The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

Hated the combat. After the Mass Effect series, I found the dialogue options quite restrictive, even if your decisions ultimately have farther reaching implications in this title.

Last about 3 hours playing this in 2020 in prep for Witcher 3. Extremely annoying camera controls & combat, but I could see why someone would come back and play it especially if you dislike the open world aspect of W3.

I do not enjoy how this game plays

Great for some of the same reasons that 3 is (story, characters, music, graphics, etc) while being a lot more linear. I was scared that the third would lose what made this one great, so that's a testament to how good this is. Sure, it is a little buggy but it's easily forgivable, and I've never understood why people don't like the combat in these games. It's good; not unique, but good. Game's a classic, I usually pick 3 over this as a preference but god damn they're both amazing.

Much better than the first game. Far better storytelling and gameplay, and the visuals still hold up fairly well in 2023 (although some tweaking to gamma was necessary). That being said, while it improved dramatically over the first game, I still feel like there's a lot of room for the series to grow, so let's hope the hype is true for Witcher 3!

actually tried to play this one but had to give up cuz too outdated. wish i played it when it came out...well again maybe this woulda been best for me in 09 lol. there were things i liked though. the map was fucking garbage. hard to figure some things out and shit. liked the story. GoT so similar. love triss. i liked the diff paths you could take. and how you could end the game avoiding a fight. i like how it set up the wild hunt

Cool RPG but a bit too pessimistic for me.

the third game played surprisingly well despite being based upon typical tolkein-filtered european mythology, but this is mostly tedious nonsense, and geralt seems wont to produce even more morally pernicious rhetoric. his outburst during the first encounter with the scoia'tael was nauseating, self-righteous claptrap. do i really have to play as this master-of-common-sense dipshit?

Combat forced me to get really cheesy, but I like the writing here a lot. I prefer how this game is more focused than The Witcher 3, without the big open world.

I might be unnecessarily harsh on this one. Witcher 3 is possibly my favourite game of all time. Witcher 2 is certainly not lacking in the story department, but it suffers from unhealthy amounts of jank, slow-ass movement, poor level design and unintuitive Witcher potion menu-navigation. The game just doesn't feel very good to play. For anyone interested in the Witcher, I recommend reading up on the story and going straight to 3.

The worst combat I've ever experienced. Also, the map feels so narrowed down compare to the first game. No room for the feeling of free-roaming.The first game was aware of its incapabilities. That's why they all map sat on a flat level. There was only 1 level. But in this one there so many ladders, hills, stone stairs, and climbing. But every one of these movements requires a mouse click at the exact time when the icon of the movement appears on the screen! Slow, unexciting gameplay.

A brilliantly told story in every way. The way it weaves its characters into the fabric of the story and world show much more than it initially lets on. It puts you in the boots of a guy who is constantly surrounded by politics yet wants nothing to do with them. Your main concept of the moral direction of the game is constantly questioned as the alliances of the characters move until there is no right and wrong. Such is the Witcher 2, a daring and phenominal story experience.

Hm. Well, the branching narrative in Act 2 is to be applauded, and the choices and consequences are probably the best of the series, but everything else just feels so "cinematic", so "AAA", and so carefully curated that it doesn't really grab me. And hot damn, those QTEs. At least W3 has an open world as a selling point. Coming from Witcher 1, this one induced a bad case of culture shock.