The Witcher: first impressions - SPOILERS ABOUND

Short version:

"Yeah, baby!"

Long version:

I played through the "prologue" to the game, which, incidentally, would be a perfect demo -- it sets the scene, introduces the characters, introduces the mechanics, and generally gets you started on the right foot. It's really well thought out -- a far cry from the "harvest fair" solution you usually tend to get. So these are very early impressions. I'm just so pleased with the damn thing I can't stop myself gushing about it here.

Anyway, on to the observations:

* Witchers are absolutely terrible housekeepers. There are evil-looking birds pooping all over the place (including indoors), there are rats, all the walls are full of holes, the floors are full of cracks, and I had an entire staircase collapse under me.
* I can't say I trust their cooking either. I've found all kinds of highly suspicious ingredients all over the place, and I'm pretty sure that in the long run they're not good for you.
* Triss must be one hell of a sorceress to be able to dress that way while living in a completely isolated fortress in the middle of a bunch of rather rough fighting-men.
* She's clearly a much better housekeeper. Her room is the only one in the place that actually looks fit for human habitation.
* However, she's also clearly doing something right -- both of the other sorcerers I've met so far had some severe problems with their complexions that I would suspect are due to overexposure to the arcane arts. Not so Triss, her complexion is perfect. Perhaps it's because she's allergic to magic.
* That must've been one hell of a potion those jokers got me to mix for her. One minute she's out like a light and half dead, the next she's… never mind.

More seriously: thus far, there's very little that's hit a false note. Specifically, two things: the voice acting, and Triss's outfit. The former isn't god-awful by any means, but it's pretty uneven and a far cry from the best (e.g. VtM:B at its best). I would have preferred none at all, I think. As to the latter, IMO they would have done better not to get that far into chainmail bikini territory. Especially if they have a situation where the clothes come off -- that would have had more impact if she was wearing more to start with.

The game mechanics are pretty nice, IMO. The twitch factor seems somewhat below Jade Empire. Click-spamming won't work, since you actually have to keep the mouse pointer on the guy you're fighting and not click when there's a little "no parking" sign on the sword icon. OTOH character development clearly does matter -- I put my hard-earned talents into improving my strong style, and the results were immediately obvious: enemies suddenly went down like ninepins plus I had some nifty new moves in the animation.

In other words, "action RPG" sums up the combat mechanics pretty well, but in a good way -- yes, there is action involved, but being a mouse-god only gives you a limited edge, with your real capabilities being determined by the way you've developed your version of Geralt.

The game looks really good and runs really well (so far) at 1920 x 1200 with most stuff on on my rig (AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+ recently OC'ed to 4800+ spec, GeForce 8800 GTS, 320 MB). The only way you can tell it's Aurora Engine is the pacing of the load screens (which, incidentally, are a lot shorter and no more frequent than in Bioshock -- and not many people were complaining there.)

Oh, that naughty postcard thing? Not what I was expecting from the shits-n-giggles reviews. Few (if any) mainstream video games actually handle sex in any way other than the fade-to-black-implied way; the single scene in the prologue is way more tastefully done than most stuff you see on prime-time TV. Perhaps it gets raunchier later on -- but if it's done in a similar tone as the first one, they're doing fine, nipples or not.

And I absolutely do not see how *that* would bump up the game's rating.

How are the dialogues? I've been hearing from some Polish fans that the translation sucks.

Not having read the originals I can't tell for certain, but the dialogs haven't struck me as shining gems of condensed prose. They get the job done, but Planescape: Torment it isn't. It's quite likely we're missing out on it.

Thanks, great mini-preview by the way, it felt like I was playing the game.

I have been playing for 5 hours and I must say : THIS WORLD LIVES. It's full of small details like plenty of little animals (rats, birds, strange kind of monkeys, fish are jumping above the surface of water) people talk to each other, clean the houses, wash their clothes. Sometimes in the trees there are some small floating colorful lights. I've never seen something like that in any game. Oblivion looks plastic. Witcher is more realistic. For now the world creation is best feature for me. Story is really good, never boring. Plenty of tactical options in combat, and lots of posibilities to augment the witcher and weapons. Good game.

hehe my eyelids are starting to fall, but I can't stop playing.. I'm not very far in the game, but i can already say that witcher is perhaps the best game I've played this year.

I'm looking forward to playing The Witcher after all the videos I've seen of it. I have a question though. From all the footage I've seen, there is a mouse pointer constantly floating in the center of the screen, can that be turned off?

Yeah, I noticed that too. It's just a tiny little dot, so no big deal, but still would be nice to not have if it is not necessary. It looks like something in place for ranged combat, but afaik there is no ranged combat.(?)

There is an actual point in isometric mode (entirely mouse driven, after all). In third-person mode there's just a tiny dot -- I'd say it's good for targeting and you don't notice it in-game.

You don't use the keyboard to move?

In third-person mode you use WASD. The dot is there to target things -- objects, enemies, people. It doesn't bother me and in fact I think it would be less intuitive without it.

I also really like Geralt -- having a "pre-rolled" character with a personality, a history, and a clear place in the world feels much deeper than being "anything you want to be."

IOW, I 100% disagree with Eurogamer's assessment that it's only half a RPG -- on the contrary, the role you're playing is much, much deeper and more complex than in most RPG's. I'd almost say it's twice the RPG most cRPG's are. PS:T is the only one that springs to mind that does this as well -- and it's got a pre-rolled character too.

BTW, as for Triss's outfit, it corresponds with the books and lore. Sorceress are pretty obsessed with their beauty and always dress like that, frivolous. And the witchers accept her as she is because she's one of the few that gained their trust.

Well, most of the female characters show a quite a lot of leg and cleavage. Again, IMO the sexy bits would've been sexier if they weren't quite so generous about their charms to start with. But it is a very minor quibble and, I suppose, a matter of taste too.

By the way, I ran into my first actually challenging fight. I liked it. I had to use a potion before the fight, and then do some active switching between styles and dodging to find openings to be able to beat it -- if I just stood there and clicked, all of my blows got parried; ducking to the side, then hitting one combo with the fast style and following up with a combo with the strong style worked better. For being so simple, the combat system is surprisingly deep.

Seriously -- this game does everything right that almost all fantasy cRPG's do wrong, and the things it doesn't do quite right (IMO) are really pretty minor, and very easy to forgive.

(Oh, and… some of those naughty postcards really *are* rather corny, but, again, that's a very minor quibble. The tail-chasing quests are rather well done, though; if all that's been cut from the US version are the postcards with the quests left in, you're not missing out on much.)

Played through the introduction, chapter 1 and parts of chapter 2. So far, so good, but there are certain issues that prevents a top score:
- Some NPCs are too similar. Example: There's a fellow leading a church/cult during chapter 1, and as soon as you enter chapter 2, the first thing you see is an identical fellow. It's not actually the same guy though, the guy in chapter 2 is simply a "priest".
- The combat is smooth most of the time, but sometimes Geralt simply stops dead in his tracks, and let opponents smack him for a good 5 seconds. If you're up against something relatively heavy, this will lead to a reload. Which brings me to the next issue:
- Load times. Unless you have a state-of-the-art system, you will probably experience quite a bit of loading. Also, since the combat can be fairly challenging later on, it is highly likely that anyone playing on medium/hard will reload often, which makes the loading even more annoying. Especially if you have to reload because Geralt just decided to not attack regardless of what the player does.
- Quest NPCs sometimes get killed during story progression, meaning any chance at completing the quest will simply vanish if you didn't complete it at the right time. Anyone playing past chapter 1 will know what I speak of.
- The Aurora feeling. The witcher is a stunningly beautiful game, but it suffers from the classic Aurora-lack-of-exploration syndrome (KotOR, NWN, NWN2 etc); Aurora is a 2,5D engine, meaning the Z axis is "fake" - you can never actually jump or lift something off the ground. Anything that looks like it's floating simply has an invisible layer beneath it. This leads to some frustrating moments where you have to run around a very large, fenced area (over and over again) because you can't simply jump over the fence and run in a straight line.

Other than that I really like the game. The story is brilliant so far, and the way things get told through Geralt helps make the experience immersive. With the few exceptions mentioned above, it seems to be a rock solid RPG in every possible way.

All in all it delivers above my expectations, which says quite a bit since I had fairly high expectations for this one.

Edit: I feel I should add something regarding the Aurora engine. Only the "exploration syndrome" makes it feel like an Aurora game; it is amazing what CD Projekt have done with the engine to make it play so smoothly and look so stunning.

I was really enjoying this game until I came to, what I believe to be, the end of chapter 1. At this point a certain encounter - which takes place immediately after a rather lengthy cutscene with no chance to prepare let alone save in between - is just utterly out of sync in terms of difficulty compared to the rest of the game so far. After a dozen attempts, all resulting in Geralt's death within a VERY short time, I reached the infamous "frustration ratio vs. interest in progressing" point and installed Jericho instead.

Perhaps there is a trick I didn't figure out. Perhaps there is a certain build that will make this encounter easier (however, that would indicate that you are NOT free to build your character as you see fit). Or perhaps I shouldn't have listened to the manuals description about easy was just for whimps and gone with that difficulty setting instead of medium … all I know is that I was running along having a great time and then *SMACK*

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
I was really enjoying this game until I came to, what I believe to be, the end of chapter 1. At this point a certain encounter - which takes place immediately after a rather lengthy cutscene with no chance to prepare let alone save in between - is just utterly out of sync in terms of difficulty compared to the rest of the game so far. After a dozen attempts, all resulting in Geralt's death within a VERY short time, I reached the infamous "frustration ratio vs. interest in progressing" point and installed Jericho instead.

Perhaps there is a trick I didn't figure out. Perhaps there is a certain build that will make this encounter easier (however, that would indicate that you are NOT free to build your character as you see fit). Or perhaps I shouldn't have listened to the manuals description about easy was just for whimps and gone with that difficulty setting instead of medium … all I know is that I was running along having a great time and then *SMACK*

Setting to hard wasn't good idea First fights are easy indeed, but it's just a prelude to serious battles in the future. Try regeneration potion and others. If this "encounter" life bar is about 20 % , you can easily knock him down with aard sign and then finish him off. But I' ve done it on medium diffiulty.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
I reached the infamous "frustration ratio vs. interest in progressing" point and installed Jericho instead.

I hope you aren't expecting much out of Jericho.

The Good
+ good story, unique setting
+ interesting characters
+ much dialog, recipes, books
+ a lot of well done cut scenes
+ cool enemies
+ action combat -> well done (no mindless clicking)
+ good graphic engine (works well on my very old rig (Athlon 2600 (2100 MHz), 2GB Ram, ATI x850 Pro 256 MB -> have to use the Omega drivers)
+ interesting alchemy system

After the first chapter:
A very good intelligent action adventure with rpg elements thrown in -> recommended.

The Bad:
- Aurora engine = a lot of loading screens

The Ugly:
Nothing so far :-)

Originally Posted by Maylander
- The combat is smooth most of the time, but sometimes Geralt simply stops dead in his tracks, and let opponents smack him for a good 5 seconds. If you're up against something relatively heavy, this will lead to a reload. Which brings me to the next issue:

Isn't it because of wrong timing? I thought it was an idea when you click wrong time, you break combo, Geralt stands for a moment, can't move and is open to attacks. It took me a little to get used to new type of fight.

But yes, loading are annoying - heritage of Aurora . But I'm not gonna give up because of this .


Don't be mislead by prologue - is mostly tutorial. Then fights are more harder later. Play on medium level first. I've startted with hard and it was a bad idea . I think reviewers who wrote that group style is too powerful and potion not really needed stop the game after prologue .

Btw I love this game - I was very affraid deep in my heart of that it will disappoint me but I am glad I was wrong. The game isn't perfect because of some technical issue but it really cought me . Scare to think what cdprojeckt could do if they weren't niche producer.

Originally Posted by fatBastard()
I was really enjoying this game until I came to, what I believe to be, the end of chapter 1. At this point a certain encounter - which takes place immediately after a rather lengthy cutscene with no chance to prepare let alone save in between - is just utterly out of sync in terms of difficulty compared to the rest of the game so far. After a dozen attempts, all resulting in Geralt's death within a VERY short time, I reached the infamous "frustration ratio vs. interest in progressing" point and installed Jericho instead.

Perhaps there is a trick I didn't figure out. Perhaps there is a certain build that will make this encounter easier (however, that would indicate that you are NOT free to build your character as you see fit). Or perhaps I shouldn't have listened to the manuals description about easy was just for whimps and gone with that difficulty setting instead of medium … all I know is that I was running along having a great time and then *SMACK*

This is the first encounter of any real difficulty -- and you'll probably need some potions, just like the difficulty selection says. I agree the leadup is frustrating and a poor design choice. Don't quit the game - it's well worth getting past and I'm sure you'll find it isn't that bad when you've worked it through.