I was going to post this in the Duke Nukem thread. But then I had a mental flashback to 1994 when everyone I knew was brutally destroyed in a train wreck.

http://www.sluniverse.com/php/vb/members/vertigo+paris/albums/misc+pics-36/thread-derail-1953.jpg

So, has anyone here had the (mis)fortune of playing this game?

It has the potential to be the best RPG i've ever, ever played but it fails so bad on so many little things that I can't bare to play it for longer than 30 minutes. Which is the exact opposite that I want from a huge single player RPG - I want to lose RL friends and be sucked in for a good two weeks.

The combat system fails, due to the awkward 3rd person camera. While it is a nice attempt at giving you a holistic view of the battle field... most of the times you are in cramped forests or indoors and the camera will just awkwardly clip against the walls and make you wonder why you are staring at your feet while people are hacking at you.

My main gripe with the game is the difficulty settings. I did my usual: New Game. Diffuclty: Insane. I always think what's the point of playing something on anything less than the most difficult setting? Shit, it involves a keyboard and a mouse, how bad can I really do?

Oh boy. How wrong was I.

This leads into the second main gripe, and that is the way the game introduces you to the controls and concepts. Very minor spoiler alert, but nothing that will ruin your life: You start off running away from some goons in a forest, you are obviously wounded. You collapse and are taken to prison. Turns out some shit went down. You are then interrogated and the 'introduction' / 'tutorial' plays out with each dialogue choice you make during the interrogation. Vernon Roche asks you 'what happened then?' - you give an answer and the game lets you play that section of the past out. While this is a nice way of incorporating a flashback... IT DOES NOT TEACH YOU JACK SHIT ABOUT THE GAME. [/rage]. Seriously, one of the dialogues mentioned a dragon so I picked that. Next thing I know, I'm running like fuck while a dragon is annihilating this town. I step into fire, I die. I get hit by an arrow I die. It's bullshit. And all the while this crazy shit is going on, little Journal Hints are popping up telling me that a Silver Sword is good for monsters, whereas a normal sword is good for Humans/Nonhumans. I didn't even know I had two swords...

So, all the while you are getting hectically thrown into the game - it is trying to educate you in how to play. I'm not sure whether you are absolutely expected to have played the first in the series (I assume this to be the case), but still. It hurts.

What made it so much worse was this difficulty bullshit. Simply put, on Easy - I can spam Mouse1 (sword attack) through any conflict, any boss fight, and group ambush... literally anything. And I'll come out with 90%+ hitpoints. On Medium, Hard or Insane - you die in 1 to 2 hits and enemies are simply untouchable. This is the main reason I have completely lost interest.

You can do such cool stuff in combat like evasive dodge-rolling, throw a wide variety of bombs and daggers, use 5 unique 'Signs' or spells which are always available to you... You can meditate and drink potions before a battle to enhance your chances, you can apply oils and upgrades to your swords to make them more badass... But on Easy - this is completely unnecessary, and on anything harder than Easy, I don't get a fucking chance to because I'm dead after encountering anything.

My final gripe is the NPC pathing and general cinematics... I like a good cinematic as much as the next guy, but seriously, in about 4 hours of playing the game I've watched about 1 solid hour of cutscenes's. It's a bit too damn much, especially when combat has the potential to be the best thing since sliced bread. The NPC pathing is just horrible, in the few occasions where I have had to follow someone, you realise that being able to walk faster than them isn't a good thing. And any attempt to cause yourself to walk slower (holding shift), causes them to walk at that pace also. All doors in Flotsam (the first town), automatically close behind you, which is just lame. Compounded by the fact that interacting with ledges, ladders, doors etc requires you to stand perfectly still and use Mouse1. It becomes near impossible to effectively loot corpses or crates n shit because the accuracy you require from a god-damn-awful 3rd person camera is just unachievable.

The storyline is absolutely amazing. The linearity of the game actually works - since it is supported by the storyline. The combat system has some of the nicest mechanics / concepts I have ever come across - it just fails hard (read the thread to see why). The character leveling up involves your usual skills, but also fancy mutagens which enhance your character to a godly level. The items are insane - your average creature will drop like 4 to 6 items (that you would expect it to have), and most of these are used in crafting/alchemy - eg. a Nekker drops a heart, some teeth, a hide, sometimes a couple eyes etc... The dialogue is great - voice acting, could use some polish...

And the best thing about it? I've seen tits at least 3 times without actively seeking them out.

Question time: Is this difficulty bug due to a bad cracked version of the game I'm using? Do I really just fail so hard at this game? Has anyone here even played the Witcher 2? If so, what are your thoughts on it? Am I doing it right? Why do I feel the need to love this game and play through it, even thought the controls/UI/various bad things literally torture me?

These sound a lot like the complaints HKS was giving about this game (I haven't played Witcher 1 yet so I'm going to do that before I try 2). The game also apparently runs very poorly, and still has remnants of the aurora engine (neverwinter nights 1... don't ask, it's a stupid story) in it.

The not being able to drink potions in combat part sounds the most idiotic to me.

It's too bad, I hope they patch up the game before I get to it. I really was hoping for a more fluid RPG than what I've been subjected to as of late.

Yeah - I only just realised now that it was released less than a month ago. I've updated to the 1.2 patch simply for they stated that "combat responsiveness" has been "improved". In reality, there were no noticeable changes.

The running poorly also surprised me. I mean, my computer isn't "high spec" by any standards, but I am forced to run the game with nearly everything on lowest or disabled - and I still don't get the best FPS.

As for the drinking potions thing.. I quite liked that touch, it adds an ounce of realism and removes a crutch that almost every other RPG relies on. You can't exactly whip open a can of diet pepsi while you're surrounded by 6 angry beasts who are tearing at your flesh. The main annoyance though, is that you are sort of expected to know what you are up against next - you can only drink a maximum of 1 to 3 potions, and their effects are extremely specialised. Only after I died 3 times running into this cave did I realise the enemies were poisoning me to shit, so on the 4th attempt I drank some poison resistance juice and ran in, only to die in the exact same time as the previous 3 attempts. Needless to say, attempt number 5 was made on Easy difficulty.

I hope it gets patched to fuck - because for every absolutely amazing thing in this game, there are about 10 tiny little grievances which pain me.

HKS and I run fairly powerful hardware, with the exception of him running a dual core (better for gaming due to the lack of multithreaded gaming) and myself running an i7. According to him there is a "micro stutter" when moving that 1.2 supposedly fixes, but as steam was really slow in bringing out that update (and you need to download the entire 9gb archive every time it patches) I'm not sure if it actually fixed it for him. But, yeah, the performance doesn't even compare to unreal 3 engine games apparently.

As for the difficulty I can't tell you my personal opinions until I actually try it, but so far it sounds like they went really overboard on the difficulties because too many people complain about rpgs being easy. I guess that was the same reasoning behind Dante's Inferno difficulties being as absurd as they are, but that just made the game flat out enraging to play.

It's literally the next sentence from what you quoted me originally. Doucher.


Well - the difficulties claim something along the lines of:
Easy - For the casual gamer. Most combat scenarios can be won through minimal use of dodging, parrying and simply maximum use of swinging your swords.
Medium - Most combat scenarios can be won through use of signs, dodging and parrying.
Hard - Most combat scenarios will require meditation, potions and the laying of traps, as well as clever use for bombs and thrown weapons (in addition to what medium required)
Insane - All combat scenarios will be extremely hard (everything above but x2, basically).

The reality is that anything other than Easy is impossible. And Easy just ruins the whole aspect of fun. As many times as I have tried playing through it on medium or hard, you just cannot win - unless you get extremely lucky. And if they really expect you to stock up on hundreds of potions (possibly true, since the loot mechanics involve hundreds of alchemical drops) - you'd spend half your time on the meditation screen making and drinking potions which isn't very cool.

One other thing I noticed, was how difficulty didn't seem to scale to your characters level. I tried the last little mission on Medium and it was all of a sudden a lot easier (my character is now level 10 and has some powerful items n shit). Whereas, if you start the game on Medium difficulty, you'll get owned doing a tutorial. Just doesn't seem to be any consistency in monster stats/damage and combat AI/fairness.

Dragon Age: Origins had this perfectly implemented. On Nightmare (I think, or whatever the hardest one was called), you had to constantly pause and think about the combat you were in - if you didn't focus down an enemy Mage then you were likely going to be quick-loading in the next few seconds. Whereas on Easy or Medium you could just give your entire team some lame tactics, and control only your main hero and just ARPG the shit out of every combat situation.

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Jun 16 2011, 12:17 pm by Zycorax. Reason: Removed quote from deleted post

Arbitrary stat jumps make harder difficulties uninteresting, really.

The hard things in dante's inferno weren't necessarily the big things like bosses, but the little things like the little enemy's ability to insta-hit you when you drop block to attack. Annoying on normal, death on hard.

I play it on hard. Insane seemed too much so I didn't try. I'm not very far.

I started the same way, I chose the dragon one, but instead of being a pansy and turning down the difficulty (troll) I kept it on hard until I figured it out. 45 minutes later I was past that level. Fuck yeah.

I've been getting better at actually playing simply because I haven't given up. I like a fuckin' challenge bro.

Like I said, I haven't played it very much lol.

I think I'm at like, just the end of the tutorial bit. There was a fight with 3 normal guys, a shield guy, a soldier guy, and a guy with horn helmet shit. Strategically it took a long while to pull off. Here's how I did it. First as soon as I enter, have my steel sword out and take out 1-2 of the normal guys, making sure to avoid any blows of anyone else. Upon killing, run away so the enemies clump and throw bombs at them. Repeat until out of bombs. When enemies are down to 2-3 mind control one of them and attack the other, making sure to constantly be using vigor as soon as I get it to mind control another <- critical. When my enemies are down to one, do a trap. Lure enemy into trap. Proceed to rape. If enemy doesn't die (usually it's the horned one that's left so one trap won't do him in) use armor spell.


You seem to lack knowledge about the mechanics of the game. ((((Also, agree, dodge rolling is CRITICAL to careful play. If you need to dodge you can't run backwards or else you get fucked up because the enemies not only have an enemy that is open to a strong attack but they get bonus damage since they're attacking from behind! Figured that out the hard way.)))) The signs are NOT always available to you. They require vigor, as does blocking an attack. Using any sign depletes one of your vigor points. Blocking an attack depletes a vigor.

To be honest the only time I have used a potion is when they have told me "LOL HEY YOU KNOW YOU MIGHT BE NEEDING ONE SOON". Which was when you went into the dark dungeon and fought monsters or the time you fought that boss guy 1v1 (or well I did, cuz that's what I chose to do) when you were trying to get through to the kids. And honestly, on that one, you didn't even need it.

Yeah whatever ramble ramble ^ ^ ^

Keep playing. You'll see what I mean.

I just did the gladiator combat arena thing in Act 2. You're at the Kaedwani military camp and you've saved some boy because he was challenged to a duel and now the king wants you to take part in his tournament.

The enemies AI is fucking pathetic. I've put two attribute points into 'dodge distance', so now whenever I do a combat roll I go flying for miles. The enemies will swing at the air (where I was standing like 10 seconds ago). I've been experimenting with the difficulties, and all it alters is a) the damage the enemy does, b) the percentage of time that the enemy is unhittable (blocking/parrying your attacks), c) the reaction time of your enemy (to attack you once you stopped parrying/or have been thrown off balance by hitting him when he was blocking). I have a Temerian Sword of Valour which apparently hits for 28 to 42 damage. Yet, whenver I'm against an opponent who has a shield - the combat reader will say "Geralt does minimal damage" - regardless of whether I hit him while he's blocking. I basically have to use my Igni sign to deal any damage what-so-ever.

Play for longer and you'll see what I mean.

The cinematics are becoming fucking tedious also. Also, wait until you get the Odrin quest. Man that was the most boring 20 minutes of my life.

I'm playing through the first one right now, and apart from a horribly optimized engine (for fucks sake I mean it's rendering graphics along the lines of KOTOR and eating shit on my PC, which can run Crysis fairly well), I enjoy it. The potion system, while a bit awkward at times, is something new. I guess I just like RPGs like this, though. Dice Poker is also the most fun I've had in a minigame ever I think... I did get fucking tired of the voice acting and terrible animation, so I just read the subtitles and keep going now, but I'm still enjoying it, and for $20 it would be worth it (I didn't pay anything though). Playing on Hard too, but it's not THAT bad. Maybe the second one's harder though, not sure.

I'm looking forward to trying the second one out when I beat this one, so I can actually participate in the conversation.

Finally got around to starting out the second one...WHAT THE FUCK. I can't even play this game on Low settings, barely getting a framerate increase at all between it and Highspec. What is everyone running for specs to play the game?

Yeah, it's a write off. I've given up playing it.

Seriously, if you hear (or make it far enough to Act 2...) people shouting Odrin... Just stay the fuck away from them. The quest involves carrying a drunk guy around a huge military camp to each of his buddies. There was no option to brutally murder the fuck out of him and leave him in a pool of his own vomit and blood.

Glad I didn't pay $50 for this game at release.

I...cleaned my computer case and gained a 5 fps performance boost. That coupled with some well placed graphical tweaks (my GPU is absolute shite, as far as the world is concerned now) allowed for some reasonable gameplay. I got through to Flotsam, and while the combat was very difficult (on Hard, no less), Tikels is right. Careful manipulation of the battlefield is required to make it anywhere in this game, like the original on steroids in that matter. I personally spammed Quen, which is a hell of a lot more useful in the second one. It allowed for some breathing room in a fight, blocking around 3 attacks automatically. I also like this quote:
Because that's definitely what this is. The last of PC developers' RPGs.

Something that is bothering me however, is the heedless re-use of sounds from elsewhere, hell I heard the marine's pain sound from the original Doom games when I beat Max in armwrestling

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jul 5 2011, 8:14 pm by Fisty.