I can finally… finally put the lid on the second game in the Witcher trilogy. And while it probably didn’t take me as long as it felt like, I’m really glad to get it over with.

While The Witcher 2 is a great game, that’s not to say it doesn’t have its share of problems. Some of them were developer issues, and I think some of them were even my own misunderstanding of the game mechanics, but either way, it made for some absolutely frustrating gameplay at times. I had my share of rage quits to be sure, and again, some of them may have just been due to my own ineptitude, but there were glorious new curse words being made up on a nightly basis. I’m pretty sure my description of Geralt as a “Pansy Fucksloth” would raise an eyebrow or two.

The reason for my colorful descriptions was that the combat in Witcher 2 appears tightly polished on the surface, but as battles get more intense, the clunkiness begins to show. Geralt’s quick attack is all but useless against anything other than Nekkers and Drowners, which means you’re using his strong, but slow sword swings against groups of enemies. The real tooth grinding anger kicks in when Geralt faces soldiers that should be fodder for someone of Geralt’s skills, only for them to constantly block every other attack you swing at them. You’ll be forced to blend your arsenal of bombs, blocks and parries, signs, and potions in order to be effective, but sometimes even that isn’t enough. The balancing difference is mind boggling at times. Geralt will kill a troll with ease, only to take five minutes worth of rolling and blocking and bombing and hacking to kill one common soldier. Other times you’ll fight a golem or two, only to have your ass handed to you by a no-named thug in a graveyard. It’s weird.

I don’t know if this was by design or not, but there was never a negligible fight in the game. With the exception of the aforementioned nekkers and drowners, and occasional endrega, the majority of the fights happen against human enemies. These humans are tough, and Geralt must use all the tools at his disposal to be victorious. The problem is, everything takes so fucking long to do. Start setting a trap, get hit. Cast Quen, get hit by the time you finish your animation.  You’ll trade it all for just constantly rolling around the area waiting for an opening. Or what you think is an opening anyway. Many times, a soldier will start blocking your attacks even though they are doing something completely different. Crossbow archers in mid-reload will block an attack. How, and with what? I don’t know. The game just decides you aren’t going to hit him anymore. The same with mages. How in the blue hell can I be wailing on a mage, who is wearing nothing but a robe and suddenly he just stops and starts blocking? Blocking with what? The game just decides I’ve hit him enough and calls a timeout. It all makes what should be a forgettable encounter into a major process.

I played the game on the Normal difficulty setting. I tried playing the way the game was intended, by meditating and using my potions, mixing oils and poisons, and crafting bombs, etc. I tried preparing for a fight. The frustrating thing was, none of it ever really seemed to matter. Swallow is supposed to increase your health regeneration in battle, but it was still excruciatingly slow, to the point of not really being a factor. The same can be said of the Axii sign and a few other items. I used Arachnid Oil one time. Not that there was anything wrong with it, but it just never seemed necessary. I only ever fought two Endrega queens and that was way back in Chapter One. As a disclaimer, I realize there are skills in the tree that makes oils and potions more effective, but those skill points are pretty scarce, and there always seemed to be another attribute that won out.

Okay, enough of my negativity. What I can say about this game is that it is damn pretty, even on Xbox 360. I played via the backward compatibility on Xbox One, and they must have worked out some kinks because it played much better than I remembered. The frame rate was pretty solid, with only a few noticeable dips. None of them effected game play. One thing I’ve been surprised by was the story. I mean, I knew there was a good story there, but I’d never experienced the whole thing for myself. Now having played through both The Witcher and The Witcher 2, I can see the bigger picture and how it all comes into play in The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt.

What I never realized was that it is all one continuous story line. Each one leads directly into the other, with little time passing in between. The only exception is Wild Hunt, where Geralt has been tracking Yennefer for a while. Even then, it’s not a huge gap. The Witcher series has always had a huge cast of characters, and until now it was hard to remember who was who. Even now it’s still a bit murky, because there are so many, but I at least recognize names and have at least an idea of how Geralt knows them. I can also appreciate The Wild Hunt’s open world more, as both of the first two games were heavily focused and linear. Sometimes the game became a slog because I didn’t really feel like going to do the thing that I currently had to do, but there just wasn’t anything else. Or maybe I needed some extra cash to afford a new crafted weapon or armor, but there just wasn’t any means to earn any, outside of gambling. At the end I sold almost everything I had because the Vran armor required 2,000 orens to craft and I had about.. 50.

I was rather surprised at the grandiose plot being wrapped up in such a tidy manner though. The mountain of exposition delivered by Letho before the final encounter seemed a bit too convenient, like the writers spent all of their time and money on the unimportant details in the middle chapter, only to realize they had to wrap shit up quick. The final confrontation with Letho was ultimately stepped on by the game’s own ambition, too. The game spent such a long time meandering its way to the final meeting, including a controller-tossing dragon battle, that when I finally met Letho face to face, I was done. I just wanted it to end, and in my surprise, the game let me do just that. I let Letho walk away, rather than fighting him to the death. It was actually rather poetic, since both of their tired and exhausted mannerisms reflected those of my own, and maybe even the developers themselves. I think we all just wanted some rest.

So I let Letho go. I’ll make sure I choose my decisions accurately when beginning The Witcher 3, though I can’t see a Backlog Barbecue entry on that one any time soon.

Things to note:
– I chose Roche’s path. It seemed to be the more “correct” one in terms of the overall canon, but I read about Iorveth’s path and it sounded much more interesting.
– I let Letho go because all the kings in the game were dicks. I mean, he killed two of them, but I killed one too. They all kind of deserved it.
– Play through this game on Easy. Seriously. Save yourself the headache.