Well, The Witcher: Part Two. Now your time has come.
I spent 70 hours on you and got all the achievements. Now I will speak about you...
For the most part, positively.
The plot of the second Witcher is good, in the spirit of the books. Geralt, as usual, gets caught up in political intrigue and tries to maintain neutrality (which, by the way, is not reflected in the game from the word “at all”). In our search for one wonderful personality and periodic flashbacks, we will learn about a new witcher school, we will be able to decide whether the king of Kaedwena will survive and choose who we sympathize with more: the repulsed elf criminal or the brave Temerian officer. As a plot, we are given a simple beginning and a very complicated implementation of everything that happens before the denouement. So, okay, I’ll stop pouring water and say: the plot is excellent, witcher-ish.
However, the additional quests will not please you much. They are, for the most part, extremely boring and few in number when compared with the third part. And monster contracts just make me sick.
The graphics are nice and don’t hurt your eyes. Of course, there aren’t many landscapes, but you can catch a couple of good shots in cutscenes.
The controls are very pleasant, but after a while you will realize that you are playing some kind of slasher game, and not an RPG. And the tactics are more reminiscent of Dark Souls, if it were more casual: hit, roll, hit. In general, you will start to get bored with battles immediately after arriving in Flotsam, which is not good. The situation will change if you play on the insane difficulty level, but if you have previously completed the game at least on average, then this will not add difficulty to you.
The music here is more likely to look towards old RPGs like Dragon Age and The Elder Scrolls, while in the third part it is more ethnic music with fantasy elements. There is no rampant folklore here, which means the soundtrack is looking in the wrong direction. There are no memorable compositions here.
Oh yes, localization. She's at a pretty good level here. Geralt doesn’t overact, Dandelion is adequate, Zoltan is cool... the list of characters could go on for a long time. However, there is no sense of kinship or warmth in the characters. They're just characters. And this is sad, because the third part wins here. No, not in terms of voice acting, but in terms of sincerity. This does not change the quality of the voice part of the game.
To summarize, I want to say that this was my first experience with the Witcher gaming universe and it was definitely positive. Yes, there are bugs in the game. Yes, after the first playthrough I got bored of replaying it because of the linearity. BUT! I will continue to return to this game many years later, because it will already be part of nostalgia and the warm past. And the game itself is excellent, so there’s no reason to return.