Posted March 27, 2016
I recently finished a play of The Witcher 2, I tried play it at release, also at Mac release, and never succeed go that far. But finally I succeed play it, and this first play has been both an enjoyment and a boredom.
I'm a big fan of The Witcher 1 but past two plays at release I never replayed it fully not even at Mac release. So perhaps I would enjoy TW1 less nowadays. What's sure is the various CRPG using party and turn based combats that was released past years made me less motivated to suffer the combats like in TW series but you can add almost all CRPG more or less similar.
So I never enjoyed much the combats in my play of The Witcher 2, and I could be the cause by not learning them and not digging them enough. But it's far to be the single points I didn't enjoyed.
To pinpoint that I'm not just looking at it negatively, I want highlight that TW2 has multiple great points:
- Writing is still on top,
- there's a fair effort to mix and merge well both some hand guiding and not too much hand guiding,
- graphics are once more at top including for an aesthetic aspect,
- there's multiple significant choices,
- the conclusion/end is quite well polished and detailed,
- the areas design is overall improved in comparison with TW1 and is overall good if you admit it's no open world CRPG (open world has also many issues and isn't just better).
I still suffered a lot too often during this play:
- Too long and too linear introduction.
- Tedious QTE gameplay everywhere, thanks they can be largely disabled but there's still the boxing, and multiple weird fake combats sequences.
- Lost of impertinence in comparison of TW1.
- Humor not working well or less well than in TW1.
- Choices and consequences highlights with much less impact than in TW1.
- Still too many paths obstacles that feel totally unnatural even if this points is improved in comparison of TW1.
- Inventory management that is a boredom because of the combination of a painful console limitation of the GUI and a craft system focusing much more on quantity than on quality or fun.
- Some MMO like grinding (generated by the crafting)
- Too many "movies" combats that lowered my pleasure at many important moments of the game. I mean combats designed around specific features (do this do that) instead of just being good combats exploiting a good combat system. And all those fake combats sequences was always bad time and no way any pleasure.
- Too many tedious secondary actions like prisoners walks, dragon events, reaction dialogs, more.
- Too many translation problems (French) related to quests, I count at least three, it's not much but it destroys the confidence in game tricks. (quote that overall the translation seems quite good beside those quests problems)
- Tricks and hints design too often weird.
- I failed enjoy the crafting past the potions, I felt it too much focused on quantity and a bit of grinding when crafting can be much more fun. But the problem with the inventory and the GUI didn't help me try enjoy it.
- Stealth parts, zero fun for me, and I have enjoyed a few stealth action games.
- And if mini games more or less worked in TW1 it's been a total failure in TW2, for me.
I can understand the TW1 impertinence isn't anymore possible at least for this series, I can understand the team is looking to improve combats and actions diversity and that's a difficult task (give us a party turn based CRPG, Geralt, Triss,Zoltan, Dandelion, Letho, Vernon, Iorveth, Cynthia, more, that's poential for kicking parties :-P ).
But I'd prefer they concentrate on do something very well instead of trying to do everything much less well, and that all those mini actions and mini games are objectively weak tedious mini web games that hardly add anything to a CRPG gameplay.
I'd also prefer they give up try make "game movies", that they let that to cinema and better concentrate on making a better gameplay and pure story telling.
To conclude on a more positive note, I'm downloading TW3 despite I was decided to wait a possible Mac release before to buy it. So TW2 has been many suffering moments for me but good moments too and definitely the writing is again very good.
I'm a big fan of The Witcher 1 but past two plays at release I never replayed it fully not even at Mac release. So perhaps I would enjoy TW1 less nowadays. What's sure is the various CRPG using party and turn based combats that was released past years made me less motivated to suffer the combats like in TW series but you can add almost all CRPG more or less similar.
So I never enjoyed much the combats in my play of The Witcher 2, and I could be the cause by not learning them and not digging them enough. But it's far to be the single points I didn't enjoyed.
To pinpoint that I'm not just looking at it negatively, I want highlight that TW2 has multiple great points:
- Writing is still on top,
- there's a fair effort to mix and merge well both some hand guiding and not too much hand guiding,
- graphics are once more at top including for an aesthetic aspect,
- there's multiple significant choices,
- the conclusion/end is quite well polished and detailed,
- the areas design is overall improved in comparison with TW1 and is overall good if you admit it's no open world CRPG (open world has also many issues and isn't just better).
I still suffered a lot too often during this play:
- Too long and too linear introduction.
- Tedious QTE gameplay everywhere, thanks they can be largely disabled but there's still the boxing, and multiple weird fake combats sequences.
- Lost of impertinence in comparison of TW1.
- Humor not working well or less well than in TW1.
- Choices and consequences highlights with much less impact than in TW1.
- Still too many paths obstacles that feel totally unnatural even if this points is improved in comparison of TW1.
- Inventory management that is a boredom because of the combination of a painful console limitation of the GUI and a craft system focusing much more on quantity than on quality or fun.
- Some MMO like grinding (generated by the crafting)
- Too many "movies" combats that lowered my pleasure at many important moments of the game. I mean combats designed around specific features (do this do that) instead of just being good combats exploiting a good combat system. And all those fake combats sequences was always bad time and no way any pleasure.
- Too many tedious secondary actions like prisoners walks, dragon events, reaction dialogs, more.
- Too many translation problems (French) related to quests, I count at least three, it's not much but it destroys the confidence in game tricks. (quote that overall the translation seems quite good beside those quests problems)
- Tricks and hints design too often weird.
- I failed enjoy the crafting past the potions, I felt it too much focused on quantity and a bit of grinding when crafting can be much more fun. But the problem with the inventory and the GUI didn't help me try enjoy it.
- Stealth parts, zero fun for me, and I have enjoyed a few stealth action games.
- And if mini games more or less worked in TW1 it's been a total failure in TW2, for me.
I can understand the TW1 impertinence isn't anymore possible at least for this series, I can understand the team is looking to improve combats and actions diversity and that's a difficult task (give us a party turn based CRPG, Geralt, Triss,Zoltan, Dandelion, Letho, Vernon, Iorveth, Cynthia, more, that's poential for kicking parties :-P ).
But I'd prefer they concentrate on do something very well instead of trying to do everything much less well, and that all those mini actions and mini games are objectively weak tedious mini web games that hardly add anything to a CRPG gameplay.
I'd also prefer they give up try make "game movies", that they let that to cinema and better concentrate on making a better gameplay and pure story telling.
To conclude on a more positive note, I'm downloading TW3 despite I was decided to wait a possible Mac release before to buy it. So TW2 has been many suffering moments for me but good moments too and definitely the writing is again very good.