After an extremely successful first season, I was thoroughly looking forward to season 2 of The Witcher and sufficed to say I was not disappointed. Following on from the end of season 1, The Witcher takes a much more chronological approach to storytelling throughout the season’s 8 episodes. As someone who never played The Witcher games and only read one of the books - The Last Wish - after seeing the first season, my expectations for the season ahead were honestly pretty open-minded. I’m not the biggest fan of the fantasy genre but the initial season really captivated me through its fantastic acting and contained episodic adventures with an overall seasonal narrative. So how did season 2 do?
Pros:
Season 2’s set and costume design have been improved tenfold. One of the big complaints of the first season from people I talked to was that the Nilfgaardian armour just looked too cheap, something which has been fixed this time around. The armour isn’t the only improvement however though as the whole show seems to have benefitted from a bigger budget with the overall SFX looking a lot better with the show really flexing its muscles with bigger locales for Geralt and Co. to explore.
The story’s more chronological narrative this season round had me a little more engaged than the first season for sure. I’m not sure if it was a major flaw for a lot of people but I found the constant hopping back and forth to different time periods between episodes in the first season difficult to follow at times so the change to a chronological narrative made the second season much easier to follow.
The acting is still one of the main attractions of this show though. Henry Cavill (Geralt of Rivia), Anya Chalotra (Yennefer) and Freya Allan (Ciri) are real standouts from the season with Chalotra getting more of an opportunity to again develop the character of Yennefer. Freya Allan is also given a much more prevalent role this season which allows her character to take a much more onscreen role in the season. New and returning characters such as the bard, Dandelion (Joey Batey), Fringilla Vigo (Mimi Ndiweni) and Cahir (Eamon Farren) also do a phenomenal job alongside the main cast.
Cons:
Whilst the show overall has seen a major improvement in terms of budget the show still at times suffers from poor CGI, especially with some of the monsters which definitely had ripped me out of a scene or two but generally the look of the show is brilliant.
Overall though, The Witcher Season 2 was a brilliant continuation of the strong foundation of the first season. I would still recommend that if you haven’t seen the first season to delve into that before looking at season 2. I imagine for people like myself who don’t have any real connection to the games or books the show is based on you’ll get an enjoyable experience out of this season at the very least and at the very best you’ll be left dying for more.
If you’d like to discuss The Witcher with me a little bit more and talk some spoilers, you can do so over on my Twitter @OdhranJohnson! If you’re interested in indie based games news, reviews and more you can check me and the team at Gaming Sandbox out over on gaming-sandbox.com.
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