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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?
None.