Witcher 2: It hates you with a passion

So I started on the Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings a while back and shut up Payday 2 beginner guides are coming.

Anyway.

What was I saying?

Ah, yes, Witcher 2. It fucking hates me.

He ain't coming for the monsters, he's coming for you.

Okay, some of it was my fault. I booted it up, and thought to myself, "Hey, it's ported to Xbox, so it must mean I can use a gamepad on it, sweet." Oh, poor, stupid past me. I forgot it was an exclusive PC game first, and the first game in the series was a PC exclusive period, no fucking around. Witcher 2 sees your consoles and sniffs disdaininly.

I could feel it's contempt for me as I plugged in the gamepad, like I promised a good night of lovin' but immediately went for the off-limits back door. However, like a fool, I persevered with my decision. Along I went, until the combat started. And, well, the Witcher 2 likes their combat more realistic then most RPGs. This means if you fight multiple opponents at once... they surround you, and stomp your kidneys out of you via your testicles. And it's not like Assassin's Creed 'surround' you, where they surround you whilst politely attack you one at the time,like gentlemen, nah. Witcher 2 will gang slap you upside the back of your head and you'll tough it out, son.

Well, combat started, and went wrong instantly. Yeah, you can use the gamepad, like you can strictly speaking use a USB cable to drink soup. It's not going to easy, you'll do it in drips and drabs, you'll look stupid and everyone will wonder why you're not just using a spoon. The worst was the quick menu - I couldn't select a bloody thing, no matter where I waggled the stick, which wouldn't be a problem if the quick menu paused the game... which it doesn't. Ouch. So much ouch.

So I switched to the keyboard, mid-tutorial, without thinking about it. Most games nowadays recognise if you switch inputs and alter their instructions accordingly - not Witcher 2. It seemed to take my attempts to ingratiate myself with it poorly, and punished me for being a little brown noser. So whilst I was running around in little circles weeping to myself futilely trying to press the left trigger button that no longer existed, I came to the conclusion we weren't going to get on so I should just suck it up and start anew before it physically manifested itself and started strangling me in hate.

The second time round went a little better. Couldn't skip the tutorial so had to do it all over again... gah. However, Witcher 2 grades your performance on the combat tutorial - said tutorial, where they shrugged, listed each move in order, and called it a day. Great. Thanks. The fuck is Axii? Or Quen? Why aren't my spells called Knockback, Control, or Shield - you know, their actual descriptions? Nope. Take your made up words and go with it. And whilst I did a little better it still amounted to my embarrassing myself and collecting more swords in my upper intestinal tract than the Iron Throne. So Witcher 2 looked at me, sniffed again in disappointment, and decreed if I was going to be so shit perhaps I'd like to play it on easy, baby mode, like the ham-handed idiot child that I was.

By this point I was thoroughly beaten down, and just wanted to play the bloody game I had paid less than £3 for on Steam Sale. So the game started proper, and straight into some full frontal female nudity. Twenty seconds past of being humiliated for being shit at games and there's vagina and tits right in my face, with pubic hair modelled also. Normally I'd have to download a mod to have not. Er, not that I'd ever do that.

Look, video games? We need to have a talk. Stop that. Stop throwing female nudity in my face to attempt to please me. It's juvenile. Once again, if I want porn, I'm on my computer, the internet is here, I got this covered. Quite frankly at this point I wouldn't mind at least a little balancing this out with some wang. I don't really want to look at copious amounts of wang, but quite frankly with have to balance this shit out. You put wang in, I'll enjoy the tits more, because at least I won't feel that I'm enabling in the exclusion of a gender from my hobby.

Nope, not good enough. Take off the pants.

Moving on, all was well and good as I taught myself combat, as the game wasn't gonna. Namely, rolling. Rolling is the path to victory. Roll, roll, and roll some more. Fuck parring or riposte - nah, roll. Rolling then use Quen, which is the shield spell. Slap the shield on, and roll faster and further than Sonic the Hedgehog and you'll be able to manoeuvre around enough to stop being stomped into the crappy medieval pavement.

In terms of the story - okay, guys? How did you not see that monk was clearly an assassin? He was like eight foot tall and built of pork shoulder, with spiked knuckle gloves. How metal are the monks in your world that this sight didn't throw you? And secondly, Geralt, whilst being the brooding loner clearly works for you, next time you might want to point out nice and early hey fuckwads, my sword's shiny clean and why the fuck would I kill the king now? We're like bros. Coulda killed him way back, and you'd never suspect me, why now? Nah, instead go all dark and mysterious... and wind up being tortured and blamed for regicide. Smooth moves, genius.

Then the game crashed.

Repeatedly.

Turns out the game crashes with too many saves. Who'da funk it? This wouldn't be an issue, unless you're playing an RPG which requires plenty of saves, (which the Witcher 2 is,) or if the game autosaves every seventeen seconds (which the Witcher 2 does.) So. Manual deleting away we go.

And Jesus! This game still doesn't like me, after all the effort I put in. There's a billion fucking different menus, with cross-purpose uses - okay, so you get monster knowledge, right? That goes in the Journal, on the Monster tab. Great. Ah, no. You see, that's just lore knowledge. If you want to know tactics against a certain monster (and more lore knowledge, weirdly enough) you have to... keep up with me here... go in the Quick Menu, select Meditate (which is not always available) select Character, go in Attributes, select Monster, and then scroll down to what you want. Why. WHY THE FUCK IS THAT SO NEEDLESSLY COMPLICATED? WHY DO I NEED TWO. FUCKING. MENUS. TO DO ONE THING? ONE. THING!

This game screams 'PC exclusive' with is unnecessary complexity. Simple little things, like demanding I use the Enter and Arrow keys. No. Listen you bastards, the left hand is on the WASD keys, the right on the mouse. Don't make me move my right hand back on the keyboard when I'm just gonna need the mouse in a second. It's ridiculously inefficient and an uneconomical use of your input device. One time, I had to draw out a glyph by instructing a man to toddle around at a distance. I'd been given the glyph earlier... but could I pull up that page so I could look at it whilst directing the dude? Could I fuck. I had to wander away, open up the inventory, find the bloody page again - a fucking nightmare, as by this point I had thousand of quest items cluttering up my inventory because once the quest's done they don't go - draw out the glyph on a piece of envelope left on my desk and then do it. Did I feel clever? No, I thought the Witcher 2 was being annoyingly bloody minded and inconvenient for kicks.

...I have no idea what's going on here.

Tragically, by this point I was drawn in. Originally, I was setting out to beat it to prove I could, now the story was interesting enough to make me continue looking up forums and videos to fix the many, many bugs. About a few hours in, though, something clicked, and there was no ham-handed idiot child - I was Geralt of Riveria, murder machine. I'd charge into combat high of multiple toxic potions and purée multiple opponents with my sweet skills, before rolling off into the horizon, setting a few traps, chucking a few bombs, and blam! Back in the frey again, my sword awash with blood.

That said, the lore and story definitely kept me going as my skills in combat grew. Watching a whole world attempting to tear itself apart whilst you struggle to hold it together purely to clear your name - and I'm a monster slayer, damn it! I kill monsters for you! For very little pay! I deserve a motherfuckin' parade, you miserable bastards! And I'm still debating going through and playing a second time, this time with skill and bugfixes at hand to explore what I missed, and choose perhaps better life choice.

Do I think it was worth the trip?

Eventually, yes. It did help I brought this on the cheap, paying full price for such a buggy game would of infuriated me. At least I got a dev on Twitter to point me towards some help.

The combat was very different to what I was used to, and was very entertaining once I grasped it. It's a pity that the game itself was so bad at teaching me what I needed to know, but getting into it was very rewarding. Once I had it down, I went into many fights only taking hits when I was messing around, and wanting to up the difficulty for more challenge. It hit both my challenge and tactical movement buttons. Each time I saw a fight approaching, my though process was "Hell yeah!"

The story was definitely engaging. Unfortunately, knowledge of what happened in the first game is kinda important, and whilst I managed without, they threw words, politics and factions at me thick and fast at the beginning and I got swamped, to resurface later and get my place. The lore of witchers are fascinating - here's your powers to kill monsters, and here's your powers to bone women better. Not a bad deal, really. Whilst I had issues with the brooding Geralt, an early scene with his friends opened him up to me - he doesn't like people in general, but values his friends, and actually smiles and jokes around. Without that scene, just seeing his brooding poker face would of got tedious. Around people he trusts, he actually inflects things! Nice. And yeah, there's some bad guys you're gonna want to rip into tiny pieces.

Lots of little touches pleased me - Dandelion's voice actor was superb, as was your journal entries, which he writes for you. While I've complained about it being needless obtuse, sometimes they get it right and send you on a quest with enough instructions that lets you explore and feel clever for figuring it out, without resorting to hand holding. Which, admittedly, a little would be nice. It's also very pretty - so damn pretty. Like, staggeringly pretty. There's quite a few games out there that could learn a thing or two about it's optimization.

I'll be awaiting Witcher 3, but just might put off buying it immediately... yeah. Not 100% confident about the developers releasing a fully working game right out the gate. But I see it's gunning for a simultaneous console and PC release, which should iron out a few of the more prevalent menu waffle and stop it from falling back on a slipshod buggy release. I hope.