The Witcher 2 Out on Steam, First Reviews Coming Out

After coming out on Good Old Games and GamersGate, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings is now also available on Steam for download.  Also, it seems that, despite a recurrent complaint from the press that review copies have been unlocked late, the first couple of English reviews for the game are out, and extremely positive at that.

Game Reactor UK, 9 (they also a video review embedded inside the link)

A big change from the first to the second game is the combat system. The old system has been completely replaced by a new one and when it comes to the fighting, The Witcher 2 is essentially an action game. Some of the damage you do is calculated while you fight, but other than that there are no invisible die being cast in the background. It’s about positioning, about attacking when your opponent lets down his guard and blocking when he attacks.

You’ve also got a whole bunch of magical abilities, so-called signs, that allow you to throw fireballs, push your enemies to the ground or cover yourself with a magical shield. The talent trees are huge, filled with skills and abilities in fighting, magic or alchemy and there’s no way you’re going to be able to learn everything there is to learn. The fights can also be quite challening and even on the easiest difficulty setting you better get used to dying quite a lot – at least until you figure out how to fight the most effectively and get some nice gear upgrades for Geralt (all of which are actually shown on the character, which should make all you loot-crazies happy).

The action-filled fights don’t mean that The Witcher 2 is a dedicated action-RPG, though. You will spend just as much time talking, exploring and solving quests as you do cutting the arms off bandits or slaying monsters. The tempo is generally good and varied all through the game.

Bit-tech, 95%

Unfortunately, while the interface and options provided by all these different ideas is impeccably put together, there are a few places where The Witcher 2’s controls falter. Searching enemy corpses, for example, can be a tiresome process even when you’re using Geralt’s detection amulet to highlight them in the undergrowth. Not only is the pop-up box tiny, but it’s also hard to summon thanks to awkwardly sized hotspots.

Quicktime events make an unwelcome appearance too, although you can at least turn their difficulty down through the in-game options. Again, though; the button indications are hard to spot when they’re sprung on you suddenly and the concept seems oddly incongruous when placed within an otherwise intelligent design.

The Witcher 2 overcomes these flaws with ease, however, and the overall impression we had was that CD Projekt’s game design ethic is on par with the company’s attitude to DRM in the way that it respects players’ abilities to think for themselves. It’s obviously a risky strategy just as the lack of DRM opens the title to piracy, the lack of guidance and level of challenge paves the way for complaints for ill-prepared players. Personally, we find it’s an approach that has paid off in spades.