Inspired by cretin 's https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/witcher-2-is-awful.145913/
Recently I started replaying Twitcher 3 with the new patch. I played it once before when it was released, I don't remember if I completed it, bit in general I don't really remember this game.
The graphics are still great. The music is wonderful and fitting. Voice-actors are well-matched. Villages and towns look aesthetically realistic.
That's all good things I can say about it.
Now let's go to the bad stuff. I don't remember twitcher 2 much either, but I was fond of the first twitcher when it came to the atmosphere and dialogues (in the Polish version). The gameplay was bad, but the game was carried by story and quests which were fairly well designed. Nothing amazing, but being in the swamps running around and killing things felt depressing and dangerous as the world was presented. This was thrown away in the following twitchers for more colorful high-fantasy feeling.
Now onto annoying things in twitcher 3 particularly.
1. The story is simply uninteresting. It's just too high-fantasy for me to care. Some wild hunt raiders appearing out of nowhere, great sorceress battle killing bagzillion of enemies etc. Some old ancient Ciri's ancestry. It's just too unreal to make me care. Picking up turnips in Gothic 2 felt more engaging.
2. Level scaled loot. People keep expensive swords and armors in potato sacks in basements. So much immersion.
3. OK, this point might be unfair because a lot RPGs have this issue, but you jump into the river in full gear to pick up dropped plants. Quest designers should stop such silliness.
4. Huge world full of nothing, lots of villages with untalkable NPCs and with nothing interesting to visit or do. What's the point of such huge areas and so many places if there's no reason to go there or just do the most generic quests you can imagine?
5. Side quests are mostly boring filler. There's a lot of side quests but they are all so bland I already forgot most I did.
6. Youtubers lie. You can do quests in any order but inconsistencies appear, like in the example here: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-witcher-3-goty-edition.109709/page-131#post-8318560
7. Geralt is Mary Sue, and annoying one at that. Sure, players like characters that are cool, but Geralt and his opinions are going too moralizing (I know it's in the books too), too elaborate and often I don't relate to them at all. The first twitcher at least was more reasonable with such.
8. Level restricted gear. Apparently you can't hold a sword that is almost the same as you currently have but sharper, because you didn't do enough fetch-quest jogging.
9. Only some choices possible, many times I'd like to do something else than I could choose. Why does it always have to be two choices and often either almost the same or in some cases too far apart and one being edgy? That's not good writing if I have to choose between two options but if I was in Geralt's place I'd do or say completely different things.
10. If monsters are susceptible to silver, why won't at least some soldiers carry such weapons considering monsters are everywhere? Even if soldiers weren't trained in fighting monsters (but again, why wouldn't they be if monsters are everywhere) they already know how to fight in general. Witcher is one of the most fake jobs you could have, like a lady in shoe store in China I've been to with sole purpose on giving stamps for warranty card.
11. A lone witcher is apparently better than a whole group of soldiers against a monster and acts smartass about it. Again, this makes no sense. While I get that a single soldier shouldn't be equal, 4 or 5 of them are still not a match for a monster, but a single witcher is?
12. Dialogues are often long, but completely uninteresting. Overdramatic gestures and pauses, tl;dr life stories, and general logorrhea. Just get to the fucking point, people (including Geralt). Nobody talks like this in reality.
I didn't play long yet, so I might add more later, although I might drop the game instead.
10/10 best RPG ever - gaming journos
Recently I started replaying Twitcher 3 with the new patch. I played it once before when it was released, I don't remember if I completed it, bit in general I don't really remember this game.
The graphics are still great. The music is wonderful and fitting. Voice-actors are well-matched. Villages and towns look aesthetically realistic.
That's all good things I can say about it.
Now let's go to the bad stuff. I don't remember twitcher 2 much either, but I was fond of the first twitcher when it came to the atmosphere and dialogues (in the Polish version). The gameplay was bad, but the game was carried by story and quests which were fairly well designed. Nothing amazing, but being in the swamps running around and killing things felt depressing and dangerous as the world was presented. This was thrown away in the following twitchers for more colorful high-fantasy feeling.
Now onto annoying things in twitcher 3 particularly.
1. The story is simply uninteresting. It's just too high-fantasy for me to care. Some wild hunt raiders appearing out of nowhere, great sorceress battle killing bagzillion of enemies etc. Some old ancient Ciri's ancestry. It's just too unreal to make me care. Picking up turnips in Gothic 2 felt more engaging.
2. Level scaled loot. People keep expensive swords and armors in potato sacks in basements. So much immersion.
3. OK, this point might be unfair because a lot RPGs have this issue, but you jump into the river in full gear to pick up dropped plants. Quest designers should stop such silliness.
4. Huge world full of nothing, lots of villages with untalkable NPCs and with nothing interesting to visit or do. What's the point of such huge areas and so many places if there's no reason to go there or just do the most generic quests you can imagine?
5. Side quests are mostly boring filler. There's a lot of side quests but they are all so bland I already forgot most I did.
6. Youtubers lie. You can do quests in any order but inconsistencies appear, like in the example here: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/the-witcher-3-goty-edition.109709/page-131#post-8318560
7. Geralt is Mary Sue, and annoying one at that. Sure, players like characters that are cool, but Geralt and his opinions are going too moralizing (I know it's in the books too), too elaborate and often I don't relate to them at all. The first twitcher at least was more reasonable with such.
8. Level restricted gear. Apparently you can't hold a sword that is almost the same as you currently have but sharper, because you didn't do enough fetch-quest jogging.
9. Only some choices possible, many times I'd like to do something else than I could choose. Why does it always have to be two choices and often either almost the same or in some cases too far apart and one being edgy? That's not good writing if I have to choose between two options but if I was in Geralt's place I'd do or say completely different things.
10. If monsters are susceptible to silver, why won't at least some soldiers carry such weapons considering monsters are everywhere? Even if soldiers weren't trained in fighting monsters (but again, why wouldn't they be if monsters are everywhere) they already know how to fight in general. Witcher is one of the most fake jobs you could have, like a lady in shoe store in China I've been to with sole purpose on giving stamps for warranty card.
11. A lone witcher is apparently better than a whole group of soldiers against a monster and acts smartass about it. Again, this makes no sense. While I get that a single soldier shouldn't be equal, 4 or 5 of them are still not a match for a monster, but a single witcher is?
12. Dialogues are often long, but completely uninteresting. Overdramatic gestures and pauses, tl;dr life stories, and general logorrhea. Just get to the fucking point, people (including Geralt). Nobody talks like this in reality.
I didn't play long yet, so I might add more later, although I might drop the game instead.
10/10 best RPG ever - gaming journos
