So, I'm giving this a six. It's not the worst game ever and it does a lot right, but, and this is what really brings it down for me, it does a lot wrong it did right in the first one.
The first thing that stood out to me, was how hard it is to see stuff. Where goes the path? Can I walk here? I just killed a guy, where is his stuff? The map is the worst, it doesn't give any information, even the lines sometimes don't seem te add up with the surroundings. Names of buildings have dissapeared. so you can only know what they are by entering, because most of them really look like eachother. The default settings for the mouse are hellish, so I had to turn the sentivity all the way down. But still sometimes it's easy to get turned around. After playing for a few hours, my eyes were hurting. The first game did this so much better.
Controls - in the first game at least you could choose how you wanted to play. Witcher 2 doesn't seem te have this option - even though it's in the options menu. Learning the controls was the most annoying thing ever. You get thrown into an arena, where they tell you all you different moves. You want to practice a move? You can't. Because now it's time for the next move. In this way they expect you to learn 9 different moves, by doing them al once. And when the game starts it's the same. I got one coin, some guy wanted to armwrestle and he defeated me easily cause I didn't understand the instructions - the armwresteling by the way plays like playing a game that keeps lagging. Not a fun minigame, and I will probably skip that quest. - anyway, guy took my coin, and I couldn't try again. Later the king wants me to help him aim the balista, I use the crosshair, too high, again? Nope, you missed, now we'll just go to the next thing. The first game did this so much better by introducing moves and giving you a lot of time to get used to everything. Sometimes Geralt puts away his sword automatically, but sometime he doesn't which is fun because now, after fighting a bunch of monsters, you have to restart because the whole village now wants to kill you because you just wanted to talk with someone and Geralt didn't put his weapon away. Fun! The first game did this too. But it didn't hurt my eyes so much that I didn't see I was still hold my sword. Sound is super loud and the game somehow didn't allow me to use the volume control on my keyboard. Also, if you're on steam and you want the game to pick up from how you ended the first game, go find out how to do this first. I was dumb enough to think the games would do this automatically, but when I found out the continuation mistakes I was too far in. Really dissapointing. And then there are some crashes, sound crashed and first I thought it was my own installation quitting, after 10 very scared en frustrated minutes I found out it was the game. Also some hard crashes. The first game had these too though.
So what is better from the first game? Well it's more detailled. The lipsyncing is better. Better voice acting. Really vivid surroundings. Things you should expect from a game after a few years. But that's about it.
Controls - in the first game at least you could choose how you wanted to play. Witcher 2 doesn't seem te have this option - even though it's in the options menu. Learning the controls was the most annoying thing ever. You get thrown into an arena, where they tell you all you different moves. You want to practice a move? You can't. Because now it's time for the next move. In this way they expect you to learn 9 different moves, by doing them al once. And when the game starts it's the same. I got one coin, some guy wanted to armwrestle and he defeated me easily cause I didn't understand the instructions - the armwresteling by the way plays like playing a game that keeps lagging. Not a fun minigame, and I will probably skip that quest. - anyway, guy took my coin, and I couldn't try again. Later the king wants me to help him aim the balista, I use the crosshair, too high, again? Nope, you missed, now we'll just go to the next thing. The first game did this so much better by introducing moves and giving you a lot of time to get used to everything. Sometimes Geralt puts away his sword automatically, but sometime he doesn't which is fun because now, after fighting a bunch of monsters, you have to restart because the whole village now wants to kill you because you just wanted to talk with someone and Geralt didn't put his weapon away. Fun! The first game did this too. But it didn't hurt my eyes so much that I didn't see I was still hold my sword. Sound is super loud and the game somehow didn't allow me to use the volume control on my keyboard. Also, if you're on steam and you want the game to pick up from how you ended the first game, go find out how to do this first. I was dumb enough to think the games would do this automatically, but when I found out the continuation mistakes I was too far in. Really dissapointing. And then there are some crashes, sound crashed and first I thought it was my own installation quitting, after 10 very scared en frustrated minutes I found out it was the game. Also some hard crashes. The first game had these too though.
So what is better from the first game? Well it's more detailled. The lipsyncing is better. Better voice acting. Really vivid surroundings. Things you should expect from a game after a few years. But that's about it.