Average Manatee
Arcane
- Joined
- Jan 7, 2012
- Messages
- 14,151
TW1's combat is more about the strategic element than the tactical one, things like proper preparation and toxicity management rather than just slowly clicking everything to death one fight at a time. The hardest difficulty level is pretty much mandatory in this regard, even though high-level Igni does break it near the endgame, and Aard kind of breaks it in the early parts of the game. The combat is nothing spectacular, but it generally gets the job done and works well in tandem with the other systems in the game (most importantly alchemy, of course). It's nowhere near as bad as the combat in Arcanum, and for ARPG combat I find it generally serviceable, not particularly great but not among the worst of the bunch either. I also kind of disagree about the high amount of combat — sure, the swamps can be a trash mob hell, but outside of them there's actually not that much combat, and the fights are generally pretty short. There are points in the game where I've spent hours in Vizima without engaging in a single fight, and the combat areas are generally compact enough to not overstay their welcome.
I think going for action combat was a natural move in a series where you control a legendary swordsman, but the problem with the sequels was that they didn't do action combat very well and threw all logic out of the window. TW2's combat system was a horribly unbalanced mess despite their numerous attempts to fix it, and it also ruined the alchemy system that played such an integral role in TW1. TW3's combat had similar issues plus a ton of additional nonsense, like all sorts of broken abilities and practically unlimited potions that could be consumed instantly even mid-fight. As far as mechanics go, TW1 is by far the best game in the series.
Exactly, TW1 combat is predicated on the assumption that if you start a fight stupidly, you should lose or at least be badly wounded. This would be absolutely lost if there was a "skill" part of the combat, like in TW2 where you can just calmly do the equivalent of circle-strafing the Cyberdemon from Doom and win without a scratch all the time.
What's the consensus on the Rise of the White Wolf Enhanced Edition mod? I was planning on giving it a go on my second Witcher playthrough.
As far as I can tell this is just a bunch of high-res textures or something? Some screenshots I can find just make it look worse.
I'd recommend playing FCR instead if you want an overhaul to make combat require more thought and preparation.