Ok so I made this account solely to post my thoughts on this abominable game, which is something I would never otherwise do - this should be an indication of how bad I think it is.

So ever since Jan I've been reading about people raving on about TW2 and how it was going to be the best thing ever and totally trump DA2 and all RPGs ever. And yes DA2 was a disappointment for me.. well it wasn't as good as DA:O but it wasn't that horrible. Anyway, over the last few weeks I've played TW2 and have gotten to the Letho fight. So here are my thoughts:
Ok first the good stuff. Graphics - superb, Music - amazing, epic songs, love it. Dialogue - I really enjoy how the townspeople actually have meaningful conversations with each other, and I like that this game has balls and isn't afraid to swear when necessary (though sometimes a bit too much, and what's with all the ploughing. I've learned to hate that word). The more important conversations sound pretty good too.

Well you'd think it's a fantastic game so far, wouldn't you? So why isn't it? One word, controls - they are fucking atrocious. First off, walking - you have two speeds: walking super slow so it takes a million years to go anywhere, or running like a maniac and constantly bumping into things and getting disoriented. Playing with the mouse sensitivity does not help here - I am constantly being turned around and in a small place like a house or an inn this is a fucking nightmare. In a good game like Assassin's Creed, you have like 6 different speeds - walk, walk fast, run, sprint, charge, walk gently, and all work perfectly. Also, this makes picking things up nearly impossible - for instance if I've just fought a bunch of monsters and want to gather their remains I can't just press R like in DA2 and my character automatically runs to the nearest openable object and picks it up. No, I have to activate the medallion, because OBVIOUSLY all the remains are hidden under bushes or they're the same color as the ground, then I have to very slowly walk to each piece in turn, stop, and then pick it up. And since they're strewn over a large area this takes forever. As a final insult we have doors and ledges. In both cases you have to stop before the thing, pause, and then use it. Again looking at AC, you go from running to climbing up a building with no pauses at all - how is this possibly hard? Oh and if you have to follow someone, why for the love of god don't they hold the door for you?

Now, speaking of combat, let's talk about it - it sucks. Now I started on hard, because I make a point of always playing games on the hardest difficulty available, but since I didn't know what to expect I figured I'd leave insanity for my 2nd playthrough. Now I am on normal and I'm thinking of going to easy. The combat in this game is broken beyond belief and for the simple reason that the controls are not fluid. Again we turn to AC, where you can go from attacking to blocking to evading to countering to punching to running away in a flash. Here, you can attack or you can block or you can roll away or you can cast a magic sign, but you have to stop between each one. If you are running you can't use signs or bombs, you have to stop first. If you roll away, well the horrible camera disorients you and by the time you find your enemy you're dead. If you're attacking one guy you will get swarmed by all the others. Now there IS a "pause" button, but it's also worthless. All it does is let you select your sign and pocket item. In all the RPG's I've ever played the pause button is there to let you survey your battlefield, figure out where your enemies are, plan a strategy, execute. Here, it does nothing. Oh also you have strong and regular attacks, but the game feels the need to assign them to different buttons. WHY? why not have left mouse for regular attack and hold left mouse for a stronger one? It's beyond retarded. So the only option is to spam quen as much as possible and focus on one guy at a time. Oh and pray.

So the combat is impossibly frustrating. The inventory doesn't fare much better. Armor and weapons are fine, I can compare those to the ones I have and sell the ones I don't need. But the crafting system.... Like what is all this shit?? There are five million kinds of potions and all of them do weird incomprehensible things. Do I want the one that gives vigor regen +1 or vigor regen +20%? what does that even mean?? For that matter, what's the difference between bleeding and poison? They both seem to do minor damage over time, should I even bother with them? As for the ingredients themselves, which ones do I need? I have 96 iron ores, 37 timber and 89 glandivalis together with 2000 other things. When you're at a store there is absolutely no way of knowing which ones you could ever possibly want. For that matter there is no easy way of buying new formulas - the only way to see which ones you have already is to compare each one in the store with your whole list, of like 100 potions at this point. Now I am not a fan of crafting systems generally and usually ignore them, but here it's completely in your face. You find all these flowers and mushrooms and things and it's just a giant waste of time figuring out what to do with them. For a good crafting system look at DA2 - you find clearly marked resources and recipes and you can review them all in one place and buy the ones you need. Some would say it's too simplified - I love it. Oh (yeah I end my paragraphs this way) and I still haven't figured out what mutagens are for.

Finally, I'd like to address the tutorials in this game. They are worthless. They will flash on screen for barely a second and then the only way to find them is to go digging through your journal. Let's take the minigames - the arm-wrestling one gave me no controls to work with - I had to figure out by trial and error what to do. In the knife-throwing one I had barely enough time to read the instructions (something about going to the inventory and putting knives in your pockets and then holding R or something to aim at a map...?) before some guy said Ves wins. Never got to try that one again because the game just moved on, not that it would have helped as I have no knives at all. Should I???

Well that's all I have to say - you may have noticed that I didn't mention the story at all. It's...meh. I haven't played TW1 so I am a bit confused atm, but the problem is that it takes me so long to get from one quest to the next because of the horrible controls that I can't really follow it. Right now, it's uninspiring.
Overall, I would give this game a 3/10 for good graphics and music, but horrible horrible controls and combat. I really tried to enjoy this game, I really did, I persevered for weeks, but I just can't do this anymore.

As a final insult, why do I have to meditate in order to level up? or make potions? And why is the Kayran fight a complete ripoff of every boss in Dead Space. I mean really? long tentacles with glowing bulbous bits that you have to attack? Come on.

Interesting, hundreds of thousands of people including me have 100% opposing opinion. But nice wall of text nonetheless, I have to appreciate the effort. Hope you feel better.

I cracked up reading the review, honestly its not your fault..its the developers.

I agree with the inventory, that could definitely do with some work on it. It's not instantly obvious what's what, and crafting recipes scroll so slowly. The doors are broken too, that should really be fixed, as are the ledges, but I don't understand why you hate the fact there's a run and a walk. I've never ran into things while running, and I tend to walk around town and stuff, admiring all the little details they've put in. The town environments are fairly small, and the walk isn't that slow, so it's hardly making the game 10 times longer.
As for the combat, lock on it your friend (left alt, I think), that way you don't go flying all over the place, and I quite enjoyed it then, it feels tactical, and the enemies are genuinely challenging, unlike AC2, where it's pretty much just wait for the chance to counter to insta-kill.
I think the reason you have to meditate to level up is much the same as sleeping to level up in Oblivion, you have to reflect on what you've learned to get better, and the same for potions, it makes much more sense to have to stop to make things that to be able to press a button in the inventory and magically then have 20 potions.
Tutorials are gonna be fixed in this patch 2.0 if you've seen the Dev Diary on it, they talk about much improved tutorials to teach you everything.
I really enjoyed the story as well, it's got a few twists and it's a nice political intrigue tale with a dragon in it. It doesn't kick off so much until Act 2 though, so it does get better the further in you get.
And finally, mutagens are used in the level up screen, if there's a little circle on the ability you can mutate it with those to give you extra vitality or other extras. It's hidden away in a tutorial.
I see the Witcher 2 as a kind of flawed diamond. Beneath some issues there's a really, really great game, and I think giving it a 3/10 because you refuse to read up stuff in the journal seems a bit harsh to me

man, nice effort the wall of text and everything but... I think you're just confused. Witcher 2 is objectively a great game (no, i'm not gonna write another wall of text to deduce that) and it makes a step forward bringing GDR and in general videogames on a whole new level.

You remind me of that guy who was on Youtube playing TW2 which end up in frustration because it was nothing like Assassin's Creed.

My opinion could scarcely be more different. Some of the effects were pretty arcane, I don't think I ever saw Vigor regeneration 1 only Vitality Regeneration +1 but I knew from Witcher 1 how imperative that was. As for poison vs bleeding, yeayh I never bothered with either. It was also really tough on normal. Not because it's massively difficult but because there's no difficulty curve the first fight and the last fight are equally hard and the game gives no chance to learn, I had to drop to easy to learn how the game worked and again to learn some of the boss battles.

But those were niggles really, once I'd learned how the combat worked it was immensely satisfying and had marvellous controls, quite simply the best in any RPG I've played and that includes pretty much all of them. I was playing on a controller though, so that could easily have made the difference. I was also comfortable dropping the difficulty down to learn what was going on. Everything else about the game was superb too, the plot is incredible, it's remarkably free flowing responding to all sorts of different events and everything about it fits together.

...what the..?

Lets face it. AC is a good game but this game wasn't made to be compared with AC and other games. I could say AC enemy is dumb by just waiting in line to get killed by 1 hit counter attack.
Most of your negative point has been debunked in this sub-forum. Even the developer also came here provide an explanation regarding the combat. Use the search function if you have any interest reading the reason behind the combat mechanics and others.

Its a good review imo.

I agree with many points, and many of those points unfortunately make the game only good, rather than a great game.

Hopefully the big 2.0 patch will address many problems.

@Bbtufty: thanks for the mutagen info, and yeah for the meditation I was just nitpicking by the end (3am where I was), but as for the combat, it's just not fluid. I have figured out how to lock on, though aside from throwing bombs it doesn't seem to help me. It just feels as if every element is there, but they failed to string them together.
The journal has nothing to do with it. I simply can't enjoy it - just going from place to place is incredibly frustrating.

@Rubarack: I have learned how the combat works, it's just not pleasant, it's like I have to force Geralt to do everything.

You expect it to be like Assassin's Creed, where the enemies line up and wait for their turn to be killed.

And because it's more realistic and all the enemies attack, you blame the game and say the combat sucks?

No, it doesn't suck, your game skills do.

Yes the controls are sometimes unresponsive and the panels could be better etc, but your rant is hardly accurate or fair.

^I didn't at all expect it to be like AC, I thought it would be an RPG like Oblivion or DA2, since so many people seemed to be comparing it to DA2.
Notice that I never said that the enemies suck - they don't. There's a great variety and they all have unique and interesting abilities, unlike AC where there's like 4 kinds of guards and they all suck to varying degrees. My problem is with Geralt himself.

Dragon Age 2 sucks..its making the whole gaming community dumb as a rock. The game doesn't even follow D&D rules, it just doesn't fit anywhere...

Who gives a fuck about D&D?? Yeah it has some serious flaws -mostly the crap plot and repeated areas, but the combat is amazing imo, at least on nightmare.