The Witcher

[Akka]

Seeing how it works fine with a keyboard and mouse then I'm pretty sure it was designed for both, and thats fine.

No it doesn't work fine, it's clunky and not ergonomic.
And if you're going to answer "no no it's fine", let's just agree to disagree, because it's becoming tiring.

 

[Disgustipated]

Anyone have a problem of not hearing NPC voices? I save this morning during the Indecent proposal quest, and they were working fine then. I was inside the home of the main dude in Flotsam (is he the mayor?), and it was working fine. But now I load it up and no npc voices. Including background NPC voices. I need to get this going as the game isn't very immsersive without any background voices (or voice when you talk to someone). I never realize what a big part of the game that is.

I do hear the dog bark though..

I did restart the game.

edit: I had to restart my whole computer. Strange.

edit2: I may as well ask a useful question. Anyone know if I can sell all these forumulas? Or do I still need to keep them in my inventory to use them? They don't take up much weight, but .1 pounds is .1 pounds. Plus I like to reduce clutter.

 

[Akka]

edit2: I may as well ask a useful question. Anyone know if I can sell all these forumulas? Or do I still need to keep them in my inventory to use them? They don't take up much weight, but .1 pounds is .1 pounds. Plus I like to reduce clutter.

No dice, you have to keep them, and some of them you can't even sell as they are flagged as "quest item".
And yes, it's annoying.

 

[Maniacal]

Quest items don't weigh anything iirc, and you can sell the formulas you are not using (I sold most of the ones I got as I didn't need them). Unless you are going the alchemy path on the skill tree I wouldn't worry about keeping more than several (a few useful potions like Swallow, the other health regen one who's name I can't remember, and a couple of bombs).

 

[LDiCesare]

I finished the game. Overall, I think The Witcher 2 is a good game, maybe even very good.
I also think it's strictly inferior to The Witcher, as it's inferior to its predecessor in every respect except graphics, fistfights and the arm-wrestling minigame from my point of view.

Regarding the user interface, I'll add my 2 cents.

The tiny info boxes and slow scrolling for items in inventory/shops (fixed by mod)

The talents screen not showing what the second level of a talent does until you've taken the first level - also no indication of why you can't take the advanced trees at the start, and no indication of which talents are mutable until you take them.

The alchemy screen is a complete mess - it often defaults to using your most precious ingredients (and resets to them after each potion you make), it won't tell you how many of an actively-chosen ingredient you have, it doesn't show you how many of any given potion you already have,

You have to exit every sub-screen to go to another, rather than going eg straight from character to inventory

Yes, all that. I also hate with a passion the fact that the item which you select in the inventory suddenly increase in font size and at the same time lose the weight/value info on the right, so the displayed item is actually the one with the least information.

The key-bindings is really bad. I have managed to switch from AZERTY to QWERTY keybinding IN-GAME without knowing how I managed to do it. It's a very annoying bug as you type ',' or 'm' and end up doing nothing, or get the wrong key indicated for fistfights (even though that's mitigated as you know the location of the keys anyway).

As for the graphics options yes that is an annoying game design, although not what I think of as a UI issue when its on the main menu (or should be).

The problem is it is not on the main menu. You have to exit the application to change the important graphic options, which is really annoying. Same for language, although I concede I'm probably an oddity in wanting to switch languages in-game.

Huh, didn't have an issue there, the maps aren't THAT big and confusing. However, hopefully they will fix that.

Nice that you didn't have a problem. I keep hitting the M key every minute because I am absolutely unable to use the minimap most of the time. It's almost useless to me.

You might want to check your resolution, because I don't have that problem. However, it would be nice if it didn't have to scroll for the longer descriptions or a better scroll.

If there is a problem at a given resolution, then there is a problem period. The inventory system requires you to WAIT for the damn text to SCROLL up so you can read PARTS of it. You can't ever read all the item description at one time, can't even scroll manually, which would still be lame but better than an auto-scroll. The inventory system is just bad.

Also, there is no way to sort inventory by weight, which is an issue as you easily end up collecting tons of junk that prevents you from running. I also have gameplay issues with the whole inventory and crafting system: Money is mostly irrelevant. Crafting requires you to carry tons of leather, timber and iron, which you should obviously be able to buy at the local merchant instead of stealing them all around the city right under everyone's nose. It's a very stupid system. You are encouraged to steal stufff in order to craft an item that will often prove inferior to something you can buy or find. I mean, superior elven armor, kayran armor? They are made obsolete almost immediately.

Saving the game works fine for me, and they are thankfully improving it in the 1.2 patch.

It's already been mentioned that you cannot rename saves, and that you cannot replace saves. The 1.2 patch doesn't change that. The system is still very bad.
The lack of renaming is especially bad. CDPR probably thought it was useless because they provided a bmp screenshot, but it's not very informative most of the time and eats lots of disk space for little benefit.

it rotates the ingredient symbols in the middle bit so you can't tell the upright-line symbol from the diagonal-line symbol etc

That is odd but they are all colour coded too.

The colors are not different enough, so the color-coding is bad. Plus there are many color-blind persons, and relying on color only to convey some information should simply never be done. It results in a very hard system. I also thinnk the whole potion system is a big regression from The Witcher, as the albedo/rubedo/nigredo added layer is gone. Plus most of the potions have a negative effect that is so important that I systematically ignore these potions, and can still play the game. In the previous game, potions were actually important. In this one, they are mostly useless, except Cat and even then only in one dungeon, and the plot-related ones. Even the potion to fight the kayran can be built without ostmurk, so it's a bit buggy.

Click to select and then press spacebar to take all. Iirc, it may be less than the first game.

I think you misunderstood. He's talking of alchemy here, not looting.

The delay for looting corpses is way too long, and very difficult to see the loot drop in long grass/swamp etc unless you use the medallion (which itself has an excessively-long delay)

The medallion delay is fine, but yeah the first game had the same issue with waiting around for the corpse drops.

The medallion delay is not fine, it should not exist at all imo. It is simply annoying and doesn't add anything to the game. It should actually be an option in the game to highlight items or not, a bit like the alt key in Diablo 2.

Skipping cutscenes is very temperamental
Wouldn't, never wanted to.

Nice to see you don't have a problem with that. I have one. It's a pain when you reload before fighting the kayran and right click at the bad time and have to withstand the cutscene totally again before actually playing.

You don't really need precision in this, its very quick (possibly faster but that could be a different experience depending on the user and their sensitivty settings) since you don't have to point directly at it and its not a surprising decision given that its 3rd person and can use a gamepad. The only unituitive part is that if you stand on it or too close it doesn't seem to pick it up which is odd.

In lose a lot of time trying to get the proper item I want to pick to select. The system is very bad, and totally inferior to a simple point and click system: You want to pick up stuff. You move. You often move too far, even though you only tapped the key once. You turn. Stuff won't be selected unless you loot another container before, which you just don't want to.
If people who use a gamepad don't have any option, then too bad for them. I have a mouse and keyboard, I would appreciate if objects I don't own didn't make my experience with the game less enjoyable.
It REALLY wastes time. At least until you realise that loot is always worthless in the game and you might as well skip it altogether.

Another thing I wanted to mention:
The dice rolling minigame is bad. Having to throw the dice is unintuitive. I mean, they stand in the air waiting for you to do something which can only have bad consequences if you throw too far, so you end up just clicking so you avoid losing one die.
In addition, the system is inferior to the first game system, as you have only one game instead of having to win twice in a series of 3. This reduces the strategic element of poker to around zero.

 

[LDiCesare]

Regarding gameplay and story, I'm a bit disappointed with regards to the first game.
TW2 is much shorter. The story is also both more naive, straightforwards, and at the same time more difficult to grasp if you haven't read the books.
The story is centered around monarchs and important persons, but lacks the absolutely great stories about common people that were in TW. Namely, the Beast and all the depraved villagers were awesome and truer to the spirit of the books than the story in TW2. The side quests seem less numerous too.
Crafting is mostly pointless. It is very much about putting lots of junk in your inventory to realise that they can only be used to craft stuff that's inferior to what you already have, or find 2 minutes after crafting your item.

Regarding choices, TW2 is quite poor compared to TW. I lack the paintings showing you the consequences of your acts. You decided to help scoia'tael? Look what they use their weapons for. I haven't felt there was any hard choice in TW2. TW proposed choices that were harder because you lacked information or there were more shades of grey. TW also proposed three paths: You could end up being on the Scoia'tael, Order side or remain neutral. TW2 only offers Iorveth or Roche.
The consequences of your acts aren't shown either in the epilogue. Depending on whether you saved or killed Adda in TW, you would see the consequences of your actions in the end-game. In TW2, you have choices with more consequences than killing or saving a princess, but don't know the end-result as the game just stops when you finish it, without giving you any idea of what your actions changed in the world.

Spoiler :

In particular, I can't think I have convinced anyone but Roche that I didn't kill Foltest in this game. I'm not sure there's a way to do it, but the consequences of these actions, like sparing Letho or not, are not shown and that's sad.

This is really sad, because you interact directly with several countries instead of just the capital of one country, and yet I ended up with the opinion I had changed the world less than in TW. Even though in TW most choices are rigged and destiny kind of traps you, it felt like you had choices and had to cope with them. TW was, from this point of view, truer to Geralt's psychology (he always believes he is guilty for everything bad that happens around him). TW2 just lacks this aspect altogether.

There's also the whole remembrance things. I don't like the cartoony visuals much. In comparison with the paintings of TW, I feel I've lost a lot. I also think the remembrance storyline is useless from a storytelling point of view. It doesn't lead anywhere. What we learn is also not particularly convincing.

Spoiler :

Yen and Geralt are alive, but how did they survive? Apart from telling us that Geralt once saved Letho, the whole thing provides naught. The allusions to the Wild Hunt are also useless as they amount to: "There is a Wild Hunt out there and your looss of memory is their fault". With no more detail. It's just lame, not fleshed-out enough.

Overall, I think I'll replay this game once, to see the difference between the Roche and Iorveth paths. I played TW 4 times, because I wanted to see the differences, but once again because it was fun and the story was much better.
If anyone aasks me about TW2, I'll advise them to play TW, and if they like it maybe try TW2, but I won't tell people to try it as I have for the first game.

 

[Maniacal]

The key-bindings is really bad. I have managed to switch from AZERTY to QWERTY keybinding IN-GAME without knowing how I managed to do it. It's a very annoying bug as you type ',' or 'm' and end up doing nothing, or get the wrong key indicated for fistfights (even though that's mitigated as you know the location of the keys anyway).

I've never even heard of AZERTY, is this some silly French thing? Though being European you'd think they'd have addressed that.

The problem is it is not on the main menu.

It is a main menu problem, because it should be on the main menu.

Nice that you didn't have a problem. I keep hitting the M key every minute because I am absolutely unable to use the minimap most of the time. It's almost useless to me.

Maybe I am just so used to remembering things especially in Minecraft its less of a problem. Hopefully they fix it, a north indicator at least would be useful.

If there is a problem at a given resolution, then there is a problem period.

Unless you're using a CRT, if you aren't using the right resolution for your monitor then things are likely to become distorted and enlarged (at no fault to the software)

It's already been mentioned that you cannot rename saves, and that you cannot replace saves. The 1.2 patch doesn't change that.

Not in 1.2 no, hence why I said improved. Hopefully they get fixed.

The lack of renaming is especially bad.

Meh. Each to their own, don't know why it isn't there though. My saves are usually just game1 or charactername1, charactername2, etc anyway. Which is why thumbnail is really nice to have especially if you're going back to a game you haven't played in a while. Hopefully they will let you save over saves in the next version, annoying that isn't already in.

The colors are not different enough, so the color-coding is bad.

I found it quite easy to distinguish between the colours, maybe your monitor settings are off I dunno. However...

Plus there are many color-blind persons, and relying on color only to convey some information should simply never be done.

Good point about that, the symbols are very poorly done. Though most games aren't friendly to colourblind people this trend seems to be slowly reversing (I've seen a couple of more recent games with a colourblind option though I forget which ones).

In the previous game, potions were actually important. In this one, they are mostly useless, except Cat and even then only in one dungeon, and the plot-related ones.

It depended a lot of the difficulty you chose, and that is similar again. On easy, well, you probably won't ever need to use them, on Normal they are quite helpful but on harder difficulties, from what I've heard, they are absolutely necessary.

I think you misunderstood. He's talking of alchemy here, not looting.

That I did, I assumed he meant harvesting them from the actual plants (looting ).

The medallion delay is not fine, it should not exist at all imo. It is simply annoying and doesn't add anything to the game. It should actually be an option in the game to highlight items or not, a bit like the alt key in Diablo 2.

I strongly disagree with this. The medallion delay is a bit too long yes, but the glow lasts long enough to gather everything highlighted and using the medallion makes sense since its already there and detects magic and monsters. If that is not long enough then Easy mode adds a rising orange spark effect to lootable objects. The Diablo (and Baldur's Gate) method of pressing a button and having everything automatically highlight is practically a cheat.

If people who use a gamepad don't have any option, then too bad for them. I have a mouse and keyboard, I would appreciate if objects I don't own didn't make my experience with the game less enjoyable.

It REALLY wastes time. At least until you realise that loot is always worthless in the game and you might as well skip it altogether.

A bit of an exaggeration, there is often quite a bit of useful loot in places (alchemical ingredients, orens), you don't have to loot every sack and timber pile (and afaik they will probably just stick around until you leave the chapter).

The dice rolling minigame is bad. Having to throw the dice is unintuitive. I mean, they stand in the air waiting for you to do something which can only have bad consequences if you throw too far, so you end up just clicking so you avoid losing one die. In addition, the system is inferior to the first game system, as you have only one game instead of having to win twice in a series of 3. This reduces the strategic element of poker to around zero.

I rather enjoyed the dice game in the TW1, and completely agree it was changed for the worse in TW2.

 

[Maniacal]

TW2 is much shorter. The story is also both more naive, straightforwards, and at the same time more difficult to grasp if you haven't read the books.

I still have not read the books, but my understanding is that the games takes place after their end where Geralt actually died. The games pretend he survives. I had much the same reaction to the first game, as I knew nothing about the world or whom the people were, although thankfully with Geralt also being relatively clueless due to amnesia everything was explained. TW1 was very long and taking a break in the middle of it made me a little confused when I got back to my playthrough.

The story is centered around monarchs and important persons, but lacks the absolutely great stories about common people that were in TW. Namely, the Beast and all the depraved villagers were awesome and truer to the spirit of the books than the story in TW2. The side quests seem less numerous too.

Yes while I didn't mind that the game is not as long as TW1 I would have loved more quests to flesh out the world.

Crafting is mostly pointless. It is very much about putting lots of junk in your inventory to realise that they can only be used to craft stuff that's inferior to what you already have, or find 2 minutes after crafting your item.

Yeah, most of the craftable armours and weapons are pointless, but I guess they make the shops feel like they have a nice selection.

I lack the paintings showing you the consequences of your acts.

I forget, what paintings?

Spoiler :

In particular, I can't think I have convinced anyone but Roche that I didn't kill Foltest in this game. I'm not sure there's a way to do it, but the consequences of these actions, like sparing Letho or not, are not shown and that's sad.

I think a lot of the did you save or not this person stuff will show up in TW3 with the Nilfgardian invasion. I really hope they make TW3 as long as TW1. As for convincing people you didn't kill Foltest, on Iorveth's path I had no problems with people (like Saskia and Philippa (well obviously) believing I didn't do it. Not sure how I'm clearing my name at the end of the game though.

TW2 just lacks this aspect altogether.

I wouldn't say it lacks it, but a bit less yes. I feel like a lot of the choices aren't really going to be fully realized and panned out until TW3.

I don't like the cartoony visuals much. In comparison with the paintings of TW, I feel I've lost a lot.

They serve the same purpose iirc, I don't have a problem with the animated visuals as an art choice but that is a rather subjective thing.

Spoiler :

Yen and Geralt are alive, but how did they survive? Apart from telling us that Geralt once saved Letho, the whole thing provides naught. The allusions to the Wild Hunt are also useless as they amount to: "There is a Wild Hunt out there and your looss of memory is their fault". With no more detail. It's just lame, not fleshed-out enough.

Spoiler :

It quite clearly states that Geralt was brought back to life by Yennefer. You also fought the Wild Hunt at the end of TW1 and it seems to have been something of great interest in Geralt and they are setting up future events. Exactly what is going on I'm not entirely sure though, but I'm not one of those people who manages to figure out what is going on between the lines and explain it all.

Still, for a few days after finishing TW2 I felt like I had just read a good novel.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm liking the game very much so far, but I'm still very early in chapter 1. It does seem to lack the complex quests of TW1. TW1 chapter 2 was almost confusing with the way the quests interacted with each other, you had to pay attention to what you were doing. This game seems more straight forward.

question: Can you store items any place? Is there a safe house to store items? I am thinking of leaving a lot of crafting loot. I have too much already.

As for the medallion, I like the system, I don't find the delay a problem. But the problem is the medallion doesn't seem to work if you are moving. I have to be completely stopped to use it. It seems more realistic (if you can believe a medallion can detect such things), and I agree BG2 and Diablo2 (actually I don't remember diablo2 having containers) made it too easy with regards to containers.

 

[Maniacal]

Not that I know of, I wish there had been a way to store stuff with the inn keepers like there was I TW1, but honestly I wouldn't worry about even picking up most crafting stuff until you need it (I don't remember if I ever even used timber). And/or just sell most of it off.

I think its more useful if you make a lot of traps and stuff with the Alchemy (and hence crafting for traps) path.

 

[LDiCesare]

A bit of an exaggeration, there is often quite a bit of useful loot in places (alchemical ingredients, orens), you don't have to loot every sack and timber pile (and afaik they will probably just stick around until you leave the chapter).

No it's not an exaggeration. Sometimes you get stuck because for instance there's someone in a bed, so the click action is 'talk' and you can't loot the sack near them, nor even see the content. Same for doors, which may open while you wanted to pick stuff. Even worse, if you hit space when you are wielding a weapon, you end up rolling instead of picking up things. Sure, it's probably due to my clicking the keyboard before mouse, but using a different key would have avoided that problem.

I forget, what paintings?

Those which happen everytime the consequences of your previous choices are made clear. For instance if you let the scoia'tael retrieve their weapons, you get a painting with some text explaining that they used arrowheads made specifically to maim civilians and that you let them use these terrorist weapons.

Spoiler :

It quite clearly states that Geralt was brought back to life by Yennefer. You also fought the Wild Hunt at the end of TW1 and it seems to have been something of great interest in Geralt and they are setting up future events. Exactly what is going on I'm not entirely sure though, but I'm not one of those people who manages to figure out what is going on between the lines and explain it all.

The whole story arc still feels totally unconnected to the rest of the game. It's a pity in particular that the feelings of Geralt for his one true love (in the books) isn't used, except in one quick Dandelion dialogue. And Dandelion's talk is, well... you know.

 

[Maniacal]

WARNING: SPOILERS
Angry Joe review he really liked it and gave a fairly decent review pointing many of its flaws along with its pros. Although I don't get his complaint about no fast travel, the game isn't big enough to have bothered with it.

 

[Wolfbeckett]

Yahtzee reviews the Witcher 2 over at Zero Punctuation today. Linky. Anyone who remembers his review of the first game will feel right at home, he doesn't like it, and the whole reason he doesn't like it seems to boil down to "This is too hard, I can't get past the Kayran, screw this game."

 

[Disgustipated]

No it's not an exaggeration. Sometimes you get stuck because for instance there's someone in a bed, so the click action is 'talk' and you can't loot the sack near them, nor even see the content. Same for doors, which may open while you wanted to pick stuff. Even worse, if you hit space when you are wielding a weapon, you end up rolling instead of picking up things. Sure, it's probably due to my clicking the keyboard before mouse, but using a different key would have avoided that problem.


Those which happen everytime the consequences of your previous choices are made clear. For instance if you let the scoia'tael retrieve their weapons, you get a painting with some text explaining that they used arrowheads made specifically to maim civilians and that you let them use these terrorist weapons.


The whole story arc still feels totally unconnected to the rest of the game. It's a pity in particular that the feelings of Geralt for his one true love (in the books) isn't used, except in one quick Dandelion dialogue. And Dandelion's talk is, well... you know.

yeah I don't understand why there is no pointer so you can select objects. Something similar to Elder Scrolls or Fallout games.

Okay, now I finally have some time to play some more. I'm tempted to take time of work just so I have time to play...

 

[Maniacal]

That is because Yahtzee isn't much of an RPG player, plays his games on Easy (so his failure of getting past the Kayran is pathetic) and isn't a serious reviewer (his show is aimed at people who have already played the game).

EDIT: His "review" also sucks horribly. It wasn't even funny :/

 

[Disgustipated]

I can't get patch 1.2 to to work. It says I have an incomplete version of the game.

edit: hmm, it seems I didn't download patch 1.1, I could have swore I did. Maybe that's the reason.

re-edit: that seemed to work.

I would like to download the troll trouble dlc, but I'm not sure of an official site to download it form.

 

[Maniacal]

Its in the patch.

 

[Disgustipated]

anyone know what this green dot is in the mini map? It moves, so it seems to be assoicated with a character, but I have no dialogue options with him. Just a generic response.

I am trying to find the quests in lobinden, but I can't find the quest givers.

ugh, the new patch introduced some horrible graphical glitches. It really mucks up a beautiful game.

 

[Maniacal]

You'll have to be more specific about which green dot you are talking about. It is supposed to refer to an important quest related NPC although there are a couple of green dots that didn't disappear afterwards for me, I just ignored them.

 

[Disgustipated]

for some reason the new patch introduced some graphical glitches for me. It worked perfectly before. I also had a crash which I didn't have with the patches loaded. I get the flashes on my screen, and I'm not sure what's causing it.