I’ve finished The Witcher 2:  Assassins of Kings – my final thoughts?  What a disappointment.

I really expected to like the game.  The first one was one of the best games I’ve ever played, bar none.  And the book I’ve read is similarly awesome.  So I really expected a decent sequel.  And it wasn’t decent.  It wasn’t even mediocre.  It was downright awful.

The graphics have obviously improved over the years.  It’d be amazing if they hadn’t.  The game looks nice.  And some real time and effort was put into modeling some of the characters…  Geralt looks exceptionally grizzled.  The various kings look very impressive with their half-decorative/half-functional armor.  Saskia looks attractive, but like you really wouldn’t want to get on her bad side.  Iorveth looks like he’s seen a lot of combat.  And the folks you get to have sex with are very well modeled.

But some of the graphical improvements seem downright superfluous.  Like having the ability to change Geralt’s hair style…  It isn’t really a bad option to have, but it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense in the context of these games.  It isn’t like you get to dress up for parties, or change other aspects of your appearance, or get tattoos – this isn’t Fable.  But you can change your hair.

The controls, with a keyboard and mouse, are downright awful.  Other folks were playing it with a gamepad, and maybe had a better time.  But I was using a keyboard and mouse, and it was awful.

The big problem was simply responsiveness.  I’d click the mouse button three times, expecting three sword swings, and I’d only get two.  I’d hit a movement key to get out of the way, and just stand there.  I’d try to take a step forward to loot an item or disarm a trap, and take three steps instead – possibly setting the trap off instead of disarming it.

It was all surmountable…  I set the difficulty to ‘easy’, and was able to live through combat.  And I was able to converse with people, loot items, move through the world…  But it all felt a little finicky.  A little flaky.  And I was constantly doing things I didn’t intend to.  The end result was pretty frustrating.

The inventory screen was a mess.  Truly a mess.  I basically just had a scrolling list of items you were carrying around.  I could filter that list by hitting different buttons…  But the end result was still just a long, scrolling list.  Generally speaking, the newest items showed up on top…  But there didn’t appear to be any way to sort the list by name, or weight, or value.  Which made actually managing the inventory somewhat difficult.  Especially after I’d been out adventuring for a while and had tons of different monster parts in my inventory.  Sorting through what was important to keep, and what could be dumped/sold, was not fun.

Potions were pretty much useless.  In the original game they’d last several in-game hours, which made it possible to prepare yourself ahead of time.  If you were going out at night to hunt monsters you could take a couple potions, and they’d last all night.  If you thought you’d be facing specific monsters you could choose certain potions ahead of time.  It added a tactical/planning element to the game.  If you knew what you were going up against, you could really prepare well and have an easy time.  If you didn’t – if you were caught off-guard – you had a hell of a fight ahead of you.

But potions in TW2 only last a few minutes.  Which means there’s no real preparation.  Sure, if you know you’re about to walk into a boss fight or something you can chug a potion…  But it’ll wear off shortly after that one battle.  So you can’t prepare for a whole evening of killing.  Which means you’re constantly getting caught off-guard, and having to do without the help of your potions.  Which means, in the long-run, that the difference between a fight with potions and a fight without potions is pretty negligible.  They can’t very well make you rely on potions like they did in the first game.

Worse are the sections where you really do need to rely on potions.  There’s a section of chapter 2 where I was walking through a very dark cave, and had to rely on cat potions to see in the dark.  But they kept wearing off.  And I had to keep drinking more.  Very annoying.

The day/night cycle seemed almost meaningless in TW2 as well.  In TW1, monsters generally came out at night.  If you had a quest to kill a pile of drowners, you’d have to wait until nightfall to do it.  And if you weren’t actually looking for trouble, it was a good idea to stay inside at night.  Various quests only showed up at night – you’d run into some woman going home after work and be asked to escort her, for example.

Now, in TW2 there are a couple quests that ask you to meet someone at a certain time of day…  But, for the most part, the time of day just doesn’t matter.  Monsters are around pretty much all the time.  I could go out and kill nekkers, endregas, harpies, and whatever else just as easily at noon, as at midnight.  Which, again, eliminated some of the planning and waiting that happened in TW1.

There was really no explanation of anything in TW2.  There wasn’t really any tutorial.  Most things were left completely unexplained.  I started picking up mutagens during the prologue – they have a chance of dropping off pretty much any monster you kill.  But you can’t actually use a mutagen until you train a talent that can be mutated.  And that won’t happen until you’re somewhere around level 10 (depending on how you spend your points).  But the game never actually explains any of that.  Nor does it explain that mutations are permanent and can’t be changed or un-done, so you really don’t want to use any of those lesser mutagens you find – rendering them simple vendor trash.  Nor does it explain that there’s a talent that makes mutagens more potent, but isn’t retro-active, so you really don’t want to use any mutagens until you’ve trained that talent.  Absolutely none of that is explained.

Nor does the game explain how to chain attacks together…  Or what any of the signs do…  Or where the various ‘critical effects’ like stun and bleed and incinerate come from…  Or whether it is safe to sell recipes and diagrams and formulas after you’ve read them…  Or what and armor enhancement is…  I could keep going, but you get the idea.  Basically nothing is actually explained at any point.

Books seem kind of meaningless in TW2.  In TW1 you needed to know about the herbs and monsters before you could successfully loot alchemical ingredients from them.  This meant that you’d periodically have to go find books on the local flora and fauna.  In TW2 you can just go out and loot stuff.  You don’t ever actually need to go find a book to lean about anything.  There may very well be some bonus for reading a book…  Maybe you do some extra damage or something…  But it isn’t enough to actually make it important to go find the book.

But, ultimately, the single most damning thing was the storyline.

We start out with Geralt in Temeria, helping King Foltest wage a war.  Foltest gets killed, Geralt is implicated, and sets out to clear his name.  That basic goal doesn’t even survive through the end of chapter 1.

By the time chapter 1 ends you’ve got Roche and Iorveth asking you to pick sides in the whole Legitimate Government versus The Rebels struggle.  You’ve also got Triss being kidnapped.  You’ve got corruption and racism aplenty in Flotsam, and racial riots.  You’ve got a war starting in the Pontar Valley, with another king looking to make a grab for land.  And you’ve got a sorceress or two acting very suspiciously.  You’ve got Geralt attempting to recover his memory, and trying to find out what happened to Yennefer.

Sure, you’re still technically following Letho’s trail…  Still technically trying to find the kingslayer…  But the whole “gotta clear my name” thing has kind of stopped being important.

I sided with the Scoia’tael which meant that chapter 2 was spent trying to heal Saskia, protect the city of Vargen, and figure out what happened to Triss.  There was very little mention of Letho, and basically no talk at all about clearing Geralt’s name.

By the time chapter 3 rolls around, Letho isn’t even important anymore.  We were trying to stop some nefarious plot involving sorceresses and dragons.  And I was trying to find Triss.  And various kings were trying to stab each-other in the back and take over various chunks of land.  Nobody seemed to care about Foltest’s death anymore.  Nobody seemed terribly concerned about who the kingslayer was anymore.

And then, at the very end of the game, we find out that The Emperor is actually the big badguy…  Just before everybody of consequence either runs away or is suddenly absolved of any wrongdoing.  And then the credits roll.

By the end of the game I really didn’t understand what I was trying to accomplish.  I didn’t know who I was fighting for, or against.  I didn’t particularly care about any of the characters.  I was just kind of trudging along, following the carrot on the end of the stick, hoping that things would suddenly gel and start making sense.  But they didn’t.

There was absolutely no sense of resolution.  No feeling of accomplishment.  It felt like I spent the entire game getting yanked around and lied-to.  And, ultimately, didn’t actually have any impact on any of it.  Felt like I’d really wasted my time.

Made it to Chapter 3 of The Witcher 2 last night…  Chapter 2 ended with Phillipa and Saskia teleporting away to some big summit.  But Saskia was acting weird.  So Ioreth and I took a look through Phillipa’s belonging, found a book of poisons and antidotes, and discovered that Saskia was being mind controlled.

So, we ran off to the summit as well.

And that’s when the rails re-appeared.  Chapter 3 was almost entirely devoid of real choices.

To start with, I’m told that I can either follow Iorveth through the caves or go take a look at the camp…  I went to look at the camp and got jumped by a pile of Order soldiers.  I fought them off, and was then told to follow Iorveth.  I suspect that I could’ve allowed myself to be captured…  But I’ll come back to the whole ‘imprisonment’ thing again later.

So, I follow Iorveth through the caves.  We eventually wind up inside this mostly-ruined city where the summit is being held.  And Iorveth tells me that I can either make my way to Phillipa’s cell through the sewers, or I can let myself get arrested.

I didn’t want to do another sneaky/stealthy thing, so I decided to try for the sewers.  I wandered around and around for a good, long time.  Trying various doors.  Looking for signs.  Trying to talk to people.  Trying not to get arrested.  Simply could not find the entrance to the sewers.

Eventually I gave up and let myself get arrested.  Which, after some interesting dialogue, results in my death.  I assume something similar would have happened if I’d allowed myself to be arrested earlier as well.

So, I have to find the sewers.

As I’m looking around, I stumble across some boxers and gamblers and arm wrestlers and a notice board with some witcher contracts…  And none of that makes any sense to me at all.

I’m a criminal.  Any guard that sees me immediately attempts to arrest me.  I can’t walk more than ten feet without having to fight a guard or run away.  The summit is happening any minute now, I’m racing against time to stop some nefarious plot.  I have to rescue Triss.  I have to find Phillipa.  I have to free Saskia.  Everything in the game says run, run, run!  And yet, they’re providing me with an opportunity to sit down and arm wrestle people…  Or kill some gargoyles for coin…  Which just seems weird.

Eventually I find the sewers.  Make my way through them, and into the dungeons.  I kill some guards and talk to Phillipa.  I’m given the choice of either freeing her (and she claims she’ll take the spell off of Saskia) or rescuing Triss.  I’m a bit of a romantic, so I go after Triss.

I rescue Triss, we disrupt the summit and expose Sile as a murderess.  Saskia goes all dragon on us and starts burning down the city.  Phillipa has apparently made her escape.

I chase Sile up to the top of a tower, we have words, and then she tries to teleport away.  I’ve got a choice between allowing her a messy, painful death at the hands of a malfunctioning teleporter; or saving her.  I save her, she tells me where Yennefer is, and teleports away.

Then I’ve got to fight the big ol’ dragon – Saskia.  We wind up battling our way up the tower…  Then fighting on the very top of the tower…  And then I’m clinging to her back as she tries to fly away…  And then we crash, she’s impaled on a giant log, and I’ve got the option of killing her.  I let her live, thinking I can still find Phillipa and break the spell.

I wander back towards town…  And that’s about the time the “Epilogue” title comes up.  Yup, that’s right, that was pretty much the end of the game.  Chapter 3 was very, very short.  Very linear.  Very rushed.  Offered absolutely no resolution.  Felt very unfinished.

But there’s still the Epilogue, right?  Maybe there’ll be some closure to be had yet…

Nope.

I talk to Triss as we walk through the city, find out some of what happened while I was fighting the dragon.  We stumble across a badly-wounded Iorveth.  I help him out.  Then I go meet with Letho.

Letho tells me all about himself, the Emperor, the Wild Hunt, Yennefer, my past…  Long, rambling, boring dialogue about all this stuff.  In literature, they tell you to show it, not tell it.  Well, the same is true in games.  Sitting there and listening to Letho ramble on about all this stuff was just plain boring.  Would’ve been more interesting if I’d gathered more of these clues myself, through exploration and gameplay.  Just being handed all this information was intensely unsatisfying.

I didn’t kill Letho, in the end.  I let him go.  Didn’t seem to be much point in killing him.  He was just a tool being used by the Emperor.  And he’d apparently helped me out in the past.  So I guess I owed him his life.

I was looking forward to going after the Emperor…  Or going to see Yennefer…  Or to confront the Wild Hunt again…  Or going after Phillipa…  But absolutely none of that happened.  The credits rolled, and that was the end of it.

I could probably have come up with more resolution if I’d killed some of these people.  I’d at least know that their stories were at an end.  I wouldn’t have to wonder what was going to become of Saskia, or Sile…  But that wouldn’t have given closure to the game as a whole.  The storyline that started with the Emperor killing off Kings won’t be ended until the Emperor is dealt with.  The storyline that started with the Lodge of Sorceresses conspiring to take over the North won’t be ended until the Lodge of Sorceresses is dealt with.  And neither of those things happens in The Witcher 2.

I’m kind of curious to see how the game would differ if I’d followed Roche…  I suspect that chapters 1 and 3 would be nearly identical, and that chapter 2 would be different.  But I’m not sure I’m curious enough to actually do it.

Obviously they’ve set themselves up for another game.  An expansion, or a sequel, or something.  But I’m not sure I care enough at this point to actually play it.

I’m really feeling pretty dissatisfied with this game.

I wound up siding with Ioreth and his Scoia’tael at the end of Chapter 1…  Which means I wound up in Vargeth, siding with some lady named Saskia.  She’s fighting to create a free state where everyone is equal.  Sounds noble, but I’m sure there’s a catch.

Iorveth is providing archer support in the upcoming battle.  Roche is on the other side of things, siding with the rightful king in the area.  And I find myself wondering just how different the game would be at this point, if I’d sided with Roche.  I can’t imagine that Roche would have wound up in Vargeth, siding with Saskia.  Would I have actually been in a different place, with a different pile of quests?

Well, anyway, Saskia gets poisoned.  I need to gather some rather obscure components to cure her.  And I have to lift some kind of epic curse from the battlefield-to-be, so that we can resolve the impending war.  And then there’s an assortment of other things to tend to – young men disappearing around town, harpies in the area, Triss is missing…

I have to go hunting for some special herb in the mines beneath the city…  Took a few dwarves with me…  Was a very, very annoying journey.  To begin with, the dwarves were always under foot.  Kept running into them, tripping over them, having to shove them out of the way.  Was fairly difficult to make my way to the monsters and kill them.

The second problem was the short duration of potions.  It was really dark in there, so I was using cat potions.  But they kept wearing off.  I must’ve gone through at least 5 potions.  Very irritating to have it wear off in the middle of a fight…  And then have to meditate just to drink one again…

I helped out some trolls.  Figured out what was happening to the young men.  Killed a bunch of harpies.  Recovered various ingredients for the antidote.  Fought my way through the killer mist, to the enemy camp, and got some noble blood.  Then lifted the curse on that battlefield.  We cured Saskia, and fought a huge battle.

It turns out that Saskia is a dragon.  That wasn’t actually all that much of a surprise to me, though.  I’m not sure why.  I guess because Iorveth was fawning all over her, and there were reports that the Scoia’tael were friends with a dragon.

And then the mage who’d been helping me, Phillipa, appears to have somehow bewitched Saskia.

And Triss has been hauled off to some other city, so I’ve got to go rescue both Saskia and Triss…

And there are constant references to the Wild Hunt.  And Yennefer.  And I’m really curious to see where this all goes…

Finished Chapter 1 of The Witcher 2…

I never did make my peace with the combat system.  I wound up in some kind of haunted asylum where I kept getting attacked by pairs of wraiths.  I simply could not fight them.  Didn’t matter which potions I drank, didn’t matter which oils I used, didn’t matter which spells I cast, didn’t matter how much I ran around or dodged…  Roughly three hits and I was dead.

If I got lucky, I could kill one of them.  More often than not, I died before either of them did.

After about an hour of this, I got frustrated enough to turn the difficulty setting down to “easy”…  I’m now able to survive combat, but it isn’t a whole lot of fun.  I don’t really need to dodge or use special stuff or anything…  I can pretty much just spam the attack button and win.  Which is disappointing.  There ought to be a setting somewhere between IWIN and IDIE.

Oh well…  At least I’m able to progress now…

So, I killed a bunch of nekkers, blew up their nests.  Killed a bunch of endregas, smashed their eggs, killed their queens.  I killed the kayran, which was impressive.  Solved the mystery of that haunted asylum.  Found out what happened to the troll’s wife.  Helped out some random people.  Beat everyone at boxing, and arm wrestling, and dice.  Picked some flowers for Triss, fell into an ancient elven ruin, fooled around in there.

And then all hell broke loose.  Some kind of riots in the town of Flotsam.  Humans and non-humans killing each-other off.  And I had to pick sides.

Rather than slowly introduce me to the conflict, let me get to know the players, let me form an opinion like they did in The Witcher – I’m immediately required to choose a side.  And I can’t even choose “witcher neutrality”.  I have to side with either the Scoia’tael, or Roche and his humans.

Once again, I sided with the Scoia’tael.  It’s hard to say ‘no’ to a bunch of plucky rebels fighting for their freedom.  Although, in this game, nothing is nearly as clean as that…  Pretty much everyone is a monster, it’s just a question of who they prey on.

It seems that I wasn’t the only one who complained about inventory management in the first game.  You’ve now got separate slots for gloves, pants, boots, and armor…  And plenty of items to equip in each of those slots.  All sorts of different benefits and bonuses to consider.  Trophies now give you bonuses, instead of just being turned in for cash.  There’s a variety of weapons to use, many of which are actually useful.

There’s also a full-blown crafting system now.  You aren’t personally able to make anything beside potions…  But you can collect components and blueprints for armor, weapons, and traps; then have a crafter build them for you.  Unfortunately, you don’t just learn recipes like you did in the first game.  You have to actually carry the recipe around in your inventory.  They’re light, so that isn’t a problem…  But they add to an already-cluttered interface, making it even harder to find what you’re looking for.  And if you accidentally sell a recipe, you can’t craft that potion until you acquire a new recipe for it.

At this point, now that simply staying alive is no longer an issue, I think I’ve got two major complaints left.

First, the controls suck.  Not so much which buttons you have to press to perform various actions…  But the responsiveness of those actions to the buttons you press.  I’ll hit the dodge button, for example, and Geralt will just stand there and get hit.  Or I’ll hit the block button, with enough stamina to do it, and he’ll just stand there and get hit.  Or I’ll try to strafe to the side, and he’ll just stand there and get hit.  I’m sure if I complained about this on the forums they’d blame my newly-upgraded computer…  But I’m inclined to believe it’s the game itself.  There’s really no reason I should be seeing any input lag at this point.

Second, potions annoy the living hell out of me.  It makes no sense that I need to meditate in order to drink a potion.  Yes, you can meditate anywhere you want…  But it’s still an un-necessary step.  Rather than simply clicking on a potion, I have to click the meditate button, selection the ‘drink potion’ button, select the potion, and then click the drink button.  Very annoying.  And, given the limited duration of everything, not being able to drink them in-combat is just plain stupid.  If you get jumped by random critters, you’ve got no time to chug a potion.  If you walk into some kind of encounter you didn’t know about, you can’t chug a potion.  And you can’t very well dose yourself before you go out hunting because it all wears off after a couple minutes.  Very annoying.

Well, I posted a bit of a whine over on the Witcher 2 Steam forums…

According to the folks there, it gets much better.  So I guess I’ve got to tough it out for now.

Witcher 2 continues to frustrate me.

I’m in the town of Flotsam.  I’ve picked up a couple witcher contracts outside the inn.  In the first game, these amounted to basically “kill 10 of these and bring back their heads”.  They were relatively quick and easy sources of cash and XP.  They were a good way to gain some experience (both in-game XP and experience with the game’s controls) before moving on to the harder stuff.

Well, in Witcher 2 they’re a little more involved…

I need to eliminate the nekker menace.  They’re basically some mean fishmen.  In order to get rid of them, I have to bomb their tunnels.  Problem is, I don’t have any of the bombs I need.  And I’m unsure how to get my hands on them.  So that one will need to wait until later.

I also need to get rid of the endregas.  They’re nasty bug-like things.  I have to destroy a few of their cocoons, which will make the queens angry, and then I have to kill the queens.  Problem is, those queens are big and tough.  I’ve tried to kill this one queen about 10 times, and died every single time.

Combat continues to frustrate the everliving piss out of me.

If I get jumped by one or two monsters, I’m generally OK.  More than two, however, and I’m dead.  They start circling behind you, and you can not block attacks from behind.  And they do extra damage when they hit you from behind.  Plus, it starts getting hard to attack the right target.  And that nice “group style” I had in the first game is gone.  So, if I get jumped by three or more enemies, I have to run away.  Which sucks.

To make matters worse, it’s genuinely difficult to augment yourself for battle.

If I get jumped by some monsters, I can’t just chug a potion and wade into battle.  Potions can only be drank when you’re meditating.  And you can’t meditate with monsters around.  So you really need to prepare ahead of time.  But potions have a very, very short duration – 5-10 minutes or so.  So it’s basically impossible to use potions and oils in random fights.  You just don’t have the chance to activate them, nor do they last long enough to linger into the next fight.

And the potions, oils, and bombs just aren’t that powerful even if you do get to use them.

I kind of thought, with how severely potions and oils were constrained, that they’d pack a big punch to make up for it.  Thought that if I drank a couple potions and oiled up my blade with something nasty, I’d have a much easier time on that queen bug.  I even set some traps ahead of time, right where I knew she’d walk.  And I built some bombs to hit her with.  None of it helped.

Even though I drank a potion that was supposed to help with poison, I still got poisoned.

My blade oil probably made her bleed like it was supposed to, but I really didn’t notice anything much.

The incendiary traps made a nice explosion, and stunned her for a moment, but didn’t seem to do much damage.

My bombs stunned her momentarily, but not long enough for me to do much damage.

And, ultimately, I died again.

I’d say that combat is simply more dynamic than the first game, and that I need to move around more and get used to the controls…  As actively dodging and moving around your enemy’s defenses seems to work fairly well…  But my biggest problem isn’t my lack of reflexes or understanding – it’s the game itself.

I’ll hit the button to block, and nothing happens for a moment, which means I get hit and take damage.  I’ll hit the button to dodge, and I’ll just stand there, taking damage again.  I’ll try to swing and hit one enemy, and wind up hitting a different one instead.  And, again, there’s no way to drink potions once a monster has arrived on-screen…  And any potions you drink ahead of time are useless after a couple minutes.

And these are just a couple witcher contracts!  These are basically side-quests.  Filler.  I haven’t tried to make any progress on the main storyline.  I can’t imagine what a boss fight will look like…

I finally made it through the prologue.

Made my way through the dungeons…  Stumbled across Aryan, who was being tortured in an attempt to get him to sign a confession that the King’s kids were actually his, through an incestuous union with his mother.  I guess somebody is trying to erase any claims they might have to the throne.

I freed Aryan, and the two of us made our way through the dungeons together.  Then he got to the oil store, and lit everything on fire.  The whole place went up in flames.  Big explosion.

That kind of annoyed me.  I was making an effort not to kill people as I escaped.  I was just knocking them unconscious.  I didn’t want to kill them since they were just doing their jobs.  They weren’t bad people – they thought I’d killed the king, and I was a prisoner, and I was trying to escape.  Aryan, though, just goes and blows up the whole place.  Guards and prisoners alike.  And he sacrifices himself in the process – after I went to the trouble of talking him down out on the walls.  Seems like I would’ve been better off if I’d just killed him.

So, I make it to the boat with Triss and Roche.  We set sail for some place with the charming name of Flotsam.

I’m treated to some kind of flashback/cutscene where I see some elf meeting with the guy who winds up killing Foltest.  It’s interesting…  Builds up some of the plot…  But I’m not sure that it makes sense for me to be seeing it, since there’s no way Geralt could have seen it.

For some reason, we set ashore a little distance from the town, even though there are docks right there in town.  I guess it’s better to walk in on foot for some reason?

We run into that same elf from the cutscene – Iorveth.  He’s the one leading the Scoia’tel I’ve been seeing.  There’s some dramatic speech, and then they attack.  Triss over-extends herself, and needs to be carried the rest of the way to town.  So we’ve got this kind of running/walking battle as we make our way to town.  Roche is carrying Triss.  Triss is keeping a shield up to block arrows.  And I’ve got to stay inside the shield and deal with the melee combatants.

We make it to town, and get to see both Iorveth and the mystery assassin glaring at us.

Then I’m informed that there’s to be a hanging, including a dwarf and some bard.  I hurry off to the town commons to see the hanging, and my suspicions are confirmed – Zoltan and Dandilion are up on the scaffolding with nooses around their necks.

I disrupt the hanging, brawl with some guards, make some impassioned speeches, meet the guy running the town…  The crowd disperses, I’m told to meet the Big Cheese after dusk, and everyone goes on their way.

I head off to the local inn to get a feel for the place.  Win some money brawling and arm wrestling.  Lose some money gambling.  Pick up some contracts from the notice board out front.  And then the game crashed on me and I called it a night.

So far, things seem very linear.  I guess that’s to be expected, since I’ve just finished the prologue…  But it worries me a bit how we set ashore outside of town, and the path into town allowed absolutely no wandering at all.  Just a single path all the way to town, with impassable undergrowth on both sides.  And then right away I got sucked into the whole hanging thing.

At this point, I seem to be pretty much on my own.  I’m looking forward to wandering the countryside and slaying some beasts, like in the first game.  But I’m concerned that the sequel will continue to be more linear than the first.  We’ll see…