The Witcher Twitcher 3 is awful

[turkishronin]

On Codex RPGs are rated on storyfaggotry so Witcher3 could even be top 10.

 

[JDR13]

Codexers: "The Witcher is just mainstream garbage!"

Also Codexers: "I know what I'm talking about because I've played 175 hours!"

 

[Harthwain]

To me the Witcher's 3 weakest point is its gameplay: I couldn't stand that the meat of the game was a much weaker Dark Souls copy (even at high difficulty) combined with dumb MMO-style enemies and detective work was pressing a single button. The card game was nice and the quests were interesting and that's how I managed to get ~35 hours in, but at some point it wasn't enough for me to continue any further.

Edit: JDR13 Why the surprise?

 

[Serus]

W-what??
But I thought Witcher 3 was the GREATEST RPG ever made! That's what Kotaku said! GERALDO DEL RIVERO, MOTHERFUCKERS!

Don't they (as in mainstream journos) say this about some new game every year?

BTW, I haven't played Witcher 2 or 3 at all. <prestigious>

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

To me the Witcher's 3 weakest point is its gameplay: I couldn't stand that the meat of the game was a much weaker Dark Souls copy (even at high difficulty) combined with dumb MMO-style enemies and detective work was pressing a single button. The card game was nice and the quests were interesting and that's how I managed to get ~35 hours in, but at some point it wasn't enough for me to continue any further.

I played TW3 to completion and I can't exactly say I hated it. In fact I more or less enjoyed my time with it.
Still, I had two main gripes with the game:

- the completely redundant, unnecessary and immersion-breaking leveling system. Levels in this game served literally NO other purpose than adding a layer of number bloat on a system that could have worked perfectly completely without them. In fact, you could revamp the entire game to work entirely on unlocking talents and getting better gear without leveled main character and enemies, and as a result still have a deeply imbalanced system where power creep became too marked anyway. In a best case scenario, though, a leaner system that did not create stupid incongruences like "Wild Hunt general level 9 followed by farmers with pitchforks level 45 thirty hours later".

- the itemization, that suffered of several problems. Namely...
1) too much fucking loot in general. Not just equipment, I mean a boatload of shit you could (and were actively encouraged to) pick up. Why everything had to contain something? Why you couldn't go two meters without a container turning orange with the Bat-vision? And more than anything why the hell game actively expected you to pick up wood planks, leather lacets, flasks of oil, pieces of silverware and tons of other pointless shit as crafting materials? Don't tell me this system couldn't have been streamlined tenfolds (making you gather only few genuinely rare and meaningful materials in specific circumstances) and made significantly better in the process.
2) loot often randomly placed in ways that didn't make any sense. Examples may include: diamonds and rare alchemical reagents in a farmer's house or in some street trash pile, a book commenting on recent politics found in an "elven ruin no one visited for centuries", rakes and other gardening tools inside small containers and drawers and similar shit.
3) the range between low level equipment and high level one was TOO FUCKING BROAD, going to add to the hideous stat bloat of the previous point. You had starting items doing 20-30 damage and then end game ones going up in the high HUNDREDS. That's a 30X multiplier, which is insane and completely unnecessary... No, actively detrimental to internal consistence in a non-linear open world game.
4) equipment being level gated, which is not just a questionable (let's even say horrible) decision in itself, but a direct consequence of the previous point (weapons scaling too much) and the first one about a leveling system being unnecessary in itself.

Past that, you have the usual complaints about the combat not being great (but frankly I found it at very least serviceable, at very least not significantly worse than many other in the genre -I'm looking at you, ELEX- and mostly ruined in its balance by the points mentioned above) and yeah, the "detective mode" in the overwhelming majority of quests being the usual mind-numbing "follow the dotted line" drivel of "modern game design".

 

[rusty_shackleford]

quality gap between the base game & DLCs is so massive they might as well be judged as separate games

 

[Tuco Benedicto Pacifico]

quality gap between the base game & DLCs is so massive they might as well be judged as separate games

The DLCs improved on narrative or focus, but hardly addressed any of the structural problems of the system.

 

[turkishronin]

To me the Witcher's 3 weakest point is its gameplay: I couldn't stand that the meat of the game was a much weaker Dark Souls copy (even at high difficulty) combined with dumb MMO-style enemies and detective work was pressing a single button. The card game was nice and the quests were interesting and that's how I managed to get ~35 hours in, but at some point it wasn't enough for me to continue any further.

Edit: JDR13 Why the surprise?

It's like this because people complained about TW2 being too hard

 

[Chippy]

They should have realised the combat wasn't too great and kept it simple. Instead they made it more spastic with 1-shot level scaling similiar to Skyrim. Or they should have removed scaled loot and given you a chance against level scaled enemies.

Then they should have realised the game was too empty, and cut the budget for all the voiced over lines for every NPC in the game, and devoted more money into writing & voicing Geralt's companions with more quests for them and time spent with them.

I could have overlooked everything irritating in the first paragraph if they had done more of what I mentioned in the second. Instead of spending more time bantering with Zoltan, playing cards with Dandelion, or romancing Triss, we got fully voiced minutes long quests of NPCs going on about their burnt frying pans.

I don't know if this is the last game in the storyline of all of these characters - but not pursuing the crackdown on sorcerers was criminal. Maybe they left that for the next installment. But it seemed the last 2 games were building towards it for nothing.

I do look back on the game fondly though, and will probably play it again. The story was fantastic and got better as the game progressed.

 

[Serious_Business]

Sure bud. I don't actually like potato.

Just get to the fucking point, people (including Geralt). Nobody talks like this in reality.

I didn't read most of the post (yes this is meant to hurt your feelings, however I also really did not read it), but this line smacks you right in the gut, right? How do people actually talk in reality? Do I care? Do I want to hear them talk? You need your shit to be functionnal, I understand. In this spirit I believe we should limit ourselves to grunts, obscure insults, and kick to the ribs (especially when the other is down on the ground crying). This is how we socialise around here. Get to the fucking point boyo. I am not fucking around with litterature you fuck. Point A to point B, right up your fucking ass

 

[JDR13]

To me the Witcher's 3 weakest point is its gameplay: I couldn't stand that the meat of the game was a much weaker Dark Souls copy (even at high difficulty) combined with dumb MMO-style enemies and detective work was pressing a single button. The card game was nice and the quests were interesting and that's how I managed to get ~35 hours in, but at some point it wasn't enough for me to continue any further.

Edit: JDR13 Why the surprise?

It's not even remotely similar to Dark Souls other than that they're both third-person.

 

[Harthwain]

It's not even remotely similar to Dark Souls other than that they're both third-person.

I do not disagree. I am using this as a very rough approximation of the style is all (dodge-parry-attack).

 

[Wunderbar]

In a best case scenario, though, a leaner system that did not create stupid incongruences like "Wild Hunt general level 9 followed by farmers with pitchforks level 45 thirty hours later".

that's accurate to the books, though. Book Geralt was gutted by a pack of pitchfork-wielding peasants.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Codexers: "The Witcher is just mainstream garbage!"

Also Codexers: "I know what I'm talking about because I've played 175 hours!"

The classic Codexian sentiment: "I spent 300 hours playing a game and it was terrible!"

 

[Robotigan]

Also Codexers: "I know what I'm talking about because I've played 175 hours!"

The classic Codexian sentiment: "I spent 300 hours playing a game and it was terrible!"

I first heard about this game within a month of release. I had just bought a brand-spanking-new gtx980 and I was ready to use it to play the next RPG epic on my big boy PC. I think I made it about 10 hours. That's when I realized the entire PC Master Race was a fraud. These idiots didn't know what a good game was, they just wanted to play an edgy story at the highest graphical fidelity possible. You Codexers think you're cool because you discovered this game was overrated 5-7 years later as if there's a single big game that doesn't gain that moniker (deservedly or otherwise) after the initial hype dies down. I didn't hop on the hate bandwagon. I've been driving the bandwagon since 2015.

 

[Yosharian]

Codexers: "The Witcher is just mainstream garbage!"

Also Codexers: "I know what I'm talking about because I've played 175 hours!"

The classic Codexian sentiment: "I spent 300 hours playing a game and it was terrible!"

What. The. Fuck. Why does it eat it if it doesn't like it?

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

But I thought Witcher 3 was the GREATEST RPG ever made!

the dlcs are very good

Hearts of Stone* is really good. Blood and Wine was yet another slog just like the main game with a retarded story.

HOS was the only part of that game I truly enjoyed from start to finish. It was a break from the mind numbing, immersion breaking slog of bland open world for a story with high stakes. It's amazing what a more closed, focused story without a mary sue shoved into it can do for such a game.

 

[Ryan muller]

>quest design in witcher 3 is bad


>Proceed to play baldurs gate

Btw, tw3 is still better than your favorite game

 

[Konjad]

Sure bud. I don't actually like potato.

Just get to the fucking point, people (including Geralt). Nobody talks like this in reality.

I didn't read most of the post (yes this is meant to hurt your feelings, however I also really did not read it), but this line smacks you right in the gut, right? How do people actually talk in reality? Do I care? Do I want to hear them talk? You need your shit to be functionnal, I understand. In this spirit I believe we should limit ourselves to grunts, obscure insults, and kick to the ribs (especially when the other is down on the ground crying). This is how we socialise around here. Get to the fucking point boyo. I am not fucking around with litterature you fuck. Point A to point B, right up your fucking ass

Thanks for the post, you always show interesting takes.

Like this one:

Konjad, I would pay you a beautiful, nice, well-spoken, well-mannered French whore. She'd make you fall in love, you'd see the world in an all new sight. As the new born bird that clumsily opens its eyes towards the light of the sun, you would grow in majesty, to open your full set of wings and fly as she would make you discover what life can offer you. You would become a man of action and conviction, a man of optimism and virtue. You would peel so many potatoes as to have her stop working in the brothel, and both of you would live a poor but happy life. And then as you come back from work she will be there waiting for you, her guts on the floor as I piss in her mouth
"what's up brah? What's wrong? You didn't start caring did you? Why did you have to start to care, Konjad? This is your problem, Konjad, not mine. This is your problem."

 

[BosanskiSeljak]

Witcher 3 is a game with good writing

Witcher 3 is one decently written questline (two if you count Hearts of Stone dlc) trapped in a game with otherwise bad writing.

It amazes me that even many critics of this game praise a good story (or say it's good for story fags). I honestly can't place my finger on what the fuck people see in it. I quite enjoyed Bloody Baron (especially towards the end with his cursed, dead baby), and a little bit about the crones just because of how fucked up they are, but that's it. Rest is as bland as a white suburban american mom's cooking.

Based moskal

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

What. The. Fuck. Why does it eat it if it doesn't like it?

Probably for the same reason that certain Codexers will sink hundreds of hours into a terrible game.

 

[Semiurge]

Witcher 3's combat is as it should've been in Witcher 2. Now you can actually dodge attacks in any direction instead of relying on constant rolling.

 

[kangaxx]

My console-only brothers both loved it, but I thought it was crap. Maybe the most overrated game I've ever played.

 

[Ravielsk]

I already wrote this in the witcher thread but it bears repeating. Witcher 3 feels like a game that tried to do a 180 in the last few months of development and the only reason why they got away with it was because its competition was literary so shit that it seemed like gold in comparison.

I say this because the whole plot is wrapped around Ciri and the Wild Hunt which were both plot lines from the books that ended in said books, pretty definitively might I add. Yet, the game somehow centers around these two points that not only were almost entirely(and deliberately) excluded from the prior two games but also factually do not fit in with the rest of the game(W3) itself. You can literary delete Ciri as a motivation or character from 90% of quest that feature her by simply pressing delete. The quest nor the plot would suffer from her removal one bit. The same goes for her gameplay sections which handle like total ass because its just Gerald minus proper dodging and everything besides his one sword.

This gets even more obvious when you get into the DLCs where the quality of the whole experience jumps up by several points simply by virtue of not having tie everything back to a last minute addition. The team most likely got bogged down with hastily adding her into the game and was therefore unable to properly focus on other gameplay systems which ultimately lead to most of them feeling like placeholders.

 

[turkishronin]

I already wrote this in the witcher thread but it bears repeating. Witcher 3 feels like a game that tried to do a 180 in the last few months of development and the only reason why they got away with it was because its competition was literary so shit that it seemed like gold in comparison.

I say this because the whole plot is wrapped around Ciri and the Wild Hunt which were both plot lines from the books that ended in said books, pretty definitively might I add. Yet, the game somehow centers around these two points that not only were almost entirely(and deliberately) excluded from the prior two games but also factually do not fit in with the rest of the game(W3) itself. You can literary delete Ciri as a motivation or character from 90% of quest that feature her by simply pressing delete. The quest nor the plot would suffer from her removal one bit. The same goes for her gameplay sections which handle like total ass because its just Gerald minus proper dodging and everything besides his one sword.

This gets even more obvious when you get into the DLCs where the quality of the whole experience jumps up by several points simply by virtue of not having tie everything back to a last minute addition. The team most likely got bogged down with hastily adding her into the game and was therefore unable to properly focus on other gameplay systems which ultimately lead to most of them feeling like placeholders.

I feel like they have always wanted to center the plot around that, they just suck at it. Witcher 1 basically has Alvin as Ciri prototype and a good part of Witcher 2 is the build-up for Wild Hunt.

 

[Barbarian]

I'm replaying this now too. Never got to finish the dlcs back in the day and plan to do so this time.

Honestly I still consider it a good game. A great game even. I also dislike much of the main campaign and some of the characters brought from the books. Yennefer and Ciri in particular, who are depraved proto "empowered wymmin" created by postmodern feminist author Sapkowski before it was so widespread(ITT, games are much better than the books and less woke if you can believe it). I think storywise where the game really shines is in the sidequests and optional content, the ins and outs of being a mutant professional monster hunter regularly employed by peasants and burgers who end up being scumbags. The grandiose "save the world" bullshit is both unenjoyable and feels out of place. Most of the fun I had with the game(and the same enjoyment I'm having right now) is when you forget the main quest exists and go exploring for jobs and contracts.

Still parts of the main quest were really enjoyable and well-written. I liked the bits in Velen with the Red Baron and the Crones. Again, the parts where you just do Witcher contracts basically. The news about cdp developing new games in this setting has a lot of potential... if they keep the woke out and don't do something retarded like having Ciri as the protagonist.

It could be better off course. Many small bits and pieces where the series actually got worse in comparison with the first game. Like how geralt was a weirdo and is now "handsome", or how mutagens and character builds have been downstreamed and simplified(it was already simple to begin with).

Production values overall are second only to maybe Take2, also the sheer amount of content and hours you can take out of the game. Overall unlike most modern games you really get your dollars worth in entertainment.

Amazing that CDP fell from grace so incredibly with Cyberpunk...