Reviews// The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings: Enhanced Edition

Venturing outside of the safety of town walls feels like a real undertaking in The Witcher 2, the wilderness feels threatening and dangerous. And the graphics are great. They might fall fairly short of an optimised gaming PC but they stand up well against other console fare. Voice acting is a bit more of a mixed bag, some NPCs can be grating but there are some pretty neat performances among the central cast. Geralt himself has an appropriately subdued and gravelly tone.

Combat is executed fairly well though there are some nigglesome issues that betray the game’s PC origins. Most notably Geralt has far more abilities than can be mapped onto a standard controller, forcing you to make a lot of selections on the fly through the hotkey menu. Not a difficult task in theory, but when you’re in the thick of things it’s a little cumbersome to cycle through the mini-menus to select the right item or weaponry for the task at hand.

Combat will grow more natural as you play however, and with higher-level abilities increasing your ability to dish out pain it won’t be long before you get some confidence behind you when heading into battle. All this isn’t to say things will get easy.

Geralt’s far from a tank, and letting yourself get surrounded or badly outnumbered is a quick way to get beaten to death by everything from zombies to slightly more conventional wildlife like giant jungle spiders. Instead you’ll need to rely on all of your skils, magic and tools to survive.

Traps and bombs are incredibly useful in combat and, while your magic is fairly basic early in the game, it can still give you a massive edge over certain enemies.

Being properly prepared for battles is as essential as honing your swordplay skills, with a big focus of the game on Geralt’s Witcher training in preparing potions that must be taken before going into battle. With different potions to enhance your abilities and resistances in every way, knowing which potions will come in handiest is the key to success as you can’t take too many at a time without poisoning yourself.

The inventory is easier to navigate and organise than other efforts in recent RPGs, but the sheer amount of stuff you’ll be picking up as you wander round inevitably leads to clutter and the dreaded weight limit means you’ll need to make regular trips to shops to sell off your junk. Crafting and alchemy may be incredibly useful skills for properly outfitting yourself, but they also lead to even more inventory clutter as you collect ingredients and recipes by the dozen. Cycling through your inventory, map and journal will definitely give you the impression that this aspect of the game was definitely smoother on the PC.

The Witcher 2 offers an experience that isn’t often found on consoles these days, which serves as both its greatest strength and weakness.

Old-school RPG fans will no doubt eat up the Witcher’s web of side quests, intricate story and the importance of properly utilising the extensive crafting and alchemy systems.

More casual fans may be intimidated by the massive amount of story that’s piled onto you early in the game however, and put off by a high difficulty that demands you put in the effort to utilise all of your available tools and abilities to succeed.

Hopefully anyone not immediately won over by The Witcher 2 will give it another try, once you settle into the story and get to grips with the combat you’re in for a gripping experience that really lets you sculpt the outcome of the story in a way many games claim to but few really deliver.

Pros
+ Well developed world and story.
+ Compelling side quests.
+ Challenging combat.

Cons
- Some control issues in combat.
- Inventory and menus harder to navigate than on PC.

SPOnG score: 9/10