The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

So, after completing my Witcher 1 playthrough I jumped straight to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. I had played it through once before and therefore decided to pick the other path this time (at the end of act 1 you get faced with a choice of which side to side with and the whole of act 2 is built around that choice (different quests, quest hub, questing area, allies etc)). More of that inside the spoiler tag, though I’ve gotta say that it’s quite an interesting approach which adds quite a bit of replay value. Witcher 2 has some nice updates besides the obvious graphical ones; the combat is smoother and you no longer had to jump between stances and using signs is much smoother, you can use them just by clicking their corresponding number key (1-5).

Witcher 2 feels significantly shorter than the first game and the story is a lot more focused, maybe a bit too much at the time. It feels like you’re only constantly running around after the main objectives with maybe some minor side objectives you can complete as you hunt the main objective. On the one hand this is an improvement over the often meandering quests in the first game but on the other it makes the game (at least feel) significantly shorter.

The second game reintroduces a few characters familiar from the first game, like Triss, Zoltan and Dandelion, but also has plenty of new ones, most significantly Roche (leader of the Blue Stripes, the Temerian Special Forces), Iorveth (leader of the Scoia’tel) and Saskia the Dragonslayer. The game continues the series tradition of telling a great story and presenting the player with tough moral choices where nothing is as it seems and there rarely is a right answer.

Spoiler

I found this game’s story maybe even more entertaining than that of the first game, but it was a bit short and the areas you moved in felt rather small and much reused (sort of like Dragon Age 2 compared to Dragon Age 1). Still, I would definitely recommend this game (though I’d also recommend starting from the first game to get the whole story). Onwards to number three!

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