The Witcher 2 (Gameplay #8) - Lady of the Night

Channel:

Demiath

Subscribers:

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Published on August 6, 2011 9:47:09 AM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKcnZeC_VVs

Game:

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011)

Duration: 8:13

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Witcher 2 is by no means a bad game, but at this point - after having played through Chapter 1 and substantial parts of Chapter 2 - I'm *this* close to declaring it the most overrated RPG to have been released in quite some time. That potentially inflammatory remark is not primarily about the game's quality compared to other games currently on the market, and should instead be seen entirely in the context of TW2 having been hailed as the triumphant return of an entire genre from the only developer in the whole wide world which supposedly still cares about cutting edge PC development. At least to me, there are just too many blatant flaws in CD Projekt RED's ambitious dark fantasy adventure to make this anything more than yet another cool Eastern European game which is still worth playing for fans of the genre.

That in and of itself should be seen as a respectable recommendation, but there's no denying that the list of TW2's problems can get awfully long. It would, at the very least, have to include things like an unbalanced skill system resulting in extremely uneven difficulty, stupid boss fights with instant kill QTEs, sluggish combat controls, confusing maze-like level design with lots of bland corridors (both in and outside dungeons), a needlessly cluttered inventory interface, plenty of boring fetch quests, imprecise quest markers and logs, a poorly introduced game world as well as longwinded dialogue which never manages to imbue the game's wooden characters with enough life to make the player fully invested in TW2's byzantine storyline with all its factions, nation states, sultry sorceresses and morally questionable kings and queens.

Despite its undeniably good looks, Witcher 2 feels like an anachronistic release which neither has the tactical nature of classic roleplaying games nor tries to learn much from more modern, accessible RPGs. I still enjoy playing the game for what it does right (graphics, atmosphere, player choice etc.), but so far that *other* deeply flawed RPG, Dragon Age 2, remains my favorite mainstream entry in this genre in 2011.

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