I played right through it about a year ago on a low-end machine (AMD 6400 APU and nVidia 650) and it was very playable at 720p. I wouldn't have been able to tolerate 1080p on that machine, though. Great game. I played it before playing the original. There are a few references you will miss, but nothing too important.

You can often pick it up for free or a few pennies in sales, particularly on GoG. Not much to lose for a lot of gameplay.

It was pretty smooth at 1080p on my old gtx 760 and a sandy bridge i7. It crashed maybe twice during my playthough, but otherwise it was fine.

I never played more than a couple of hours of the first Witcher and still loved TW2. I'd say it's very much worth it if you've got relatively decent hardware.

When I still had my GTX 650 Ti Boost, framerates were decent but not great and sometimes dropped into the 20-30 fps range (1080p). Now I have a GTX 970 and I can max all settings (except the uber thing) and still get 85+ fps. It feels like a disproportional increase, so maybe it's helped by certain features from the post 600 series.

Interesting. I can't wait to see how well my GTX 950 holds up. If that can't give me the performance I'm looking for, it may be an excuse to upgrade to a 1060. Thanks for the replies.

I think it's comparable to Wine (Nvidia hardware). I didn't test it on recent AMD cards.

60 FPS with an I7 Haswell and a 780Ti. Bit of stuttering here and there but nonetheless very enjoyable. Amazing game by the way.

Very good performance with even a first gen i5 (750) and a 980, all graphics settings maxed except for ubersampling which is disabled, at 1080p. Some thins that I had issues with: I tend to make a lot of saves, but as the saves built up the game started getting slower and choppier, once I realized this and cleared out all but like 10 saves it was back to being smooth again. Occasional crash, but very rare. Turn on subtitles, voiceovers are sometimes missing during the interlude cutscenes. Play on at least hard mode, anything else will make it seem cakewalkish and will ruin some of the enjoyment.

Quoting: GrifterPlay on at least hard mode, anything else will make it seem cakewalkish and will ruin some of the enjoyment.

I enjoyed it plenty on normal difficulty. I enjoy the adventure, exploration and story aspects of these games. The action is secondary.

I agree about hard more - choose that from the start. Same applies to the first Witcher game.

Very good performances here (40-80 fps) with an AMD FX 8350, GTX970 and 8Go ram on a SSD and ElementaryOS Freya, all on ultra settings.

Juste two things :
- i've disabled bloom (don't like this effect).
- and the ubersampling (10-12 fps max with enabled).

The tutorial suggested easy. I chose normal. First thing I did was get an achievement for 10 kills without damage. Tried the tutorial again and didn't do any better.

The arena at the end of the tutorial is a terrible benchmark, it throws you into the deep end with regards to combat, I did absolutely dreadful, but once the game starts up properly it builds up all your combat skills gradually -- but since I failed the arena I'm played on easy at first, and it's like running through doom with iddqd in the actual game.

Play on hard, and reload a few times, but get a much better experience where you have to actually parry and counter thrusts etc. You feel like you're accomplishing something rather than grinding to get to the next point-n-click-adventure-game bit.

Okay, I've got it downloaded and have played a few hours. With a GTX 950, core i3 6100, and 8 gigs of ddr4, with every setting maxed, even ubersampling, at 1080p....
Pretty good actually! Rather smooth, with some rare stuttering. I can't help wondering if some setting isn't actually enabled.

In terms of difficulty, after immediately dying in the first mission I switched to easy and have been limping my way through the game. I've never played anything like this before, so I'm taking my time.

The game is rather pretty, though not as polished as I had hoped. No support for interface scaling, pop-in, and anti-aliasing being a single toggle. Also, while I can disable the HUD (Awesome!), I cannot access my inventory or character stats at the same time. Still a great game. I got in an argument with a guard and a sassy prositute told him she knew how little balls he actually had. Love it.

Not playing on hard becomes annoying in the later stages when you are already more comfortable with gameplay, and got a lot more abilities especially in the final sets of the skills tree (like adrenaline based skills). Geralt feels too overpowered. Besides monsters like Kayran (which is the hardest fight in the game either way), playing on hard is the most balanced option.

Quoting: GrifterThe arena at the end of the tutorial is a terrible benchmark, it throws you into the deep end with regards to combat, I did absolutely dreadful, but once the game starts up properly it builds up all your combat skills gradually -- but since I failed the arena I'm played on easy at first, and it's like running through doom with iddqd in the actual game.

Play on hard, and reload a few times, but get a much better experience where you have to actually parry and counter thrusts etc. You feel like you're accomplishing something rather than grinding to get to the next point-n-click-adventure-game bit.

The game seems slightly imbalanced to me. Regular foes and minibosses are absurdly easy. Endrega Queens, Wraiths, even Kayran, are easy. But I reached the first fight with Letho and I'm stuck. My attacks are too weak, thus the fight takes long and sooner or later I make some stupid mistake and get hit seriously - from then it's just the spiral downward.

It's comparably bad to the first boss fight in Deux Ex HR and in huge contrast to Dark Souls, where regular foes can be as deadly as bosses.

Good mods:

Geralt with beard: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/693/?
Bag instead of book: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/93/?
Pirouette dodge instead of roll: http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher2/mods/697/?

Ah, and surely import your end game save from TW1. Raven's Armor is pretty neat.

It would seem that can cchange the difficulty later on if I need to, so that's good.

I've found some pretty sweet mods myself. Better textures, a more advanced HUD, and even interface scaling.

On a final note, after playing at 720p and then switching back to 1080p, I can say that it's just as smooth at either resolution. Which is a great departure from when my games ran like crap at any resolution.

Play well on my Radeon R9 290 with Open Source, last I tried.

Alright, just a few more observations on my part.

First of all, those textures absolutely tanked my performance. That said, they are freaking gorgeous, so overall a fair trade. I turned down a few settings and barely even noticed a difference.

The other mods are a bit hit and miss, which is most likely my own fault.

Finally, let me just say that this game is awesome! I can barely pull myself away long enough to play anything else. A definite must buy for anyone.

Quoting: chuzzle44Finally, let me just say that this game is awesome! I can barely pull myself away long enough to play anything else. A definite must buy for anyone.

Yes, and if you didn't play the first yet - play it as well (Wine). I like it even more.