WW said:
entropy3ko said:
WW said:
Well actually I was already annoyed at the endlessly dreary intro cinematic... that fight with the monster should have really been cut back a little
They won an award for that intro from someone - but yea, it's very looong.
It was very well done, superb graphics, but they really made that battle against that monster (a striga I think it is called later in the game) way to long.
Anyway....:
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THE WITCHER: SECOND IMPRESSION
Here in a fun lovin' city in the noth of the Netherlands where I live (I'm not Dutch though) The Witcher was sold out, so to get it I had to perform a dark ritual and summon a demon from hell to bring it to me. I used Yahtzee recepie:
What would you get if you took the corpse of J.R.R. Tolkien, ground it into a fine powder, and snorted it off the doughy breasts of a prostitute suffering from Tourette's Syndrome? Well, first you'd get a throatful of dead writer, then the police would probably want to talk to you, and you'd no doubt make an enemy of Mrs. Tolkien. What you probably won't get is The Witcher, because it's a video game, and more easily acquired from your local electronics retailer, you idiot.
and indeed no Witcher. The demon brought me 'The Lord of the Cockrings'.
After doing some research I found out the 'proper' recepie:
Take Andrzej Sapkowski (the writer of The Witcher fantasy books which in Poland are more popular than Halo 3), put him on top of a bunch of X-men comic books, a playboy, a dead wife-beater and a DnD book and set the whole in a blazing fire while dancing around whith a hooker (which is easy to find here) and the Demon brings you the Witcher.
Ok 'nough joking. Although the joke was meant to explain the game. The game is inspired by the Books of Andrzej Sapkowski (which I have not read so I will not talk about fidelity) and treat the arguments of eracism and conflict very much as you see in X-men. Instead of mutants you have 'non- humans' ie elves, dwarves, dryads, etc... although GERALT is actually a mutant, and is often called a frek, like the mutants in X-men.
Although I must say that it is not TOO bad, actually, although the story starts a little boring it gets a little more interesting as you progress in the game. It is certainly better than most plots around and at least it is trying to combine different genres.
I did not find the sexual part or the huge cleavages mysoginistic. The mysoginistic part was that often women talk about that they were beaten by their husbunds... and Geralt does not seem to give a shit at all. It's like the most normal thing in the world.
Although if we go back to the past it was so, then I guess it's not the game that s mysogynistic, it's only Geralt who does not give a shit and only thinks about satisfying his primordial urges.
I unfortunately must disagree with Yahtzee about the complexity of the game. Yes the manual was thick (which I used to smack the demon I summoned back to hell empty handed) but I did not read it. The tutorial/prolougue part of the game made everything quite clear.
One thing that really annoys me is the Inventory Screen. Small Icons, you can not sort your items... it's very unfriendly to use in my opinion. In the end you only collect ingredients and potions in there and making the icons a little bigger, maybe with the name next to it it would have been helpful.
I agree on that 'reaserch' BS. Often before you can do a quest, harvest certain ingredients, etc... you need to research a certain plant, monster, etc.. by reading a book about it which will put and entry in your journal where it talks about monsters or ingredients.
The concept is good, I like the concept very much BUT: the problem is that to aquire a book you must pay 200-500 orens (the currency in the game) and your reward is rarely more than 200-300 orens for doing a job...
Maybe it is because Geralt is a platinum blond (ok he's a albino due to the mutation bla bla bla) but he has no sense of economy. Actually the best way to make money is to play dice-poker or fistfight.
And here we enter a part of the game I likes, the mini-games. Although not really exceptional, they were fun, especially because you can earn much needed money with them. they certainly beat the pointless sex in the game. You have a few minigames like 'fist fighting' or 'dice-poker' a combination of Yahtzee (ironically LOL) and poker.
There is not much to say about them, but they are useful and a little fun if you are tired of dicking around cities and swamps in search of monter XYZ.
The Sex: pointless add-on to the game. If you complete certain quests and make the right dialogue (although it is hard to go wrong) you have sex whit a woman in the game. The sex is even less explicit than in THE SIMS 2!!! And the Sims is a game rated for kids. I felt somewhat cheated in this aspect. It's like you work really hard to score a girl and then you find out she only wants to watch 'Bambi' leaving you with a photo of herself showing the tits.
OK, you do not buy the Witcher to watch porn, but why adding sex to a mature game and then censore it totally like this? More than in the MTF Sims! It is better to leave it out entirely like in other RPGs then.
In my opinion it is better to leave out something than put it in in this way. In conclusion: it will not make you MASS ERECT!
The combat. Ah the combat! The people who say it is not a click-fest need to be smacked. Indeed it is a click-fest. ok you can use a 'sign-power' or drink a potion along with it but basically it's a click-fest. Basically it's a click minigame. You click on the enemy and then when the cursor gets 'flaming' you must ckick again to do a combo.
It gets boring especially when you have to fight the same kind of enemies over and over again or you have to fight a particularly tough opponent, like a golem which took a LOT of clicks to kill.
Besides Geralt is sometime a real pushover... (at least at Medium Difficulty)
Then what is the point of having other weapons other then the two swords? in the end you end up using either the steel or the silver sword anyway and the other weapons are basically useless in combat.
The running around is also sometimes annoying, lettting me wich that Geralt had a car... or at least a bicycle.
The quests are not too bad though. Sometimes it is hard to figure out what you actually have to do, but at least they are varied enough (not counting the 'collect part X of monster Y for dumbass Z after reading book Q).
Some NPC are funny and even sick and twisted, although the reaction of Geralt is often very mellow, perhaps the mutagens that turn you into a Witcher contain a lot of Hash, or perhaps he's thinking about that cute woman passing by...
One bad thing about NPCs: they mostly look alike. A little more variation in faces, body, clothes would not have hurt. 'All dwarves look alike' they say... and INDEED they do! Except Zoltan who cut his beard just to be different, still... Same applies for elves, druids, 'Salamander' thugs, Stormtroopers... oops sorry.
I think the graphic designers missed the point here: instead of making the grass look totally realistic, it would be better to spend a little more time on making the NPCs a little more varied.
IN CONCLUSION:
The Witcher is an ok game, it has his good points, like story (but certainly not good as the one in Dreamfall), setting, voice acting...
It shines especially in the graphics, but apart from that it is an average RPG. And sometimes it also gives me the MMORPG feeling...
I must agree with Yahtzee in the end.
Do not get me wrong: the game was and stil is fun for me (since I have not completed it) but I can totally understand that if someone is not a big fan of the genre, he/she will not like the Witcher.
In the end the score is an 8.0. A Must-Have if you like cRPG and it is a good game if you want something different than the usual DnD/Forgotten Realm stuff, but if you do not like the genre that much you beter stay away from it.
and yeah: Patch 1.2 saved the game. The loading times are fine with it...
PS: although I do like the Witcher, I like Yahtzee review of the Witcher more. And it's free.
