The Witcher 2
You can read my review about The Witcher. I loved the game, mostly because the huge personality that the whole product. Characters with a unique spirit, non-conventional story, choices that cannot be placed in the simple black-white gradient, adult theme, and the complements go on… For those that agreed with me, great news! The Witcher 2 is all of that, bigger and better.
The polish developers Projeckt CD printed a hollywoodian tone to the game. The storytelling element (both in game and kinematics) is superb. You really care about the characters and their motivations. Some characters that in the first installment were not that relevant in the game (but are in the book series that the games are based on), like Zoltan and Triss, in the second game they are relevant and very likable.
Since Bioware basically imposed the good/evil dynamics, several games were created using the formula. But the Witcher universe is nothing like that. Like in the real world, people are moved by complex motives: religion, politics, economics and even the mundane takes place. that, allied with (spoiler alert) the possibility of multiple endings (in fact, more than 1/3 can be different, depending on your decisions), and you will fill quite tempted to play the game a second time, just to see how things play out if you take other choices.
Graphically the game is nothing but true beauty. The same can be said about the sound and music. And all of them are relevant -so there is no filler stuff- and very well done. Textures, models and visual effects are top-notch. Famous RPGs like Mass Effect, Dragon Age are not even close.
But it’s not perfect. The menus are slow, difficult to select, the game generates hundresds saved games automatically and the turorial… the tutorial … the Trial by Fire, as they call it, was a wrong decision. It seems you are facing a boos as the very first contact with the game. I could also talk about the difficulty, that in the first thrid of the game is really hard.
Have no doubt! The Witcher 2 is problably my favorite RPG game ever. I can go even further? Top 10 games ever. Simply that.