indigo said:
. ADMIT IT - playing The Witcher most of the time you think how to fuck next girl - ADMIT IT!! - dont you realise that CDPR made utter morons of us!?
I have to assume you're a troll, so I'm not going to argue with this too much. Obviously, if you're not trolling then you're a fuckwad. Fact.
As for the combat: it bears the most similarity to Gothic, in that it's all about combos, and execution of some combos relies upon the character having invested in certain skills. However, it cuts back drastically on the twitch factor of Gothic, and you won't be able to beat the game without investing any skill by simply committing a certain pattern to muscle memory. A single click executes a combo, and a click as that combo is finishing will chain another, more advanced (and powerful) combo to that. Geralt parries and dodges automatically (dependent on character skill) but you can manually execute rolls, dodges, spins around opponents, and flips over their heads. (This has tactical/strategic use, in terms of putting you in the optimal position versus multiple foes, rather than being used to dodge individual blows.) There are three combat styles (fast, strong, and group) for each type of sword (steel for humans and silver for supernatural enemies).
It's the best realtime combat system I've seen in an RPG. If a game isn't going to go turn-based, I prefer a real, honest-to-god real-time system with some balls instead of stupid real-time-with-pause. (The Witcher has "active pause," which allows you to switch sword styles or begin drinking a potion, but doesn't allow you to queue up attacks . . . it really just lets you get around any interface awkwardness.) Character skill is most important, but the player has to have an active role in the combat, which is best I think. There are sufficient tactical options to keep things interesting, especially when playing at the hard difficulty level (strongly recommended, although even medium is reasonably challenging) and combined with the genuinely wonderful alchemy system. There are a variety of potions with powerful effects that are absolutely required to win battles on hard and quite important on medium, making alchemy integral to the combat experience (indeed, alchemy is integral to the plot as well . . . you start on the main plot after nefarious forces steal some alchemical formulae). There are also five magic signs, each of which has two possible effects, and which are designed to synergize with sword combat rather than replace it. (Example: use the Aard sign to stun/knockdown nearby enemies and then finish them with a single sword blow, or to blast away half of a group of enemies to give you room to maneuver and kill the ones who remain.) You have the option of using an "isometric" view or an over-the-shoulder view: iso is somewhat easier, OTS is more visceral (although both look great, due to the high-quality motion-captured animations).
Another nice thing is that there's a surprisingly reasonable amount of combat for a game billed as an Action RPG. Much less than in most recent "true RPGs," especially for quests related to the main plot. You could get through the game without actually killing too many people/creatures, although typically you'll want to do so because it's fun and the bounties are important so you can afford all the books you're going to want to read.
