In this review, we try to solve problems in the PC/Steam game The Witcher 2: Assassin’s of Kings. We find out how well this RPG game plays.
This game was released in 2011. It is the sequel to the game to The Witcher which we also reviewed previously. While the previous game got only a mediocre score, we, nevertheless decided to give this game a spin anyway.
The game appears to take place after the events of the first game. Kings are being assassinated by an unknown assailant. Unfortunately, others have pinned this on you, Geralt of Rivia. Charged with regicide, you aim to try and clear your name by tracking down whoever is responsible for the king slayings.
This game certainly has a number of similarities to the first game. First, you still have the two sword attacking system. You have two swords: a steel sword and a silver sword. There are, of course, additional weapons in the game, but you generally operate on the two weapon system. Steel swords are meant for fighting human enemies. Meanwhile, the steel sword is meant for you to fight monsters.
While that is nothing new, the style of attack is slightly altered. Previously, you had to choose between fast style, strong style, and group style. This is manually selected from a quick menu as you take on different enemies. In this game, however, group style has been eliminated entirely. You are now left with strong style and quick style. What’s more is that the styles are no longer manually selected. Instead, you can use left click for quick style and right click for strong style. This obviously helps make this game more efficient.
Another change is that you no longer have a quick menu at all. Instead, you operate on the basis of several quick keys. While the game does train you a bit to tell you which keys does what, after that, you are generally on your own.
In addition to this, the timing system has been completely eliminated. Previously, you had to try and time your clicks to attack enemies. Yellow is a reasonably good hit while orange is the best possible hit. In this game, however, you no longer have to put up with this and just click to attack.
A similarity to the previous game is the use of a minimap. Like the previous game, you get waypoints to mark where you need to go during a particular quest. If you are close, a small orange shield represents where you need to go. If you are far away, then you get an arrow (or arrows) to guide you in the general correct direction.
Another change is within meditation. Previously, you needed some sort of fire starter and you could only meditate at specific fire’s. Now, you can meditate anywhere via the CTRL button (middle icon allows you to meditate).
Like the previous game, meditation permits a number of actions. This includes passing the time, brewing potions, or checking up on your characters ability progression.
One minor change is that you can access your characters ability tree at any time. So, you no longer need to be meditating to spend your ability points.
As you complete quests or defeat enemies, you’ll get experience points. Get enough experience points and you’ll level up. The leveling up system has been completely overhauled. Previously, you could get bronze, silver, or gold points as you leveled up. What you got in terms of point types was fixed, but you could level up certain traits based on the type of points you got. In this game, however, the bronze, silver, and gold points has been scrapped. This in favor of a much more stripped down style of simply spending points. Every time you level up, you get a point.
Spending points is generally similar, however. You get a skills tree that you can spend points going four directions. Initially, you can only spend those points in general training. Make it to the top of the skill tree and you’ll unlock the other three branches. Those three branches are: swordsmanship, alchemy, and magic. What you choose to level up is entirely up to you, but each branch does have great overall benefits to offer you. What you choose depends entirely on which style you want to play the game in.
One thing that is slightly different is the use of mutagens. Mutagens are items you can obtain in a number of ways. You can obtain them from fallen enemies, brew them as a side effect (an ability is required for that), or you can even buy them. Mutagens can be used on the skill tree. Look for a slot for an ability you activated. If there is one, you can apply a mutagen. Mutagen’s offer characteristic bonuses. This can include resistances, more vitality, better armor, attacks that deal more damage, and more. Simply select the skill where a mutagen can be applied and apply the mutagen of your choice.
Another major aspect of this game is the ability to brew potions. In this game, this has actually changed by quite a bit. Previously, you needed to have an alcoholic drink strong enough to brew the potion. This is no longer required in this game. You simply need the necessary ingredients and the potion recipe to brew the necessary potions.
Additionally, harvesting ingredients has changed somewhat. Previously, you needed to purchase books to learn about the ingredients in the area. You now no longer need prior knowledge to harvest ingredients. Instead, you need to simply find where the different ingredients are growing so you can harvest them.
You can use your medallion to find item pickups. Simply use “Z” to activate it. This will cause item pickups to give off an orange glow. Moveable objects and doors will also glow. Finally, you can find circles of power to obtain an extra temporary boost in different character stats (this can include health regeneration, weapon damage, and better defense among other things).
Item collecting is slightly different. You now can pick up multiple weapons. Previously, you can only store weapons you have equipped. Each item has differing weights (some items don’t have any kind of weight to them). You can carry up to 300 units of weight. After that, you are forced to walk everywhere you go. You can either drop items you are carrying or sell them to the various merchants in town.
Additionally, you can obtain special quick action items. This includes bombs and throwing objects. Throwing objects (typically, knives) typically allow you to attack enemies that are ranged and you cannot reach them via direct melee combat. Traps, meanwhile, can be laid out and hit enemies after they step on them. On easier settings, these are almost completely unnecessary, but on harder difficulties, they are almost a necessity.
Another type of quick action item you can get are bombs. You can throw a number of these and they will do damage to enemies in the blast radius.
Finally, there is the magic abilities. Like the previous game, you get 5 signs. In this game, you don’t have to activate anything. You get your magic right away. You can access your signs in the CTRL menu. Alternatively, you can use them via a quick cast. Different signs do different things.
The item menu is a bit different, but fairly straight forward. You can click on a number of different item categories to show what items you have for that category. For instance, clicking on junk items will show all the junk items. Crafting items will be secluded if you click on the crafting item category. Clicking on the treasure chest item will show all items.
Additionally, you can organize items by different aspects. These aspects are the four smaller icons on the left hand side. By default, items are organized in alphabetical order. Other ways are sorting items by when you first found the item, by weight, or by how much you can sell that item for. Quest items generally do not have weight or value.
Quests are handled fairly similarly to the first game. You have a list of quests via the “J” (Journal) menu. Unlike the previous game, you can only see quests based on their most current phase. If they are ongoing, they won’t have anything next to them. If they have a red “X” next to them, then it means you failed a mission. A green down arrow means you’ve completed the quest.
Quests with a subtle shield next to them mean they are main game quests. Alternatively, if they don’t have a shield next to them, they are side quests. You can activate and track a quest by double clicking on them. If the quest you have shows gold characters on the top, it means you can do something right away to advance the quest. If the quest simply has normal white text, it means you can’t advance the quest any further for now (or you’ve already completed it).
Quests are generally obtained by following through existing quests (you start with a handful of them). Other quests are obtained by talking to people (i.e. finding out that you can play different Non-Playable Characters (NPCs) in dice poker. Alternatively, you can find the jobs board and obtain contracts from them.
There are also mini-games in this game. The first game is the only returning mini-game: dice poker. Dice poker is played by rolling 5 dice. Much like Yahtzee, you need to try and get various “hands”. This includes a 5 dice straight (i.e. 1-5 or 2-6) or matching dice (pairs, triple’s, quads, five of a kind, full houses, etc.) The higher the value for matching dice, the higher the value your hand. You make a bet, roll, then make an alternative bet, and roll whatever dice you choose. Beat your opponent by getting a better “hand” then them.
A second mini-game found in this game is arm wrestling. Simply keep the icon within a small margin that slides along a bar. The longer you keep it there, the more you win the fist fight. Allow the icon to move outside and your opponent starts winning. Move the mouse (which has a delay effect) to keep control of your icon. Defeat your opponent by pushing their arm down like you would expect in a real life arm wrestling game.
The final mini-game is the fist fight. Think of this as the Dance Dance Revolution game. Using your WASD movement keys, hit those keys as they appear on the screen. Do so quickly enough and correctly, and you’ll win a small flurry of fists. Beat your opponent by winning enough rounds of punching.
Like the previous game, this game has a lot of talking and speech trees. You’ll generally get different reactions from different choices. Most of the time, your choices only affect conversations. Other times, they will have an impact on the overall game. Try to get as many good choices as possible during the game.
A new feature, however, is the use of time limited decisions. In the heat of the moment, you can get a choice, but a limited amount of time to make it. Sometimes, those quick decisions have huge implication on the rest of the game. So, choose as wisely as you can.
Another new feature is the ability to use various signs. Different signs will show up from time to time while making decisions. You can charm people, control another characters decision making ability, or even intimidate people. Like your characters experience points, the more you use a type of ability, the better you get at that specific type of persuasion. Note that you can always fail to perform an action and some characters are immune to certain kinds of persuasion. So, use and choose carefully.
Also, there are certain quest orders you can take that will fail certain missions. Generally, this comes from completing one quest too quickly while another quest was still left unfinished. Also, making certain decisions while in conversation can cause you to fail a mission. So, saving often over top of the auto saving is generally advised.
For me, one thing about this game is that the writing is definitely improved. Previously, you were running around and collecting sex cards while completing quests. The game wound up being just less than believable. This time around, the game is much more believable even if virtually every character is less than likable. For a game that is heavily dependent on dialogue and cut scenes, this actually makes a difference in the overall experience.
The game is far from perfect, though. For one, the controls are all keyboard shortcuts. A lot of RPG games do utilize keyboard shortcuts, however, many of them utilize clues in words themselves to make familiarizing yourself with keys easier. An example of this is Might and Magic IV – Clouds of Xeen.
This game doesn’t really do this and expects you to remember everything after a short tutorial level. Not only do you have strict keyboard shortcuts for so many controls, but you also have to remember a certain order in the process. This pretty much forces you to rely on a cheat sheet after a while thanks to either not remembering right away or coming back to the game after a period away from it.
There are also bugs to be found in this game. Perhaps the most annoying one is the soft locking of the game on doors. If you have a person or happen to hit a door at an angle, you can cause Geralt to walk forever, forcing you to reload at your last saved game. Most of the time, this isn’t a problem, but sooner or later, I found, this happens.
Additionally, the game can be rather confusing with all the twists and turns and how quests flow. This pretty much forces players to abuse saving and loading whenever things don’t go their way (beyond losing in dice poker of course).
On the plus side, difficulty curve is actually quire reasonable. You can also select different difficulties based on your level of skill. In fact, how well you do in the tutorial level allows the game to recommend a difficulty level for you.
A number of the changes from the previous game do make this game a better all around game. This includes the removal of the bizarre sex card system, the overhauling of the leveling system, and changes to the alchemy system. In many ways, you don’t actually find yourself missing the quick pause system. On the other hand, the quick pause system did make the interface a bit easier to use. So, I’m not sure about the axing of the quick pause system even though so much about the game is much more efficient.
At one point, I did experience a full game crash, though since it only happened once, I can chalk it up to bad luck. Otherwise, the game itself seemed quite stable. The only issue is that auto-saving automatically saves into a new file. So, the more saves you have, the longer it takes to load up the load menu. At the beginning of the game, this is no big deal. Towards the end, you can definitely watch the whole game just drag trying to bring up the excessively long list.
Generally speaking, the game has a very steep learning curve with the general controls. Additionally, there are a couple of bugs that can cause soft locking. Also, the quests can be rather confusing at times. Still, there have been a number of changes that actually improve the overall game such a the writing, the alchemy system, and combat systems. Ultimately, this is a great example why I try and play games further down the franchise list even if the previous experience wasn’t that great. You never know if things will get better or worse. In this case, the game is an improvement over the previous one. It’s not a particularly amazing game, but it felt much more playable.
Graphically, this game does feature quite a bit of details. The cities, forests, and caves do offer a fair bit of visual variety. The small firefly effect does allow players to find item pickups without having to use the medallion. Also, the models are reasonably good and the effects are pretty good as well. So, a pretty solid effort all around.
Audio is also respectable. The music is pretty decent. Nothing especially stands out to me, but the overall music is actually pretty respectable. Sound effects are nicely done. Voice acting is also quite solid. My only problem is that some of the dialogue is too quiet in some scenes. Good thing there is captioning or else I would have missed good chunks of the dialogue altogether.
Overall, this is a solid game. It’s definitely an improvement over the previous game. Several modifications do improve the overall game such as character development, alchemy, meditation, and combat. Writing is definitely improved as well. Additionally, the difficulty curve is quite respectable and the game can be adjusted based on your skill level. Problems include a steep learning curve with general controls, soft locks, occasional glitches, and sometimes confusing quest progression (Try going through the Up the River quest without eventually having questions on your first playthrough). Graphics are reasonable and the audio is respectable. So, a reasonably solid game all around.
Overall
Furthest point in game: Beat the game.
General gameplay: 17/25
Replay value: 7/10
Graphics: 8/10
Audio: 3/5
Overall rating: 70%
Drew Wilson on Twitter: @icecube85 and Facebook.
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