Developer/Publisher: CD Project RED/Namco Bandai Released: May 2011

Played on: PC (also available on Mac, 360)

The original Witcher game was impressive – a linear and contained 3rd person high fantasy action-RPG with scope for exploration and discovery that featured a sophisticated approach to moral ambiguity and a quality ensemble of characters. I was excited for the sequel and ordered it when I could, but sadly couldn’t get it to run sufficiently on my PC. A couple years later the hype for Witcher 3 started building, I couldn’t bear it and tried a different install of Witcher 2 (this time from a Steam sale) and got it to run…barely. At low resolution and with lots of the fancy textures turned off, the game played JUST smoothly enough to get through it. Sadly, I didn’t have the same graphical experience as those with beefier setups (I’ve since upgraded my RAM but not sure how much difference that would make.)

The Witcher 2 feels like a true evolution of the original game. You once again control Geralt, a “mutant” who hunts monsters for pay, who is accused of killing the king he served. The region is destabilised as Kings go to war, and Geralt finds himself caught up in the occasional web of political intrigue, race-rebellion, missing memory rediscovery, and proving your innocence by hunting down the true assassin, a Witcher named Letho. The world is bigger and the combat is more refined, but still takes some getting used to.

Geralt’s dialogue is not the dull and conservative type we expect from RPG heroes, it is brazen, honest and world-weary, swaying believably from sympathetic to selfish. Geralt is an established character (based on books by Andrzej Sapkowski) and the game stays true to his nature and that of all the other new and familiar characters that populate his world. The moral ambiguity and flawed nature of most of the characters and political forces in the game is refreshingly cynical and complex, and makes the plot far more compelling than contemporary fantasy titles like Skyrim. It also has a much keener sense of irony and humour.

There is a lot of plot related fun times to be had, but side-missions and actual Witcher monster hunting missions are a treat too. While other RPGs will just say “go to the woods and kill 6 ka-chomp-a-chomps”, if you did that in the Witcher you’d be fighting all day or dead. Geralt needs to research, get the right strategies and potions together, before taking on the strange monsters that plague the Witcher’s world. It’s a great level of detail that would be near impossible to give to the hundreds of side quests in larger RPG’s, but it feels like Witcher 2 is sowing the seeds to grow this further in future games.

With a more complicated plot than the original, Witcher 2 pushes its ambitions further with branching plot lines and multiple endings. In the game’s second chapter you can side with the human-hating rebels, the Scoi’otel, or the murdered King’s forces. Both choices are appealing, and lead to a completely different middle-game. Hiding over 10 hours of gameplay behind a story decision is not the sort of thing you’d expect a small-ish Polish game developer to do, but they boldly buck convention on multiple occasions in The Witcher 2 and it usually pays off. They’ve struck a great balance between quality linear storytelling and giving the player the choice of where the story goes.

The Witcher 2 has some slight balance issues, with some weird difficulty balancing throughout the game and a huge amount of exposition in the game’s conclusion rapidly attempting to tie everything together – but it’s still a hugely rewarding experience for action-RPG and fantasy fans. As soon as my first 30 hour playthrough was over I wanted to play it again to try out the different options available, but I was kind of over getting a crappy performance from my computer and everybody talking about GTAV while a played a 2 year old game….

Can’t wait for the next game!

Verdict: High fantasy action-RPG with a plot and characters that treat you like a fan of the genre. Equally appealing branching narratives add to the game’s scope and replayability.

Should Bradley play this: Yes, he would love this series.