The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Preview

GameShark is up next to preview The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and comes away impressed, noting it is “a title that should be on the short list of every self-respecting RPG gamer”.

What’s different this time around is the level of refinement as no system goes completely untouched. Combat has been revamped from the somewhat repetitive click fest of the first game to a more arcade-like experience that, at times, feels like it would be more at home on a gamepad. The fast, power, and group combat styles of the first game are long gone. You now make swift or power attacks using the left and right mouse buttons, using the keyboard to direct Geralt towards a particular opponent. You must also manually adopt a parry posture if you want to absorb an adversary’s attacks. Though different and definitely arcadey, it’s ultimately effective given that the first game’s combat model was not its strong-suit. That said, you also have to make such frequent use of a specific tumble animation to quickly move into or out of danger that even after just a few hours with the preview build I found myself wishing Geralt had a few other dodgy moves in his repertoire rather than somersaulting around the battlefield like an Olympic gymnast.

The character skills are now grouped into three primary trees: Training, Swordsmanship, and Alchemy although the latter two are inaccessible until you’ve accrued enough Talents in the Training tree. It’s a simpler system than in the first game, but it still allows for plenty of customization that should allow you to approach combat obstacles from different angles based on how you’ve built your character. One interesting aspect to this is that, rather than try to explain away Geralt’s skill advancement from the first game, this game appears to just ignore that any such progression occurred. It may not be an elegant solution for a continuing character, but it beats forcing in some convoluted plot-based explanation.