50% of the damage is *deflected on enemies*.
But 100% is absorbed by Quen instead of Geralt's vitality bar.

Granted, the use of "deflected" in the talent tree description is slightly misleading.

I am in Normal Mode. I thought I had set it to Easy at the outset, but apparently didn't. Hasn't been all that bad. The biggest issue, and I've seen it mentioned here in other threads, was the fact that Gerault would start whacking on one opponent, then suddenly jump to another, and the camera pespective kept changing. Sure does screw things up. It wasn't until I was on the wall during the Battle for Vergen That I discovered the Alt key where I could stay focused on one target ( some people are just slow ). : ) That helps quite a bit.

Ooops, by bad, you're right. Then maybe it felt weaker, because I went from normal difficulty to hard mid-game and that was around the time of patch 1.2.

Your last sentence hit dead on what I was trying to convey or at least part of it, plus the jumping from one target to another. You are right, in that you can get into trouble easy enough locking on, but if you stay heads up, you can usually avoid a whole lot of grief. I think the biggest problem was the one size fits all approach they took with developing the game for both the PC & Console. I have a PS3 and somebody posted an app that willl allow you to use the PS3 controller, I think combat may work better with the controller & Joystick rather than mouse in the game. It worked well in TW1.

HUH??? cRPG's are KNOWN for replays. That is one of their big selling points. Some do it with different classes like fighters/mages/thief, others do it with different races and others do it with good/bad playthroughs.

So you are way off base on this comment.

Some people will replay anything they love, and rightly so, but in the vast majority of CRPGs, the story is going to be exactly the same every time you play it. Few games have such large mutually explusive paths as TW2 does. Even a TW1 replay is going to see a lot of repetition.

I think the main reason why CRPGs get replayed a lot anyway, is because there's a serious lack of quality CRPGs, and RPGers are fanatical enough to prefer replaying a story they already know over playing a non-RPG. But honestly, when I replay a CRPG, the fact that I already know the story, hurts the experience.

CRPGs have little replay value because every time the plot is going to be the same. The problems, challenges and bad guys are going to be the same. The story will be mostly the same, differing only in details. Sure, I may have different spells, weapons and armour, but if they don't effect the plot (and they rarely do), then from an RPG viewpoint, it's not terribly interesting.

The main replay value comes from the modding community. Experience the same game, but this time with lots of new stuff added, lots of broken stuff fixed, etcetera.

You have a point in that very few CRPGs have [i]major[i/] plot changes if you play through the game differently. However, one of the big 'replayability' factors is that there are many minor plot points/side quests that are very different depending on how you approach them in-game. As well, some CRPGs have side quests/companions/subplots that don't even appear if you do the story one way instead of another. Couple that with the different flavor afforded by playing different classes/races or even the opposite gender, and I find CRPGs in general have far more replayability than most other genres.

True. You can be a thieving, sneaky bastard, a charming, persuasive devil, or a sheer brute. The various builds, character development paths (which also corresponds to different equipment), plus the sidequests based on your choices contributes to replayability of CRPGs, at least the better ones.

Modding adds to that too.

CRPG's have little replay value? You're kidding right? While there is a moderate amount of reply value here in tw2 (not sure there is as much as the hype says) Badur's Gate, Icewind Dale or Fallout had tons, depending on the story and different characters/directions you can choose (and the former mentioned had many) . I'm curious which games have found to have no replay value. Usually adventure games have that claim (you can only do one correct sequence but I still love them....thanks GOG!) IF you shelve them for a year or two you forget...and can reply or play with a friend.) Anyway, interesting comment..

I agree with the OP for the most part i have finished one play and am half way through the second play and well the game is even more annoying this time than the first time. I hate the combat, gimped alchemy, the meditate before potion use, the over use of QTEs which negate any potion usage, the inventory system is still broken, in comparison to TWEE TW2 is consolized trash.

I run the game on a home built machine which is an I7 950, Asus p6x58d premium main board, GTX 480, 64 gb Kingstom SSD where win 7 proffessional 64 bit is installed, a Western digital 2tb 7200 rpm 64 mb cache Hard drive where everything else is installed. The game runs great and looks great but that is about all that is great in the game, hardly an endorsement more of an expectation. Too many things were changed or not fixed from TWEE in what appears to me to be the detrimental effect of the inevitable consolization of a PC franchise where the developer shit all over thier primary audience, in what can be described as a Douglas Adams moment "So long and thanks for the fish".

Asai

But then you're still playing an adventure that you already know. Perhaps it's my experience with pen & paper RPGs. If you've played an excellent adventure or compaign there, you don't say: "That was great! Now let's try the same thing with different characters!" You go of and play a completely different adventure.

Take The Enemy Within, widely considered to be one of the best RPG campaigns ever. I know lots of people who ran that campaign several times, but always as a GM. Playing the same campaign a second time as a player would seem rather pointless, not to mention unfair, because you already know what's going to happen.

Compare this to strategy games, like Advanced Squad Leader. Lots of people replay the same scenario several times, even against the same opponent. It's a pure test of skill and a learning experience, rather than experiencing a new story.

As such, my feeling is that strategy games (especially multiplayer ones) have an enormous amount of replay value. For CRPGs, after the initial play, any replay will naturally suffer because you already know the main plot. It is now merely a test of skill -- can you do it at higher difficulty? with different stats and abilities? -- and it has that completist/collectors thing that works with single player adventure games, but not with multiplayer roleplaying.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that to me, it feels like any replay value in CRPGs exists only if you ignore the roleplay value. It's a game that needs to be beaten or a gameplay world that needs to be explored, rather than a unique experience to a unique character, which if how I view a roleplaying adventure.

I guess that's also why I never really replay CRPGs. There are a lot of which I have great memories that I'd love to experience again, and a lot of games I've played in the original version, rather than with the community mods or enhanced edition (I never played TWEE either). I have replayed strategy games like Civilization 2 and Stars! about a million times, and I've played pure tactical games like Nethack and Adom possibly even more. I love RPGs, and that includes CRPGs, more than I love strategy games, yet for some reason I never replay them. I'm not entirely sure why, really. Apparently I'm unique in this.

I don't play any of the games you mentioned here. However by looking at your post, you used the same arguments (no new story, but merely a test of skill) for both CRPGs and strategy games, yet you concluded (based on those 2 arguments) that this is why strategy games have higher replayability value.

Or perhaps you are merely suggesting that CRPGs have less replayability to you because it does not have a multiplayer mode?

Strategy games DO have more replay value than RPGs but the comparison isn't really fair. They are a different class of games and utterly impersonal. You manage a world but you never get to experience it. I have replayed Alpha Centauri more times than I'd like to admit but it's a poor substitute for seeing the place in first/third person. How I wish someone would make an RPG in the same universe at a time when all factions are still alive and half the Planet is unexplored... To discover the wreck of Unity... To watch Sparta battle the Peacekeeper forces... To walk thru the gardens of Gaia... To sabotage a power plant in a Hive city... To be saddened at how Believers destroy anything luxurious in a settlement they've conquered from Morgan.... Eh well, man can dream... Where was I?

Ah yes, the replay value. A fair comparison would be another game type where you play first/third person. Like an FPS or an adventure or a stealth game or a survival horror. Out of these, RPG offers more replay value IMO. You experience a story that is similar to the one you've already seen but it's not *quite* the same. Kinda like watching a movie and then reading the book that the movie was based on.

I agree. I played through Neverwinter Nights Platinum some 5 times. TW1 3times, Fallout 3 at least 3 times. Nayway you get the idea, some do lend themselves to replayability as they are fun and you can do different things. Some others, with just one way to go, are still fun to go back through at times and others, once was enough.