If you've never played The Witcher 1 or 2, allow me to give you a little bit of background... You play the part of Geralt of Rivia, a professional monster slayer: a Witcher.  Witchers are trained and mutated into skilled and efficient killing machines able to use magic and potions to enhance their skills even further.

The world in which the Witchers live is a pretty violent and unforgiving one.  Non-human races are, more often than not, treated as second-class citizens and given a rough time.  This gives rise to a group of non-human guerillas known as Scoia'tael or, more commonly, Squirrels.  Whether they are freedom fighters or terrorists depends very much on your point of view, but clashes between the Scoia'tael and humans are frequent and bloody.

Despite his profession as a monster hunter, Geralt seems to spend a lot of his time dealing more with people than monsters and the start of The Witcher 2, for reasons made clear at the end of the original Witcher, finds him as a bodyguard to King Foltest during a particularly tense time.  It's not long before Geralt finds himself stuck in the middle of a bloody conspiracy, not helped by his continued amnesia.

While playing the original Witcher isn't necessary to enjoy or understand The Witcher 2, it will give you a better understanding of Geralt and the world he inhabits.

The Witcher 2 is a detailed and gritty RPG with a lot of moral grey areas.  On numerous occasions you will find yourself faced with choices that are far from clear cut, with the consequences often having quite dramatic results.  For example, faced with choosing the fate of one particularly unpleasant individual you could chose to put an end to his abuse and satisfy the vengeance of an ally... but in doing so you would leave a significant number of people without leadership or guidance when they need it most!  Neither choice is right or wrong but they will have some impact on your relationships with different people and the world around you.

Combat in The Witcher 2 is unforgiving and often chaotic.  Failure to prepare before a big fight with carefully selected potions and you'll quickly find yourself struggling.  Once in the fight, not paying attention to the types of weapons your foes are wielding, their weaknesses and, most importantly, when to block or dodge their attacks and you'll be seeing a LOT of the 'Game Over' screen... this is definitely no button masher.  Get the combat right however, a Geralt becomes a whirling, death-dealing demon.  Once you've got a few points in the swordsmanship tree, like being able to parry attacks from all directions or deflect projectiles, things get a little bit easier... just don't expect it to be 'easy'.

In fact, this applies to most of The Witcher 2; in this age of games that tend to spend all their time leading the player through each obstacle, very little of this game is pointed out.  Need to eliminate the nests of some nasty Nekkers? First you've got to actually find them! No quest markers to show you exactly where they are... the nearest you get to a hint is when you stumble across one and numerous Nekkers jump out of the ground and try and attack you.  Even once you have found them... if you haven't researched how to actually destroy the nests by reading the relevant book, it's unlikely you'll have the correct 'tools' on you. Personally, despite how frustrating this can be sometimes, I love it.  It feels like you're actually achieving something rather than just following someone else's instructions.  There are a couple of times when the best (only?) way to do something may not be at all clear to you... so don't be surprised if you end up spending a little time on the web looking things up.

So how are the graphics and performance on the Xbox 360 version? Surprisingly good actually... as long as you install the game on to your Xbox hard drive.  The lighting in general is a little lacking and the textures lack some of the definition you'd find on the PC.  That said, The Witcher 2 is still an impressive game to watch and they have achieved something rather special.  My only real complaint with the graphics is that if you haven't installed the game on to your Xbox hard drive you will notice quite a lot of texture 'pop' and often find you have to wait for NPCs to appear, which can be a little frustrating.

There are a few little niggles I have with the game as a whole.  Silly little things like being able to have a rematch when playing dice without having to return to the main game, going through the conversation again and re-loading the dice game for example, or the fact that when you're following someone, they will always close doors in your face...  not enough of a problem to ruin the game but they can cause some frustration.  Some actions can also seem rather sluggish... I'm pretty sure that someone that spends most of their life waving their sword about would be a little more 'decisive' about unsheathing it. I'd also be interested to hear why they felt it necessary to delay the ability to load from the Game Over screen rather than allow you to load you're last save straight away.  This proved to be almost controller-thrown-at-screen frustrating when faced with a tough fight that required multiple attempts... but maybe that says more about me than it does the game.

Quick time events also make an appearance but are thankfully restricted to only a few places like the fist fighting mini game and finishing off 'boss' monsters, so served as almost a pleasant break from the usual pace of the game.

Overall, The Witcher 2 is a rich, mature, RPG with a decent plot and some really memorable moments.  A superb achievement by CD Projekt Red and I'll be looking forward to the third instalment of The Witcher and, perhaps, finishing the story.

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~ Naiboss