

What makes Witcher 2 shine is the well crafted, incredibly epic story of politicking and sorcery. That said, I highly recommend you persevere lying on the other side is a huge payoff. Overall, it’s a little daunting to start. Very little is explained in the way of combat mechanics, the many systems at your control (things like potions, crafting, magic abilities), and the context of the warring monarchs and their mysterious assassin which are central to its plotline. The game does offer an overall useless tutorial (if you have the Enhanced Edition), but otherwise it throws you right into a pretty hot mess. Let me be blunt - that is the absolute worst way to start the Witcher 2. I started Witcher 2 having never played the Witcher 1, and generally not knowing what the game was about or how it worked. I did play with the Combat Rebalance mod, which allegedly makes the combat better truly I think it just made it more trivial, but those may be two sides of the same coin in this case. Over the course of the game, much of the Witcher's many turning gears become an immensely enjoyable machine, though it jumps to a rough start and could use a more enjoyable combat system. To be reductive, it contains a lot of action-like RPG combat and deep mechanics common to Bethesda games, but is also extremely narrative driven to the tune of something Bioware might put out. The Witcher 2 is a narrative driven action RPG by Polish developers CD Projekt Red.
