The Witcher 3 Pre-Expansion Thread

[Beggar]

Can someone explain to me, how this game is any good? Everywhere you go, you jump on a cutscene and you gotta watch this modern empty cinematic crap. I managed to get outside and wanted to bitchslap some bitch, Geralt didnt do shit and she just ran off. As I walk further, I see a horse - I try to kill him with my sword and my weapon is just slicing the air - horse is immortal. Basically you can cut off dudes head, hands and watch him bleeding to death, but when it comes to a fuckin horsey or a kid - you cant do shit to them.

I havent played much, but is there anyone whom enjoyed Witcher 1 and would pick the first game over second any day? Is there anyone who thinks that Mass Effect type games are pure hollywood super hero shit? If this dude explain good things of this game that really matters?

 

[Cromwell]

Baron is a fucking bro, completely relatable and likeable character. Guy has seen some shit during the wars so obviously he is damaged as fuck, I really like him.

You seriously didn't see a spark of a nice person destroyed by grimderp witcher world? Guy genuinely cares, at first I tought about him "Oh great, another generic cruel lord", but the little details like him wanting to wait with you for the child spirit redeem him for me.

Not only that but if you speak to him about his family he is very sad, he regrets everything that happened. Theres also more to the story which he doesnt talk about but theres a reason his wife can sent him into a fit of rage (dont know if thats explained later I did not finish the quest until now). He is definetly not the evil baron who just smacks his wife around and doesnt give a shit.

Yeah bro, he only beat his wife until she miscarried because he loved her.
He really cares about "his" lands, so much that he sends his "soldiers" to pillage them regularly.

After what shed done she could be happy he did not drown her in a lake. I assume you have read what she did, and also what exactly happened that led to the miscarriage.

 

[Night Goat]

Why is this game so stupidly expensive on steam.

I am not a console gamer, why should i pay 60 euros?

Why would you buy it on steam when it is on gog?

With Cheevos you have a number anyone can lookup like I have displayed on this site. It's a concrete number which Valve monitors to weed out cheaters.

It's evidence you have put time into gaming. I only talk to people with Cheevos over 10k. I won't waste my time having a converstaion with a noob who doesn't know where the A button is asking, 'So do you play Witcher?'.

It shows dedication, and that you don't just give up on things. It would actually look good on a job resume.

There are so many people you meet in life. It's nice to be able to filter people out by Cheevos and not waste time.

 

[J_C]

Can someone explain to me, how this game is any good? Everywhere you go, you jump on a cutscene and you gotta watch this modern empty cinematic crap. I managed to get outside and wanted to bitchslap some bitch, Geralt didnt do shit and she just ran off. As I walk further, I see a horse - I try to kill him with my sword and my weapon is just slicing the air - horse is immortal. Basically you can cut off dudes head, hands and watch him bleeding to death, but when it comes to a fuckin horsey or a kid - you cant do shit to them.

I havent played much, but is there anyone whom enjoyed Witcher 1 and would pick the first game over second any day? Is there anyone who thinks that Mass Effect type games are pure hollywood super hero shit? If this dude explain good things of this game that really matters?

So your requriments for a good game is for being able to slap a woman, kill a kid and behead a horse. Ooookaay.

Anyway, is this game fucking hard on Blood difficulty or what? I attacked 4 drowners at the beginning, and they raped me half a dozen times until finally I managed to kill them.

 

[AwesomeButton]

BTW, dumbfucks who can't use spoiler tags when talking about quests will be attacked by the Miniature Demons of Ass Sweat who will pour said ass sweat into their mouths while they are asleep at night. Just so you know.

 

[Rahdulan]

Anyway, is this game fucking hard on Blood difficulty or what? I attacked 4 drowners at the beginning, and they raped me half a dozen times until finally I managed to kill them.

I really think it's mainly Witcher 2 nekker cave situation all over again except it now applies to group encounters in general. And keep in mind they're level 3-4 as far as I remember and when you start off you're, well, level 1 with starter gear. Human enemies like deserters are level 1-2 and a much fairer match when you start playing because you can survive without instinctively going for 1v1. From my experience, at least.

 

[J_C]

Anyway, is this game fucking hard on Blood difficulty or what? I attacked 4 drowners at the beginning, and they raped me half a dozen times until finally I managed to kill them.

I really think it's mainly Witcher 2 nekker cave situation all over again except it now applies to group encounters in general. And keep in mind they're level 3-4 as far as I remember and when you start off you're, well, level 1 with starter gear. Human enemies like deserters are level 1-2 and a much fairer match when you start playing because you can survive without instinctively going for 1v1. From my experience, at least.

Yeah, they are level 3 and 4. I was just surprised that they annihilated me so quickly, because I remembered drowners being pushovers. :D

 

[Morkar Left]

Gets really good around 6:50.

Sums up what's wrong with modern gamers. What a moron.

I'm not sure how you come to that conclusion since all his critiques are, at least, based in fact and against the 'modern gamer' -- who are mostly dolts. Witcher 3 is very much a game designed for modern gamers.

edit: Damn, it seems you got the movie reference, dude. Have to brofist for that, even though you post shitty videos.

I post good videos that offend people with shitty taste in games~

The whole gryphon thing, though... so bad.

Watching this video and read about the other ai short-comings in combat and out of combat I think npc ai is actually the weakest part in the game (second is being a console port) downgrading it A LOT and very disappointing. The ai of a community patched G3 is a lot better than this. I''m actually happy I haven't paid full price for the game. My expectations aren't really high anymore considering the amount of money they invested into the game. Let's see how good or bad it will turn out when I'm finished with the other two.

 

[Zeriel]

So your requriments for a good game is for being able to slap a woman, kill a kid and behead a horse. Ooookaay.

Anyway, is this game fucking hard on Blood difficulty or what? I attacked 4 drowners at the beginning, and they raped me half a dozen times until finally I managed to kill them.

No, it's not hard on Blood or the difficulty a step higher either.

Learn to pattern recognition m8, I know it's tough but it's the fundamental thing differentiating you from an invertebrate, so I think you can manage.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I like Worth a Buy content, get a chuckle out of a lot of his videos and he has some pretty good points, i.e. stealing everything from every peasant's house (íf you do it in front of a Nilfgaardian guard you're fucked though) and how scripted the game feels, even though he is trying a little bit too hard complaining about the first big boss scripted fight of the game; he might as well have talked about the well wraith which was a 10x better designed encounter/quest, which can be done out of order by the way, you can still kill the named wraith even if you don't do the full quest.

However, his complaints about the combat and the video itself (he's taking no damage) lead me to believe he's playing on the lower difficulty levels; on hardest, you definitely can't spam roll because enemies dodge and aggressively pursue you and are in your face all the time, plus similar-level enemies take off half your healthbar in one hit. Against pack of enemies, rolling once often means you're dead. So although combat isn't difficult per se, it's not braindead either; he didn't even mention the dodge, which is crucial.

I do agree with complains about the imprecise nature of the controls, and sometimes it really pisses me off because the canned animations are so long and there's no animation cancelling.

There are a lot of flaws with the game, I would never deny them, but I am really liking the good parts; the filler content (basically the open-world shit) is repetitive and quite boring for the most part, but the main quest and actual sidequests (the stuff you get from notice boards) are actually surprisingly good - even the writing.

Legit complaints about the game would be the weak skill tree and incremental bonuses like 2%, 4%. This "balance!" shit really has got to go, devs need to assume that people are going to find broken shit in single-player games regardless, trying to overbalance everything just makes potentially fun aspects of character building really boring.

 

[Darth Roxor]

No, it's not hard on Blood or the difficulty a step higher either.

Yeah, p. much. Granted, I've only just arrived in Velen, but so far sidestepping has been a hard counter for, well, everything, don't even need to learn any patterns. I even killed the griffin on first try by just side-stepping like it was Grimrock, and I think it only managed to hit me three or so times during the whole fight (and with quen around, those single hits are not exactly a problem of any kind).

 

[Turisas]

but after looking back I'd probably do the same thing with the "Nightmare" I was secretly hoping that we could've rode it, even for a bit.

"Ride" it, sure.

You wanted to plough the druidess, didn't you.

 

[Gerrard]

If you're using Quen you might as well be playing on easy.

By the way, you know they put a lot of work into the PC version when the key that is supposed to "Display item stats" when you have a schematic selected in a store window closes said window.

 

[Cromwell]

No, it's not hard on Blood or the difficulty a step higher either.

Yeah, p. much. Granted, I've only just arrived in Velen, but so far sidestepping has been a hard counter for, well, everything, don't even need to learn any patterns. I even killed the griffin on first try by just side-stepping like it was Grimrock, and I think it only managed to hit me three or so times during the whole fight (and with quen around, those single hits are not exactly a problem of any kind).

I think there are a few enemies (endrega warriors for example) where you have to roll backwards to get out of their rage after slicing them a bit. Everything else is just sidestepping and for large groups of mobs just take care that every mob is always in your face and not sideways or behind you. If the camera perspective were better you would see something behind you but as it is I got killed a few times because I did not notice the peasant behind me. Also annoying are archers which you dont see but which still hit you.

 

[Zeriel]

No, it's not hard on Blood or the difficulty a step higher either.

Yeah, p. much. Granted, I've only just arrived in Velen, but so far sidestepping has been a hard counter for, well, everything, don't even need to learn any patterns. I even killed the griffin on first try by just side-stepping like it was Grimrock, and I think it only managed to hit me three or so times during the whole fight (and with quen around, those single hits are not exactly a problem of any kind).

There's a few unique enemy types that have some bullshit moves that are harder to avoid, but because of quen it again doesn't matter. That said, there are a few moments in the Ciri questline that are really annoying because she lacks that Quen buffer, so the high damage moves (and poison debuffs) are pretty annoying.

Then again, when "pretty annoying" is the closest I feel to challenged on the hardest difficulty, we've got a problem in the whole other direction.

If you're using Quen you might as well be playing on easy.

By the way, you know they put a lot of work into the PC version when the key that is supposed to "Display item stats" when you have a schematic selected in a store window closes said window.

You'd have a point if the other signs weren't utter shit, but they are. Damage signs never compare to good swords, only Axii is occasionally useful for monsters that have scripted interaction with it like mounted soldiers and alghouls. What else are you going to spend your stamina on?

(Actually, Axii may be the most OP sign in the game at high levels, but you are arguing that's quen, so I shan't go into discussing Domination.)

It's kind of funny they redesigned stamina to prevent sign-spamming, when even if you could spam it Igni is simply not worth using.

 

[a cut of domestic sheep prime]

Playing it myself now. Like the writing for the quests and characters - eg, bloody baron. But yeah, I hate how nerfed the potions have become since witcher 1. Combat is ok at times, but boring at others and the constant pirouettes can be ridiculous. Like most action RPGs, I just set the difficulty to minimum so I can get it over with and move on to the story. Camera pisses me off. I really want to zoom out or zoom in to first person sometimes, but I cant.

Good game on the whole though. Lots of C&C - tho a lot of biowarfake style fake choices too - If this had come out in 2000, you'd all be crapping yourselves with delight. As it stands, there are too many jaded, bitter old sods and far too many wannabes who want to score some kool kredits.

12/10 goty

 

[Ulminati]

 

[Comrade Goby]

He's an elf what do you expect. Elves are like Swedish people

 

[Zeriel]

Random depressing thought: are all AAA games from now on going to be "open world games" that crib from Ubisoft Game Formula? It really seems like it. It's hard to think of a big-budget game in the last year or in development that isn't being shaped into this new hybrid genre. I never thought I'd miss the old linear, cinematic railroad track games of yore, but they are starting to look pretty appealing compared to open world games festooned with pointless things to do that have a linear cinematic railroad track main quest shoved into areas that are ugly and not very designed because they had to make a big world.

Comparing Witcher 3 to Witcher 2 doesn't give me much hope for the future. 2 wasn't remarkable at the time but I came to see its merits, and 3 is even worse in pretty much every regard.

 

[Cyberarmy]

At least this one don't have "tower mechanics"

 

[Baron Dupek]

Finally some REAL Professional Review done by Professionals.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Only amusing part was the Bojack Horseman reference.

 

[cvv]

Random depressing thought: are all AAA games from now on going to be "open world games" that crib from Ubisoft Game Formula? It really seems like it. It's hard to think of a big-budget game in the last year or in development that isn't being shaped into this new hybrid genre. I never thought I'd miss the old linear, cinematic railroad track games of yore, but they are starting to look pretty appealing compared to open world games festooned with pointless things to do that have a linear cinematic railroad track main quest shoved into areas that are ugly and not very designed because they had to make a big world.

Comparing Witcher 3 to Witcher 2 doesn't give me much hope for the future. 2 wasn't remarkable at the time but I came to see its merits, and 3 is even worse in pretty much every regard.

I see where you're coming from but when all is said and done I think you're wrong. W3 is definitely NOT just a strong W2 main plot with a load of pointless side quests sprinkled around a bland world. That would be DAI. Minus the strong main plot.

Are there some side activities that won't exactly blow your mind with their depth, complexity and reactivity? Sure. But they're not overdone and they do serve a purpose - they're small pieces of lore and atmosphere enriching the bigger picture. If you wanna play this game MMO style, running numbly form quest giver to quest giver and mechanically checking the boxes noone can stop you but W3 is the one game I don't recommend it. This one is entirely about immershun. It's one of those extremelly rare game worlds interesting and mature enough to be worth larping in.

Oh and to one of your earlier points about difficulty - playing on the hardest diff is NOT easy. You made it sound like you can just lightly sidestep everything, swing your little sword a few times and boom, even the hardest bosses fall like pins in the bowling alley. It's quite possible you're a twitch combat god and just breeze through this game towards a flawless victory. Fine. But for vast majority of non-casual gamers, including me, a lot of battles on the Death March diff are pretty hectic, especially higher level mobs. Just fought a Water Hag 9 levels higher than me and it was pretty fucking exhilarating. Beat her after 5 attempts. And even a nest of neckers can molest you if you're not careful.

 

[AngryEddy]

He's an elf what do you expect. Elves are like Swedish people

I dont see a black cock anywhere in that picture.

 

[Gerrard]

I've seen pretty much all of those. The door in the fort was a facepalm moment.
They didn't find any things floating in mid-air.