I'd call it a flawed masterpiece, with the flaws being few and far between (for me anyway- I had a grand total of 0 crashes) and being ironed out in the fairly regular patches

It's not a horrible game if you think of it as some kind of 3D fantasy adaptation of the old Streets of Rage games, actually. For a game that's the sequel to the spiritual successor of Baldur's Gate, however, it's an abject failure and a betrayal of its roots. I think that's the problem most people have with it.

Sales figures were high initially because of an insane marketing campaign. Over the course of one 30 minute-long show I saw four DA2 commercials, which I suspect led to the large sales numbers at first. Don't forget that within half a month of release they were giving away Mass Effect 2 with it for free, though.

So yeah, prevailing wisdom should be that it's a passable game given the right frame of mind. Witcher 2 is considered far more than passable by most people though, so it's not beyond reason that the majority of people would find it better despite opinions being a subjective thing. That's all I was saying :)

So stupid about these average scores is that the game can get 10x 95% score but then some incompetent idiot on destructoid or edge show up with 60% writing lies in the review and the score is going down with 2-3%. One or two persons can do such a difference with a bad review... shame

I played with excel a little bit.

Witcher 2 average score from 57 reviews = 88,561%
Witcher 2 average score from 54 reviews (without 3x 60% score) = 90,148%

Witcher 2 definetely deserves at least 90% score.

I don't know - I find the random extrapolation "is considered far more passable by most people" the wrong part. There's little chance to proove that, really.

I know very few people personally who disliked one of the games but liked the other. They either enjoyed playing both, or didn't play either because they dislike the entire genre.

Of those who played, the complaints about both games are numerous, always the same (and they're well-known), and ultimately didn't really impact the fun of playing either game.

I make two big exceptions to this, one for each game:
- In Witcher II, it shows some parts were never playtested, or their problems deliberately ignored (Alchemy-tree and the potion-system vs the Alchemy-tree come to mind).
- In DA II, there's a few story-ordering bugs which can make you see later stuff before the earlier stuff. Merrill's quest comes to mind, but while it's the most glaring one it was far from alone.

The reason I except these is because these actually will suck out a bunch of enjoyment if you run into them.

Still, personally I know very few people who a) touch the genre and b) didn't thoroughly enjoy both games. They're both good and very very different so I wish people would be less focused on comparing them all the damn time! -.-

Debatable.
In "modern" days of gaming-reviews, where a 0-10 scale is used from 6-10, where 6 is unplayable-due-to-bugs, and games actually starting up are either8, 9 or 10, definitely. I'd say it deserves a 10, easily. I mean it runs, you can get to the main menu, and it has a character. Comparing most modern reviews, it already qualifies for a 10 there.

Given review-scales where the full 0-10 is utilized, I'd say it'd be tough to call a game with as many technical and design flaws a 9/10, even given how enjoyable it is to play.
A 7/10, I suppose. A good game, very good even, brought down by bugs, a new and rough engine, some serious design flaws and combat responsiveness/feedback working together in a non-nice way frequently.
Doesn't "destroy" the game at all, hence a 7/10 (which is a good grade, mind you!), but not up there near perfection, yet.

Or in other words, 9/10 because a game has to be entirely-perfect + jaw-dropping to get a 10/10, then -1 for design flaws and -1 for technical issues => 7/10.

Yeah, you're right. It's not really something that one can offer up empirical evidence to support, but I will say that the tide of user reviews, meaningless as they are on their own, coalesce into an overarching narrative that tends to be pretty accurate. Maybe your experience is different, but I've seen a huge disparity between the narrative for the two games, though I will admit that it's not something that's really provable.

I do agree with both your exceptions.

And the same counts in the other direction.
Why don't you leave out the 7 100% scores as well and see where you end up then?
100% is at least as unrealistic as 60% for this game, if not even more so.
Perfection doesn't exist.

Anyway, the more scores, be they low or high, the more accurate your average will be.
Some people are very annoyed by some issues of the game that they are blind for the strong points of it, and give a score of 60% or less.
Other people are so in love with the game that they are blind to the weak points of it and give it a score of 100%.
They average each other out anyway, and you still get an accurate average.

I think the 88 it has from critic ratings is fair. I generally ignore the user ratings as most are fanboys or haters without a real review.

While its a great game the UI and inventory, along with potions being too short do hurt the game. Say what you want about bioware but generally they know to to make a great easy to use UI and inventory system.

It comes to my opinion that there's a level of biasness towards EU developer like CDPR. Believe me if Bioware release a game with level of Witcher 2 i'm sure it gets 20/10.

There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.

Lol anyway there is indeed some biasness... I feel the same way too... Im guessing EA/Bioware pulled some strings for DA2, critics giving high scores when the players themselves hated it, much like Two Worlds II...

The Witcher 2 is a definite 95% in my books...

Last we heard, The Witcher 2 sold 400,000 copies in two weeks. I wonder what that figure it up to now.

Yeah.. i'm interested to know if CDPR managed to sell 1M copies this time around. In my most humble opinion, this is the most beautiful RPG i've played in my past entire gaming life.

I've played all Bioware RPGs too and i'm no fanboy of any game developers. I'm a fan when you give me a quality product.

Your statement is incorrect. One outlier skew the average way more then the unrealistic score on the other end.
Simple math test:
Case 1 (Hater): 10 critics reviewed the game 9 people gave the game 9/10. One was a hater and gave the game 6/10. The average score in this case 8.7/10.
Case 2 (Fanboy): 10 critics reviewed the game 9 people gave the game 9/10. One was a fanboy and gave the game 10/10. The average score in this case 9.1/10.
Therefore, one hater deviated the score by -0.3 point while one fanboy deviated the score only by +0.1 from the average 9.0 between the regular reviewers. For hater that gives 0/10 score the score deviation will be -0.9.

Conclusion: haters in our case have more weight than fanboys and thus don't average each other.

Learn math!

I know enough math to realise that, thank you for your compliment.

It just seems that you didn't fully understand what I was trying to tell.
There are indeed 3 "hater-ratings" as you call them.
But there are 7 "fanboy" ratings, 4 more than "hater-ratings".
This means that there are more people who 'adore' this game than there are people who 'hate' this game, and it will push the average score up.

So do not only take into account the score, but also the number of ratings.
take 10 ratings of 90%, 3 ratings of 60% and 7 ratings of 100% and you will come to the nice average of 89%.

If you still don't know what I am trying to say, then do this:
Get all the scores from metacritic, and leave out all the 100%'s and all the 60%'s, and see what score you get.
Or wait, I allready did that for you :) It's 88,68%.
Did that change anything in the current score (with the fanboys and haters)? No.
So maybe now you get my point...

Oh and on a sidenote; I don't see a 60% as a "hater-score".
If a 100% is a fanboy score, then 0% is a hater score.
60% is more a score of someone who is probably just disappointed with the game.

Realistically speaking all 0/0 and 10/10 votes should be excluded to establish a much better average (this should apply to all titles).
Please note that reviews of a game like Witcher 2 that are rated below 5 are actually hater reviews. There are two reasons why.

1)

Just because you can review a thing it does not mean you should review a thing. Basically a car critic/lover should not be reviewing motorcycles because in principle he/she is unable to offer an informed and non-bias opinion, we already know what he/she prefers. And let’s face it, would cares what a motorcycle lover thinks about cars… right?

If you (as a male) were ask to review a Barbie doll, we would assume you would give it a very low score, because you are a male, you do not play with dolls, you are of different age bracket… therefore not a target audience. This does not change the fact that 6yo girl would rate a Barbie doll as 9/10 and be right about it, being that she is a target audience.

Someone who never played a role playing game and holds no interests in the genre should not be reviewing a role playing game (unfortunately the silly freedom on option, even uninformed one applies on MetaCritic.com and often on other review sites).

2)

Witcher 2 is a very good game. You can rate it as average if the style of role playing presented in it does not appeal to you or you dislike the setting (because you may think that Diablo is a role playing game or that Feralden has something more than a pack of wet dogs to offer), but let's be realistic as far as role playing games go this is a solid product. To give it a low score you need to hate it for wrong reason, hate the publisher/developer, hate the fact that others rate it higher than your other favourite game… and so on.

People love to hear a sound of their voice (or see their typing). They think that because they CAN express their opinion, they SHOULD, and demand that others LISTEN and RESPECT said opinion…