It’s going to take a while longer before the press will be done dissecting and analyzing CD Projekt RED’s The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, but luckily for the Polish studio and RPG fans, the response is largely positive as this last handful of critiques shows.
Wired, 8/10
Making that tough decision dramatically changes the game in fact, there are hours of content that you won’t see depending on which path you take.
Besides giving you a good reason to go back and replay the 30-hour game, these branching paths make you feel like an integral part of the story. It’s a role-playing game in the literal sense of the word, something few videogame RPGs are these days.
Other RPGs present a clear binary choice: Are you a shining paragon of virtue, or a mustache-twirling, Saturday-morning-cartoon-style villain? Witcher’s choices actually made me think, and when I made the wrong decision, I truly regretted it.
GameShark, A-
The game mercifully does away with the sexual pin-up cards you’d receive with every sexual conquest in the first game. Although sex and sexism is rampant, direct encounters mostly strike a much more mature cord and, after the first scene, can be largely passed over if you so desire. That doesn’t mean there aren’t some graphic depictions to be found, but they’re largely context-appropriate and, in at least one case, delightfully amusing. Somewhere there’s a dwarf in a pub telling disbelieving ears about the elven spirits he heard at some ruins.
That said, CD Projekt still needs to do a better job handling women in its games. There are plenty of non-descript women walking around that I’m sure lead quiet, normal lives as I run past, but those you deal with directly are either whores, eager to stick their ample bosoms in your face, or end up being denigrated in some way. Geralt’s ever-present companion, Triss, is an arguable exception here, but there were events in this game where it felt like the designers were a little too eager to revel in the muck of ugly male behavior. It’s not anything an adult can’t deal with, but under not circumstances should you have your kids in the room when you’re playing this game. You’ve been warned.
Quibbles aside, The Witcher 2 is an incredible achievement in graphical fidelity, branching storytelling, and just flat out smart gameplay. It’s not as long as the first game, and the final chapter’s story arc does feel rushed, but any issues are massively outweighed by the brilliance of this design. As Geralt you’ll face some remarkably difficult decisions and you’ll never quite know who to trust or if you’re doing the right thing. If you’ve got the PC hardware to make it go and the stomach for some of the uglier things it has to say about humanity, this is a game you absolutely shouldn’t miss; a strong game of the year contender.
Kotaku goes scoreless
The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is not a tale of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski’s hero, Geralt of Rivia; it’s the tale of your Geralt of Rivia. CD Projekt Red has gone great lengths to create a game better than 2007’s The Witcher. They’ve built a stunning new game engine rife with dazzling special effects. They’ve tightened up the writing considerably, crafting a narrative deftly woven with suspense and sprinkled with lighthearted wit. Combat is faster, more fluid and natural than the complicated stance-switching beast of the original game. Even The Witcher’s trademark sexual content has been taken to a whole new level. These improvements lend themselves to a highly enjoyable PC action role-playing experience, but what makes The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings excellent is the same concept behind the success of its predecessor: The power of choice.
Tech2, 8.5/10
As much as I enjoyed my time with The Witcher 2, it’s important to reiterate the game’s shortcomings. It can be a bit intimidating to newcomers with its erratic difficulty and steep learning curve, so if you’re the impatient variety, you may get put off really fast. It even has a few issues with combat, its inventory system and certain annoying segments that involve brain dead friendly AI. But all that’s balanced out by a solid adventure backed by stellar production values, intense and challenging gameplay, a myriad of diverse quests, and an engaging plot.
Game Over Online, 80%
Following in the pattern of decent-and-then-awful that The Witcher 2 loves to soak in, the story waffles back and forth between “standard fantasy fare” and flat-out incomprehensible. For the most part, Geralt’s quest to uncover a conspiracy to assassinate all the kings of the realm is adequate to move the action along. Other times, especially concerning Geralt’s loss of memory, the game starts spitting out “in the know” gibberish in rapid succession and when the game dips into this lore from the novels, you may just as well go make a sandwich. Random names (of people we’ve never been introduced to) are thrown around willy nilly, with the developers seemingly assuming that the players will know who the hell they are. Half the time I couldn’t tell if nonsense words like “Aedirn” and “Glevissig” were people, places, weapons, artifacts…and after the first few hours, I just gave up caring. CD Projekt Red was clearly not interested in helping me understand so if they weren’t going to meet me half way, there’s not much I can do but smile and nod while all the characters spout context-less dialogue.
Another huge problem with using an established universe and characters based on a book series is that everything feels borrowed. I never truly got the impression that Geralt was my character. Even regarding any possible romantic relationship, I never knew if I should be staying true to the predefined roles or branching out on my own. Since I wasn’t the one that got Geralt to where he is with his lover, Triss, being given the option to cheat on her now seems shallow and scummy. But if I had been the one to establish that partnership in the first place, maybe finding someone new would be in-character. It’s like going to a friend’s house and seeing his shiny new LCD TV. Sure you want to watch something on it, but you aren’t going to start fiddling with the settings; it’s not yours to customize.
Both of these aspects hurt this RPG more than one might think. Immersion is always a big deal in a role playing game and the single biggest contributor to immersion is the feeling of ownership. This was never my journey, my companions, my victories, my rewards. They were all Geralt’s, and more than that, they were just the latest in a long line of such events that I have no knowledge of. It was as if I was merely a foreign consciousness that took control of Geralt for a single chapter of his life and then I was gone. He’ll go on to live more chapters in other games or books, and I’ll move on to other RPGs, barely remembering my time inhabiting his world. Was it a fun ride? Sure, but that’s all it was. It wasn’t a personal experience, like it should have been, like all RPGs should be.
