The amount of whining in these forums today is overwhelming. You think this is hard? I've been playing games since I was 4 years old. Hard sir? Try some old stuff and then your learn the meaning of pain. Perhaps a wizardy game?

This is a cake walk compared to the old days. Want a challenge? Try hard, then come back. There is no reason for anyone to die 20 times unless you are simply not learning or adapting. In that case, no one can help you expect trying it on easy.

An old soar is apparantly still in the game too.
When you're triggered into a finishing move, the game just proceeds.

In TW1, he would take his time to make a large killing blow, while stuff was still stomping him.
In TW2, while they aren't stomping you, they are still closing in on your back.

And due to the low health, i do not think that the TW2 version is an improvement. :(

I agree there needed to be a better tutorial to ease you into the new combat. I hated and still do DAO because of their combat pause/tacticle system(Never played the Baldur games).

Now, its strafe and roll and run away from everything oh well, The times they are a changin!!

I wonder if Geralt's amnesia is actually some kind of degenerative disease. I don't remember running away from a bunch of drowners in Chapter 1 of first Witcher but here taking on a bunch of them is a suicide. Geralt seems to take more damage than in Witcher 1 and the enemies feel considerably faster too. This combined with the fact that you don't have AoE sword skills before you spend a bunch of points in Sword skill tree makes fighting groups of enemies real pain in the ass. It's just running away, dodging and taking some potshots on enemy who separated from the group a bit so the rest don't assrape Geralt.

I'm pretty sure they either did play testing with only their own team members or some Witcher 1 veterans.

Best solution would be slowing down the combat a bit and making the damage Geralt takes a bit lower. Trash mob bosses that can and will one or two shot the player are not fun at all. Or getting cornered by trash like Drowners who were joke in Witcher 1 and getting beaten to pile of blood and guts in 2 seconds.

SPOILER AHEAD










I bet there will be a lot of people crying for their mamas when they reach the end of Chapter 1. The boss does everything you do but just much better. He would be challenging even if he didn't cast signs and lob grenades on you. The best part is when he chain casts the Quen (best version of it of course) on himself and you can't damage him for full minute while you run around helpless and he bombards you with grenades, Igni and Aard.

Remember, this is all on the "Normal" difficulty.

All of this will probably get tweaked "à la" dragon age

But if you study the skill trees, you'll see many opportunities for crowd control and AoE damage (multiple yrden working in synergy, whirlwind, combo igni+ inflammable gas etc... Still need to test it to see if it works in practice)

Later, people will publish builds and tutorials that will probably make it easier too

Thanks all for the responses.
Turns out reading the manual turns out to be incredibly useful. Memorizing what each spell does also helps a great deal in the start.
I have now progressed through the starting "tutorials" and the "****ING DRAGON FIRE ****" section and the only bit of advise I can offer is to pick the story elements as they go. Don't start with the dragon one, pick the one about the day the king called, then the assault, then dragon, then cathedral. It seems the combat is eased into that way rather than dropping you in the shiz.
Also once you get the hang of the combat it really does get easier. You learn to throw bombs and set traps and switch spells out during fights and it gets really enjoyable then.

Glad to see that this game actually has some learning curve though. It's refreshing.

Hard is fine, but for those of us that played Witcher 1 there was an expectation that like the first, the game would progress from a tutorial where you can spend some time learning the controls and fighting weaker opponents to harder ones as you level up, gain exp, and start learning potions etc. In this game they throw you directly into major combat with little or no explanation of the controls, they don't tell you that you have signs or potions, let alone how to use them, and the opponents are ridiculous. Not well done at all. I've since progressed to Chapter 1 and it has gotten a little better, but it still does not match the gameplay of the first.

I'm playing on Hard and I didn't find it that bad? You just have to be smart about targets. Might hep that I have the good steel sword from TW1 though, nice touch letting me import those items from the save :D

Combat feels really really good too.

More like tweaked ala Age of Conan It seems that the author of FCR (insane mode) has been promoted to Combat Designer here!! wah wah wah

Yeah those drowners were a pain. I had to reload again. I had not learned enough from the past. It was only yesterday that I took 6 drowners on in a group in the witcher 1. I guess old habits die hard. So I just sat on my ass and watched as Triss casted some fireworks.

I beg to differ. During the opening segments there were tooltips explaining how to use and equip signs, combat items, and potions. If you missed any of them, they can be found in the Journal section under Tutorial. I've played through the beginning of the game with both keyboard/mouse and an Xbox gamepad. Both experiences were superb and I'm thoroughly impressed with how comfortable gameplay is with a controller.

My first solo battle was met with many deaths. However, combat was such that I enjoyed buffing up and trying to tackle enemies in a different order each time. Instead of being frustrating, I found this to be an engaging experience. After a few failed attempts at using only my sword, I tried a combination of potions, traps, bombs, and signs to devastate my opponents. The system is brilliantly balanced, without lending too much power to any one skillset. I would suggest experimenting in the combination of signs and using the environment to your advantage. Flinging soldiers off of large buildings or cliffs with the Aard sign can be very pleasing. Take advantage of the save anywhere feature, reloads are incredibly quick with very limited loading allowing you to get back into the action immediately.

To those opposed to gamepads, I urge you to at least try it out. Before playing I was convinced nothing could compete to the keyboard and mouse experience found in the first game, but was I pleasantly surprised at how satisfying using a controller was. I could definitely see this working on a console, though scaling the graphics might prove troublesome.

With the Witcher 2, CDP has perfected the interface, combat, controls, and visual appeal already spectacular in the previous title. Well done, this game is a shining accomplishment.

People nowadays expect things to be feed to their mouth. The games has provided Journal if you didn't feel clear about some things, and the manual is pretty helpful too. So you need some few ragdoll to familiarize yourself before going straight into the main story? Remember the old days RPG / adventure game? You would be lost if you didn't read the information or the manual. Example are Realms of Arkania, Dragonsphere, Alone in the Dark etc.

I suggest you take some time and read the Journal or the manual before whining and sulking.

Plus, if your character is already great since the get-go, what's the point of upgrading and investing in better equipments?

Well if you make a tutorial I expect to be fed to my mouth. Tutorials are supposed to let the players know the basics of the game. I have died over 15 times at that ballistic level and I now learn that there are a couple of things I can do, I mean keys, signs etc. and I didn't know them before having a look at here. May be it informed me on the screen but info screens are too fast to disappear.

For those who think people are complaining too much about the difficulty, please remember that most of them are playing the game in normal difficulty which is second easiest. I have just started playing the first game a few days ago to remember the old stuff and obviously there is a huge difference between the first levels of the games..

I'm with the OP. I died so often on Normal that I was spending more time on the load screen than playing the game. Switched to Easy, but it's TOO easy. I'd be happy with a setting between those two.

Of course, the fact that I was trying to get the game running at a reasonable speed AND figure out how to invert mouselook didn't help either.

Do you work for CDP?

You can certainly disagree, but there are huge issues with the start of the game in terms of pacing with the gameplay; it's as simple as that. This is guaranteed to be mentioned in critic reviews.