Witcher What do you guys think about the game?

*cough*play on hard*cough*

Maylander said:

In the Witcher I find the combat fun at first, but slightly tedious over time. Preferred style doesn't mean a whole lot in most cases - certain situations can only be solved with group combat, certain with strong combat, and some with fast combat. You need to use the right sword and style in most battles, because any other combo is useless (for example trying to hit an agile creature with strong attack, or a heavily armored opponent with fast attacks).

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I'm not bored of the fighting yet. I play on hard and I think I've nailed how you do well in combat. Alchemy is the answer. If you quaff enough potions any fight turns rather easy. There is only one enemy I've had big trouble beating, I usually just run away from them. The boss fights and big groups of enemies also lift up the difficulty. I'm in chapter 3 at the moment so that might change.
It's true what you say about the combat styles. If you use strong style onto a fast opponent it won't work. You can't really afford to have a chosen combat style. Adds some tactics to the game. I like finding out everything I can about monsters, so most of my money goes into buying books about them.

I personally find the varied combat styles to be the more appealing aspect of combat. It is much more realistc that way, and who wants to play the same fight routine every time anyway?

I'm in Act 3 too, and there's a bit where the difficulty level drops a great deal... before it ramps up again. I've done a couple of climactic fights by now, and it seems there's one more coming up, and they haven't been easy -- I've been seeing red spots on more than one occasion. I even got killed once. I'd imagine that there would have been a fair bit of save-and-reload on Hard.

That is, those were some very good fights, with a real sense of achievement once that spiky horror was crumpled up in a heap on the floor.

I wasn't really talking about difficulty (or lack of), I was simply talking about everything being predefined - the big puzzle here is just to figure out what style to use on what enemies, and it's nailed. The next time you go through the game, no matter how you place your talents, you'll still end up using the exact same styles on the exact same monsters. That becomes tedious.

Leaves the player with very little choice. You can't become an incredibly strong, slow/hard hitting warrior relying heavily on strength, or an agile swordmaster using speed to dispose of his foes. You use strength against heavy opponents, and speed against dodging ones. Geralt is always everything at once, and you always have to use the fighting style that is designed to kill monster X, not whatever style you actually prefer.

At least, that's my perspective. If you're really stubborn, I supposse you can use fast fighting on everything, but you'd have a really hard time against some of the heavier opponents. Likewise, if you rely mainly on strength, it's virtually impossible to beat the dodging ones (can't hit them).

You have a point, but I don't quuuiiite agree. I've been relying more on Signs lately, and it gives the combat a quite a different feel: if I had weighted them more earlier on, I would have used different potions (=more Tawny Owl, less Swallow), and my tactic would have been to get through a stun and then a finishing move, rather than go with brilliant fencing all the way.

Similarly, if you weight alchemy at the expense of fencing, you can improve your odds by always having the right buffs on your swords and the right potions in your bloodstream.

IOW, you do have a significant amount of choice -- you can go all-out for swordsmanship, all-out for alchemy and signs with swordsmanship doing the finishing moves, or become an all-rounder.