![]() ![]() Games usually create places full of marble palaces and gorgeous architecture, wide streets and bustling town centres. Play It's in the cities that the contrast between The Witcher 2 and other, cleaner, more aspirational and austere fantasies is most apparent. The new intro cinematic introducts Letho, the game's main antagonist, colourfully and gorily forwarning you of his regicidal tendencies. The Enhanced Edition's extra content helps to flesh out this story, and some of the background behind it. Instead it feels like what you're doing actually means something. You're never told to choose between good and evil, filling some invisible morality meter. ![]() These well-written diversions mean that Geralt never feels like an errand boy, and the choices that you make – minor and major –affect the course of the narrative in a way that feels natural and organic. ![]() Investigating a single murder might uncover a long trail of cause and effect. Spend time in taverns and get into a fist-fights or gambling debt, and you might find Geralt led into something bigger. The Witcher 2 is full of excellently-designed quests, from the grand machinations of its central plot to side-quests that deal in ghost stories, missing persons and humorous mysteries. A comprehensive in-game journal offers a refresher on everything you could need to know about the characters, locations and recent events, but there are some elements of the actual gameplay that could be better explained. It does suffer, as it always did, from a lack of clarity in menu-heavy activities like crafting and alchemy. Menus, though, are definitely best suited to mouse control - the complex layout of The Witcher 2's alchemy, inventory and character menus is easier to navigate with clicks than a d-pad. This slightly improves the flow of combat, and encourages you to take advantage of the full variety of magic rather than falling back on a single spell. The layout of these myriad functions works well on a pad, but the extra flexibility of a keyboard allows you to use number keys for spells, meaning that you don't have to select them from the radial menu. The Witcher 2 often bookends its quests with nail-biting fights against powerful wraiths or monsters - conveniently, Geralt's Witcher medallion reacts to danger, giving you notice when something dangerous is just around the corner. Combat is challenging, and reliant on good preparation taking the extra time to craft bombs, traps and potions that will help you in specific battles often pays dividends. It's useful to know that running away is sometimes a better idea than trying to stand and fight. Spells ignite, confuse or trap your foes, where oils and enhancements change the properties of your blades. Dipping into stylish slow-motion to select spells, bombs and traps from a radial menu, you chip away at groups of enemies through strategy and smart positioning rather than simply hacking through them with silver or steel. Play Underpinning The Witcher 2's ambitious fantasy is a sword- and magic-based combat system that is one of the best around, delivering challenge and flexibility alongside the straightforwardly violent finishing moves and lethal strikes that are the backbone of all good melee combat. If you did, the extra content might persuade you to revisit it. If, for some reason, you didn't buy The Witcher 2 last year, now is an ideal time to do so. They're discernible in spots of extra graphical and interface polish that make this the definitive edition of The Witcher 2. Developer CD Projekt Red claims to have made over 100 of these minor fixes, improving animations, NPC models, stability and much more. If you already own The Witcher 2 on PC, this Enhanced Edition is available for free via a patch, and offers around 4 hours of new content and 32 minutes of cinematics (including a new intro and outro that provide extra context for the game's fulsome, complex story) alongside an array of small improvements. The Witcher 2 drops you right in the thick of it, and expects you to deal with it. Plenty of games shield you from their lore, afraid that it might scare you off. It expects you to be intelligent and interested, to care about the political machinations, racial tensions and complex history of its world. The Witcher 2 is a game for adults, and not just because of all the sex and violence. Though sworn to impartiality on matters of the state, he is drawn into this complex political maelstrom by a series of regicides that brand him a criminal and pull him back into his own, forgotten past. And who are you, amongst all this? You're Geralt of Rivia, a stoic and distinctly un-heroic monster hunter with a few memory problems and a faintly inexplicable way with the ladies. ![]()
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