First Impressions: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition (PC)

While writing about Mass Effect 2 a while back and restarting the first Mass Effect, I came to the conclusion that I did not want to sit through that game all over again, repeating everything that I had previously done, either with the same outcome in mind or perhaps coming up with a new one.  That idea seemed daunting and the last thing I want to do is play a game and feel weighted down by self imposed obligation.  So I decided to leave the Mass Effect universe (for now?) and decided that it had been a long time since I had been in the Northern Kingdoms of The Witcher series.  I already had The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition on GOG and thought that this would be a great game to play while I was not lying in bed playing Fire Emblem: Three Houses.  Plus, if you have not seen the opening cinematic for The Witcher 2, I highly recommend it.  No, seriously.  I will just wait here until you come back.  

Good?  Good.

One of the first things I found rather amusing was that despite this game having come out in 2011, I am still not able to run the game on the highest graphical settings on my laptop.  There are times when the game takes a second or two to load textures when faces fluctuate between looking like something rendered on the N64 and an Xbox 360.  And then there was the opening minutes of the arena tutorial when my computer was really chugging, even during cut scenes, only to realize that my computer was not plugged in and the system was trying to run off of the battery.  Plugging in gave the computer a boost in performance, but still not enough for the game to run as smoothly as I would have liked.  It is still completely playable, but I do not think it is running at 1080p 60fps, so maybe it is not playable after all?

When I first started the game, I was happy to see the option to upload my save file from the first game, although I was not sure how much information was going to be brought over, but I was happy to do so; another plus instead of playing Mass Effect 2 and the issue that started this all.  So I first started the game using mouse/keyboard controls, being the way that I played The Witcher, so it seemed only natural, but because of the updated fight system here, I found the controls felt very awkward and in the arena tutorial, I felt that I was playing like crap.  So I started over, this time using an Xbox 360 controller, the controls felt a lot more intuitive.  At least for the most part.  Rotating the camera still felt a little jarring at times and not as smooth as I had while using the mouse, but overall, I found that I did prefer the controller with this new format for combat, especially with all of the added combat mechanics.  Somewhat surprisingly, I still played like crap during the tutorial and the game recommends that I play on Easy.  Sure fine, I will play on Easy difficulty.  No shame.  Sure, no shame. . .

I guess combat is one of the biggest changes that I have noticed in the game, and I am still not 100% comfortable with the changes.  The first Witcher game had a completely different feel to it, and not just because I was using mouse/keyboard controls, but the combat here does feel a lot more tailored to use on a controller.  During the arena tutorial, I did feel too inundated with information about all of the options to use against enemies such as daggers, bombs, traps, and five different spells that use in-universe names that are not always clear as to what they do.  In the first game, you slowly gained the different spells, often giving you time to use them frequently enough to recall what each one does on the fly.  Here, all I can frequently remember is that Igni is a fire spell because it looks like Ignite.  And I got very good at the combat in The Witcher, and I liked that both your steel sword and silver sword had three different fighting styles based on who you were attacking and if you were being attacked by a group.  I know that sounds more complicated, but combat in The Witcher seemed more RPG oriented than a straight-up action game.

Currently, I am just over six hours in and during the prologue sequence where you are able to somewhat determine the events that lead up to the present moment, I felt a combination confusion as being lost within the greater story, and that the story itself was one that I was not finding myself all that interested in.  With looking forward to playing The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt - The Complete Edition on the Nintendo Switch in the nearish future, I had hoped that I would be drawn back into this world rather quickly.  Going into Chapter 1 and beginning my exploration of the river port town of Flotsam, it was here that I was reunited with Geralt's male buddies, Zoltan Chivay and Dandelion; Triss Merigold was introduced in the introduction which fit it well with my choices from the first game; I chose her over Shani to look after Alvin when the choice arose as I thought a sorceress would have better luck than a field doctor.  I think it was the combination of all of the time I spent in Vizima in The Witcher, all of my run-ins with Zoltan, Dandelion, and Triss there, as well as finally acquiring some Witcher Contracts that really gave me the feeling of, "Yeah, now I'm back."

I was a little surprised when I looked up the game on HowLongToBeat and saw that the completion time ranges from 25 hours to 53.5 with an average-ish of 34 hours.  Granted the completionist time for The Witcher was 54 hours and I ended up taking 24 additional hours, but an average of 34 hours still seemed very short.  At this point in my ability to find time to play games, I am actually not too concerned if The Witcher 2 only takes me 40 hours, but I am anticipating more than 50 because that is just the way that I play these long-form RPGs.  Talk to everyone, read everything, and take in as much of the world as I possibly can.  And I intend to do just that.  I also intend to read the next book in the series, Sword of Destiny.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Through Forests Deep, Over Mountains High