The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

The sequel to The Witcher, set in The Verse of The Witcher series. Released on May 17, 2011, it brought with it a brand new game engine with shinier graphics and new game mechanics. Its plot starts with a regicide of which Geralt is accused and promptly embarks on a quest to clear his name and bring the real Kingslayer to justice. He encounters many former comrades on his journey, but soon enough he starts to suspect that all is not as it seems as he is once again drawn into the political schemings of the Powers That Be, where everyone seems to be working their own angle.

According to The Other Wiki, The Witcher 2 has received universal acclaim, it currently has a metascore of 89/100, based on 33 critic reviews. Critics generally praised combat mechanics, customization, graphics, environments, immersiveness and storytelling. PC Gamer felt that combat mechanics and the game's ending were the weaker point of the game.

In April 17, 2012 the game was published on Xbox 360 as an Enhanced Edition with approximately four hours of more content, and 33 minutes of extra cutscenes. The Enhanced Edition is also available for the owners of the original PC version free of charge either through the game launcher, or at Gog.com.


 * Adipose Rex: Henselt is fat. Goes well with his objectionable personality, though it certainly doesn't help explain his excellent swordsmanship.
 * He is more Acrofatic as he is definitely more stocky than fat. Many soldiers say that Henselt was an accomplished fighter not shirking from any battle and turned to lavish lifestyle only recently.
 * Affably Evil: is very polite around various influential people and has civil conversations with them which show how well educated he really is on matters about the Northern Kingdoms. However, he is also very crafty, tricking people into revealing crucial information simply by asking them a few seemingly trivial questions. He even has the guts to subtly taunt Geralt in King Henselt's camp about  while talking about a statue with beauty trapped within, the significance of which becomes clear to Geralt only later in the story.
 * Letho is surprisingly soft-spoken and polite compared to his thuggish, brutal appearance. He keeps reminding that he has no personal grudge with Geralt, and that he can avoid any conflict between them just by walking away.
 * Almost-Dead Guy: Ciaran on the barge, explaining.
 * becomes one as well.
 * And I Must Scream: A truly horrible one happens to in the sequel, when  transformed into a tiny figurine. Subverted in that it's a state more akin to a coma, but yeah.
 * And Now for Something Completely Different: the perspective will occasionally switch to another character in another situation, such as Triss, Dandelion, Roche, and even Henselt.
 * Anti-Villain:
 * Arrow Catch: Geralt can deflect them back to his enemies.
 * Art Shift: The game has a generally realistic look to it, except whenever a flashback plays. Those take on the appearance of a gritty comic book.
 * Asshole Victim: The kings that are being targeted for assassination aren't really the nicest people.
 * Back-to-Back Badasses: in Iorveth's path.
 * Badass Normal: Vernon Roche and Iorveth.
 * Bag of Spilling: Pretty much averted; Geralt starts off knowing all his Signs and equipped with plenty of basic Alchemy formulas. He doesn't have any of the combat style changing from the previous game, but that's just because the combat engine is different.
 * Bald of Evil: Bernard Loredo.
 * Batman Gambit:
 * Big Bad Ensemble: Letho of Gulet,,.
 * Big No:
 * Bittersweet Ending: At the end, Geralt and recovers the rest of his memory. Unfortunately,
 * Blessed with Suck: The elf Cedric is afflicted by visions of the future. He has no control over this ability, and some of his visions are so horrifying that he tries to suppress them by drinking heavily.
 * Blossfechten: Geralt seems to prefer the Pflug guard position as his default ready stance with a sword. Letho prefers the vom Tag guard instead.
 * Bonus Boss:
 * Brainwashed and Crazy: The dragon Saesenthessis
 * Break the Cutie: Implied to happen to Anaïs over the course of the game.
 * Break the Haughty: Plenty of haughties get broken in the course of the game, from kings to sorcerers.
 * Broken Bridge: Troll Trouble of Chapter 1.
 * Though you never cross that particular bridge, and indeed it won't be ready to cross before you leave the area for good.
 * The Chessmaster: The Nilfgaardian ambassador Shilard and pretty much every sorceress in the game.
 * Cluster F-Bomb: Man in the prison during the prologue.
 * Combat Pragmatist: Geralt and witchers in general are supposed to be this, and if you don't want the game to kick your ass, you the player will be forced to as well. Simply relying on swordplay isn't enough, you need to juice yourself up with potions, oil your blade with nasty substances, lay traps, toss bombs, turn enemies against one another and so on. Learning to be the guy who brings a grenade to a sword fight is a big part of the game.
 * Contractual Boss Immunity: Major enemies are immune to instant kills.
 * Corpse Land: There are some that come complete with skeletons and evil spirits.
 * Corrupt Hick: Loredo.
 * Covert Pervert: Roche. While carrying a RRoD'd Triss, he takes solace in the fact that he'll die holding a nice ass, despite her protests.
 * Dead Star Walking:
 * Difficulty Spike: The beginning of the game was so difficult they had to patch a tutorial in.
 * Dropped a Bridge on Him: Literally, to one of the bosses.
 * Escape Artist: Iorveth.
 * Even Evil Has Standards:
 * Evil Old Folks:
 * Also Loredo's elderly mother who Getting stabbed by her is possibly the most inglorious death in the whole game.
 * Evil Sounds Deep: The Draug, one of the bosses, takes this trope Up to Eleven.
 * Eyepatch of Power: Iorveth.
 * Eye Scream: In the third and final chapter,  You even get to see the after-effects.
 * Foreshadowing: While the dragon is attacking in the prologue, Foltest wonders if it's possible to train a dragon.
 * Shilard's casual comment in King Henselt's camp to Geralt about a statue with a beauty trapped within actually refers to.
 * First Episode Spoiler: The death of towards the beginning is what kick-starts the plot.
 * Gameplay Ally Immortality: NPCs have this when they accompany you on quests.
 * Gameplay and Story Segregation: Sometimes Geralt can't use his Axii sign in situations where it would make perfect sense. For example, he has to search a sedative to calm a hysterical man in a haunted ruins of a mental hospital, rather than just use the sign meant to calm and influence people's minds.
 * On the other hand, he can use Axii in certain conversations, provided he practices enough to level up using it as a speech ability (alongside Intimidate and Persuade). Geralt can also use some of his other signs in non-standard contexts; one of his sword finishers is toasting an enemy with a little fire, and he can use Igni to light or extinguish torches like a light switch.
 * Grey and Grey Morality: Deciding between Roche and Iorveth... almost every choice is grey.
 * Groin Attack: Geralt of Rivia can deliver these during quicktime brawls.
 * Guide Dang It: It's not possible to completely finish the quest "From a Bygone Era" in Act 3, unless you decide to search a certain unassuming wooden shack near the Kaedweni camp in Chapter 2, and even then you need to know that the barrels behind it hide a cellar entrance. This is especially difficult to those who choose Iorveth's path, since this is the only thing of any interest on the other side of the wraith-mist apart from the main quest, and is possible to completely miss even if you take your time looking around the area you can never return after completing your objective there.
 * Happy Ending Override: The Witcher ended on a relatively victorious note, with Geralt restoring order to the Temerian captial of Vizima and helping it forge an alliance with Redania in the process. Not too long in the sequel, though,
 * Harder Than Hard: The game features an "insane" difficulty, which in addition to being the toughest difficulty in general in terms of damage dealt by enemies and such, also features Perma Death where if you die, all your saved games from that playthrough become inaccessible and you have to start over.
 * Heads I Win, Tails You Lose: Beating Letho in the first chapter leads to him getting the advantage on Geralt before sparing him.
 * Hold Your Hippogriffs: Iorveth considers capturing Loredo's prison barge to be a "piece of lembas", mildly confusing Geralt who apparently isn't familiar with the saying. Doubles as a Shout-Out.
 * Hopeless Boss Fight: An interesting version comes up on the Roche path.
 * Horny Devils: The Succubus, of course.
 * Hypocrite: Many of the human peasants in Vergen. They claim that want a land without kings and where all people are equal. All people, that is, except for nonhumans, who should just get their own "nonhuman land."
 * I Just Want to Be Normal: Geralt and Triss in the sequel. However, they have to stay involved when Geralt gets framed for.
 * I Owe You My Life:
 * Jeanne D'Archetype: Saskia the Dragonslayer.
 * Jerkass: Prince Stennis. He's quite willing to give his ally, Saskia, to Henselt during the summit with Kaedwen, threatens and constantly demeans Geralt in all their conversations, and refuses to give up some blood in order to . Of course, probably had something to do with it.
 * Karma Houdini: Depending on your choices, the following people can get off without suffering any repercussions for their actions: And no matter what you do, at least some of them will get away.
 * Karmic Death:
 * Literally Shattered Lives: The Enhanced Edition starts off with a massive dose of this in the new intro movie. The titular kingslayer sneaks onto a ship where a king is having a private festival with jesters, strongmen and so on. He tosses a magic ice bomb at the center of the ship and freezes about 75% of it, including almost all the people, who get crunched to bits in the ensuing fight. Of course, since the freezing was probably not the harmless variety they were dead already.
 * Love Ruins the Realm: The war is the second time King Foltest's illegitimate offspring cause problems.
 * Loads and Loads of Loading: Averted compared to the first game which was infamous for this. The lengthy opening logos can mercifully be skipped before accessing the main menu.
 * The Lost Woods: The unnamed forest around Flotsam is rightfully feared by the townsfolk, since it crawls with spider-like Endegra, corpse-eating Nekkers, as well as elven guerillas who will kill any human they come across without mercy.
 * Mad Scientist: Dethmold definitely qualifies with his although he is intelligent enough to behave casually (very sensible thing to do as he is an advisor to a bad-tempered king who has already burned one sorceress at the stake).
 * Man Behind the Man:  is behind Letho. His goal is to.
 * Manipulative Bastard: in the Little Sisters quest in chapter 2 plead for Geralt's help but in fact have a far more sinister agenda.
 * Multiple Endings: There's sixteen.
 * Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: Geralt fails to protect  in the prologue when he could have.
 * If Geralt chooses to help Iorveth instead of Roche prior to the first duel with Letho in chapter 1,.
 * If Geralt chooses to believe during the Little Sisters quest in chapter 2, he.
 * Roche screws things up in Chapter 1 when
 * Nintendo Hard: Many players find this game extremely difficult compared to the first, particularly early on. The enemy AI actively attempts to flank you and damage dealt from behind does double damage, it takes practice to avoid being trapped in a bad situation by enemies. This makes the prologue one of the toughest areas of the game, making the game have a reverse difficulty curve.
 * Thankfully, this got reversed just slightly in the 2.0 patch - you can no longer get interrupted mid-swing by an enemy hitting you from the side, which would generally knock you over for a few seconds prior to 2.0.
 * Nonstandard Game Over: Depending on what you say or do in various situation, it's possible to watch Geralt get killed. He can even die during his interrogation with Roche at the beginning.
 * Not So Different: Roche and Iorveth hate each other for being remorseless killers of elves and humans respectively.
 * Obfuscating Stupidity:  looks like a big, dumb oaf, and perceptions of him generally go there at some point. He exploits this advantage every chance he gets.
 * Old Save Bonus: Now if only the "old save" in question wasn't horribly bloated, it might still be around...
 * One-Scene Wonder: The Draug.
 * Optional Sexual Encounter: Triss, Ves, an elf woman you save, various Prostitutes, and a Succubus. Triss gets a 4 minute sex scene.
 * The Other Darrin: The only returning actor is Doug Cockle (Geralt), with all other characters being recast. More obviously, Iorveth switched actors between the first trailers and release, gaining a thicker accent to boot.
 * In the Russian version most of the characters were voiced by different actors, including Geralt. In the first game he was voiced by Vladimir Zaytsev, while in The Witcher 2 he was voiced by Vsevolod Kuznetsov. Fans actually created an online petition, asking to bring Zaytsev back, once the trailers came out. Kuznetsov voicing Velerad in the first game didn't help matters. When the game came out, people were less upset, since Kuznetsov did really good job at voicing Geralt and was on par with Zaytsev, if not better.
 * Our Dragons Are Different:
 * There are options to this action, though. Also,
 * Out-Gambitted:
 * Pet the Dog: Oddly enough, Bernard Loredo, the commandant of Flotsam. Call yourself nonhuman and he'll disagree rather quickly.
 * He does want Geralt to do his dirty work, though. Employing a nonhuman to hunt other nonhumans wouldn't make a very convincing argument.
 * Press X to Not Die
 * Rape, Pillage and Burn: Standard operating procedure for conquered towns. Geralt has the opportunity to stop a bunch of soldiers from doing too much raping, pillaging and burning, fortunately.
 * Refusing Paradise: Played with.
 * Restart At Level One: Played straight, though it at least averts Bag of Spilling in that Geralt keeps the Signs from the first game.
 * Sadistic Choice: At one point, you have to choose between saving Triss or someone more important to the grand scheme of things... either Anais in Roche's path or Saskia in Iorveth's. Luckily,.
 * One can come up in Chapter 1 if you side with Iorveth. Loredo attempts to burn some Elven women to death to prevent Geralt and the Scoia'tael from sailing away. You only have enough time to save them, or kill him to prevent any future nonhuman persecution
 * Scenery Gorn: Loc Muine will be filled with dead bodies in the Enhanced Edition if
 * Sequel Hook: One of the reasons the ending received some criticism - it felt like there was so much more to do, even after everything the player had gone through.
 * Shoot the Hostage:
 * Shout-Out: After, Iorveth and Geralt ask what they need to brew an antidote. Phillipa tells them, among other things, a great source of magical power is needed, possibly through one of the twenty rings of power. Iorveth drawls out, "One ring to rule them all..." and Geralt says "Let me guess, then I run barefoot up the side of a volcano."
 * The same chapter features Geralt finding Balin's journal (curiously, split into parts found on three separate dead dwarves) in the rotfiend-infested mines under Vergen. It's a brief chronicle of what occurred in the mine, and ends abruptly with a mention of "Durin's Bane".
 * Joan of Lukomorye mentioned is an linguistic pun on Joan d'Arc and a reference to Monday Begins on Saturday by Strugatsky Brothers (In itself a reference to Alexander Pushkin's Ruslan and Ludmila).
 * One of the books that Síle de Tanserville is mentioned to have bought from a dwarven merchant in Flotsam is called De Vermiis Mysteriis.
 * Also, Geralt asks if Ves joined the army by pretending to be a man, so her old father wouldn't have to go.
 * The final quest in the game is called "Enter the Dragon".
 * Shut UP, Hannibal: Geralt can distract Iorveth with a rather delicious one in chapter 1.
 * The Stinger: The Enhanced Edition adds a scene showing
 * Take That: One to Assassin's Creed, where in the prologue you can stumble upon the corpse of an Assassin who missed the haystack by that much.
 * Talking the Monster to Death: In the Enhanced Edition, a new quest involves you encountering a golem. You can fight it out, or you can literally invoke this trope by way of Logic Bomb.
 * Throwing Your Sword Always Works: Geralt has a group finisher where he kills three human enemies by throwing his steel sword on the first, his silver sword on the second, and killing the third one in close combat. He also has a finisher against harpies where he throws his silver sword and it stabs the harpy in mid-air, killing it.
 * Roche also manages to kill an enemy soldier via thrown sword in a cutscene.
 * Tutorial Failure: The Witcher 2 has a rather lacking tutorial that fails to detail several in-game features properly, as put by Penny Arcade.
 * Version 2.0 has remedied this via adding a tutorial section separate from the main story.
 * Undying Loyalty:
 * Triss, who loves Geralt so much she resolves to help Geralt
 * Also, ultimately Vernon Roche.
 * Ungrateful Bastard: Prince Stennis is not only unwilling to help Geralt or Saskia in their endeavors despite saving his life at the beginning of Chapter 2, but
 * Villain Forgot to Level Grind:
 * Arguably Fridge Brilliance, as Geralt doesn't really get stronger during the course of game as much as he just gradually recovers his old skills, so one way of looking at the power discrepancy in the final battle is that Geralt
 * Walking Armory: Averted compared to the first game. Geralt only equips a steel sword and a silver sword, but has several pockets for bombs and traps (likely due to complaints that the optional weapons were completely useless beyond torches for light).
 * We Used to Be Friends:
 * You No Take Candle: Trolls talk like this. They also eschew any proper nouns, referring to themselves as "troll" and others by their race or profession.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Scoia'tael embody this trope -- Geralt even says as much point-blank.
 * You No Take Candle: Trolls talk like this. They also eschew any proper nouns, referring to themselves as "troll" and others by their race or profession.
 * Your Terrorists Are Our Freedom Fighters: Scoia'tael embody this trope -- Geralt even says as much point-blank.