The Witcher 2 first hours impressions

"The Witcher 2" just had a major new patch released for it, patch 2.0.

This patch fixes a lot of the bugs that plagued The Witcher 2 at release.
Additionally it adds a whole new tutorial, which is a couple of small mini quests that sets up the basics for the game, reducing the risk of embarrassment from being killed by the first drunken hobo that swings a sword at you.

You know this guy means business. He's got two swords!

There's also a whole new "Arena" game mode included, which focuses on you fighting arena battles against progressively harder opponents.

The patch also makes some balance changes to combat and even adds some new items and quests as well as a whole new difficulty level!

The release of this patch, couple with Steam cleverly running a sale for The Witcher 2, made me finally get into this game, which I have longed for from a distance until now.

Read on and learn how I found the first few hours in the company of the white haired wolf.

You see, I played the original "The Witcher", or rather I played the first 5 hours or so of it.

I will not argue that the first Witcher game is not a deep RPG with a large open world and complex mechanics to master.

However, I found trying to enjoy the game about as easy as accidentally going on a date with a beautiful shemale.
Sure, there are a lot of good things to like and you might even enjoy yourself if you close your eyes at strategic moments and think of your happy place, but ultimately the problems outweigh the pleasure and leaves you feeling violated and confused.

The orginal "The Witcher" only dedicated RPG fans need apply

A lot of the mechanics of the game felt very cumbersome and was not explained in a very intuitive way.
The game suffered from bugs galore and the balance of the game world felt off (running on your merry way to complete a quest only to get two shotted to death by a big sptting flower is no fun).

Thus I was naturally tepid with my excitement for The Withcer 2 when it came out.
Reading reviews it was clear that the game was a marked improvement from the first one, polished in all these problem areas compared to the first one.

But it was also clear that many of the issues from the first game still persisted in some way even in the sequel,  so I held off my purchase.

Until now.

Once again Steam managed to entice me out of my money against better judgement

Over the weekend I got a chance to start up the game and get my first fill of The Witcher 2 and I can really see that this is a much more "complete" game than the first one.

First of all the graphics are truly awesome and get put to good use, like showing off a massive siege battle in the opening scenes of the game or rendering the naked boobies of your lover (I understand that there is quite a lot of nudity in this game. That's European developers for you!).

Just look at the details of those polygons!

Secondly, it feels like the game is much more concerned with taking you by the hand at the beginning of the game and not overwhelming you too much with too much stuff to deal with right away.

Thirdly, I've yet to encounter any bugs in the game, save those that have died at the pointy end of my sword.

The siege at the start of the game does an excellent job of showing off the graphics

I will say that this is still very much a Witcher game and I did spend a couple of fights "gaming" the AI by running back and forth, using terrain to bug them out while I was killing them, but nobody is perfect right?

It's a lot better than a drop dead gorgeous blonde babe with an erection, I can tell you that!