Manwe on 25/9/2009 at 04:09
Quote Posted by mothra
yes, the beast can kill you instantly. it's called critical hit. or it's called bad luck. or it's called Newbie playing on the wrong difficulty.
It had nothing to do with player skills it was entirely dependant on a dice roll. The first time I killed the beast (after 5 tries probably) I actually one shot her myself, without doing anything special, without any skills, I just stunned her and killed her, just like that. It was completely random which equals bad design in my mind. Of course that was two days after the game was released and they did a good job balancing the game later with the patches.
Quote Posted by mothra
Most ppl on the forum that had that problem just stood infront of the beast and slashed at it without much thought. You know, i do NOT consider this a bad design choice (as opposed to the cutscene thing which MANY companies are guilty off), I consider it one of the design choices that made Witcher a good game.
Besides choosing the right sword style, taking the right potions (which you can't do before the fight because you don't know it's coming and can't do during the fight because you're killed instantly) and spending your talent points correctly what else can you do but slash at it without much thought ? That's all the gameplay of the witcher consists of, clicking at the right moment. I'm pretty sure blocking and avoiding are all based on dice rolls, and moving around doesn't affect how much damage you take (while you're in attack range I mean).
Quote Posted by mothra
I may sound hyperbolic but TheWitcher is like, one of the best games besides STALKER that came out in a long time for me
Yeah well that would have meant something ten years ago but now... There just aren't that many triple A games on PC anymore. The worst thing is I actually agree with you. Well it's definitely my favourite but maybe not the "best" whatever that means.
Quote Posted by mothra
most of the criticismn issued is the typical "but the game is complicated and takes long to start and get in and I have to read all the text to understand and I can't one-hit kill everybody.......", all things that make a good game for me contrary to "jump in and play" aka "just hit mouse1"
(again Batman AA comes to mind: finished on hard without EVER using m2 for the punching, btw a game I did like but won't ever touch again)
What does Batman AA have to do with this ? I didn't even play it. Anyway I never complained about having too much to read or having a game that's difficult (there's difficulty and plain bad design), or with a steep learning curve. And you can one-hit pretty much anything that's not a boss fight in the witcher anyway. It's just not my idea of a complex game gameplay wise. Which is why I said it felt like a console port earlier on, because the gameplay was so simple and basic. You barely have any control over your character, you can't even jump, all you can do is move your character around and click on npc's and enemies. Sure there are subtleties to the fighting system, and I actually quite enjoyed fighting in this game despite everything I said (the slick animations helped a lot) but I would have prefered a different control scheme that's all.
Thirith on 25/9/2009 at 07:33
I know I sound like a broken record, but I still have to say that I found The Witcher underwhelming. I don't mind lack of polish, and I pretty much loved the original STALKER, but for a game this story-heavy I felt that the writing was decidedly sub-par. I thought about it after finishing the game, and I think that if the actual writing had been good (as well as the voice acting), chances are I would've enjoyed the game a lot more. The gameplay itself was mediocre IMO, but then that's true for most if not all RPGs. The story definitely had potential, but it shot itself in the foot with some of the worst, most inconsistent writing in any story-heavy RPG - made worse for me because the potential for something much better was obviously there.
Mothra, did you play the game in English or in German? If the latter, how was the writing?
P.S.: Manwe, I'd agree about the dodgy optimisation, but I'd say that The Witcher has some of the best art direction of any PC RPG I've played in the last 10 years. Especially when compared to any of the 3D Dungeons&Dragons games, it's head and shoulders above them. There are some missteps IMO, but by and large it is one of the best looking games in its genre, at least on the PC.
mothra on 25/9/2009 at 10:00
pro-tip: jump behind an enemy to hack his back without getting countered. that's how you avoid one-hit deaths with the beast. at this early stage fights are more about getting to the right place to strike than using the right potions/stance. additionally if you play vanilla the first Igni/Aard has always ridiculously high damage so do NOT use it until you have wounded the enemy. then the chance to stun/knock back is MUCH higher than before. So yes, there is dice roll in the game and NO, it is not based on luck only.
my insane mod makes igni/aard useless on bossmonsters and gives them much more hitpoints. It took me 5 tries and a final fight of 12 minutes to finish the beast of using 6 potions and being so drunk it took me 2 minutes to walk out of the cave, which leads to:
pro-tip 2:
drink yourself near unconcious before the fight and put all your talents in dodge. this way you don't have to spend many talents on strength and still have about 200% more damage without using potions that do NOT let you dodge.
PS: I played the game in polish with engl. and/or german subs and in english in both versions, I don't even wanna know the german Voiceovers because NO WAY they are going to be of any good. I found everything sufficient and effective in advancing story or creating mood/setting. What I liked the most about it was how the stories and the decisions worked, how many missions influenced each other and the extremely well made flashbacks. Another hightlight for me was the HUD/Inventory design (not functionality) , that was topnotch. I thought the presentation of the Witcher (no matter how old technology-wise) was inspired and the levels gorgeous. Also, pacing-wise it was one of the best RPGs (imo), with a long intro-chapter, a meaty, central investigation, a near-climax followed by the (by me) most beloved quests around Murky Waters, a cliche-ridden but goose-bump inducing presentation of my new silver-sword gifted by the Lady of the Lake and an appropriate hack-n-slash through HORDES of enemies.
Last Level was pure B-movie PULP fun.
I don't care that much about the dialogue, just compare it to DragonAge character intro vids (vomit) and since I'm no native polish/english I wouldn't even dare to critizise it.
Comparison with Batman comes from both games using "rhythmic clicking" for combos, with batman being more on auto-mode than the Witcher.
Manwe on 25/9/2009 at 11:16
Quote Posted by Thirith
P.S.: Manwe, I'd agree about the dodgy optimisation, but I'd say that
The Witcher has some of the best art direction of any PC RPG I've played in the last 10 years. Especially when compared to any of the 3D Dungeons&Dragons games, it's head and shoulders above them. There are some missteps IMO, but by and large it is one of the best looking games in its genre, at least on the PC.
Yes I don't think the game is in any way ugly, I was really talking about the tech not being as advanced or impressive as crysis (but as mothra pointed out that's not really the point of a rpg). The art direction is indeed pretty good, the scenery is just gorgeous, and the monsters are really well done too (except for the werewolf which they really fucked up somehow).
Personally I thought the writing was pretty good. There were some dialogues issues when the game was released when you would interact with some npc's like some lines that wouldn't really fit. For example they re-used the same basic lines several times in different situations (like "hello" or "thank you") so sometimes the tone wasn't right, or geralt would say a line that had nothing to do with anything. But I'm pretty sure they fixed most if not all of these issues in the EE. And I thought the voice acting was pretty damn good compared to most games (played it in english). I also really liked the plot and the background story, and for once I actually cared about the characters in the world and what repercussions my actions would have. I just didn't like the controls that's all. I mean there were some really good gameplay ideas. I liked the idea of mixing swordplay, magic and the use of potions in a dynamic and complementary way but I just didn't like the overall execution of it (especially the swordplay).
june gloom on 19/11/2009 at 04:23
Why ask him? We have other Poles here who won't translate it as "it sux ur a fagot HAHAHA"
EvaUnit02 on 19/11/2009 at 04:42
He seems to be the Pole that most frequents GenGaming. Of course summaries from the likes of Bukary and VanHelsing would be welcome too. Cheers.
Briareos H on 19/11/2009 at 07:37
that doesn't sound like Polish
And if that's russian, either the frontman has a speech impediment or it's not a familiar sounding russian
btw: cool.
Yakoob on 19/11/2009 at 08:38
Yup, Russian. Can't help you there folks!
Andarthiel on 19/11/2009 at 09:02
If the audio quality was better I could probably tell you what they're saying as I know quite a bit of Russian.
