So I finally, at long last, after approaching ten years of delay (holy what!), beat this game. And I'm super glad I did.
Wild Hunt has been tempting me, and since I finally got a new rig, I figured it was time to go back and do this thing properly from the start. I never got to play Witcher 2 because I wanted to finish the first game, and it had been long enough for me to feel comfortable going back to it.
So I just beat it tonight. I don't know what my total play time was. Steam says 81 hours, but I'd guess 10 of that was time I had the game open but wasn't at the PC. I didn't go full completionist, but pretty close. At the end I just couldn't take much more of it, and kinda started to rush through.
I feel like the game has aged well, in the sense that it's just as dumb and awkward as it always was, but the other stuff remains as compelling. The combat is wonky, the dialogue stiff and sometimes stitched together in weird ways, and the quests don't always tie together as logically as you want them to, but while the storytelling is sometimes a bit weak, the story itself is great stuff, the characters are fascinating and overcome the awkwardness of some of their lines and their models anyway. There's so much that shines through in the end, and I am so happy that I stuck with it and finished the game. I felt like it started to drag for me from the end of the 3rd chapter until about the end of the 5th, but suddenly the combat actually started to ramp up in difficulty, I had to use more potions and such, and the story really started to come to a head. I was entranced through to the end, and found the ending to be very satisfying, especially given that I was reasonably happy with all the choices I'd made.
It's funny how knowing that my save file would carry over to the next game really gave gravitas to each decision. I had little panic moments several times, because I knew that these things wouldn't just stick with me for this game, but would go into the next as well, and given how deeply I cared for these characters (which, again, is sort of a miracle given how awkward their presentation is), I really felt like my choices mattered. Especially the small ones that regarded Geralt's friends.
So yeah, it was a long time coming, but I'm done and so super pumped to start the 2nd game, which promises to be much more satisfying in the GAME department than its predecessor. I still really enjoyed this first entry for everything that it did right, and even though there were things about it that made it less compelling just due to age, technical issues, weird/poor design, it's got a diamond at the center that I feel good about having unearthed.
Now I just need to get the second game downloaded so I can dive in.
HYPE
