S&S Review: The Witcher 2: Enhanced Edition

Title: The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings: Enhanced Edition

Format: Xbox 360, PC

Release Date: April 17, 2012

Publisher: Warner Bros Interactive

Developer:  CD Projekt / Metropolis Software House

Price: $59.99

ESRB Rating: M

The Witcher 2 is the sequel to the critically acclaimed PC game The Witcher, and the new Enhanced Edition brings the sequel over to the consoles.  Xbox fans have another great action RPG to spend countless hours lost in the Witcher's unique universe.

Presentation and Story:

The Witcher 2 has one of the more interesting and dark stories I have scene in a RPG in quite some time now.  You play as Geralt of Rivia , the silver haired monster hunter who has a unique relationship when it comes to women.  The story is complex with a lot of layers to unravel as you dive deeper into the game.  You'll have to pay attention since there are a lot of little details involving politics and the game's specific history can confuse you.  If you stick with it though, it will be very satisfying.  Graphically, the game looks sublime in every way.  Character models and animations are smooth and crisp, even though the game's framerate can stutter from time to time, the highly detailed environments make this one of the best looking game's on console.  The voice talent is superb, offering a wide variety of voices to go along with the diverse amount of races in the game.  If you have the available space, you will want to install the game to your 360 hard drive.  This vastly improves performance and closes the gap between the console to the superior PC version. Impressive visuals and a great soundtrack rounds out the game's atmosphere beautifully.

Core Gameplay:
The Witcher sticks to the basic sword and magic based combat paradigm, and its one best on the market.  It offers a fair amount of challenge and never becomes cheap like a typical JRPG.  Although the difficulty for the Xbox version has been toned down compared to the PC version, don't expect a cakewalk.  If you choose to approach each enemy encounter blindly, you will perish in the heat of battle.  The ability to make bombs and traps will come in handy as you face off against a greater number of foes.  The game's controls are tight and responsive.  The Witcher's quests offer a lot of cool and often haunting quests that require you to make tough choices.  The choices you make won't be your typical good and evil choices, some will just require you to choose whatever you believe is the best choice.  This is what makes the game so good, the choices you make will have a continuous drastic effect on the story.  This raises the replayability meter of the Witcher to new heights, giving you a huge reason to play through the story more than once.

Final Thoughts:
The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition is an exceptional RPG that stands out in every way possible.  With a stupendous presentation and a solid combat system, this can be considered as an early contender for Game of the Year.

Final Rating = 9.25/10

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