movement using this method of editing the .ini file? Anybody have first hand experience doing this and getting it to work?

Bought a new lap top for the game and well sort of needed one anyways…running everything on high and no problems at all…..but the laptop is only three weeks old so very impressed…

I am enjoying reading all the pros and cons of the game. I would not be buying this for a year even if I wanted it, because I like to wait for patches to polish these games.

I think the combat sounds very off putting to me, I don't want to have to roll around all the time when fighting multiple enemies. It appears that combat, a key element, has (once again) been designed in a way that would not allow me to enjoy the game. I'm not interested in playing arcadey like action combat where reflexes and quick button smashing play a large role. I will most likely pass on this game as well, just like the first Witcher, where combat was absolutely terrible from the demo I played.

I also think the UI looks and sounds very consol-ish in this sequel, which would annoy me greatly, and not designed for a PC. Probably this is because the game is intended to be released on consoles in the near future, but they should have designed a separate UI for the PC only, not a "compromise" that works on both platforms.

Originally Posted by crpgnut
All hail the quads I still may buy a better card for this game just for grins. Can somebody tell me a good Nvidia card that's under $200 bucks? I haven't bought a video card in many years, but I've always liked Nvidia. I'm sure ATI is just as good nowadays

Well, I'm running two GTS 450s that I bought for about $170 each. Probably get them cheaper now. It's about the highest end card you can get for sub-$200. Really pleased with them. As I said before, this is the first game I've had to worry about settings on.

Originally Posted by Arkadia7
I am enjoying reading all the pros and cons of the game. I would not be buying this for a year even if I wanted it, because I like to wait for patches to polish these games.

I think the combat sounds very off putting to me, I don't want to have to roll around all the time when fighting multiple enemies. It appears that combat, a key element, has (once again) been designed in a way that would not allow me to enjoy the game. I'm not interested in playing arcadey like action combat where reflexes and quick button smashing play a large role. I will most likely pass on this game as well, just like the first Witcher, where combat was absolutely terrible from the demo I played.

You shouldn't let random complaints influence your decision too much. The game, just like its predecessor is a great RPG, one of the few these days Its gameplay could be better however.

few things on combat'

first for me it seems a bit unresponsive. I often have to hit a button twice to get it to work.

also i found the difficulty to be very hard on normal, which was fine I figured I would figure it out. Well I have, the block key, enemies that trashed me 8 times in a row before I started using block now do little to no damage and are no challenge at all.
I hold block let them attack , they stagger , hit them twice, repeat till they are dead.I have only fought humans so far so not sure if it works on monsters.

is there a way to switch to signs by hotkey with out immediately using the sign.

Why no strafing or back peddling you always turn around. I think that is specifically made for controllers so you can control the camera with 1 analog stick and geralt with the other. throw in the poor support for hotkeys (like the signs I mentioned above.) and the console friendly radial menu and i'd say combat was made with controllers in mind first.

Maybe since you have the option to play with the controller on the pc they feel that's no a console sacrifice. I disagree.

sorry if i'm repeating anything already mentioned didn't have time to read whole thread.

Oddly enough im iffy about the combat in this one and loved the combat in the first. which i'm sure most of you will disagree with whole heartedly.

Originally Posted by Freeradical
Can anybody out there confirm for me if it actually is possible to keymap the arrow keys for movement using this method of editing the .ini file? Anybody have first hand experience doing this and getting it to work?

I changed the ini file with the help of this post from the GOG forums.

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witc…mapping_issues

Somehow i needed to change the keybindings with the configurator tool (this is a separate executable) before my it accepted the changed .ini. After that it worked fine.

The example there binds movement to the arrowkeys and several other important functions (block, use item etc) to the insert/delete block and numpad. A good setup if you mouse with your left hand.

Originally Posted by sakichop
Why no strafing or back peddling you always turn around…

Ho no I dislike so much that. Also I wonder how it can works well for group fights. Add to that target lock, and auto lock, and buggy auto lock, I feel it very bad. and I wonder how with such base it can generate great fights as some feel it now.

Originally Posted by Lurking Grue
Oh, I won him with two pairs too, but I never got any links. All I got was the congatulations in the pop-up and that's it (and I have the GoG version of the game, btw). Oh well, gotta check the GoG forums. Thanks for the info!


That player is me, it happened to me. I haven't finished the game, but Newboy said something like, "here, have the medallion, I don't want it," but then there is no medallion in my inventory. He clearly should given me the medallion, but nothing happens. Ergo, there's a bug there. I didn't want to kill Newboy as he helped me to escape by distracting the guards.

It is a bug, but SPOILER

Partially into chapter 1 and I'm loathing the combat. To be honest, the combat is pretty good 1 on 1, but it quickly goes down the toilet as you have to deal with multiple enemies (which seems to be the norm). The controls don't feel very responsive and if you accidentally move into the wrong position due to the lack of responsiveness of the controls, you could easily lose half your life.

I hate to say it, but I enjoyed the combat in the first game far more. I'll also thump the next person who says I need to roll more.

Apart from that it (and stupid QTE events), it's a fairly decent game so far. It's probably not meeting my expectations so far, but I'm still early in the game. The original game took a few chapters to really pick up.

Finally finished Chapter 1!

Dunno if something will be different in Chapter 2, but a few things I can't forgive:
1. No drinking "contests"? OMG… I want to get drunkards more drunk like in TW1! I certainly hope for a DLC with this.
2. Kayran boss… Man… I don't find QTE utterly "evil", but two QTE there… Very bad thing. I died about 10 times on that creature. It was fun and not frustrating, I admit, but those 2 QTE's were pretty much silly.
3. Boobs are all over the place. Great! But… No cards? Thumbs down.
4. Timed decisions… Um… I want to think some more will I release "elven terrorist" or knock him down. But ok… Not a biggie: F5 + reload saves the day.

A few things I adore and I didn't mention before:
1. Noticing the easter egg "they'll never learn" in the prologue gives you a certain perk. Also using persuasion, intimidation etc, affects your perks. Awsome.
2. Mutagens drop randomly from mobs. Honestly I thought I'll have to get alchemy for those, but thankfully it's not the case.
3. To solve or at least make easier certain quests you have to learn stuff. Read books, kill mobs, talk to NPCs. Nekker nests quest for example cannot be solved without doing this. Not to mention pretty challenging endraga queen (easier to solve with a certain oil type). Awsome. Nothing is pointless in this game. Especially reading books like in other games.
4. Some crafted equipment is better than loot. And some is (almost) necessary to make! Lousy equipment = you're dead.

I gave 10/10 to this game and honestly I adore it even more.

Actually as I get better with combat, i found I rely less and less on rolling.

Originally Posted by DeepO
Just about every quest offers more than one resolution, just about none is of simple fedex type and all feel unique and often imaginative.

Really? This certainly applies to the main quest, but all side quests seem extremely straight forward, and yield very little - if any - reward. In fact, they can safely be ignored. Nekker quest? Arm wrestling? Fist fighting? Queen bug quest? Dice? Pretty much every sidequest in chapter 1 can be ignored but the Kayran (which might just be a main quest, I'm not sure at this point - I completed it thinking it was a sidequest, but I'm not so sure now).

The same thing continues in Vergen. Main quests are awesome, but the sidequests are all rather simple and add little value overall.

In any case, I've bumped into another annoying bug: Failure to load the game. No idea why this happens, but from time to time loading savegames seem to end up in some sort of infinite loop - I have to alt tab out of the game, stop the game, and enter it again to load properly.

Is it just me or are the difficulty levels unbalanced? Playing on normal was almost impossible for me. I'm still in the prologue, and after dying about 10 times each in the ballista and dragon parts, I gave up and started a new game on easy. Now the combat is much too easy, and I didn't die once.

It's just weird, because I played the first game on hard, and even that was too easy.