The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

[Frogacuda]

I think the upgraded dodging ability helps a lot in that fight. The Quen is annoying but it's easy to just wait out. That fight takes a lot of patience.

[MechDeus]

The writing in this game continues to impress me. For a long time during act 1 I really liked the quality of it but I felt the game lacked some of the personal side that comes with the party member interactions in Bioware games. Having finished act 2 I've come to find that the interpersonal stuff is way better than I thought, people may not be directly discussing stuff with Geralt but it's much more natural and shows they're all working on their own side projects. I like not seeing someone for a while and then having them show up and talk about everything they've accomplished while away.

I've also discovered that upgrading the dodge immediately moved the game to nearly-invincible mode. Aside from the artificial difficulty that plagued a couple spots in the first act, it turns out that quick strike + roll away > everything. Doesn't matter what the enemy is or how many of them there are, as long as Quen is up to absorb the occasional block/strike that can't be manually stopped I rarely take damage anymore.

Having a weapon with frost is pretty awesome too, making people explode into ice chunks is great.

I think the upgraded dodging ability helps a lot in that fight. The Quen is annoying but it's easy to just wait out. That fight takes a lot of patience.

Yeah, it gave me some trouble at first because there's very little room to move around and Letho has way more reach, but I just ran in circles until his Quen ran out, poked, and then continued to run away like a little girl. If only I had upgraded the dodge back then, I probably wouldn't have kept getting hit by Aard which is what dragged me down.

[Yoshi]

It sounds like I made that fight harder than it needed to be. I neglected to craft my new armor right away and didn't choose the dodge skill, so I was getting hit more and harder than perhaps was necessary. Now I'm on to Chapter 2 with my armor crafted. I'm definitely going up the sword tree for skills but only have Riposte thus far.

[Frogacuda]

I didn't realize until fairly late in the game that skills on the tree could be upgraded twice so I think I made some things harder on myself too.

It's a pretty tough game, overall. Even though fighting groups gets a LOT easier over time and the final fight is a joke a lot of the boss battles are damned tough throughout.

[MechDeus]

I'm definitely going up the sword tree for skills but only have Riposte thus far.

I've found riposte to be useless. Going into the block stance after a sword attack takes a lot longer than dodging away, so striking then trying for a riposte isn't really viable considering how fast the enemies can return fire. It also has a much shorter range than many enemy attacks and I think will only activate if the person the cursor is on attacks you (i.e. if the guy next to him attacks you riposte won't trigger).

When I looked at the other talent trees besides swordmaster I thought they all looked stupid except for the Quen boosting ones (once I knew what Quen was) and the final two or three, but that means taking a lot of useless abilities just for a couple neat things. The sword tree gives ridiculous amounts of damage, percentage chance instant kills, crit boosts, the ability to instant kill three guys at once, and the 200% dodge that renders the combat nearly pointless. I'm not even sure why anyone would even pick the others.

I broke one of the scripted fights because I "killed" someone that wasn't supposed to be able to die, took me a minute of being stuck in a room to figure out what happened. I put that in quotations because he didn't actually die, per se, I simply got multiple health bars of his to zero despite him having an ability that made him invincible and let him heal. Then he froze up with an empty lifebar in his scripted speech zone and I had to reload.

In Hensalt's camp I also kept getting lit on fire during conversations since talking to people teleports Geralt in front of them. I got to do an arm wrestling match while on fire, which was particularly great.

[Yoshi]

When I looked at the other talent trees besides swordmaster I thought they all looked stupid except for the Quen boosting ones (once I knew what Quen was) and the final two or three, but that means taking a lot of useless abilities just for a couple neat things. The sword tree gives ridiculous amounts of damage, percentage chance instant kills, crit boosts, the ability to instant kill three guys at once, and the 200% dodge that renders the combat nearly pointless. I'm not even sure why anyone would even pick the others.

WoW flashbacks!

[MechDeus]

WoW has definitely had the side-effect of having me plan out min-maxing as soon as I see a selectable leveling layout.

I took a look last night and saw Witcher 2 has a level cap of 35 and I'm at 27 so far, and apparently there's only one specific way to respec and no way to reset mutagens. Glad I only used a couple rare greaters and didn't waste slots with crappy lessers, I figured you could at least destroy the old one to implant new ones in. Kinda lame, but whatever.

[Yoshi]

Yeah, I wasted a slot on a lesser too, so that sucks.

[epmode]

360 port incoming, this year. Possibly November.

In other news, PC patch tomorrow, helps with targeting and also adds all of the retailer-specific preorder bonuses for free.

Also also: The PC version is $10 off on a bunch of sites for the weekend.

[raystorm]

Happy the game is doing well. I hope 360 gamers embrace The Witcher 2 even with all the big name heavy hitters coming out in November.