"Beautiful, scale .. and a little sad"
Optimization it's incredible .. I'm not exaggerating. On my laptop with four cores 2 GHz and 1 GB of the video memory I was sure that in low settings the game will turn into a slide show. Started the game on low setting - everything was flying .. Decided to run at medium .. And after opening the configuration I thought that the most ideal way to configure the PC to the desired configuration - is to set to the maximum and begin to reduce each of the parameters. The results were surprising .. Starting on Ultra (not even high, but ultra) and removing 2-3 options, I ran the game. Without unnecessary words - the game was flying.
2) Bugs:
Here briefly - no bug has not been noticed. Playing cards, mugs were beaten.
3) About the game:
I'm generally a fan of Sapkowski and I read all 7 books of "The Witcher". I also would like to mention that I didn't like the first Witcher so much. Yes, it was a High-quality game, but no more than 8.5 points that it got from all the respected resources. "The Witcher 1" was recognized as the game of the year, but for me it was very far from the reality of the book universe.
Nevertheless the foregoing, I waited the game impatiently because of trailers and interviews that promised a lot of interesting things. And based on the first trailers, it became clear that the atmosphere of the game will more closely to the book. And so on May, 17 I have finally started the game I have been waiting for. Now about the pros and cons:
Pros:
1) "The Witcher 2" is quite scale. This is not Oblivion. Here the scale is different. There is absolutely no any need for 10,000 caves and there is no unnecessary kilometers of the forest. Starting from the beginning, Flotzam is a small town with a harbor, surrounded by forest. I do not know how "CD Projekt" managed, but they have inhabited the area with wildlife, so I honestly didn't want to leave this town. Forest seems to be much greater. The greater pros is that locations have practically no repeated patterns. After running a couple of hours on the area around the town you can intuitively assume where you are, not looking at the map.
2) Characters. They are very in tune with the universe of Sapkowski. There is no absolutely good or absolutely bad. Everyone is not without a sin. The behavior of the characters is as close as possible to the real life. If Triss is the youngest witch - then she behaves herself respectively, and speaks in the same way. And even if you are drunk you won't confuse her with Philippa.
3) Fights. Many don't like new fighting style, but for me it seems very realistic. It's not Gothic with 10 enemies, where three are attacking and the rest are "waiting in the queue." It's not Fable, where you cut one rolling from one side to another, and the rest are waiting for their turn to die. It's not even "The Witcher 1" - where there is no any difference between 6 or 9 opponents, when you're using a group style. No, here the fighting style may not be very useful, but very realistic. You can run into 4 soldiers and kill them in a minute, and then stumble on 6 Sco'iatels and you'll be stabbed in your back.
4) Crafting / Alchemy. To tell the truth I'm not very fond of the alchemy. I was playing for the Swordsmen. So I can not fully appreciate this aspect .. The fact is that you can only drink elixirs before the fight, but not during - it's quite realistic. I usually intuitively felt when to "sit down and drink." Maximum 1 or 2 times I ran into an enemy I wasn't able to defeat without elixir. I really liked the way of creating swords and armor. You know when you do not have a silver ore or wood and the seller they ran out of it - so you run around the neighborhood in search of these materials - it's worth it, because that creates a real impression that later you get totally different sword / armor. It's not just one and the same model with different sword handles. You create exactly sword and not stick with a steeper handle. This is the first game where a drawing of a good sword is much nicer then the sword the merchant is selling.
5) Choice. Here without spoilers is really hard to tell briefly - to choose is often extremely difficult .. Feature with running out of time may actually aggravate the situation to such a limit that you just do not have time to choose one or the other option. Very realistic, I think ..
Cons:
1) No matter how paradoxical it may seem, but Geralt still a bit gutted in terms of ideas. I understand that this character is already described in the book and we can not build his character again. Still, the loss of memory could be given a wider option of building the personality of Geralt. Sometimes he says things that I was not going to say, but this minus is of course not significant.
2) The balance of the money. Played on average level .. The first time in my entire history of games in the genre of RPG, I felt no lack of money .. I had a little orens in the bag, but there were no expensive purchases in the game.
Summary: "Beautiful, scale .. and a little sad". "CD Projekt" made a very beautiful, intelligent and interesting game. I am sure those 16 endings, that were promised to intrigue us, make us play the game more than once .. And as I mentioned ... Sadly - game is very short .. VERY short for the game we were waiting for 4 years .. Here are the final titles and yet it's hard to believe. It seems right now the screen goes black and will get a new cat scene, and again it will be possible to experience the adventure .. But this will not happen .. And this is a little sad ..)