Fuck The Witcher 1. Seriously. (rant)

[Dalisclock]

I kinda feel the same way as the OP, though not as angrily about it. I played through it a couple years ago and it felt like a game that should have released around the time KOTOR did, except it came out years later and was not as engaging. I trudged through it for the sake of the story, which was the part I liked, but I never have any urge to play Witcher again and I've told people to just skip it because almost everything from Witcher 1 is forgotten by the time you get to Witcher 3 anyhow(in universe).

Witcher 2, on the other hand, is pretty much what Witcher 1 should have been(except for the inability to drink potions in battle, which sucks).

 

[ExileNZ]

It's rough around the edges being on the first game, let alone the engine it's running on, but it's kinda tough to take all of OP's comments to heart when the tone clearly reeks of irrational resentment. For example the status effects don't disappear; they are still shown in the top left corner as an appropriate icon depending on the effect. If anything it's more a case of difference in design - even by 2007 by standards - than being broken or what have you.

I don't really know what's supposed to be irrational about disliking repetitive combat, drawn out gameplay and poor storytelling. And when the foundations of the game fail to work, you start to notice tons of smaller nitpicks (like my whole tirade about the status effect symbols) which start to infuriate you in equal measure.

My guess is you're still running around Chapter 2: That Fucking Over-long Swampy Hell-hole. I very nearly abandoned the game at that point and I know a couple of people who did. Forcing us to get all ten seals just to advance the story a little more was a shitty design choice and one I won't try to defend.

HOWEVER, people are right when they say the game gets much better after that. The world shows us more of what's in store, the story opens up in more meaningful ways and you have to start making some hard decisions with sometimes dire consequences - moreover, some of your earlier decisions start coming back to haunt you. You start to realise that no amount of heroism can save these people from the terrible shit that's happening to them - in large part because they're doing it to themselves. Maybe you even start to feel okay with that... There's also a nice twist implied near the end that makes Alvin much less annoying in retrospect, but in any case the stakes are sufficiently raised and the story takes some very interesting turns.
My only real bugbear is that for all the choices that carry over to the second game, you always wind up retconned with Triss. She's cool and all, but she wasn't my choice so it was annoying to see that hand-waved into oblivion.

 

[Potjeslatinist]

Well I love all three Witcher games. And I hate all that weeaboo anime crap you love so much. But I'm not running around trying to convince people to "avoid it like the plague". That's coming on a bit agressive, isn't it? Calm down.

 

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Even though I said that I like The Witcher 1 I don't think that I could replay it ever again. And I would be totally OK if CDPR decided to remake the whole game including large parts of the story and make the narrative, atmosphere and aesthetics more consistent with the other two games. Yes, all three games are different from each other, but the difference between TW1 and TW2 or TW3 is so much greater than the difference between TW2 and TW3. It feels like a completely different studio made the first game. The difference in pretty much every aspect of the game is astronomical going from TW1 to TW2. The jump from TW2 to TW3 seems a lot more natural. TW1 is almost detached from the other two games and even from the books.

 

[Irwin126]

I have yet to play the witcher, Mainly because I'm afraid my computer would implode on it's self after the tutorial. That and every time I hear praise for the witcher 3 the more I want someone to talk about what's shit about it. So I know what to avoid if I ever even try to play the game.

All praise for a game is always a problem. With no real criticism going towards it, it will just seem like a bunch of fanboys consuming every negative reviewer [7/10] into changing their scores or else [9/10 or 10/10]. And I think I'll use this example for every game that gets 9/10 or 10/10 with praise from the community who would kill the reviewer's dog if the score is lower than 9/10.

I'll call it, witcher syndrome. Or Zelda Syndrome if we are going extreme.

Even so people disliking or hating a thing can be good. We can see what's truly wrong with it and see if it can be improved appon newer games. I don't see people criticizing the witcher series often. So It's a breath of fresh air.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Oh boy. I'm (probably, hopefully, please God let it end) near the end of the final chapter, and all the people who thought I was going to like it by the end... what the hell are you smoking? Chapter 5 is undoubtedly the absolute worst part of this shitfest yet! Yes, chapter 4 is quite good actually, since it doesn't involve 12 overlapping fetch quests the game will just prevent you form proceeding in, or running around 2 areas with 2 loading screens and a boat ride in between. It has a different sort of atmosphere, more engaging plot, a bit of Lovecraftian influence, and environments that remind me of summer in Finland. Those are all quite nice, and I actually enjoyed chapter 4.

But Jesus' cunthair, it all goes down the toilet, into the sewer system, and then bores a straight line into the bottom floor of hell with the final chapter. If chapter 2 exacerbates and underlines everything wrong with the questing in this game, chapter 5 does the same to the combat. This is the least fun I've ever had playing a video game ever. In just a few fell swoops, the game manages to up its shittiness by a power of 10 by

- having essentially a nonstop combat gauntlet of difficult encounters with zero autosaves in between
- limiting the amount of available alchemy ingredients, so if you don't have enough healing potions you're shit out of luck
- introducing more and more enemies with the ability to inflict the pain status ailment, which I have now put in my top 5 of the worst game design choices ever. Oh yeah, let's put a status ailment that not only stops the player for several seconds from moving or attacking, but also make him take damage the whole time and have all the enemies gang up on them at the same time. Also make sure the player has no way of preventing or knowing which enemies can inflict it, when or how, so that it's always essentially random. Fun times!

I already said the combat is unresponsive, but it bears repeating: the combat system is unresponsive as fucking fuck. At the boss which I'm now Geralt has simply started to refuse to do the Igni sign. Doesn't matter if I'm in the midst of enemy hordes or on the other side of Mars, he simply won't do it. The targeting switches in combat for no discernible reason, making hunting down specific targets essentially impossible. The dodge move seems to operate on a random number generator. I previously criticized the game for having the player just look at the mouse cursor, but then I realized it doesn't matter because nothing happening on screen has any relation to the damage being done. So many times I've seen damage numbers pop up when a single enemy has just stood staggered in front of me. Honestly, who in their right mind would design the entire climax of their game not only around this horrible, broken, borderline unplayable combat system, but also introduce more and more enemies for the player to fight?

I don't think I've ever said this unironically, so The Witcher truly is a milestone for me: this game is genuinely horrible. Horrible combat, horrible questing, horrible UI, and a horrible final chapter that highlights all the mechanical faults in the game with 50 ft neon pink letters. I honestly, truly, genuinely, cannot comprehend how anyone could enjoy this game. Its ratio of redeeming qualities to faults is so overwhelmingly in the red it's almost black. It's massively less fun than the temple of Bahamut in Final Fantasy 10, which itself is about as much fun as untreated pneumonia. To think a game with so much passion and love clearly put into it can repeatedly crash and burn so spectacularly, and yet still had the critics lining up to give it succulent BJs on release has got to be some sort of world record.

I'm honestly almost at a loss for words here. I don't think I've ever hated a game more than this. It's kind of unreal to be honest. I will tell everyone to avoid this game harder than Aleppo and ebola-AIDS until I hopefully forget about it someday.

So... sorry I guess.

 

[Erttheking]

Combat was boring and a chore, voice acting was flat (Grealt sounds emotionally dead, even when accusing a man of being a rapist. People say he's supposed to be like that, but having a character that's intentionally emotionally dead doesn't make him any more engaging) it's the boring kind of dark fantasy where everything sucks because of course it does. I wish dark fantasy writers would automatically stop equating "Dark" with "racism, swearing, tits and everyone is an asshole." Seriously, Siegfried was my favorite character on the basis that he wasn't a total jerkwad, which made him pretty damn unique. And apparently if you side with the Squirrels over him, he turns racist out of nowhere. Because of course. Some people say that there's better stuff farther in. Well sorry. I gave twenty hours of my life to that game and I enjoyed maybe two of them. If I wasn't enjoying myself then, and I didn't feel like flagellating myself anymore.

And that mystery in chapter 2 can go fuck itself then die in a fire. I felt like I was reading a mystery book with half the pages ripped out. For some reason I had to go interrogate a dwarf for his relationship to the mystery, EVEN THOUGH I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA WHO HE WAS! I was able to accuse the investigator of secretly being behind it all, even though I had no idea why the hell I would want to do that, and then it turns out that I should've done that, but it didn't matter because even though I decided it was the local crime boss because I wanted this mess to just end, I couldn't beat him because the crime boss has a dozen of his men just sitting in the side room that I couldn't beat because there's no skill to the combat here, just clicking until either you or the enemy dies first. After that, I was just fucking done. It's a shame, there were some good aspects to it. I liked how when I gave some weapons to the elves because a man had given them his word, they end up using them to kill a criminal you were getting information from. A morally gray situation from all ends. But the overall game was just....UGH! I wanted to like it. I really, REALLY wanted to like it! *Sigh* I did get the Witcher 3 for PS4, and I hear that one's a lot better. I'll probably get around to playing it some day, but the series just left a bad taste in my mouth.

I didn't get that far in Witcher 2 either, but that one didn't enrage me as much. The combat was kinda eh still and the grimdark writing of "cuss cuss, racial slur, tits" was still there, but the world had a better feel to it, the characters actually had some depth (Foltest being a gung ho warrior who gleefully storms the bastion of his enemies, but still having a soft spot for his bastard children was a nice touch) but I still stopped playing it. Mainly out of general boredom.

Also, did the Witcher 3 get the rampant sexualization of women under control? Seriously, it was fucking stupid in the first two games. I kind of get pulled out of how grimderp this place is supposed to be when every woman has tits big enough to act as flotation devices.

 

[Erttheking]

First game is made for fans of the books. It is great. Read the books or GTFO newb.

Kind of insulting towards fans of the books isn't it? Assuming that they want to play a boring, drawn out, badly designed game?

 

[Rastrelly]

First game is made for fans of the books. It is great. Read the books or GTFO newb.

Kind of insulting towards fans of the books isn't it? Assuming that they want to play a boring, drawn out, badly designed game?

The game was neither boring, nor drawn out.

 

[Erttheking]

First game is made for fans of the books. It is great. Read the books or GTFO newb.

Kind of insulting towards fans of the books isn't it? Assuming that they want to play a boring, drawn out, badly designed game?

The game was neither boring, nor drawn out.

I beg to differ. Even people who actually like the game admit that the combat is boring and that chapter 2 can go to hell.

 

[Rastrelly]

First game is made for fans of the books. It is great. Read the books or GTFO newb.

Kind of insulting towards fans of the books isn't it? Assuming that they want to play a boring, drawn out, badly designed game?

The game was neither boring, nor drawn out.

I beg to differ. Even people who actually like the game admit that the combat is boring and that chapter 2 can go to hell.

The game is boring and the combat is boring are two different things. Plansecape: Torment would be a boring game too in this case. Chapter 2 is one of the weaker parts of the game indeed, but there is a lot of fine stuff in it as well.

 

[Erttheking]

First game is made for fans of the books. It is great. Read the books or GTFO newb.

Kind of insulting towards fans of the books isn't it? Assuming that they want to play a boring, drawn out, badly designed game?

The game was neither boring, nor drawn out.

I beg to differ. Even people who actually like the game admit that the combat is boring and that chapter 2 can go to hell.

The game is boring and the combat is boring are two different things. Plansecape: Torment would be a boring game too in this case. Chapter 2 is one of the weaker parts of the game indeed, but there is a lot of fine stuff in it as well.

Yeah, the problem is that around half of the game is combat. And the thing about Planescape: Torment? People argue that that game is boring too. Apparently there's one hell of a death march towards the end that kills the good will it's built up. Granted I hear Planescape: Torment actually has a good story that explores deep themes, but even then you'd just be tolerating most of the game.

Also the fine stuff in chapter 2 begins and ends with Siegfried.

 

[Silence]

Yeah, Witcher 1 is shit. Could not follow the story either, even after playing 2 first, and the combat ... well.

 

[Rastrelly]

Yeah, the problem is that around half of the game is combat. And the thing about Planescape: Torment? People argue that that game is boring too. Apparently there's one hell of a death march towards the end that kills the good will it's built up. Granted I hear Planescape: Torment actually has a good story that explores deep themes, but even then you'd just be tolerating most of the game.

Also the fine stuff in chapter 2 begins and ends with Siegfried.

Hmm? I loved re-meeting Zoltan and Shani, all minor characters were great, Lovecraftian themes in the Swamp area were fun, as well as all druid fun further into location.

Also, with PS:T, some people find it boring to read. I find those people boring and usually disregard their opinion on stuff that requires reading. For me PS:T had one of the best stories in gaming, including the ending, albeit rushed a bit, that rush added to feeling of approaching climax. Put some wits to it if you played a diplomat, and it's quite passable. There is only one actually bullshit area in PS:T - it's Curst Prison. All other necessary battles (there are 2 of them) are solvable with help of teammates, and hardcore enemy-filled zones are either can be ran by, or stealthed through.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

Well fuck me. Finally over. I feel like I want to barf now. The game just kept digging and digging and discovering all new ways to suck dick until the very end. The only good thing about the last 3-4 hours was the ending cutscene, which did leave quite a cliffhanger. Everything else can go fuck itself. The final level and boss were undoubtedly the absolute fucking worst I've ever had the displeasure of playing. A repetitive combat gauntlet, like the one I spent the last 3 hours suffering through with this shit system. With no checkpoints, so you constantly have to break the flow to save your game. Yeah, let's just throw a bunch of those guys I've already fought a million fucking times, and give them that bullshit status effect that you literally cannot do anything to prevent and will end the fight in seconds once inflicted. Even with every single buff you get during the last level and whatever potions you throw on top. And if by some miracle it's not inflicted, the guys will just stunlock you to death, also in seconds. It's unfair combat design, plain and simple.

So... sorry I guess.

Apology accepted, not everyone can have taste. Although Chapter 2 can go suck a dick.

Well excuuuuuuse me princess, but how is disliking a game where the main mechanics simply Do. Not. Work. not having taste? Seriously, if I had a buck for every time a quest marker led me to the wrong location, or Geralt switched targets in combat for no reason, or slowed to a crawl in combat for no reason, or plain and simply did not follow my inputs I'd have a lot of money to convert to euro right now.

Eugh. I haven't felt this pissed off about a piece of supposed entertainment since Suicide Squad. But at least that pile of walrus dribble was only about 2 hours long and had some tasteful cheesecake to ogle at. This took me like 25, and the cheesecake was smack dab in the middle of Uncanny Valley. I feel like I'm owed a refund and an apology, despite buying this game like 5 years ago for the price of a few chocolate bars.

Fuck this game. Fuck everything about it. Fuck the combat, fuck the quests, fuck the story, fuck the characters and their stiff 2007 faces, fuck the UI, fuck the generic, boring visual design, fuck the level design, fuck the repetition, fuck the pointless economy (I didn't even mention that; the amount of times you need money for anything can be counted with one hand), fuck the mechanics hinting at depth (like being able to give people gifts) that end up fucking nowhere. Fuck even the slightly good parts for giving me hope that this colossal turd might get better. I'm not touching this shit ever again, not unless someone pays me a triple digit salary by the hour. I'm done.

*drops mic*

 

[Erttheking]

Well I love all three Witcher games. And I hate all that weeaboo anime crap you love so much. But I'm not running around trying to convince people to "avoid it like the plague". That's coming on a bit agressive, isn't it? Calm down.

Weebs, right?

So... sorry I guess.

Apology accepted, not everyone can have taste. Although Chapter 2 can go suck a dick.

I really question how much better the game can get after that in order to justify the insults.

 

[Aetrion]

I personally really liked the first Witcher game. Yea, it was far from perfect in many aspects, and a significant chunk of the game where you're doing the Salamandra investigation has no clear path through it, and you can very easily wind up advancing the story without having done all the side quests yet. However, I found a lot of it to be a breath of fresh air when compared to both open world RPGs where the whole world simply waits for you and therefore nothing ever has a sense of urgency, and linear RPGs where there is no real way to stray off the path presented to you. I thought that game felt uniquely alive precisely because you didn't know if going somewhere would suddenly advance the story in ways you couldn't predict.

 

[Imre Csete]

Best Neverwinter Nights mod out there.