The Witcher Comments by Dan Whitehead

I said "wow"

DYSWIDT?

Geralt can even get drunk and pissed up on booze.
Drunk AND pissed up? Holy cow! :)

One for those who value story and character over technical innovation then

Sounds a bit like "It really isn't for anyone other than the devoted western-RPG head."
Which I think is a bit of a naff thing to spend words on in a review, especially in summary. Is this a "add a point if you like RPGs"-type situation? :)

I'm about 10 hours into the game, and I'm enjoying this a lot more than Neverwinter Nights 2 and its expansion :)

The things that does it for me:
-Great storytelling, it throws a lot of unexpected situations at you and constantly surprises you. Also liking the adult stuff ;)
- Great combat, just watching Geralt swing around his sword and jumping around his enemies is amazing.
- Awesome design, not technically but aesthetically this game feels a lot more "alive" thanks to its authentic style.

Music is a bit naff though?

7/10 is not an accurate reflection of the game. From playing it is a solid 8/10 even for people who are only casual rpg fans and a 9/10 for western rpg fans.

The scoring on EG has become a little poor, would be nice to see a change in system to something a bit less token and which feels slapped on the end and often at odds with the content of the review. Invariably it is the score of the review and not the tone which gets circulated and used on sites like Metacritic and Gamerankings which influence people on which game to buy. Would be a shame to see people pass this over when it has a great deal of quality gaming to offer and a more European take on the genre and the fantasy setting.

That's indeed a bit of a problem. People will see the score and think it's the next Two Worlds, when nothing could be further from the truth.

Hmm, was tempted to get 2 worlds. It really that bad? Went to get this today, couldn't find the collector's edition, so gonna try amazon.de. Tabala Thingy was out, and Legend seemed to be everywhere.

" Aretak
26-Oct-07 11:33:24

Two pages for this and only one for Pro Evo?

Etc. "

Well. that's simply because any football game is really only worth one line, and that's usually something along the theme of...

....." Football is crap as are most ( but not all ) sports".

In fact I may submit a retrospective review of all the sports games ever released, as that quick one line review says it all and covers so much.....

**sigh**

( I'm soooo clever ).

Surely a game in which you MUST play a particular role is more worthy of being called a role-playing game than one in which you create a character? I really like messing with character creation systems, but having played with the options I usually end up creating pretty similar characters at the end. If I'm squeezed into a role I'd not necessarily have tried, I 'play the role' to a much more conscious degree.

+ you mean "hoarded", not "horded". Sack your scrutineer/editor, they make you look thick.

+ obligatory "Witcher ad is using 99% of my CPU cycles AGAIN, shoot the ad creators plox" comment.

Going back to PES again, if that got an 8 for being last year's game with a few new brush strokes added, it feels very wrong that this is just a 7 for being a very competent RPG game with a few new brush strokes added?

Can't help feeling Witcher is "small" so can be marked "small-ly" whereas PES is big so must be "big-ly" marked ...?

I was somewhat looking forward to this but the review makes it all sound rather childish...

And of course, they copped out with the "visuals" when you're taking time out with one of the girls...

Anyway, this looks nice. More interesting to a non-hardcore RPG player such as myself (I LIKED Sudeki, okay? But only a little), as it seems more accessible than, say, Gothic 3.

This game will go unnoticed, partly thanks to EG and its score... :(

Shame since this is a GREAT game.

Really seems like a strange score for a game this enjoyable.

I was somewhat looking forward to this but the review makes it all sound rather childish...

/looks at sciamarad's game collection

Buffy? Final Fantasy? Metal Gear Solid?

Believe me, you need not worry about childishness in The Witcher. ;-p

I can't agree with character being pre determined as something bad. In case of witcher is like complaing that in KOTOR you have to be jedi ;) In most cases you have freedom of sahaping your own character, because people writing the story, can't create saomething interesting - which is good, I prefer to make my own story rather than go trough some boring stuff, however The Witcher character is so cool and fascinaiting, that I want to play as one!

Role-playing. Playing a role is not simply acting.

For me, the simplest definition of a role-playing game is one where the character influences the world and grows (at least partially) independantly of your own physical skills.

Whether on the computer or in pen and paper, If you roleplay a scrawny wizard with a strength of 5 (let's assume it means: not a lot), you'd better not charge into a group of baddies with a 2 handed sword you can barely carry, or try to hold up the falling spiked iron gate until your party can get out. No matter how quick and strong you think you are, your character isn't. And you must play within those contraints.

Similarly, yet in a different setting, shooting / hacking baddies is not about *your* twitch and leet aiming skills, Halo 3 style, but the game will resolve those things based on your character's abilities behind the scenes.

Or think of Fallout. No matter how clever *you* are, a char with a low intelligence would miss out on the smart dialogue options.

Then there are the usual: We expect to have control on the character's growth, ...

It's a roleplaying game. The character is the entity, not you.

Of course, you can mitigate that and have roleplaying games which also require some ability on your side. But the distinction should be whether it's the character or you that matters first.

That's my "simple" definition of a roleplaying game. I agree it doesn't absolutely require you to have full control over the char creation and backstory.

Wendelius

The issue with people "not remembering" dialogue has been fixed in patch 1.1 which was the release day patch.

Several reviews on German based websites give this game 7/10 on average. It has nothing to do with the following I reckon .....

Gameplay - 9/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 9/10
Made in Poland - 1/10

"Gameplay - 9/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 9/10
Made in Poland - 1/10"

Hahaha. Love it.

The game is clearly a nine, and I believe the fan reviews will reflect that.
Eurogamer's reviews lately are 5/10 sometimes 6/10.

In fact there is no need for the game to release for half the score, the reviewer is a fanboy/hater of certain genres/platforms/etc and the score is such half predestined...

Several reviews on German based websites give this game 7/10 on average. It has nothing to do with the following I reckon .....

Gameplay - 9/10
Graphics - 9/10
Sound - 9/10
Made in Poland - 1/10

Nice presentation, crappy joke.

As far as I am aware, only mercurial Gamestar gave it 73 or something - that's the reviewer's atonement for his enthusiastic Gothic 3 review where he ignored much worse bugs, only to get torn apart by the readers. Now he tried it the other way round, and there's bloodshed again on the site because everybody loves the game. Shit job. :)

Saw an 8.5 on onlinewelten.de, 89% on gameswelt.de (they added 5% after the patch and for the better voiced English version), so I am not sure where that "average of 7 on German sites" comes from.

I think it was a joke post all the way through?

Twitching auto-aim.

lol ... pure satire without a shred of factual based truth

Hi there,
Some might like the review, and some not, but let me just point out few relevant mistakes that you Dan did.
1. Triss isn't your ex. I failed to find dialogues suggesting it. She loved Geralt, but he didn't love Triss (that's in books). "I feel a bond when we speak"? "You were someone important"? Sure - she's his friend.
2. Side quests. From what I've seen until now (I'm in a 3rd act of the game), around two-thirds of all quests you find in the game are side quests, so "this one IS for you".
3. And again, later on you write "there's no shortage of quests (...) of witcher missions".
4. "Top-down view (...) is entirely mouse-driven". Wrong again, Dan. Just give your fingers a try upon WASD while using that camera. How was it? ;)
5. About combat system: "lot of arsing around for no benefit". It becomes clear to me that you failed and thus saw no benefit. It works like a charm if you time your clicks right. You get a true boost in your attacks. No, really...
6. "Shades of Groundhog Day" thingy. It must have been a whore you tried to seduct, because women I talk to refuse to have sex if I choose wrong dialogue option. Ever. :(
7. "Topless slave girls in Conan" - I haven't found any Conan-style sex card in this game. Maybe you've seen further on in the storyline.
8. You say there's still some "good choice, bad choice" stuff. You're right of course. Especially when you take a side quest and wonder "should I kill 9 drowners or not?"
Now summing up - I truly believe you should consider rewriting this one.

"Wendelius - Halo 3 and aiming skills, I rofled ;]"

Fine. Maybe Halo 3 is you roleplaying a 360 auto-aim system. :)

If you can think of an auto-aim-less game on the 360 (or take your pick of older PC shooters), substitute that name instead of Halo 3 then. There. Fixed. :P

Wendelius

This looks sounds and appears a whole let better than any recent rpg such as nwn2 or oblivion, I'm a little cofounded by the score being given out here. Looks like an 8 to me at least from watcing videos etc.

Strange review, a lot of fluff and not much substance about the actual game.

The more I play, the better it gets. Really haven't been captivated that much by an RPG in years.

hmmm I'm a little bit surprised by some of the negative reviews here. For me , the game is a 9+ maybe even a 10.

After 6 hours of playing the game I can say that it's definetly a great piece of work and a must buy for every RPG fan. It's surprising that in a country like Poland can make such a great game...
The system of combat is a bit tricky at first but overall it's interesting and fun.
7/10 is a misunderstanding for me, I would give "The Witcher" a 9/10

I'm about 7 hours into the game and it has really exceeded my expectations. The graphic is amazing with a lot of attention to detail, the plot is really cool and I love the fact that there aren't any good or bad characters - they're all somewhere in between. The only bad thing about the Witcher is that my wife says I'm not spending enough time with her since I bought the game :)

I get the feeling Dan played about an hour of the game and then phoned in the review. 7/10 is a bigger load of bollocks the more you play it.

The more i play this game the more i like it. In no way is this a 7/10 game. I was a little worried about the combat system but it works well in my opinion. Plenty of room for strategy. One thing i noticed early on that made me smile was when it started raining and the children that were playing outside ran for shelter as did the rest of the towns folk. Nice touch. It's a 9/10 for me unless something goes horribly wrong later on in the game.

I've argued on my blog I don't believe it is possible to role-play in a single player game, and that you are instead making a story up in your head. I don't disagree that this is still valid, but to me role-playing is about taking on a role and playing it. Its a performance art, and without an audience, you aren't actually role-playing. And a computer is not an audience. Sure, you can tell people the story later, but that's the point you start role-playing.

Having said that, this argument is more about the genre conventions, and with that in mind, genre theory basically says that you're staying in genre if you don't break too many conventions. Breaking a couple, such as not allowing customisation of the character before starting the game is fine, as long as you have other elements in there, such as customisation of the character during the game.

This game is 9/10 for sure. It is not innovative, but roleplaying games dont have to be innovative. They have to work, have a great atmosphere and attention to detail, so the world actually feels alive. The Witcher does have all these things.

If you think it is a 7/10 so be it, most people that rated seem to think different though :D

Spent pretty much all day playing this. The jump from the prologue to chapter 1 seems a little disjointed (though my "who the hell are you?" question got answered quickly enough), and the game hasn't disappointed me since then. There's the occasional odd touch of dialogue (Geralt says something as if he hasn't met someone he already had, the character profile of someone I encountered didn't match what the character had come across like), but it's vastly outweighed by the awesome present.

Though the boss fight of chapter 1 had me in rage for the best part of an hour. Hopefully it actually was hard rather than me being crap.

Hesitant to give this a 9/10 after only a day's play, but it's definitely deserves an 8 at the very least.

Man, I've got to get some sleep. I've been playing this game all night and it's AWSOME!!

Same here.. same. here. What a game.

The clue's in the name - role-playing. Games in which you create a role and then act out that character in the gameworld. Without the freedom to come up with your own virtual identity, what you're really talking about are adventure games with a few RPG trimmings.

THANK YOU for saying this, I've been sayng this for bloody ages!

The new Final Fantasies aren't role-playign games. They're good (I'm not saying they're bad games) but they aren't role-playing games.

So far, I'm far more intrigued/interested in this than NWN2 or Mask of the Betrayer. For all of the story and dialogue presented in those games, as well as Oblivion, the tone/feel of The Witcher just seems more grounded, and dare I say it for a fantasy game, "realistic".

The opening movie really set the mood, and I'll definitely look forward to playing it if/when I sort out a machine capable of playing it properly. It makes my old laptop whimper in the corner, and the UI really needs to be seen at a better resolution than its minimum setting of 800x600.

The biggest worry I think is the amount of patching that's gone on - the release day patch 1.1 was 113MB, and they've since updated that to 1.1a to fix something else. It's not minor stuff in the patch notes either, there's enough there to make me worry about what else is lurking broken in the game.

As it stands however, assuming the worst of the problems are patched, I think it's more an 8 out of 10 for me; I've barely scratched the surface of the game, and I'm really looking forward to finding out where the story takes me.

Recommended, but make sure you have a beefy machine to play it on!

The Witcher is the new, fresh look at fantasy RPG.
In my opinion, the main advantage of that game is the unparalleled atmosphere.
Graphic system is based on upgraded Bioware aurora graphic engine (the same as in NVN 2). It's worth noticing, that minimal requrements are low.

Finally got a chance to sit down with this and have a proper play last night. Ended up playing until 6am.

Awesome, this game is awesome. It's all so greatly realised. Small brush strokes in the grandeur of the game, but I love that when it starts to rain, all the peasantfolk run for shelter. The little kids playing their little kid games made me smile, and remember playing when I was that age.

I agree with the jarring beginning of Chapter 1, as Snidesworth says. The voice acting's a little patchy as well. A few "Bloody hell, I can act better than that!" moments, which go a little way to undermining immersion here and there. Fair number of CTDs as well, which is annoying.

It's an easy 8 for me, bordering on a 9. Fie to this 7 I say! Feel the burning stare of my Reader rating, and change your ways!

"and the UI really needs to be seen at a better resolution than its minimum setting of 800x600."

Yeah, the standard resolution for non-crunched graphics is 1280x1024 it seems like.


"The biggest worry I think is the amount of patching that's gone on"

I don't think you should be worried about a game getting support after launch, just be thankful. :)

Don't get me wrong, I'm very glad they're patching the game - I'm just disappointed at the extent to which they have to do it - the patch notes for 1.1 read like a who's who of errors that could have or should have been picked up on prior to release.

I appreciate the complexity of the game, particularly one with the sort of Aurora Engine conversation trees and scripting variables etc., but there's an awful lot of stuff that was shipped in a bugged state.

That being said, I've just been playing it for a couple of hours without a hitch (my whimpering laptop has stepped up to the plate with some new ATI drivers, and things are a fair bit better).

the patch notes for 1.1 read like a who's who of errors that could have or should have been picked up on prior to release.

Well, they certainly have been picked up on prior to the release, or it wouldn't have been a release day patch. Sorry to be pedant, but while this is admittedly far from ideal, there's a huge difference between a release day patch (when they obviously were testing and coding up to the last minute, but didn't delay the release), and a patch several weeks or months afterwards after the public has been used as testers.

For what it's worth, I haven't noticed a single bug after the patch, apart from one crash when I was exiting the game anyway, though.

Having just sunk the best part of Sunday into this, I feel obliged to throw my tuppence in and say, yes, I too think this is much better than a seven...graphically it's ace, incredibly atmospheric, and although it never reaches Bioware's dialogue heights, it's no Two Worlds either.

Combat is really compelling, I like the different fight styles, and the awesome soft-porn collector cards you get for sexual conquests are hilarious.

A real gem, methinks, can't wait to get back to it.

Hadn't my friends come by to play some skate. saturday evening and dragged me with them out to the pub I would had played this game non-stop from friday to the kickoff of the Liverpool - Arsenal match. So far it's the best singleplayer game I played in ages.

Good story and subplots, characters that feel more real than usual videogame characters (they don't feel like their only purpose is giving quests/information to the player and they so far have realistic drives for their acton - not just simply evil for the sake of being evil).

Excellent game so far, I picked it up randomly... ended up spending the entire week end on it.

Really good game. I just love it. Like mixing NWN and Fable.

Funny, the review had me thinking I'd skip this, but the reader comments put it back to the very top of my list. My only concerns are a) it will play out more like an action adventure than an RPG, as the review seems to imply, and b) bugs. (Nice to see titles coming from Eastern Europe, but I'm a little gunshy after the promising but nearly unplayable S.T.A.L.K.E.R.)

So in terms of inventory and character customization, how does Witcher compare with say, Gothic 3? (A personal fave.) I don't need it to be D&D 3.5 deep; NWN2 was a fiddly bore IMO. (Granted, my experience w/ NWN2 was limited to the 1st couple of hours, until I finally just gave up on the camera and UI altogether.)