Zero Punctuation: The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

JonnWood

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Jul 16, 2008
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Poisoned Al said:
You can't deny that some games are dumbed down for console gamers, there is a difference between "dumbed down" and "streamlined" that a lot of people don't seem the grasp.
People like you, for instance.
 

Solomar

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gring said:
inkbot007 said:
snip

For someone who talks about having a different opinion, you probably shouldn't state that it's broken as if it was a fact. Personally, the problem I had is that I chose the dragon part before the siege part and didn't know the fighting system, even less in a cramped area with more then one opponent.

Also, I don't a problem learning stuff through gameplay. Hell, I think it's the best way to do it. Isn't it nice to be able to say: "Oh I can do that with this spell, nice!" Instead of the game telling me press Q to stop burning. Or when I used aard against an enemy next to the cliff hoping it would push him off, and then seeing him fly away, oh I laughed so hard. If they game had told me that it would have been a lot less fun. I like the "you did something good we didn't ask you to do so here's to you" way of thinking. Same goes when I play DnD for exemple, it always funner to have a DM who rewards innovation I find.
 

Kahunaburger

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TheWulf said:
I hope this won't get me banned, but it's something that this review left me wanting to express (and really, it's not negative to Yahtzee in any way).

First of all - thank you, Yahtzee! I'm a PC gamer and an older one at that, so I remember when PC gaming was this silly thing that people did with work machines, an extension of the home computer era of Britain. These days though it seems to have become some circlejerk master race thing which borders on being Imperialist. Occasionally I think that PC gamers could use a good kick to the head to make them realise that they're not better, and really not that different, than anyone else.

I've had trouble fitting in with PC gamers simply because, yes, many of them do fit in with this trope. They're pseudo-intellectuals, and they seem to ascribe to the belief that simply having a PC puts them on a better social rung than someone who doesn't, which in and of itself reminds me of the classism I've seen in the UK (how privately housed people treat council housed people, for example). I just think that it's a facetious extension of that, since it's mostly British people I see propagating this PC master race nonsense (and I'm British, too). This worries me.

So really, yes, a good damn kick to the head is necessary, occasionally, just to point out that PC gaming is not the be all and end all of gaming. And anyone who'd forego an experience like Okami or Ratchet & Clank just because it's on a console is only robbing themselves.

The other thing I'm happy to see ridiculed is the dark fantasy pap we've had to endure. There were some parts of Tolkien's works that fully embodied dark fantasy and did so really well, but what amuses me is that this 'dark fantasy' we're seeing in games isn't really dark at all. It's... how to explain this? It's the cheerirer moments of Tolkien's works, such as the shire, overlaid with a GTA sheen. It's gritty, there's a this essence of "Keepin' it real!", and trying to be nothing more than a medieval fantasy setting where people are dicks.

That's not what dark fantasy is.

And really I think that gaming was better when it wasn't trying to do dark fantasy. The greatest moments of RPG history, for me, weren't particularly dark. Black humour, sure, but not dark. Planescape: Torment, Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magicks Obscura, Anachronox, Fallout 2, and so on. Then there were those entries that were just gloriously strange, like Uru and the earlier Japanese RPGs (Shining Force, Phantasy Star, Skies of Arcadia, et cetera). Those really were memorable.

In fact, I can only really think of one game which might have been genuinely attributable to what dark fantasy actually is, and that's Mask of the Betrayer, an expansion pack for Neverwinter Nights. That was genuinely dark. It had all sorts of ethical conundrums, it dealt with losing yourself, your identity, and whether you'd become a monster just to keep your memories; it dealt with the wall of the faithless, a construction of endless suffering where the souls of those who don't choose a god go to be picked apart; it deals with how a group of witches had taken the realm of dreams as their own and twisted it to their own dark desires to live in, and how that managed to corrupt and harm the spirits who lived there; it dealt with ethnic hatred; it dealt with religion; it dealt with xenophobia versus acceptance; it dealt with love, hatred, jealousy, and it handled all of these topics with a degree of grace and panache that I hadn't seen before and may never see again.

By comparison, to call something like Dragon Age a dark fantasy is a joke. It's more of a 'gritty fantasy,' as I described it. Just the shire meets GTA. It's not particularly impressive and certainly not clever. I'm just waiting for RPGs to stop trying to be 'kewl' so that they can go back to being clever, and then I can enjoy them again. "Be who you are, not what you think you should be to appeal to the masses." has never applied to anything like it applies to the modern RPG.

---

Oh, and Ultima VII really should be on my list of silly RPGs that I loved, too. Anything that has a Unicorn that gives the entire party laughs at the expense of the player by accusing the player of being a virgin, or has a merry little gay fox in a large, bright bow who likes to talk about how pretty he is, or has a farmer who's been labeled as crazy because of claims that a ship had crashed in one of his fields (which it actually had - a ship from the Wing Commander Universe, no less), is okay by me.

I miss RPGs being like that. :|

I know, I know... just getting old.

---

And Morrowind should've been on my list of strange RPGs. It wasn't dark but it was magnificent... I'll never forget the first time I looked up and saw my first silt strider, or the strange jellyfish creatures I encountered when scouting the swamps, or tackling the Ministry of Truth floating high above vivec. That game was so amazingly exotic in its visuals, its architecture, and even its people. By comparison Oblivion was something of a let down.
Agree on that - the whole concept of "dark fantasy" is incredibly silly. Interestingly enough, to my knowledge neither CDProjekt or Sapkowski ever described The Witcher as "dark fantasy," but it ended up lumped into that category because the games reminded people of Dragon Age. Dragon Age is, IMHO, actually less dark than LOTR, which is not very dark haha. And the game itself doesn't really seem to be trying to be dark - it's entirely possible the whole concept was something some marketing drone thought up to appeal to the kids.

And Witcher was never, to my knowledge, trying to be dark - it's more of a deconstruction/reconstruction of fantasy and fairytale tropes. It has trolls living under bridges, for crying out loud. People swear, kill each other, play politics, and (gasp) have sex in the Witcher, but they did that in the real middle ages as well.
 

Theotherguy

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Continuity said:
The point i'm making is that it is a good game and many people are judging it purely on their experience of the first 5%. Why dont they get further than the first 5%?? because despite being told it gets better they give up. Conclusion = no staying power. OK there will be a subset of individuals who simply dont like the game but I have little sympathy for them because if they don't like RPG they shouldn't buy RPG, and the witcher is more RPG than many games we get by the name these days.
You Dear Sir are right. Don't mind the mindless "I watched the review and some gameplay movies and I'm now Mr. Knowitall" people or the "Why can't I just press 1 button and kill everything" people.

I remeber the times when playing games STARTED with reading a goddamn manual to actually know how to and what to do.And the second step was trial and error. People got so lazy and dumb nowdays. Well good for me in my job dumb people are a blessing(lawyer).
 

jackdaniel0001

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Theotherguy said:
Continuity said:
The point i'm making is that it is a good game and many people are judging it purely on their experience of the first 5%. Why dont they get further than the first 5%?? because despite being told it gets better they give up. Conclusion = no staying power. OK there will be a subset of individuals who simply dont like the game but I have little sympathy for them because if they don't like RPG they shouldn't buy RPG, and the witcher is more RPG than many games we get by the name these days.
You Dear Sir are right. Don't mind the mindless "I watched the review and some gameplay movies and I'm now Mr. Knowitall" people or the "Why can't I just press 1 button and kill everything" people.

I remeber the times when playing games STARTED with reading a goddamn manual to actually know how to and what to do.And the second step was trial and error. People got so lazy and dumb nowdays. Well good for me in my job dumb people are a blessing(lawyer).
By your logic we are all bums for not go out and hunt for our meat like they used to do it in the old days. I read books, I read journals and I read the road signs. I'd rather not have to read a manual when the whole point of me playing a game is to do something other than reading.
 

jaateloauto

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Jan 23, 2008
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Ixal said:
So he spends the first third of the video attacking PC gamers for being arrogant and then rips the game because of what can be summarized as
1. I can't press buttons and
2. I don't read manuals.

This review is rather bad as it is neither informative nor funny.
It contains much wrong informations "I can't skip the cutscene" and the jokes boil down to "PC gamers are arrogant", "I don't read manuals" and "I don't care about the setting and background".

Considering this and his previous RPG reviews I would like Yahtzee to stick with generic shooter/action/whatever games on consoles. At least he knows how to make fun of them.

Kahunaburger said:
LiquidGrape said:
But honestly, I don't think I have seen quite so much rage over a ZP episode before.
What gives?
Witcher fans and Bioware fans, IMHO. There's sort of this silly ongoing argument over which game is the Once And Future Pseudo-Medieval Fantasy RPG.
Not really. As a Witcher fan I would have nothing about Yathzee making fun of the problems and silly bits in the game. But instead he goes "This game is bad because I can't play it as I don't invest any time and effort into it, har, har har".

For people who can play the game (its not really that hard even), this is not funny. We just shake our heads as we have no clue what this is about and are sad because the game gets away so bad not because of its faults, but because of Yahtzee ignorance.
I was looking forward to hearing some funny remarks of Witcher 2, perhaps a remark on how developers no longer felt the need to put the gamer to look at loading screens for tens of hours or how every witch in the game has the sex appeal of an 18 year old pop star or any jokes which would indicate Yahtzee has actually played the game and by doing so has somewhat of an idea about the lore or story of the game. For example by starting with the notion that Geralt is an 'STD archive waiting to happen' anyone who is familiar with the Witcher books or games knows that he clearly has no idea what he's going to say. I'd imagine more fitting and funnier would be to say that Geralt's immunity and impotence conveniently makes his dick a pole every woman wants to ride on in order to make the game sell more or something of that liking. I'm not an expert on comedy but things that just contradict the game you're reviewing don't seem funny to people who've actually played it.

The review had the insight that Confused Matthew has on some his reviews: nothing is happening, I'm bored, I don't care about anything that's happening because I haven't paid attention etc. Complaints about things that are only happening due to his incompetence or lack of knowledge.

The Witcher 2 is a game that for all the good it brings has a lot of faults. It's however disappointing that the review didn't seem to have much to do with the game. Even those which are about the game seem a bit puzzling. Yahtzee says the game does not give you indication on when fights are going to happen and what is needed to defeat an enemy before the fight starts. I'd say when you descend to a lair that has marked X for quest spot it's pretty likely you'll encounter whatever monsters the quest description says you'll be killing.

Characters in the game do from time to time mention things that could be useful in defeating whatever the witcher will be probably facing in battle and the extensive journal in the game has information on every creature. If you buy books from merchants in the game which the game encourages you to do the journal starts giving information on specific weaknesses and strategies which are useful against the various opponents. Sure, doing research requires some actual decision making and initiative but you can skip this by turning the difficulty down. The other option of the game screaming to the player on every new encounter "use X against Z monster!" I imagine would likewise be used as a punchline in this type of a review. I'm left wondering if the developer can do no good in Yahtzee's mind.
 

JonnWood

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Jul 16, 2008
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Ixal said:
When I play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 4 without bothering to read up any of the combos and other functions of the game I will also not have fun. But whos fault is that?
Its especially bad as in previous reviews he complained about games holding the players hand too much.
Yahtzee can be inconsistent. Like when he complains about games' lack of story, then complains when MGS4 has too much story.

It is also strange that in the first part of the review he jabs at PC gamer "elitists" but then proves them right by not being able to memorize what 5 spells do.
You mean the five spells in an entirely made-up language except for one, which is loosely based on the Latin for "fire"?

Say, if you had never seen a Final Fantasy game, what would you assume a "Firaga" spell does? How about "Blizzaga"?
 

gring

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Solomar said:
gring said:
inkbot007 said:
snip

For someone who talks about having a different opinion, you probably shouldn't state that it's broken as if it was a fact. Personally, the problem I had is that I chose the dragon part before the siege part and didn't know the fighting system, even less in a cramped area with more then one opponent.
And that's not broken? They give you 4 options, but only 1 is really the correct one. Seems broken to me. I did the same thing too, I actually started on the 4th option, had no idea what was going on, then started a new game weeks later cause I wanted a fresh angle, and I realized later that they were telling a linear story, with no explanation at all as to their intention. SEEMS PRETTY BROKEN.

Also, I don't a problem learning stuff through gameplay. Hell, I think it's the best way to do it. Isn't it nice to be able to say: "Oh I can do that with this spell, nice!" Instead of the game telling me press Q to stop burning. Or when I used aard against an enemy next to the cliff hoping it would push him off, and then seeing him fly away, oh I laughed so hard. If they game had told me that it would have been a lot less fun. I like the "you did something good we didn't ask you to do so here's to you" way of thinking. Same goes when I play DnD for exemple, it always funner to have a DM who rewards innovation I find.
Theres a HUGE difference in something like "this ability can be used in multiple ways" and "this one ability has to be RIGHT NOW otherwise you die", especially since they don't really even properly explain the spells to begin with. Something like pushing someone off a cliff isn't that hard to imagine, its something that makes sense, I'd do it all the time in Mass Effect 1 and 2. I agree though that innovation should be rewarded, but that's isn't what I'm talking about.

Since its supposed to be the tutorial, if you died lets say, more then 3 times, a warning could pop up on the death screen saying "Use Quen to put out the flames". But still the problem remains, that you learn through death, which can be done well (like in Demons Souls), but here its more about learning the designers EXACT intentions, rather then using reasoning to figure it out. They could have given you at least a decent enough description of the spells, or even given you situations where certain powers would be best, and even hint at the option to use quen to cleanse effects. These are just ideas off the top of my head.

The extra credits episode about tutorials, I think, covers the concept of the importance of a proper tutorial well, because in this game, even though it says "tutorial" there really isn't even one at all. And again, I'm not against hard games, I loved Demons Souls, but its hardness was intuitive, and its controls were refined. When I died in DS, I felt like it was my fault. But here, I can't help but just blame the designers.
 

Zeriu

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Jun 9, 2011
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jackdaniel0001 said:
Theotherguy said:
Continuity said:
The point i'm making is that it is a good game and many people are judging it purely on their experience of the first 5%. Why dont they get further than the first 5%?? because despite being told it gets better they give up. Conclusion = no staying power. OK there will be a subset of individuals who simply dont like the game but I have little sympathy for them because if they don't like RPG they shouldn't buy RPG, and the witcher is more RPG than many games we get by the name these days.
You Dear Sir are right. Don't mind the mindless "I watched the review and some gameplay movies and I'm now Mr. Knowitall" people or the "Why can't I just press 1 button and kill everything" people.

I remeber the times when playing games STARTED with reading a goddamn manual to actually know how to and what to do.And the second step was trial and error. People got so lazy and dumb nowadays. Well good for me in my job dumb people are a blessing(lawyer).
By your logic we are all bums for not go out and hunt for our meat like they used to do it in the old days. I read books, I read journals and I read the road signs. I'd rather not have to read a manual when the whole point of me playing a game is to do something other than reading.
Why are you so angry about a game having a manual? Is it so hard to read it? Is the feeling of paper against your skin causing an allergic reaction? Why nitpick? Another thing: Every game in this day and age is so terrified of making you lose. After playing Dragon age 2 and Fallout 3 where the goal is to get from the beginning to the end without significant challenges, concentrating on the story, I thought it was refreshing when i first jumped into battle, and the game kicked my ass saying "Fuck you. You have to earn your plot update".
Oh well. I can only conclude that this game is not for everyone, but I didn't like Oblivion at all and you don't see me bashing it for some arbitrary reason.
 

Azhrarn-101

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synobal said:
Those Nekkers were a pain soon as I saw them I reloaded and read up on the Nekkers and made some grapeshot bombs, so easy after that. Really though I was happy I couldn't just wade in god of war style and slay hordes of monsters with out any sort of tactics or skill. I saw my friend do the same quest and he went the magic route and he took care of them silly quick with Igni. So it's not like there was only one way to do the quest either.
Oh, I imagine there are many ways to solve that particular fight, which is awesome.
The more ways there are to solve a given problem the better, and it looks like CDProject Red have managed to pull that off pretty well.

But I was having a bit of a brainfart after that many tries (I'm trying to go the magic route, and diving into melee combat with that many targets was not the best idea), I went for strait-up combat with a few grenades and lots of potions (my toxicity was just short of maxed during the fight). It worked, but certainly felt far from optimal, but I really hadn't gotten my head around the magic yet, so I certainly wasn't using that optimally, although "Shield" is my friend. ^^
 

Fullmetalfox

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I think this video was spot on. Well done. Another Great ZP.
PC gaming is cool but PC elitists are pathetic and they are the reason why The Witcher 2's developers made such horrible design choices. Its clearly made for them! They think having to read a big ass manual is the same as depth. They think bad design is the same as challenge. Well you get what you ask for.
Enjoy your steamy pile of crap!
 

Kahunaburger

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jackdaniel0001 said:
By your logic we are all bums for not go out and hunt for our meat like they used to do it in the old days. I read books, I read journals and I read the road signs. I'd rather not have to read a manual when the whole point of me playing a game is to do something other than reading.
Well, this might not be your game, then. It's relatively reading-intensive, and the writing is definitely part of the experience. That's a valid design decision, though - people are completely free to use whatever media they want in their game. It might just boil down to personal preference.

gring said:
And that's not broken? They give you 4 options, but only 1 is really the correct one. Seems broken to me. I did the same thing too, I actually started on the 4th option, had no idea what was going on, then started a new game weeks later cause I wanted a fresh angle, and I realized later that they were telling a linear story, with no explanation at all as to their intention. SEEMS PRETTY BROKEN.
Well, it begins in media res (which is a non-linear storytelling technique), and the flashbacks can be as linear or non-linear as you want them to be. Although it is hilariously punishing to have one of the dialogue options lead to "oh no run away from the dragon!" when other dialogues lead to much easier stuff. The dragon thing isn't too hard if you stay in cover and keep an eye on the dragon, however, and they made it easier in patch 1.2.
 

Zeriu

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Jun 9, 2011
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Fullmetalfox said:
I think this video was spot on. Well done. Another Great ZP.
PC gaming is cool but PC elitists are pathetic and they are the reason why The Witcher 2's developers made such horrible design choices. Its clearly made for them! They think having to read a big ass manual is the same as depth. They think bad design is the same as challenge. Well you get what you ask for.
Enjoy your steamy pile of crap!
I will,thank you.
 

Gametek

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May 20, 2011
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Fullmetalfox said:
I think this video was spot on. Well done. Another Great ZP.
PC gaming is cool but PC elitists are pathetic and they are the reason why The Witcher 2's developers made such horrible design choices. Its clearly made for them! They think having to read a big ass manual is the same as depth. They think bad design is the same as challenge. Well you get what you ask for.
Enjoy your steamy pile of crap!
I want to see the reaction when this game is portrayed on the Xbox, actually. You know, I prefer that the consol noob [ehy, it is you that call "elite" the pc gamer] decided that for them self, after having actually tried it out.
 

jaateloauto

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Jan 23, 2008
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Fullmetalfox said:
I think this video was spot on. Well done. Another Great ZP.
PC gaming is cool but PC elitists are pathetic and they are the reason why The Witcher 2's developers made such horrible design choices. Its clearly made for them! They think having to read a big ass manual is the same as depth. They think bad design is the same as challenge. Well you get what you ask for.
Enjoy your steamy pile of crap!
I'm fairly certain most of players who've completed Witcher 2 haven't even looked at the manual. At which point do you need it?

I'm also quite confident bad design decisions are not made deliberately even if you like to think so. Recent 'horrible design choices' in AAA games I've seen have mostly been due to the fact that console games have been ported to the PC, not because PC gamers like that sort of thing. And these design flaws haven't been really exclusive to PC either. Witcher 2 is only the studio's 2nd game and as such it's not a flawless experience by any standard.
 

Kahunaburger

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Azhrarn-101 said:
synobal said:
Those Nekkers were a pain soon as I saw them I reloaded and read up on the Nekkers and made some grapeshot bombs, so easy after that. Really though I was happy I couldn't just wade in god of war style and slay hordes of monsters with out any sort of tactics or skill. I saw my friend do the same quest and he went the magic route and he took care of them silly quick with Igni. So it's not like there was only one way to do the quest either.
Oh, I imagine there are many ways to solve that particular fight, which is awesome.
The more ways there are to solve a given problem the better, and it looks like CDProject Red have managed to pull that off pretty well.

But I was having a bit of a brainfart after that many tries (I'm trying to go the magic route, and diving into melee combat with that many targets was not the best idea), I went for strait-up combat with a few grenades and lots of potions (my toxicity was just short of maxed during the fight). It worked, but certainly felt far from optimal, but I really hadn't gotten my head around the magic yet, so I certainly wasn't using that optimally, although "Shield" is my friend. ^^
Yeah, I really like that aspect of the game. I did that fight (assuming you're talking about that cave that has 10-20 of them) with bear traps, yrden, and hit-and-run with quen + swallow. It's an amazingly flexible system. If you're going magic, my advice is to buff spell intensity and critical effects wherever possible - other than that, you really can't go wrong with any of the signs :) Quen starts out pretty powerful compared to the others, but for a caster build the others seem to eventually catch up to it.
 

Ixal

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JonnWood said:
You mean the five spells in an entirely made-up language except for one, which is loosely based on the Latin for "fire"?

Say, if you had never seen a Final Fantasy game, what would you assume a "Firaga" spell does? How about "Blizzaga"?
When I can, at any point of the game, press "J", scroll to the "tutorial" header and look what those 4 unknown spells do, including a picture, then yes. Complaining about those spells is just lazy.

Arden = Push
Yrden = Trap
Axii = Mind Control
Quen = Shield

Easy to remember, even easier to look up in game.
Not using "fireball" and "shield" as a name does not make the game bad, it just shows that the player has no real interest in playing the game.

To go back to my Street Fighter example, each character has 10+ special moves, some with strange names, too and you can't look them up during the game.
Why does no one complain "Street fighter is too complicated."? "Why is it named Hadoken and not fireball"? "There is no turorial in the game. I have to read the special moves for myself!"
 

predatorpulse7

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JonnWood said:
Ixal said:
When I play Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter 4 without bothering to read up any of the combos and other functions of the game I will also not have fun. But whos fault is that?
Its especially bad as in previous reviews he complained about games holding the players hand too much.
Yahtzee can be inconsistent. Like when he complains about games' lack of story, then complains when MGS4 has too much story.

It is also strange that in the first part of the review he jabs at PC gamer "elitists" but then proves them right by not being able to memorize what 5 spells do.
You mean the five spells in an entirely made-up language except for one, which is loosely based on the Latin for "fire"?

Say, if you had never seen a Final Fantasy game, what would you assume a "Firaga" spell does? How about "Blizzaga"?
Here is something you may have missed.

The first time you cast one of these spells, it gets updated in your journal(and it says so on the right of your screen). Once you go yo your journal(press J) you see what each spell does.

And this is within the game. It is also explained in the manual.
 

Lizmichi

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Jul 2, 2009
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Oh yes yes burn Yahtzee for disliking something. It's not his job to like a game, it's his job to tell you what the game did wrong and why he didn't like it. He hated the Witcher so I'm not surprised he hated the Witcher 2. I honestly didn't like the Witcher at all so I guess I need to hang.

Guys it's ok for someone to dislike something you like. Why should what others think of something matter if you like it. That's fine really it is. I don't go after others for liking the Witcher or hating Dragon Age 2. I love Dragon Age 2 and I know that allot of people don't agree with me and that's fine. My point is let Yahtzee think what he thinks, you can disagree with him but god please people calm down.
 

Ixal

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Lizmichi said:
Oh yes yes burn Yahtzee for disliking something. It's not his job to like a game, it's his job to tell you what the game did wrong and why he didn't like it. He hated the Witcher so I'm not surprised he hated the Witcher 2. I honestly didn't like the Witcher at all so I guess I need to hang.

Guys it's ok for someone to dislike something you like. Why should what others think of something matter if you like it. That's fine really it is. I don't go after others for liking the Witcher or hating Dragon Age 2. I love Dragon Age 2 and I know that allot of people don't agree with me and that's fine. My point is let Yahtzee think what he thinks, you can disagree with him but god please people calm down.
He is free to dislike it from the start, but then he should either not review the game at all, especially when he doesn't even have the hardware for it, or be professional enough to complain about the real weak points of the game instead of just making things up (cutscene skipping) or not even bothering to actually play the game (sign names, etc.)

I do not like DA2, but if I were like Yathzee, I would complain about "How should I know that cunning makes you crit harder"? And "No one told me what those icons above the enemies heads mean when I hit them with certain attacks" (Status effects that can be used to set up combos) or "Potions have cooldowns? That is dumb!".