The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition Reviews

As a fan of The Witcher Series, I'd recommend this game for it's lore and continuation of the first instalment's story. Although this game was shorter than i expected, i had fun with the new mechanics and characters.

I usually never get far past the tutorial, which is one of the worst tutorials I've played. Everything about the game and the way it plays just feels awkward and clunky. I like the story and setting and all that, but the gameplay leaves a lot to be desired for me.

Good game, still fun to play even years later. The 2 distinct story line paths allows for replay ability. Combat is a bit outdated, making some of the boss fights early in the game annoying, but the story is good and once you get some upgrades everything starts to flow more smoothly

I beat this 2x on the OG Disc version. I beat it 2x here. I bought several other copies for friends. This is my favorite game of all time. Despite being 14 years old and a dx9 game, it still holds up graphically. Unpopular opinion: Superior to Witcher 3. This is truly a Game of Thrones style game. "The flea has bitten a Lion." One of the most incredible lines I've ever heard in a video game. Buy it. Beat it. Play it a second time (or just choose the alternate main branch).

Coming from the first Witcher, this is a huge upgrade. Combat is way better and it looks pretty good for its age. The game is pretty short but there is some replayability since your choices really change some of the chapters.

great story love the story but too bad that i played the 3 first so the old game mechanics made the game play hard for me but its a really good game

Summary: It feels pretty brutal to give a thumbs down to The Witcher 2 given how much I loved this when I first played it years ago. I think my feelings on it are more complicated than that, but unfortunately there are only two options on Steam and I definitely can’t say I recommend this game. Despite the fact that I have some nice things to say about it, it has just aged a little too much to be something I enjoy and tell other people to try. It’s aged way better than its predecessor by a country mile, but sometimes even a valiant effort isn’t enough. Review: The first thing I want to acknowledge and give credit to is that this game is a straight improvement on the first in literally every way. It’s shocking how much they learned from their mistakes and this game is quite possibly the best example of why bad games need sequels, because they absolutely improved everything. Combat, characters, writing, world and quest design, art style, you name it it is almost certainly better in this game. Exploration especially is a real highlight. I loved touching every part of these maps, especially Act 2 which is absolutely the high point of the game. A lot of parts have aged relatively poorly, but I want to give credit to this game for being a real achievement for the studio. Unfortunately, I am reviewing it today, not 14 years ago (holy shit time flies), and by today’s standards this game just doesn't quite hold up. The most obvious way it doesn’t is gameplay, specifically combat but also itemization and preparation. The combat just isn’t… fun? It definitely looks a lot better and feels a lot more dynamic than Witcher 1, but once you spend a lot of time with it it really loses its luster because for the most part you just upgrade your dodge roll and just spam that until you win. The enemy types start out promising in the first area with a couple cool monster types that are both different and a pretty sick boss fight, but that variety never grows to a more interesting point. There are unique items that you can use to augment and assist combat just like the other games like oils, bombs, and throwing knives, but they all just kinda…suck? For lack of a better word? That’s unfair for bombs, because the combo of Dragon’s Dream and Dancing Star is straight up sick as hell and can just clear anything, but other than that I don’t think I used a single other type of bomb because why bother? Same with oils, even the ones that provide damage boosts don’t really feel like they do anything because the boosts are percentage based and therefore really small. Throwing knives are just a joke, I didn’t use one literally my entire playthrough because the game never incentivizes it, and again they don’t really do anything different that your swords couldn’t do or that you need. I almost forgot to talk about preparation and potions. I don’t have much to say other than the system is stupid. Only being able to drink when you meditate is a horrendous design decision, and the way toxicity and potion matching works is just boring and useless. I was really hoping for more depth here. All in all the combat just suffers from having some cool ideas that while interesting ultimately feel superfluous because you’re gonna end up hacking away at everything you fight anyways. On top of that just like the first game the signs are extremely underpowered, and as someone who likes using magic in any game I can I was really bummed out by how terrible they are, even with upgrades. The other way that this game hasn’t aged well is writing. This really surprised me on my playthrough, because a lot of people still praise this game's writing despite its age and I remember loving it many years ago when I first played it too. I’ve even seen some people say that its writing eclipses The Witcher 3’s. I can now confidently say those people are insane, it isn’t even close. The characters are strong, especially in Iorveth’s path in Act 2 you meet so many cool characters that are well fleshed out, well acted, and well written in a way that just makes you excited for the next conversation with them. (Quick side note, I really recommend Iorveth’s path if you end up playing the game, Roche’s path is not only inferior, but also he is a racist. Fuck racists.) Once you look past the characters however, the story that this game tries to tell is almost weirdly pro-monarchy/authoritarianism and nobility? It also doesn’t really reveal these true colors until towards the end of the game, and it’s hard to describe without spoiling but suffice to say that this game makes a lot of definitive statements about what it thinks a “good” application of power is, regardless of what your choices are, and it has not aged well at all in today’s world. This surprised me a lot as everyone who talks about this game online touts its choices, and even I remember the choices being really distinct and different. But while the game lets you make those choices, it still has commentary about those choices that is very clearly one sided, which removes a lot of the moral ambiguity of the world and choices themselves that a lot of people seem to think that this game has. In other words this game isn’t morally ambiguous at all, it definitely tells you which choices IT thinks are right, and as a result its writing is a lot less interesting. It definitely nails the interpersonal relationships between the characters, but the actual plot writing itself is really lackluster. The last thing that I’ll criticize is that Act 3 just really sucks. It’s so much worse than the first two Acts that it almost feels like it’s from a different game. It’s boring, way too long and drawn out, way less interesting and fun. It brings the pacing of the game to a screeching halt and it just doesn’t recover from that ever. Slight mini rant: I quit my playthrough in the middle of Act 3 this most recent time, partially because as I mentioned above it is boring as hell, but also partially because I randomly walked through a door and got curb stomped by 3 gargoyles that I couldn't dodge and couldn’t do anything about and died, losing about an hour and half of progress because the game’s autosave feature sucks. It did not feel worth powering through that all over again especially when I’ve done it before so I called it there so I could move on to the far superior Witcher 3. Just wanted to include this story to show that this game still features dumb game design despite being better than Witcher 1. Overall, just like before I’m glad this game exists, was successful, and was an improvement on the formula it set up in the prior game. We need to allow companies second chances like this so they can continue to improve and cut their teeth. I don’t recommend this game to anyone looking to get into the Witcher series, I just don’t think the quality is there anymore and as much as that sucks it is also just a reality of any creative medium. I do however recommend the studio that made it and encourage everyone to check out their future works.

The witcher 2 is an amazing game especially if you’re a witcher fan you’re going to love it I just got 100% completion and I might go for another playthrough I really wish Gwent was in it because I don’t like the dice mini game at all the pacing is a bit slow but that’s not a big deal any game CDPR makes is going to be incredible

This game is really damn boring imo coming from Witcher 3 but I wanted more background on the games lore especially the politics in terms of the factions and the war as I had no idea what was going on in Witcher 3. I have got my answers by playing this game, though it felt like a drag. If you love the Witcher's lore then yes I would recommend it.

It's a very good game. Graphics are still okay in 2025. It is a very nice game. It takes the first one and fixes all its issues, so it's perfect. I can't find any downside to it tbh. ---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☑ Good ☐ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☐ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☐ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☑ Check if you can run paint ☐ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☐ Old Fashioned ☑ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☐ Average ☑ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☑ 9 ☐ 10