Newkie

Just finished off The Witcher II. I was a bit late onto the first one having only played it last year but it's graphics and gameplay didn't seem too behind the times. The second one though has really great textures if you can run it at top spec with no difficulty. The gameplay has changed a fair old bit-unusual for most rpg sequels with Fable, Kotor, Elder scrolls, Mass Effect etc seeming to stick with what they know. It definitely freshens the game up a bit and-particularly at the start-made the game a real challenge (I found). It's no longer possible to string together 20-bit combos to tear through a group of soldiers, instead you have to make a lot more use of guile, particularly the dodging roll and "ripostes" or well timed counters. The use of posion, fire or stun grenades etc etc as well as throwing knives also livens up combat options.

However-not sure whether this was because I started the game on its second from top difficulty (on the top-Nightmare you can't actually manually save and with this game, where autosaves are basically built around cutscenes, it would definitely bring about rage issues or cardiac arrest) but I did find that you slowly learn what combat style suits you and you rinse and repeat this through the game. The same can be said of a lot of RPGs of course but in most of them you will learn some flashy new explosion or jedimindtrick power even if they are gimmicky. The Witcher though is built around passive traits-all your armour and essentially every attribute/trait you get only adds passive bonuses to the game, with the exception of magic which I found to be a bit of a waste anyway unfortunately as you could get the most out of it-a 1hit invulnerability shield (Quen) and a "blast" (Aard)-from the start

Anywho. while the combat isn't great what I do love about the Witcher series is the storyline/general character interaction. Maybe I'm a bit childish for laughing when a prisoner calls you a c**t or the fact that you can get one of the best weapons in the game by complimenting the Lady in the Lake's firm ass rather than her virtue (if you do the latter she gives you the finger, and not the good kind)-before plugging her watering hole but the humour in the series is great. I also like the fact that unlike kotor/fable/mass effect with the whole "evil choice make u red and bad and scawry/good make u nice angel man wiv halo" (which was cool about 10 years ago) the Witcher/II more often than not presents you with two or three morally grey choices (and in two they've even brought in a count down!) where you're actually racking your brain over what the consequences might be, or worrying after you've chosen something, which is a far better approach than murdering some poor sentient Fish creature just because you want a better force choke ability.

I did feel though that the game let itself down a bit with the whole character import from the first game-really it seemed to make very little difference given you rarely meet up with the same characters, or if you do they don't seem to remember you ****ing them over, which was a shame. If they had left it out entirely I wouldn't have complained, but as the option was there I coudln't help feeling disappointed. Hopefully they can fix this for the third installment (which from the little released about it sounds like it should be good, 20% larger than skyrim-which for a game which is quite linear in where you can travel will be some achievement if they can pull it off and keep the same depth to the story/quests as the first two had).

Overall a very satisfying 8/10.

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