Review: The Witcher 2
With The Witcher 2, Polish developer CD Projekt Red was able to accomplish what few modern RPG developers can: provide meaningful and difficult decisions throughout the course of the game. Because of this, The Witcher 2 is one of the most satisfying role-playing experiences of the last several years.
The story begins one month after the events of 2007’s The Witcher. You play as Geralt of Rivia, a monster hunter in the 13th century who has been drawn into the political conflicts inherent to feudalism. If you haven’t played the first game, you may have some difficulty with the nuances of the story at the start, but over time the pieces of the puzzle should fall into place.
The town of Flotsam is on the brink of race-motivated rioting when you first arrive.
In most modern RPGs, NPCs are consistently presented as either demons or saints. This carries over to the main character, who has to choose to be a Jedi or a Sith. In the world of Knights of the Old Republic that made sense, but the lack of moral ambiguity in more “mature” games such as Dragon Age is disappointing.
The Witcher 2 doesn’t suffer from this problem. You’ll learn very quickly that nearly everyone has vices and virtues, and because of this decisions aren’t clear-cut. You may sympathize with a particular faction’s motives, but not their methods. Someone might deserve to face justice, but you have to let them go for the greater good. This makes the decision points in The Witcher 2 all the more interesting; in one instance I actually took a break from the game because I was so conflicted about a critical decision.
What builds on this moral ambiguity is that your decisions have a tangible effect on the story as a whole. In a game like Mass Effect, you make many decisions, but almost all of them are self-contained within a side quest. You can choose to let someone go, and maybe they’ll provide some nominal support later, but that’s the extent of it. In The Witcher 2, however, certain decisions change how large parts of the game turn out. In fact, all of Act II is entirely different depending on what you do at the end of Act I. You go to a different city and do different quests; it is not a cosmetic difference. This adds a great deal of replayability beyond simply “this time, I’m going to be a jerk to everyone.”
You can ally with these guys, or go against them.
The story is also complex and intriguing. Geralt’s desire to clear his name and the power struggle between various factions is at the forefront, while there is an undercurrent of conflict between the humans and non-human races. Much like in the original game, The Witcher 2 presents a dark and racially charged world. The humans persecute the elves and dwarves who live in the cities, but at the same time a faction of non-humans have broken off and formed what amounts to a terrorist organization. Everyone gets down in the mud in this game.
As for the dialogue and voice acting, it’s markedly better than the original game, even in comparison to the original’s Enhanced Edition. What I especially like about the dialogue is the believable use of mature language. This isn’t like in Grand Theft Auto where characters act like a little kid who just learned to use the f-word. In The Witcher 2, profanity is used to emphasize poor situations, or when in anger – usage one would expect from a mature adult.
The other aspect that I really enjoy is the game’s willingness to require players to figure things out for themselves. Too many RPGs have adopted the World of Warcraft “Quest Helper” design where the game tells you exactly what to do every step of the way. This makes sense in an MMORPG, where the quests are plentiful, but it’s less interesting in a single player RPG.
Sword fighting seems to be the strongest of the three talent trees.
In The Witcher 2, even simple kill quests require you to figure things out on your own. You have to first research the monster type by either reading a book about them, or fighting them out in the field. Once you’ve researched the monster enough, you learn what type of dens to look out for, but even here the game won’t just point them out. You have to track them down yourself based on what you know about the creature. At the same time, the game will provide guidance in certain cases where it would have otherwise been frustrating, like navigating through dark subterranean catacombs.
This philosophy of leaving players to their own devices also carries over to the combat. It’s action-oriented, and at first you might think it looks like combat in Assassin’s Creed 2. But you very quickly learn that if you try to take on 10 enemies at once, as Ezio might, the fight will rapidly end in your death. In fact, it’s not until the latter stages of the game that battles with three or more enemies become consistently manageable. Through most of the game, you have to engage and disengage appropriately to stay alive. Some may find this frustrating, but I for one thrived on the challenge. It is worth noting that the “normal” difficulty is likely closer to most games’ “hard” difficulty, so some gamers may wish to play on easy.
Being an action RPG, there are all the standard RPG mechanics you would expect. There is three different talent branches that represent different combat styles: swords, magic, and alchemy. There is a crafting system that allows you to make armor, weapons, traps, bombs, and potions. There are mini-games like dice poker, arm wrestling, boxing, and so on. These secondary mechanics are fairly solid, but they’re really not what make the game as memorable as it is.
Of course, there are a few things that CDPR hopefully will improve in future patches, DLC, and/or expansions. The tutorial could do a better job of getting players acclimated to the game. The user interface, while fine for the forthcoming Xbox 360 release, could use improvement on the PC end of things. There are technical problems that users have reported, though my experience was fairly smooth. And probably the largest issue is that the third act does feel short compared to the first two. But I’m not sure you can complain about the length of a highly replayable game that takes 30-40 hours to complete if you do the side quests.
In spite of these minor issues, The Witcher 2 is an impressive roleplaying accomplishment. I applaud what CD Projekt Red has done, and hope that other RPG developers take note. At times it reminded me of the glory days of CRPGs where even the kids were rotten thieves who couldn’t be trusted. If you have any interest in RPGs whatsoever, you have to play this game.
VERDICT: SINGING CANARY
The Witcher 2 is available now on PC. Reviews appear every Friday on Game Canary. The Game Canary review system is detailed here.
Categories: Reviews
Tags: PC, Singing Canaries, The Witcher 2