I recently purchased the game during the Steam summer sale, so I thought I'd share my thoughts.
First of all, the game is bloody
gorgeous. When you first step out of the tent and see the battle raging around you, it's really quite breathtaking.
This is how you depict war. I'd say the graphics are easily on par with
Crysis, but unlike that game this one actually has an artistic style to it. One thing that struck was just how
mediaeval the game looks. I know that's what you'd expect from a fantasy game, but the Witcher 2 hews a lot more closely to the European High Middle Ages, in terms of dress and architecture, than other fantasy-themed games. Hell, the opening siege of the La Vallette castle felt like something out of
Medieval 2: Total War. Of course, there's a bit of an anachronism stew going on, with characters wearing 13th century style armour while others wear 16th century style ruff collars.
While the graphics were excellent, the game engine apparently doesn't support 16:10 aspect ratio, so there's black bars on the top and bottom of the screen. I am aware, however, that there's likely a fix in the works for this. I also noticed that, with SSAO enabled, characters will occasionally cast odd-looking blob shadows near the walls, but this is a very minor thing.
So on to the game itself...
Damn it, every time I see "Geralt of Rivia" I keep reading it as "Geraldo Rivera." Can't be helped.
Within the first five minutes I'm treated to near full-front female nudity. Since the game was produced in Poland, they obviously have differing standards from North America, but I can't help but feel they were trying to make a statement with this sort of thing. "We do not share their Puritan western values, so
let's hit em' with the good stuff!" Triss Merigold immediately makes me think of Leliana, and I think to myself, "I am going to have to kill her?" But she isn't like her, really. So she'll live. For now.
I'd say that in a fight with Hawke, Geralt would trounce him easily. But would he win in a fight against my warden, Skade? I think not.
Now I've heard that the prologue to this game is supposed to be really, really hard, but I never got that impression. I only died once, when Drizzt, er...Geralt unded up charging forward when I mashed the attack button, causing him to end up completely surrounded. The game does provide a rather poor introduction to combat, however, and it often informs of abilities and talents well
after they would have come in handy. You also
really to have to learn how to move in battle (rolling was quite helpful in getting out of bad situations in a hurry), as well as using your Signs and bombs as much as possible. I'd almost say that the signs make things a bit
too easy, IMO.
Damn, I love the music that plays during battle! Really gets you pumped up for some killin'.
I have a rather large gripe with the user interface; it's rather clunky and often requires an unnecessary number of clicks or keystrokes to get where you want to be. I kept longing for a
Dragon Age-style quickbar on the bottom of the screen, where I could access potions, spells, and whatnot at a keypress.
As for the story itself, I've never read the novels and know next to nothing about the setting. As a result, it feels like a large amount of lore is going completely over my head. Not only that, the setting feels...I wouldn't call it cliche...actually that's
exactly what it is. I'm sure twenty or thirty years ago this sort of grimdark "Anti-Tolkien" fantasy would have been a break from the traditional heroic High Fantasy material, but these days, where GRRM's
Song of Ice and Fire pulled a
Watchmen on the fantasy genre and convinced everyone that ZOMG GRIMDARK!!! was the way to go,
The Witcher feels like it's riding a trend. It's not
bad, mind you, just it feels like something I've seen before.
Modifié par Redcoat, 06 juillet 2011 - 06:50 .
same with *SPOILER*
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lol ![=]](https://lvlt.forum.bioware.com/public/style_emoticons/default/sideways.png)
