official The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

[inferniac]

All in all I think the devs have handled this release very poorly.

It really looks so, patch is said to be coming next week to fix activation / dlc download issues among others.

[hekkyUK]

Damn this game is HARD!

I always like to play my games on the hardest difficulty but I'm struggling with this on normal and I refuse to play it on easy :p!

If it wasn't so buggy I would keep trying but I think I'm going to give up for now - At least until a patch or two are released

[spaceelf]

It felt damn hard until I figured out how to drink potions. Heh. Yay for confusing interfaces!

[WastedJoker]

Other than the DLC issue I've not had a single problem so I think it's been a successful launch.

[DrunkenBeard]

I'm not sure I can play this on my laptop : i5 M420 @ 2.27Ghz, 4Go RAM and a Geforce GT 230M

[ViperAFK]

Damn this game is HARD!

I always like to play my games on the hardest difficulty but I'm struggling with this on normal and I refuse to play it on easy :p!

If it wasn't so buggy I would keep trying but I think I'm going to give up for now - At least until a patch or two are released

I found even easy pretty difficult. I died many times lol.

[Nagisan]

I found even easy pretty difficult. I died many times lol.

The only time I've died was when you had to run from cover to cover while the dragon in the beginning breathed fire down on you. For some reason, the dragon was breathing fire nearly constantly out in the open at one point, my only option was to try to run through it (it was just not freaking stopping). Then a few other times he burned down the roofs and caught me on fire when I fighting the enemies in the same area. Died 3 times trying to get past that point......since then I haven't died once. I however have not gotten past the first major town as I haven't had enough free time to continue playing.

Group fights in general are a pain though......even only 3 guys are really tough to take on at times....they just all seem to attack (which interrupts you) at the same time, making it really hard to take even one down. My best tactic so far is using Aard on one of them to knock them back/interrupt one of them, then either using it a 2nd time on another or just attacking the two one after the other (switching between strikes....annoying but it can handle 2 guys pretty well if done quickly).

Anyone have tips for group fights?

[DrunkenBeard]

Anyone has problems with the mouse ? The game runs fine but the mouse is extremely unresponsive ingame. I turned v-sync off and changed smoothness to 0 in a config file (saw that in a forum while searching for a fix) but the problem persists. It's not unplayable but it's very annoying :/

[Fusion101]

Yeah ive noticed some mouse issues, like you say it isnt gamebreaking, just anoying.

[Miuku.]

God people will accuse ANY game of being "consolized" these days, its ridiculous. This game isn't even on consoles yet, and I didn't notice anything that seemed to obviously cater to them.

4 button combat, a 4-way easy to port inventory interface + wheel for abilities, a complete "on rails" storyline with very little branching, bosses were practically straight out of any a-typical slashfest and.. door area transition.

The game reminded me greatly of Dragon Age II, which was a huge disappointment for me, much like Witcher 2 ended up in being. I guess PC gamers nowadays are so starving for any games that they're willing to suck anything and if anyone disagrees, they get flamed - sad, really sad.

[Billus]

4 button combat, a 4-way easy to port inventory interface + wheel for abilities, a complete "on rails" storyline with very little branching, bosses were practically straight out of any a-typical slashfest and.. door area transition.

The game reminded me greatly of Dragon Age II, which was a huge disappointment for me, much like Witcher 2 ended up in being. I guess PC gamers nowadays are so starving for any games that they're willing to suck anything and if anyone disagrees, they get flamed - sad, really sad.

Errr what? Have you played the first Witcher at all? Witcher 2 uses the same formula that made the original Witcher popular. Most "open world" games fail to portray a real, progressive storyline with any real meaning and significance. To compare Dragon Age 2 to the Witcher 2 is just stupid, the Witcher is in a league of its own. Dragon Age 2 removed many features from Origins whereas the Witcher 2 has kept or built upon them.

[Lovell]

If you played the first Witcher you'd realize how superior this 4 way system is, in the first Witcher you had to pause the game to select spells or equip bombs potions etc. and it was very tedious, if you don't like the game then don't play it but don't assume your opinion is fact and better than others just because we don't share your narrow opinion, not all RPGs have to be like Oblivion or Fallout.

The game is only hard at the start for some reason it gets a lot easier when you get some armour, unlock more health, damage etc. at the start 3 soldiers can kill you in seconds later on they barely scratch you.

I'm finding all of the references to characters, events from the books damn annoying, even more so considering there's no information in the journal to catch people up, they just throw out random references as if you're supposed to know what they are.

There's 5 books and only 1s been translated to English so it's kind of annoying, there's no reason for a lot of these references to be in the game they don't add anything but confusion. :blink:

[burnsflipper]

Anyone has problems with the mouse ? The game runs fine but the mouse is extremely unresponsive ingame. I turned v-sync off and changed smoothness to 0 in a config file (saw that in a forum while searching for a fix) but the problem persists. It's not unplayable but it's very annoying :/

I'm running it on a GTX 460 with 768mb of RAM and it runs quite smooth in High, with the ocassional texture popping, specially evident in the tavern, and yes it is quite hard I had my ass handed to me so many times, specially by that first boss monster thing :p

Also some quests where you have to find things, they usually aren't on the map, and you end up taking many turns in the forest until you find them :angry:

4 button combat, a 4-way easy to port inventory interface + wheel for abilities, a complete "on rails" storyline with very little branching, bosses were practically straight out of any a-typical slashfest and.. door area transition.

The game reminded me greatly of Dragon Age II, which was a huge disappointment for me, much like Witcher 2 ended up in being. I guess PC gamers nowadays are so starving for any games that they're willing to suck anything and if anyone disagrees, they get flamed - sad, really sad.

from Joystiq.com

Did you know that The Witcher had three different endings? Seems like par for the course, right? Well, things are getting downright insane in The Witcher 2, which Eurogamer reports will have 16 different attainable outcomes. Here's some other interesting improvements, courtesy of that snazzy new multi-platform engine:

There will be 256 cutscenes (totaling 150 minutes) in The Witcher 2, whereas the first game only had 130 cutscenes (totaling 53 minutes)

The Witcher 2 will have 30 different armor types to choose from, compared to the five available in the first game

You'll only need to suffer through four load screens in the sequel, while the first game forced players to wait during approximately 700

16 endings, yeah, that's very little branching right there :rolleyes:

I've started a 2nd playthrough and only in the first chapter already found very different situations according to my choices

It really looks so, patch is said to be coming next week to fix activation / dlc download issues among others.

They have never been quite good with optimization, if you remember the original release of The Witcher, maybe we'll get some performance patches in the next week

[Lingwo]

Finally got round to trying to play it.

I put my CD key in when it asks for it and then it just says "checking for updates" and then it closes! No error, no nothing. I can't launch the game any other way. I have to use this launcher for it to update the game. Brilliant stuff, i am usually one who will defend DRM but this isn't making me a fan of it :laugh:

[+BeLGaRaTh Subscriber¹]

Finally got round to trying to play it.

I put my CD key in when it asks for it and then it just says "checking for updates" and then it closes! No error, no nothing. I can't launch the game any other way. I have to use this launcher for it to update the game. Brilliant stuff, i am usually one who will defend DRM but this isn't making me a fan of it :laugh:

I was having the same issue which I posted about earlier in the thread. What I did was go to the securom site and downloaded the srdiag tool, that found an issue with securom, downloaded something and then the CD key thing worked. Sadly though my machine now runs like a dog, very slow and sometimes grinds to a halt, all was fine before SUCK UR RAM was installed and fixed :(

[Lingwo]

I got it working in the end. I had to manually download a patch from thewitcher.com and it allowed me to activate and it worked fine then. At first i tried srdiag and it wouldn't even find securom in the game :laugh:

By the time i done this it was late and i went bed. I only played past the intro and walked outside the tent. I will play some more in a bit and hopefully see a bit more of the game. I've already see way too much of Triss.

[WastedJoker]

http://www.destructoid.com/review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-201752.phtml#ext

Destructoid giving it a 6 out of 10 :/

[Lingwo]

More site hits if they give a popular game a bad review. People will go there to see why and to moan.

[WastedJoker]

Patch 1.1 notes:

Internal tests of Patch 1.1 are well under way. Our current target is to release it this evening. Please note that although we are doing our best to have it ready by then, the time still may change in order to be completely sure that the patch will function properly. This is our primary concern since there are significant changes and upgrades that will affect many users.

1. Simpler and more reliable game installation and activation. Details to be revealed soon.

2. Fixed the free Troll Trouble DLC download. It is now included n the patch so there's no need to download and install it separately.

3. Fixed an issue that prevented some users from downloading other free DLCs (the ones given out with some pre-orders, special promotions, etc). The launcher now properly refreshes the list of available DLCs and allows for installation.

4. Performance improvements: approximately 5% to 30% better framerate and faster game loading for many users, depending on their individual systems and game versions. Owners of retail versions can expect the biggest improvements.

5. Fixed random crashes occurring on some systems, especially after saving and loading saves.

6. Key mapping ? allows the arrow and number keys to be used for movement.

7. Added the option to invert the mouse.

8. nVidia surround vision now works properly.

9. More accurate assessment provided by the "auto-detect settings" option will help improve game performance.

10. Removed a bug that prevented completion of the ?Blood Curse? quest.

11. Fixed a bug that prevented the additional link in "Extras" from being unlocked after winning the dice game against the GOG.com monk.

12. GOG.com credits now work properly.

source: http://www.gog.com/en/forum/the_witcher_2/the_witcher_2_patch_1_1/post227

[Andre S. Veteran]

Looks like they're still fixing the big, easy to fix bugs, like broken quests and crashes. I think I'll wait for a few patches before I buy. Anyway no time to play this atm, but it does seem exceptionally good.

[Lovell]

http://www.destructoid.com/review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-201752.phtml#ext

Destructoid giving it a 6 out of 10 :/

I know the feeling when you get beaten badly in a game you get to know all of the bad things, the bugs and minor annoyances stick out a lot more, after reading his review it reads as if he got raped the entire game.

His review is spot on though about all of the little annoyances, not been able to open doors or pick up items till the fights over, problems getting your sword out or switching your sword for some reason it just seems to stop working you'll have to switch it around 3 times before it works, the quests with no map markers are especially annoying you have to run around hammering the medallion just to find them or you stumble on them out of luck.

There was 1 quest which I finished by accident managed to skip just about all of it and only found the other bits later on after the quest was over.

I still believe 60 is way to low to give a game just because you got annoyed, but hopefully if they make a Witcher 3 they'll sort all these little annoying bits out, they really do ruin the game and destroy all immersion.

[lalalawawawa]

http://www.destructoid.com/review-the-witcher-2-assassins-of-kings-201752.phtml#ext

Destructoid giving it a 6 out of 10 :/

Probably because it is not by Bioware and EA, and its not as hard and immersive as Dragon Age 2. :)

^^

EDIT: Or maybe it wasn't as hard as Valve's Source games, you know so hard that you don't even die unless you're an idiot.

[WastedJoker]

I like the lack of objective icons. Too many games hold your hand *shrugs*

Anyway, it seems the fps boost for retail versions comes purely from the wonderful Securom - from the patch notes I think we can expect the DRM on retail versions being removed entirely.

[WastedJoker]

Patch 1.1 is live but make sure you remove all mods (this includes all the pre-order bonus dlc you might've download from pirate websites :p) before attempting to install.

Just copy them back once the patch is done.

Bro tip: Save your config files as the patch resets them - I decided to just re-configure my settings via Options in case the .ini files had inconsistencies...

[DrunkenBeard]

Word about the patch notes ?