The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) by CD Projekt Red

Witcher 2 is a mix of positives and negatives whose positives ultimately far outweigh the minor complaints I have with the game.

It shares some of this roughness with its predecessor, The Witcher, which I find to be so rough as to be almost unplayable nowadays. The Witcher 2 had similarly convoluted, poorly designed levels which make it a chore to navigate to and fro while completing quests and exploring. The forest outside Flotsam is guilty of this. It's exceptionally difficult to get where you need to go without circling around hedges and trees and carving through numerous cannon-fodder caliber enemies. Additionally, looting and interacting with the environment is a huge chore given the cooldown on your amulet scanning ability, and the way the game locks out looting for what feels like an eternity once combat starts. Crafting and inventory management is a gigantic chore due to the obtuse user interface, which I felt like I had to fight with constantly. I also experienced a few lock-ups in which Geralt would get stuck in an animation, and a few crashes here and there. Transitions into different areas of the map are bothersome as well. There are numerous small complaints like this that show some of the roughness the previous game also exhibited, albeit far less of them overall.

But there are significant improvements, too. This game looks beautiful, especially when compared to the previous game. I was surprised by how high a quality some of the textures were, and the art design in general is noticeably improved from the first game. The character and monster designs are fantastic, with some of the sorceresses and Geralt's outfits being particularly stunning. Even just the background of the dice poker board, or the deranged drawings on the wall of the burnt out asylum are artistically impressive. Due to this mix of artistic prowess and a powerful new engine, a lot of the visuals on display in Witcher 2 still hold up today, nearly a decade after its original release in 2011. This is made more impressive by the use of developer CD Projekt Red's in-house REDengine, which they developed and used for the first time with this game, to glorious effect. Although I dealt with a few crashes, the game otherwise runs superbly (I'm near 150 fps at all times with max settings) and it still looks great despite being nine years old. It's a pretty impressive achievement for what was a small studio at the time to develop such a solid engine, and the game is made much stronger than the first Witcher, which used the ancient Aurora Engine, licensed from BioWare.

The combat is also substantially improved, ditching the previous game's ridiculous and shallow faux-rhythm system for classic third person combat which is far more satisfying to execute. It feels a bit loose to me, especially when compared to The Witcher 3, but it's still miles better than the first game's combat and far more intuitive. Enough depth has been added to make things more interesting throughout.

Where The Witcher 2 really shines, though, is in terms of narrative, quest design, and providing the player agency. The strongest thing The Witcher 1 did was weaving its quests together, so you feel especially detective-like once you begin uncovering all the pieces. This is also true of Witcher 2. For example, in Chapter 1 you very quickly obtain a series of side quests very early, simply by talking to people. Almost all of these quests turn out to be intertwined in some way: An incense-maker turned fisstech dealer and a drunken troll turn out to be related. Sounds far-fetched, but the common ground not only turns out to be reasonable and compelling, but also teaches you more about the political situation in the game's setting of the Pontar Valley. And if you're looking for a game in which you have the power to impact the story with your choices, then look no further—The Witcher 2 features perhaps the best example of "your choices matter" that I've ever seen in a game.

CD Projekt Red took a massive chance in the way they designed this game, because there's a significant choice to be made at the end of Chapter 1 that leads to two nearly exclusive routes through the plot. Meaning that no matter your choice, you will end up missing out on about a third of the story content in this game because the two paths moving forward from this choice are so different from one another.

It's a ballsy choice by the developer, because these people had to be designing these entire areas and questlines knowing that half of their players would likely never experience them (unless you're a nerd like me and replay the game to take the other route). The consequences of this choice further reinforces the fact that you are actually impacting what is occurring in the narrative. Few games take player choice to this extreme, and the fact that CD Projekt Red did makes The Witcher 2 something special for that reason alone. Furthermore, the choice is packaged appropriately—you likely won't even realize that you just made a game-altering choice, even though you still realize the gravity of the choice when you made it. The game won't pause and give you any hint that a massive choice is about to occur, which I love. It's an exceptional, ambitious move that is perfectly executed and it makes this game far more memorable and impactful than it'd be without it. Bravo to the developers for making the difficult decision to include two branching paths like this.

If for nothing else, this game is worth playing due to the quality of its narrative. It's a politically-driven game with strong social commentary and genuinely interesting characters, and it gives you the opportunity to pass judgment and act within this world as you see fit. It's constantly satisfying in this manner and it left me thinking about my own moral code regularly. Although Witcher 2 does not feature the classic, epic story that is featured in Witcher 3, I appreciated the narrower scale and the stronger focus on the political machinations of this world's elites. It might take some concentration, but once you grasp what's going on in the narrative, it's quite compelling.

The Witcher 2 is not without its warts, but it shows a staggering improvement over its predecessor and it remains more than enjoyable today. If you're in the mood for a good story, check it out. You'll probably be well-satisfied.

⭐⭐⭐