I’ve been playing The Witcher now for quite a few days (came out on the 26th here) and I heartily recommend it. For those that haven’t heard of it it’s an RPG set in a ‘gritty’ fantasy setting. The hype around the game is that choices you make have long term effects that only become apparent later and there’s rarely an obvious good verses evil choice.
For instance an early choice you make involves elves wanting the supplies you’re guarding claiming that the supplies do belong to them and they will pay but you weren’t informed of any transaction. Do you give the supplies up? Or do you assume they’re lying and fight them off? I choose to give them the supplies and much later an NPC involved with a quest was murdered because of it.
The other hype around the game is its adult themes. It’s refreshing (for me at least) to be in a fight and actually have people screaming “OH shit!” instead of “ow that hurt!” The cursing is fairly steady but I feel it wasn’t overdone. There’s also sex Geralt (the main character) can talk his way into most women’s beds. The result is you get a ‘card’ showing the girl in a sexy pose (the cards are censored in the American version with covered nipples or Barbie models there’s a cheap way to import the UK version if anyone asks me) at first I was interested in having more than the typical RPG romance option but after awhile the novelty faded. Now I only pick them up because I’m a bit of a completest. If anything it’s less rewarding than having a couple of well developed love interests.
The combat is a bit of a mixed bag. They try to please both RPGers and Diablo players. You click on an enemy to start combat then after a certain number of strikes have to click again to do a combo. This is easier than it sounds on Easy and Medium levels your icon visibly changes and the tolerance is pretty high. On hard your ‘swipe’ changes color so you have to watch fairly closely or learn the patterns. What is interesting about combat is you get different swords (one for human one for monsters) and 3 combat styles for each. Picking the right sword/style is important but not too difficult to figure out.
Where this game really shines however is how immersive it is. Decapations and swearing and sex are all very nice but it doesn’t matter if I don’t care about the quest and the people I’m around. Geralt’s attitude warms my heart he’s kind to those friendly to him. Sarcastic to those that annoy him and a total bastard to those that treat him unfairly. It gives him character and it makes the personalities of those he deals with seem that much more interesting because they’re not just bouncing off a bland blank slate. I’d say this is the first RPG since Baldur’s Gate II that I’m really just enjoying the world and the journey more than the actual quests.
It’s still a little buggy Vista owners I hear are having a tough time without some hotfix Microsoft has released. I’ve had about 8 CTDs usually just before a cutscene begins. I also hear that load times are terrible on drives that weren’t defragmented before hand (and considering the number of loading screens there are in this game that’ll be a serious issue) personally my drive was in good shape before I installed and I have a good defragger (better then the normal XP one) so it wasn’t an issue with me.
Anyway my point is if you like RPGs and can overlook a few flaws BUY THIS GAME. It’s fun and refreshing.
this is the first I’ve heard of it. it looks awesome. I might have to upgrade my RAM sooner than later for this.
when you say
do you mean that there aren’t any love interests? I do like me some romance in video games. I can do without it, but I like to know if it’s going to be there or not.
I think there are two love interests in the game, but you can sleep with darn near anything with two breasts.
I do love this game, however, play it on low quality settings (it’s still good looking) becuase the load times are murder.
Use stun effects against any tough enemy you can. This game doesn’t pull it’s punches. The first real boss WILL destroy you if you don’t use every advantage you’ve got. I never was able to kill him without using stun/instant kill deathblow (you do the deathblow automatically if you attack while he’s stunned, but he doesn’t give you a big window on it.
Likewise, there are some normal battles you’ll lose if you don’t watch out. The enemies have their own tricks and are pretty mean about using them.
Actually, I have to say part of me really likes the difficulty. It makes me really feel like, though I may playing a badass Witcher killing machine, I’m up against small armies of undead monstrosities and abominations unto the earth. The mature themes are pretty well developed,. While it’s not true there’s no good or evil int he game, a lot of it comes down to your choices and morality, where all the parties involved are dirty. Sometimes doing a “good” thing or the “right” thing may have terrible consequences. And sometimes doing the wrong thing is useful. You have to understand like Geralt understands that he’s not responsible for other people’s choices.
Well I’m not far enough to say for sure but the two love interests in the game seem to be a coin flip type decision and not any kind of romance subplot if you know what I mean. You pick A or B and that’s that, but again I haven’t finished it so it may develop in complexity.
I read somewhere that you can back between two buildings and kill the dogs (that’s the boss you’re talking about right?) one at a time. Personally I just group attacked the weak dogs and switched to strong once they were dead. A little running around to regen health at one point is the only difficult part I had.
Oh I also used specter oil on my blade and had a blizzard/healing potion running. Herbalism and potion making are must have skills right off the bat.
As a minor spoiler, you’re not really warned you’re about to face the boss at that time - in fact, it starts as a minor finishing element to a quest. As a result, I wound up having a nasty problem of not having Spector Oil. If I downed a Blizzard and Swallow Potion I could take the boss down to about 30% health, but his attacks are too damaging.
I try to have one of each oil/potion I think might be useful on my witcher at all times. That makes even unexpected fights pretty easy I’ve found. Just apply and destroy. I also keep the anti-toxic one on me for when I start to go into toxic shock from all the potions I down.
I’m beginning to really hate the inventory system though. I have 10,000 ingredients in storage (well it feels that way) and no useful way to sort them. I find myself running back to the innkeeper all the time to dump my inventory in before going on and questing more. I must have been forced to drop more things than I’ve been able to carry back at this point.
Just thought I’d bump this thread back up to inform anyone who is interested that there’s a demo for this excellent game available now. You can find it all the usual places. Here’s a mirror that worked well for me (it’s a 2 GB monster):
Warning: Playing this demo will likely cost you fifty bucks (like it did me).
I’m still enjoying the game (in chapter 5), though the butchering of the English dialog script that the publishers did* irritates the hell out of me, since half the time I’m left scratching my head wondering what the hell they’re talking about.
*They took the existing English script and hacked off chunks. Lots of people are reinstalling the Polish dialog with the original English subtitles, which is apparently still on the disc.
Have they released any patches for this recently? I’m having major trouble getting it to run without crashing in Windows XP.
I’ve tried multiple versions of my video card drivers, uninstalling, reinstalling, various swear words, different video settings, and it still crashes during cutscenes. The video freezes and the sound carries on for a little afterwards. Occasionally, I get into the game and everyone is just a set of empty clothes. Amusing at first but not really what I’m looking for in a game.
There’s a patch promised by the end of the year that’s supposed to address performance issues (specifically the long load times). I assume various bug fixes will be included, but I haven’t read any details.
Have you reinstalled the latest version of DirectX 9.0c? What kind of video card and sound card do you have?
I am using DirectX 9.0c and I’m pretty sure I installed it during the time that I was trying a ton of stuff. I tried lots of stuff so it’s hard to remember. My video card is a GeForce 7900 GS and the sound card is of the Sound Blaster variety but I can’t recall the exact model.
I have read about other people with similar setups having the same issue. The problem is that there doesn’t seem to be a silver bullet answer.
