Review The Witcher Review

[cardtrick]

Tags: CD Projekt; Witcher, The

Cardtrick sent in this review of The Witcher, explaining why exactly this game is a worthy addition to any CRPG fan's collection:

The Witcher is one of the first games . . . well, ever . . . to actively hype its choices and consequences. This alone should make it interesting to the average Codex reader. The basic idea, in case you've been living under a rock (or, you know, have a life outside of games) is that The Witcher presents you with choices during the course of the game without clear answers. Only much later in the game do you discover the consequences of your decisions, which can have significant impact on the plot.​

Read the full article: The Witcher Review

 

[Direwolf]

Nice review. Pretty much my overall thoughts on the game.
I am giving it a rest for now and will probably re-play it from the beginning once patch 1.2 comes out.

 

[Jeff Graw]

Pretty good review!

However, in the epilogue I experienced a whole bunch of "bioware-esque" choices whenever the grand Master asked me to join his side. I *really* wanted to side with him, and that choice didn't seem to be outside of Geralt's persona or anything like that, but the game just wouldn't let me. It's a good thing that the rest of the game wasn't like that, because that part sucked pretty hard.

 

[cardtrick]

Er . . . that first post is not by me. I rarely speak in the 3rd person.

 

[Jason]

It's the wacky magic of the content submission system. Just sit back and enjoy the mystery.

 

[Deleted member 7219]

The magical mystery tour is coming to take you away.

Coming to take you away!

Take you today........

 

[Paranoid Jack]

Damn, good review.

You should be ashamed of yourself! You not only sounded reasonable but you didn't tell us much about yourself or how you hate certain aspects of real-life. Plus I found it most repulsive that you actually finished this game before writing such a well rounded review/opinion piece. And further more you covered all the bases which is way out of line considering today's journalistic trends. :wink:

Bravo and dead on. No candy coating. No overly optimistic bullshit. Just fact and well grounded opinions. And I bet you didn't even get paid...

 

[Badesumofu]

Defragging is a good idea, but make sure that you actually defrag your Page File. Merely defragging the drive upon which your Page File is situated will not acheive this. You need to move the Page File onto a different drive, then restart, then defrag the drive the Page File usually resides on, then move it back there, and restart again.

I have 2 GB of RAM, and I found that by dropping textures to low and defragging I could get load times down to about 10-15 seconds for The Temple Quater and near instant for entering a house (that old woman is infuriating, I wish there was an option to just hit her or something). Now if I could just disable those infernal auto-saves...

 

[aboyd]

Now if I could just disable those infernal auto-saves...

Supposedly coming in the December 7th patch.

 

[pug987]

Now if I could just disable those infernal auto-saves...

It seems there is a way to disable the auto-saves without having to wait for the patch:

1. First know your installation path to the game. Replace the X with your current path to where you installed the game.
Go to game installation folder which should be something like this:
X:\XXX\The Witcher\System

Mine is at
H:\Games\The Witcher\System

2. Create a txt file inside the system folder by right clicking in the system folder and selecting 'New -> Text Document' (This may vary from system to system, but this is by using Windows XP). Name your created file to:
player.ini

3. Now open your newly created file with Notepad if you haven't already. Add these lines in it and save:
[Server Options]
Disable AutoSave=1

To give proper credit the above is from The Witcher forum at gamefaqs and I haven't tried it so I can't say for sure it works. From the replies the poster got it seems it does.

 

[sqeecoo]

Thanks pug! That's good advice. Any other tips for improving performance? .ini file tweaks? I couldn't find any, and the game is a bit slow. I don't mind the load-times, but the occasional slowdowns.

 

[Circuitbreaker]

(that old woman is infuriating, I wish there was an option to just hit her or something).

She's meant to be annoying old hag :D

Depending on her dialogue line either give her a bottle of wine or some money and after that she won't pose a problem anymore.

As far as performance issues are concerned, on my subpar system performance took a nosedive after entering the Trade Quarter. The large number of people up and about, seriously bog down the game on my machine at times. Quickly switching locations increases the problem. It's still not unplayable though, but a decent machine is strongly recommended to play The Witcher. My 4+ year old PC clearly does not qualify as decent.

 

[Rane]

To give proper credit the above is from The Witcher forum at gamefaqs and I haven't tried it so I can't say for sure it works. From the replies the poster got it seems it does.

It works, with a rather unpleasant side effect. After certain area transitions, Geralt will freeze at the area entrance and you won't be able to move him at all. But hey, at least the autosaving is gone.

 

[Tails]

Good review, it's time to give a Witcher try...

 

[Gerrard]

To give proper credit the above is from The Witcher forum at gamefaqs and I haven't tried it so I can't say for sure it works. From the replies the poster got it seems it does.

It works, with a rather unpleasant side effect. After certain area transitions, Geralt will freeze at the area entrance and you won't be able to move him at all. But hey, at least the autosaving is gone.

It happens when the game was supposed to auto-save. Which really makes this pretty useless because you need to save and load game to fix it.

 

[Paranoid Jack]

If you haven't started play I would wait until the next patch is released because it will most likely require a restart anyway.

To increase load and save game slow downs keep your number of saves to a reasonable number. I noticed as I progressed deeper into the game without cleaning out old saves it took longer and longer to save and or load when entering into the game for a new gaming session. That is because the game is taking an inventory of your saved files to list on the menu screen.

At one point I had over two hundred saves between the auto saves and me saving each time I felt it was a good idea.

I played the game on max settings with the OTS camera on my AMD 64 4200+ (which is about two years old now) with a 8800 GTS 640mb (three months old) and two gigs of quality RAM. Even with a RAID 0 set up the load times were long. It played fairly well but near the end there are numerous enemies running about in groups (not to mention the good guys) and the other on screen effects caused the game to get very clunky. So hopefully the next patch or two will increase the pleasure and reduce the annoying loads. Unfortunately I doubt this engine allowed them to take advantage of dual cores.

If you don't have the system to run it on high settings drop some of the effect. Believe me if you enjoy the game as much as I did you will be playing it again. So when you get a new system you'll be able to see it in all it's glory then.

I plan on replaying the game with the next patch or the one after it but using a different camera angle (since it greatly changes the game-play in my opinion). So I will be a murderous Witcher in my next run through while playing in isometric (most likely the close version of isometric).

I've got MotB to finish since The Witcher pulled me away from it but I also now have Mass Effect and it's a decent game also. Problem is I think I will find it hard to return to MotB after playing through The Witcher. The environments are just so well done from the beautiful graphics to the world that actually feels alive...

 

[VonVentrue]

Great review. It would have undoubtfully convinced me to purchase the game had I not decided to lay my hands on a copy already (the very fact the Witcher was very well received by other Codexers was a decisive factor in helping me make this decision).

 

[Pr()ZaC]

You know, recently a job at Gamespot opened up (a reviewer got fired because of a bad video-review).

You should fill in

 

[Herbert West]

You know, recently a job at Gamespot opened up (a reviewer got fired because of a bad video-review).

You should fill in

Cardtrick's reviews are to good and sophisticated for those mainstream tards

 

[MarekBrutus]

There is evidence that portions of the dialogue were cut from the game before localization, so Polish fans may very well have quite a different experience.

That is true - I played the original and when I saw the English language version I felt:

a) Mad - because someone blotched the job;
b) Sorry for the poor foreigners that, just like me some 20 years ago, would have to learn the language of the game creators to fully appreciate the product.

 

[doctor_kaz]

Excellent excellent review. I just got around to reading it. I think that it shows why the game is truly great and why it will have a strong following for years to come and tremendous staying power. Unlike any other RPG of the past few years, I think that the game will be viewed very favorably ten years from now. It's a heavily artistic labor-of-love type game that is clearly geared at the more hardcore PC RPG gamer crowd, but not at the expense of accessibility or polish. I wrote in my user review at Gamespot how satisfying it is to play a hardcore PC RPG that doesn't force you to hold your nose half the time because of some design problems. From what I have heard it is also selling well in Europe, which is great news. I am praying that Germany and Eastern Europe will be immune to the consolization craze that has damaged North American PC gaming to within an inch of its life. If The Witcher and Oblivion were sci-fi movies, The Witcher would be a masterpiece with staying power like "The Terminator" and Oblivion would be a shitty Michael Bay film like "Armageddon".

 

[Fresh]

The phantom score of 8,5 is wrong. It's worth a 9.

 

[cardtrick]

Fair enough. My phantom rating system for games is pretty personal, just based on what I have enjoyed. It goes from 0 to 10. Games near 10 are extremely good. Games at the midpoint, 5, are just barely worth playing; right on the cusp. Ratings below 5 indicate how strongly I think people should avoid playing the game. In retrospect, it would probably make more sense for me to go from -5 to 5, but that would have been weirdly nonstandard. For the sake of comparison, here are my ratings for RPGs I can think of that I've played since the release of Fallout:

10: PS:T, Fallout
9: Arcanum
8.5: NWN2OTB, Fallout 2, The Witcher
8: VTMB, Wizardry 8, Anachronox
7.5: Deus Ex, Gothic I
7: Arx Fatalis, KOTOR2, Gothic 2, Icewind Dale, TOEE
6.5: NWN1:HotU
6: BG2, KOTOR, Jade Empire
5.5: NWN2:OC, BG, NWN1:SoU
5: Morrowind, Eschalon
4: Oblivion
3.5: NWN1:OC, Dungeon Siege

 

[DarkUnderlord]

My phantom rating system has three levels:

1. Worthy of a full price purchase.
   
2. Bargain Bin.
   
3. No.

 

[Hazelnut]

Well after playing through the whole of the game, I now feel quallified to comment. Very good review Cardtrick. A little dry maybe, but 100% spot on and covers all the salient points. Look forward to your next review.

On DU's scale it's a definite 1 !