[PC] [PS4] [ONE] Wiedźmin 3: Dziki Gon

[christian]

http://thewitcher.com/witcher3/

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Cinematic trailer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0i88t0Kacs

[christian]

Saw people online complaining about the weight system in W2, hoping that it's been removed for this one. But W2 needed a weight system! Right now, in my playthrough of the original, I'm carrying 40+ barghest skulls, because I don't know where to sell them. Within the city maybe? I don't know, but it's absurd for me to be carrying that many around with me wherever I go.

Weight management is an important feature for a game that values realism, and every good RPG should value it. The games already do a great job of avoiding the terrible misstep of Elder Scrolls inventories by limiting your stored weapons to whatever you can attach to your person, and games that take this constraint seriously are all the better for it.

And besides, a strong theme of the games is proper preparation for the hunt. Allowing you to carry your entire stock and armory with you wherever you go would subvert this theme entirely, and then you'd be left with a far less interesting game.

[christian]

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And of course, as soon as I post that, I found a screenshot of an Elder Scrolls inventory in The Witcher 3. D'oh!

[christian]

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2015/ ... ardophilia

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[christian]

http://scathingaccuracy.com/reviews/363-witcher3

As if that weren't enough, they went full on baby mode with the alchemy system as well. It's REALLY stupid that you only have to concoct a potion ONCE, and then you just have it forever and it only takes 1 alcohest to replenish your entire library of potions and bombs. Because then what the fuck is the point of gathering all those herbs now? Seriously? There's so many herbs to pick in the game but you only need enough to make a potion one time? What this does is that it turns herbs into yet another pointless junk item that you don't want to waste time picking up. In the previous games ingredient gathering for alchemy was important because you could run out and you needed to have a lot of ingredients to keep replenishing all of your potions. They had value and were worth picking up. Now they're worthless, and besides you can just buy them all at the herbalist anyway with your infinite supply of cash that will never, ever run out.

[christian]

The game's a masterpiece, but it's kind of crazy how many bugs I've run into. Even after a year of patches, some of the problems I run into remain unsolved. Then again, spend over 60 hours in a game as large and open as this, you're bound to find something. I've been hit hardest by alternate signs being uncastable in combat, magical books finding themselves glued to the arm of a key character, and randomly being unable to swing my sword in combat. Not exactly stuff you can easily ignore.

[christian]

I like that so many of the undiscovered locations contain not only the occasional nice sword or armor piece, but alchemy formulas. If they didn't, once you became powerful enough, there'd be no reason to ever go back and check out any that you'd missed. But potions, bombs, and oils always remain useful, both for the level 1 noob and for the level 100 master.

[christian]

What's the point of playing as anyone other than Geralt? I've gotten to a couple of the Ciri flashbacks, and I don't think they add much to the game. If anything, these interactive flashbacks detract from the experience by their unnatural overexposure to Ciri, who we are supposed to searching for this whole time. If Geralt ever finds her, it'll be hard to empathize with him since we, the player, had only just seen her a short while ago.

[christian]

It's kinda weird that the most important alchemy substances end up being the various alcohols sold in taverns. You'll need them to make White Gull, which tends to be my only missing ingredient for most recipes.

[christian]

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.ph ... ostcount=1

I could probably ramble here forever praising this game, but I'll try to keep it short. The moment I finished the quest "Bloody Baron" (the second main quest in Act 1), I knew CD Projekt Red created something magical here. That quest alone was probably better than 90% of most video games in their entirety that I have played in my life. Everything I praised in The Witcher 2 at the beginning of this thread was raised tenfold with The Witcher 3. So much time, effort, and love was poured into this game and it oozed everywhere. The game is so massive that it definitely is a little overwhelming at the start, so much so that certain people were turned off and shelved the game. It is definitely one of those games that require time and effort to complete, but the reward you get in return is something that every gamer should experience and I hope people put off by the open world will eventually come back and try it again.

I'm certain I'll never forget some of these quests.

Now, for all the praise I give it, does it have faults? Of course it does. The biggest one being the combat. As every Witcher fan puts it: "It's serviceable." I do feel like it's unfair to expect From Software levels of combat, however. Personally, this game is so great that combat could be only activated via voice commands from Kinect and I would still play the game. Others hate it so much that they simply can't play the game. To that I say it's a shame. The combat does get more varied and interesting as you level up and you devote your skill points to either the Signs or Alchemy trees. The DLC also adds new things like Runewords and Mutations to spice things up. Another thing that could have been improved were NPC variations. The more you play the game, the more you will start to encounter the same faces/voices for NPC's which can definitely break the immersion of the game. All important NPC's are unique, however. There is some "fluff" added due to the sheer magnitude of the game like NPC's labeled Peasants who can't be interacted with and many buildings being inaccessible. It's hard to fault CD Projekt Red for this though because if they made every NPC unique with dialogue and had to render every building then this game would have been released in 2020. When it comes down to it, the triumphs of the game far outweigh the downfalls.

Emphasis added. Now I never understood the criticisms raised against the combat. I'm playing on Death March though, so perhaps difficulty is a factor. The only obvious concern that comes to mind is how often you'll have to open your inventory in the middle of a fight (which is somewhat alleviated as you learn better alchemy formulas). And that there isn't that much variety among one-on-one fights.