The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings ann.

So, finally got some play time in on it and haven't been able to put it down... Anyone that claims this is consolized in any way must be delusional. I would say it's "console-friendly". The combat is more on par with GoW (to me a very good thing) and you can still pull off the fancy witcher combos by timing and alternating your strong and weak attacks.

Hard mode is unforgiving - doesn't take much to kill you so you have to master combat quickly or else not get very far. I found using double-tap motion keys and tactically rolling to where I want to be to attack makes a massive difference, especially against large groups where parrying just won't cut it. I think that alone was my saving grace through the prologue which let me just wade into mobs of baddies and chop them to bits while taking little damage.

On vacation this week, so between family activities I have plenty of time to enjoy it.

Best PC game I've played in a while - I don't know if I'd put on the same level as Planescape: Torment from back in its time (seen some posts on other forums clamoring this), but it's damn good and so far. Time will tell where it lands on the food chain of great rpgs.

The developers gave it the "spark" that makes a game enjoyable and memorable. And I'm not talking about the titties... LOL, speaking of which my wife came in my office with some coffee when I first started it up to play this morning and said, "So, THAT'S what's keeping you up at night, huh?"

Heh, just wait until she gets a load of DNF...
 
I saw a post earlier complaining about the tutorial fights. I just wanted to concur and add my 2 cents. On normal, the tutorial/prelude is just plain frustrating. I think I reloaded 10 times on the *SPOILER* dragon part alone. Quen was the only way I could proceed without being incinerated. The game does a poor job of initiating new gamers IMO. I even played Witcher 1 and was and still am slightly confused. I still don't know how to drink a potion or add them to my quick bar.

Does this break the game for me? No. I'm getting much better (albeit slowly). But I can certainly understand others' frustrations. They just dump you off in the tutorial with a sword, some signs, and VERY LITTLE additional guidance on how to proceed. I found the tutorial popups disappeared too quickly or were just not very instructive. And the tutorial fights overall are too difficult on normal, again IMHO.
 
I saw a post earlier complaining about the tutorial fights. I just wanted to concur and add my 2 cents. On normal, the tutorial/prelude is just plain frustrating. I think I reloaded 10 times on the *SPOILER* dragon part alone. Quen was the only way I could proceed without being incinerated. The game does a poor job of initiating new gamers IMO. I even played Witcher 1 and was and still am slightly confused. I still don't know how to drink a potion or add them to my quick bar.

Does this break the game for me? No. I'm getting much better (albeit slowly). But I can certainly understand others' frustrations. They just dump you off in the tutorial with a sword, some signs, and VERY LITTLE additional guidance on how to proceed. I found the tutorial popups disappeared too quickly or were just not very instructive. And the tutorial fights overall are too difficult on normal, again IMHO.

You can hit "J" to open up the journal. It has the information from the popups and a little extra as well.

I got creamed the first time at that part too, but I think that was more a dumbass move on my part than anything tutorial-related. Common sense would say stepping into fire is bad, right? Not me :p. /TOASTEE!
 
You can hit "J" to open up the journal. It has the information from the popups and a little extra as well.

I got creamed the first time at that part too, but I think that was more a dumbass move on my part than anything tutorial-related. Common sense would say stepping into fire is bad, right? Not me :p. /TOASTEE!

I think right before my first reload, I was thinking something along the lines of: "This is just the tutorial, they can't possibly...oh ****!"
 
You can't add a potion to your quick bar. RTFM. Seriously, everything you need to know is in the manual and/or in your journal once you get the tutorial popups. Potions must be consumed before battle, always.

For me... GOTY. There have been 0 technical difficulties for me (thank raptor Jesus!). I really like the combat, I wouldn't call it "hard", but it is challenging enough to make you think out your battles, rather than running in a la Dynasty Warriors. Right now, I've made it through to Flotsam, asking merchants about a reward for - Deleted due to Spoiler-. The pacing is incredible.

The game obviously is the best looking RPG to date, and probably top 10 best looking games of all time. The voice acting is very good. The writing is very good. The performance is good (not using xfire). The combat is damn satisfying. Mmmm.

If you're having trouble with the combat, there are a few tricks to learn.

First off, if someone is standing near a ledge, Aard them off of it to their death.

If you are being charged by 3 enemies, try to line them up a bit and Aard the first one to stop him or knock him into the guy behind him.

Also, use Quen if you're taking too much damage. Learn to time your strikes and anticipate you enemies moves.

Attacks are directional, so you want to keep your combos going, jumping back and forth between enemies and stabbing if you can. Wind up heavy strikes for stunned or recovering enemies.

Don't start rolling out of the way when you see someone starting a swing, roll before they start, you can usually tell when they are going to hit you.

Use traps and bombs. Move them in your inventory to your pocket slots. Activate using the R button. Bombs can take out several foes at once, and traps can seriously split up a group of enemies.

Save whenever you can. Use Swallow potions when you think you're going into a fight that might be a challence. Make sure to make more potions as you can, but watch out for your ingredients. Always use the most common type of ingredient to make them. Sometimes you can use ingredients to make simple potions that should be saved to make permanent stat boost potions and the like. Save the rare stuff.

Separate your enemies using Aards or traps, use block in one on one fights, then follow up with heavy strikes when your opponent is recovering. This is NOT Call of Duty, you can't fight a heap of enemies all at once.
 
Also, if you have an enemy reeling, keep pressing the attack by moving forward and laying on the light strikes. If they block, roll back and move in with a heavy strike.

Throwing knives are a good way to deal with charging groups of enemies. You can usually kill 1-2 before they get to you.
 
I died a lot starting out on hard, but I always felt I was making some sort of mistake. I practiced and referenced the manual. Found some combination of signs and items that worked well. The combat system really feels good when you do well. That's not to say it's not without it's problems. Sometimes he just flies and leaps into combat a bit carelessly and I'm not sure how to control that. I think it's the method they chose to close distance when attacking an enemy otherwise out of range.

I was so confused when I couldn't drink a bunch of potions before a fight and I love how a progressive quest summary is kept in the journal for each quest.

Played 6 hours last night and barely got to Flotsam. Such a good game.
 
Jim at RPS said the fighting gets easier after you get some skills. The progression curve is a bit steep.

Then someone in the comments mentioned he later went back to the opening tutorial and wiped the floor with everyone, so I'm sure a lot of it is skill based too.

It definitely sounds like the game is worth the initial investment.
 
The only thing that makes me mad is WASD. I can't change it to my preferred arrow keys. I'm still not having trouble with the combat, but I wish I could use my normal key layout. I'll bet there is an .ini tweak for that.
 
The only thing that makes me mad is WASD. I can't change it to my preferred arrow keys. I'm still not having trouble with the combat, but I wish I could use my normal key layout. I'll bet there is an .ini tweak for that.

Remapping to the arrow keys:

In User.ini (in the Documents folder, not the main installation folder) under the section Input QWERTY or whatever keyboard layout you have:

[Input]
KeyboardLayout=QWERTY

IK_Down=(Gamekey=GI_AxisLeftY,Value=-1.000000)
IK_Left=(Gamekey=GI_AxisLeftX,Value=-1.000000)
IK_Right=(Gamekey=GI_AxisLeftX,Value=1.000000)
IK_Up=(Gamekey=GI_AxisLeftY,Value=1.000000)

Get rid of these lines if they are there:
IK_Down=(GameKey="GI_Down",Value=1)
IK_Up=(GameKey="GI_Up",Value=1)

courtesy of the intarweb.
 
^ Thanks. Hadn't had time to look for this yet. I'll probably stop playing normal and bump to hard with my preferred control scheme.
 
I haven't tried the second one yet, going to play the first one again and choose to stop Javed in the begining. I'm just so happy there is a company out there putting out amazing games and giving me a reason to keep my gaming pc and not swap it out for a console. Every PC gamer should own the first one, it is incredible IMO (I never play games twice, so that means something)
 
We need to get some screenshots going. Though seeing everything in fluid motion is just sick. ;) Such an awe droping game.
 
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Where did you get the game guide online?

Considering I'm dl'ing on Steam right now and have no physical guide, would be great to know.

Think he means the pdf manual, it should be in root of Witcher 2 folder as the REAL game guide is actually 96 pages.
 
I really need to finish my playthrough on W1, but then again there is no rush for W2 since I didn't even get W1 until a $5 Steam sale ... so I can wait.
 
Anyone have a system that is blowing through the game (50-60fps on ultra) at 1080p or higher?

If I throw in the towel and buy a gpu (or 2), I don't want to buy something and then come up dissapointed.
 
Yea my copy I preordered at D2D came with 1.0gb of extras, game guide (34 pages), walkthrough (90+ pages), Soundtrack (768mb), papercraft witcher II cut out dolls, and the world maps.
 
Anyone have a system that is blowing through the game (50-60fps on ultra) at 1080p or higher?

If I throw in the towel and buy a gpu (or 2), I don't want to buy something and then come up dissapointed.

Yeah, managing about 80-85FPS on ultra w/ uber-sampling disabled. If you want to go uber, your going to need to go SLI/XFire
 
Anyone have a system that is blowing through the game (50-60fps on ultra) at 1080p or higher?

If I throw in the towel and buy a gpu (or 2), I don't want to buy something and then come up dissapointed.

Yup. I do. All ultra and enabled options with near distance though. No uber either.

Single 480 GTX soc at 580 stock clocks and a 2500K at 4.4 w/ 4 gb sys ram. 50-80fps average. 1920X1440
 
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Yeah. In the digital premium version there is a 96 page game guide and a 32 or 34 page manual. Blubikins is confusing game guide with the manual.

Oh, thanks for the correction.

Do you at least get the manual with the non-premium edition?

Not sure what's in the game guide, but at least having the manual could be good.
 
CatalystCreator has just tweeted a bunch of news about ATI/Crossfire

Witcher 2 - CF profile - looks like a driver change is needed (can't do to much with just CAP) - will let you know more info when I have it

We're looking at Witcher 2 for single and CF - will release hotfix driver as soon as possible

We always try to get CF support the day a game releases, but sometime we don't see the final build of a title until it releases...

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we'll probably be waiting at least a week or so before the game is playable. I thought we were passed all this with crossfire but apparently not, I think after all this messing about I'll be going back to single core cards in future no matter how fast the dual GPU ones are, waiting like this when a big title is out is completely unacceptable for such a high end graphics solution.
 
CatalystCreator has just tweeted a bunch of news about ATI/Crossfire

I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we'll probably be waiting at least a week or so before the game is playable. I thought we were passed all this with crossfire but apparently not, I think after all this messing about I'll be going back to single core cards in future no matter how fast the dual GPU ones are, waiting like this when a big title is out is completely unacceptable for such a high end graphics solution.

I'm under the impression your difficulties with combat are at least mostly attributed to the low framerate you're getting. Always keep a secondary card for backup!
 
CatalystCreator has just tweeted a bunch of news about ATI/Crossfire







I'm going to go out on a limb and say that we'll probably be waiting at least a week or so before the game is playable. I thought we were passed all this with crossfire but apparently not, I think after all this messing about I'll be going back to single core cards in future no matter how fast the dual GPU ones are, waiting like this when a big title is out is completely unacceptable for such a high end graphics solution.

I think its great and all that AMD is working on it, however they really need something in their drives that can pull in CAP profiles automatically. They are putting out multiple CAP installs a month and its stupid to make people keep installing them every week to play new games.
 
Is exclusive pre-release access to the game part of the nVidia WIMTBP program nowadays (don't think it's been historically) or why are these issues just now being discovered? I mean, either AMD didn't get access, in which case I can't be angry at them, or they had access and just didn't use it (too busy optimizing Far Cry 2 or something).

I'm asking CatalysCreator on twitter. Earlier tweet:

"We always try to get CF support the day a game releases, but sometime we don't see the final build of a title until it releases..."

Doesn't really say much about why.
 
oh hell.. im playing it since yesterday, its enjoyable and entertaining but: its just another suckingbox-xport-crap-console-fuckingthing.. dx9 with aspect ratio fixed on 16:9.. oblivion with a ton of mods is heavier and looks a lot better than this ^^!

developed for pcs? yeah right.. thank you marketing team, the only difference this time is that the console players will have to wait first :rolleyes:
 
Is exclusive pre-release access to the game part of the nVidia WIMTBP program nowadays (don't think it's been historically) or why are these issues just now being discovered? I mean, either AMD didn't get access, in which case I can't be angry at them, or they had access and just didn't use it (too busy optimizing Far Cry 2 or something).

I'm asking CatalysCreator on twitter.

Historically TWIMTBP has sent developers out to the game studios to fix and optimize Direct 3D code. Having met some of these people, they would normally show up, spend about 4 hours doing nothing but /facepalm, then get to work on fixing rendering paths. Often the fixes actually benefited ATI/AMD users as well, however people would still be like "OMFG TWIMTB ruined another game for ATI users".
 
Here's some screenshots, 1920x1080 maxed out except Ubersampling. Runs well (30-40 fps) on a 6950 and X3 720 @3.4 ghz.

 
Historically TWIMTBP has sent developers out to the game studios to fix and optimize Direct 3D code. Having met some of these people, they would normally show up, spend about 4 hours doing nothing but /facepalm, then get to work on fixing rendering paths. Often the fixes actually benefited ATI/AMD users as well, however people would still be like "OMFG TWIMTB ruined another game for ATI users".

The only time I've seen ATI users complain of TWIMTBP is when Batman:AA Anti-Aliasing solution was deliberately turned off for ATI users, seems like a legit complaint to me.
 
oh hell.. im playing it since yesterday, its enjoyable and entertaining but: its just another suckingbox-xport-crap-console-fuckingthing.. dx9 with aspect ratio fixed on 16:9.. oblivion with a ton of mods is heavier and looks a lot better than this ^^!

developed for pcs? yeah right.. thank you marketing team, the only difference this time is that the console players will have to wait first :rolleyes:

No, modded Oblivion does not look better. It's also obviously not a port.
 
We're looking at Witcher 2 for single and CF - will release hotfix driver as soon as possible.
Do you think that means they're leaving a lot on the table with their single cards too? I'm aware of the CF issues but it's not clear whether the single card framerates are well below what they should be or not.
 
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