1.5/5 ★ – SpiderJ95's review of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition.

Extremely disappointing as someone who played the first game and watched the show. Even compared to other games that released in 2011, I don't think the game holds up. Combat is horrendous, attempting to be strategic but ending up being decidedly unfair. There's no real way to be an expert at in-the-moment combat like something like Dark Souls, instead relegating you to using items to give stat boosts to actually stand a chance. I immediately switched to the easier difficulty when I was essentially destroyed by standard soldiers in the beginning. I can't really say the enemy AI is anything to write home about either, magician enemies in particular will spam protective shields in a couple fights which left me running around in circles trying to get a single hit in before they teleport away. Monster-hunting/knowledge plays a very small role in this one, to a ridiculous degree. Most monster hunting involves getting a side quest and defeating X amount of monsters. From what I've heard of The Witcher 3, it seems that they've drastically improved this going forward. The story is a somewhat complicated political thriller, probably making this as close to a fantasy Tom Clancy game as it can get. It's really off-putting though when the first game gave you opportunities to explore and figure out about the world on your own (taking place in the beginning in one town, etc.) and this one throws you into the deep end several times when it comes to characters and even how any of the events that are happening are related. The game even begins with a choose-the-beginning-of-the-story segment so I'm not surprised with people getting easily confused with the plot. Characters from the last game also seem to only serve as super minor characters in this one, Triss for example is barely in it. I saw many suggesting people to play The Witcher 2 before 3 but to be honest, I don't really see the point in retrospect. Combat is frustrating, quests are exceedingly simple/repetitive in structure, and the plot in this game in terms of importance to the 3rd one can be summed up in a sentence or two. I understand that the dev team created a new engine while making this game which always has a cost somewhere. Unfortunately, it seems that the cost was a game that overall felt a little dated compared to other titles that released the same year.