The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Reviews

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Written by WorstUsernameEver on June 28th, 2011

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After a recent run of rather disappointing RPGs, The Witcher 2 has restored some of our faith in the genre, providing a lengthy, rich role-playing experience, a proper grown-up storyline and some highly enjoyable hack-and-slash action.

There's infinite detail on every facet of its world, all of it crafted within a phenomenal engine that produces constant moments of beauty. It's definitely a hog on your PC, but if you're able to run it then the results speak for themselves; all of the elements coming together, from the dynamic lighting and shadow effects, to the highly impressive textures, smooth frame rate and superb animation. The Witcher 2's visual fidelity is second to none.

And that persistent quality exerts itself throughout The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Its story isn't afraid to delve into an often bewildering world of complex politics, but at its core it's a character tale. Backed by superb fantasy writing and a fantastic sense of moral ambiguity seeped into the choices you make and the ramifications they have on the world and the narrative. It's a smart, refreshingly dark take on RPGs, complemented by action-oriented and tactical combat with a surprising amount of depth. It has its flaws but they're only minor in what is a landmark title and a series we can only hope will long continue.

There are other things I could complain about, like the draw distance that wasn't quite far enough, the poorly integrated stealth system that is mercifully rarely used or the strange lack of pants on a rather large number of inhabitants, but really, a lot of these problems only come about because there aren't many major things to complain about. From the well-crafted story to the engaging combat, there's more than enough here to scratch your role playing itch and introduce you to a wonderfully constructed world. You'll love just about every minute of it.

Oh, and there are some really graphic sex scenes. So, uh, yeah.

If you have a fairly decent rig you'll see some amazing things, if you have a low end rig, you'll get a damn fine looking game regardless. Witcher 2 is a game you can't afford to miss out on...

Since patch 1.2 there have been some bugs introduced, but they weren't there for the first playthrough of this game and therefore did not affect the score. Witcher 2 never gave me a single CTD for my first play and I hear that quite a few of you have had CTD's since 1.2 and so on, CDPR assured us they are working to resolve these issues and a few more...their first patch was released with a quick turn-around and this is the kind of support we like to see from developers.

A grand job all round and well deserving of the score that it's been given.

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