The Witcher 1 Thread

[DalekFlay]

I feel the opposite. The first act is some of the best parts of that game. The middle slog through endless city and swamp missions is a real bore, and hard to get through to see the end. Then you get another decent village section before a dragged-out and kind of boring finale.

 

[Nryn]

Boys and girls, is Witcher 1 worth it to slog trough? Found it very tedious last time and I played it like 15 minutes every half year. Witcher 2 looks awesome and Witcher 3 is around the corner. I know I won't forgive myself I do not finish the trilogy fully but im not sure I can handle Witcher 1s clickity combat.

If you want to try getting into the series in earnest, I wouldn't advocate skipping the first game at all.

One of the biggest draws to the game is its morally ambiguous choices and delayed consequences, sometimes manifesting themselves many hours later. Unfortunately, it requires a time commitment to see your choices play out. My advise is for you to play out the first 2-3 major choices (you'll know when you've made them), and take a call on whether to continue playing or not.

The C&C themselves aren't as diverse as stuff from Alpha Protocol, or even New Vegas, but they are given appropriate context and compellingly framed in a way Bioware and Bethesda routinely fail to do. The writing is decent overall but one of the final plot twists is one of my favorites in recent memory. It was a minor bit of C&C, subtle enough to fly under the radar of non-observant players, but on spotting it, I couldn't help appreciate the writing for how understated and thematically appropriate it was.

I also felt that the first game did a better job at presenting the world compared to its sequel; the second one had a more narrow focus, mostly centered around politics right from the get go. On the other hand, the first one did a great job at presenting how bleak and cynical the world of the Witcher 1 is, often through just interactions with various country folk.

Lorewise, both games are probably important for different reasons. The first game has several major interactions regarding the Wild Hunt. On the other hand, the third game appears to be a direct continuation of the events that unfold in the second game (even more so than Witcher 1 --> Witcher 2), so it's bound to contain a lot of references to the events and characters of the second game. Both the games are story-driven games first and foremost, so you're likely to miss references to characters and events no matter how robust the summary journal entries are in subsequent games.

I found the combat to be the weaker aspects of both games, though for different reasons. The first game was entirely devoid of challenge and the mechanics themselves were incredibly simplistic, with only the alchemy system being a particularly neat idea. The second game's combat suffers from being unable to decide whether it wants to play like Arkham Asylum or Demon's Souls, often mixing elements of the two for a frustrating combat experience. The twitch-heavy action mechanics lack a refined foundation, leading to unsatisfactory strategies such as rolling around constantly, or spamming Quen to cast a damage shield on yourself. In hindsight, if you end up disliking both combat systems, I'd argue that the Witcher 1 is probably easier to get through since its combat demands far less from the player, allowing one to autopilot through the combat encounters to get to the narrative and C&C bits -- the main draws of the game.

If nothing else, the game's got an incredibly moody and atmospheric soundtrack that the second one does not live up to:

 

[yellowcake]

Don't be a faggit and play the goddamn game already. It is and probably will be the best witcher game. Protip: play on hard difficulty. It forces you to use alchemy which greatly enhances the feel of the game.

 

[pippin]

The combat is weird but if you really want to play through the game you'll get used to it. Fortunately it's not that hard to make Geralt more powerful, but higher difficulty levels will demand alchemy use. C&C is good, and it's not hard to realize how your choices will affect the game. There are occasions, during chapters, where Jaskier literally tells you "this will have a big impact on what we're doing". Still, most of the times the quests and dialogues are written well enough that you enjoy them all the same; for me, the investigation was one of the best parts of the game, because the game never tells you if you're doing it right or wrong, and it's not hard to reach an incorrect conclusion.

 

[Perkel]

TW1 brilliance in C&C isn't impact on the world but specific design approach where later C hovers in limbo to finally resolve itself after literally hours so you can't just quicksave/reload. So this makes people ho along their choices no matter how they resolved something which is uncommon in almost every RPG to date.

On horizon i think only AoD tries something like that from what i read.

I would absolutely love to see fallout esque game with no taboos untouched made this way so for example one choice several hours before can lead to extinction of village you tried to save for last 5 hours.

 

[Ezrite]

Boys and girls, is Witcher 1 worth it to slog trough? Found it very tedious last time and I played it like 15 minutes every half year. Witcher 2 looks awesome and Witcher 3 is around the corner. I know I won't forgive myself I do not finish the trilogy fully but im not sure I can handle Witcher 1s clickity combat.

If you want to try getting into the series in earnest, I wouldn't advocate skipping the first game at all.

One of the biggest draws to the game is its morally ambiguous choices and delayed consequences, sometimes manifesting themselves many hours later. Unfortunately, it requires a time commitment to see your choices play out. My advise is for you to play out the first 2-3 major choices (you'll know when you've made them), and take a call on whether to continue playing or not.

The C&C themselves aren't as diverse as stuff from Alpha Protocol, or even New Vegas, but they are given appropriate context and compellingly framed in a way Bioware and Bethesda routinely fail to do. The writing is decent overall but one of the final plot twists is one of my favorites in recent memory. It was a minor bit of C&C, subtle enough to fly under the radar of non-observant players, but on spotting it, I couldn't help appreciate the writing for how understated and thematically appropriate it was.

I also felt that the first game did a better job at presenting the world compared to its sequel; the second one had a more narrow focus, mostly centered around politics right from the get go. On the other hand, the first one did a great job at presenting how bleak and cynical the world of the Witcher 1 is, often through just interactions with various country folk.

Lorewise, both games are probably important for different reasons. The first game has several major interactions regarding the Wild Hunt. On the other hand, the third game appears to be a direct continuation of the events that unfold in the second game (even more so than Witcher 1 --> Witcher 2), so it's bound to contain a lot of references to the events and characters of the second game. Both the games are story-driven games first and foremost, so you're likely to miss references to characters and events no matter how robust the summary journal entries are in subsequent games.

I found the combat to be the weaker aspects of both games, though for different reasons. The first game was entirely devoid of challenge and the mechanics themselves were incredibly simplistic, with only the alchemy system being a particularly neat idea. The second game's combat suffers from being unable to decide whether it wants to play like Arkham Asylum or Demon's Souls, often mixing elements of the two for a frustrating combat experience. The twitch-heavy action mechanics lack a refined foundation, leading to unsatisfactory strategies such as rolling around constantly, or spamming Quen to cast a damage shield on yourself. In hindsight, if you end up disliking both combat systems, I'd argue that the Witcher 1 is probably easier to get through since its combat demands far less from the player, allowing one to autopilot through the combat encounters to get to the narrative and C&C bits -- the main draws of the game.

If nothing else, the game's got an incredibly moody and atmospheric soundtrack that the second one does not live up to:

Well you and everyone else says its good or that im a idiot for not doing it! Also my Polish friend said he kill me if I do not play all of the games if I own them. So I willl give it a go again!

 

[Ezrite]

So....should I play it isometric or third person? Thats the second question. I played it third person last time.

 

[Ninjerk]

Doesn't matter, shut up and go play it.

 

[adddeed]

Doesn't matter, shut up and go play it.

It does matter though. Isometric is much better than the over the shoulder they slapped in. The game is built for iso and it shows. Plus battles are much better and feel more tactical isometric. Finally, I think the game looks better from top down, visually.

 

[Tigranes]

Play what you prefer. Next you'll be asking whether you should play it drinking coffee or tea.

 

[naossano]

I would say that high isometric is good for tactical view and combats, while low isometric is better if you want to enjoy the scenery.
Not fond of non iso perspective.

About TW1 i definitely advise to play it, for the (not so frequent) delayed C&C, the writting, and the "actual" exploration. (you explore an actual society instead of a collection of random sceneries)

About TW2, i think i will play it sometime between now and may 2015, but i am not fond of the gameplay changes. Fortunately, it is way shorter than TW1.

 

[DalekFlay]

I played the whole game non-iso and never had a problem with combat. Combat is fucking boring in the game anyway. Play it how you think it looks the best visually.

 

[adddeed]

The thing is that a) visually the game looks better in Iso, and b) combat works better in Iso.

Play isometric.

 

[Lilura]

I played the whole game non-iso and never had a problem with combat. Combat is fucking boring in the game anyway. Play it how you think it looks the best visually.

I played over-the-shoulder, too. There is nothing tactical about TW1, so iso isn't necessary.

 

[Ninjerk]

It's a fucking rhythm clicking game, the view difference does not matter one fucking iota, and if you level up Igni you can just round enemies up WoW-frost-mage style and blast whole waves of enemies down.

 

[Lilura]

Igni in the Act Two swamp. Lure them all together for efficient incineration fests.

 

[Ninjerk]

Igni in the Act Two swamp. Lure them all together for efficient incineration fests.

It's embarrassing how effective it is.

 

[Multidirectional]

In my experience Igni was pretty op for most of the game. Anyway, how's Witcher 1 FCR mod? i realized it's been a pretty long time since I played W1.

 

[naossano]

It's a fucking rhythm clicking game, the view difference does not matter one fucking iota, and if you level up Igni you can just round enemies up WoW-frost-mage style and blast whole waves of enemies down.

Low and high isometric doesn't change much the gameplay, but it is no longer possible to have a mouse based gameplay with non iso perspective, which makes a HUGE difference for me.

 

[Ninjerk]

It's a fucking rhythm clicking game, the view difference does not matter one fucking iota, and if you level up Igni you can just round enemies up WoW-frost-mage style and blast whole waves of enemies down.

Low and high isometric doesn't change much the gameplay, but it is no longer possible to have a mouse based gameplay with non iso perspective, which makes a HUGE difference for me.

I'm not really sure what you're getting at.

 

[DalekFlay]

I'm not really sure what you're getting at.

I'm assuming he means he wants to sit back and play the game with only his mouse hand 90% of the time. I've seen many similar comments from MMO players who are shocked and aghast when a singleplayer RPG asks them to use WASD to walk around.

 

[Athelas]

It's a Witcher game, it's fairly obvious what's occupying that other hand.

 

[naossano]

I'm not really sure what you're getting at.

I'm assuming he means he wants to sit back and play the game with only his mouse hand 90% of the time. I've seen many similar comments from MMO players who are shocked and aghast when a singleplayer RPG asks them to use WASD to walk around.

I am not much aware about comments from MMO players as i don't play much MMO, but i am not much comfortable with RPG using keyboard+mouse or gamepad for RPG, instead of using mouse.
It make walking clumsy, easier to mistake npc with chest and doors, it make the act of walking a constant process instead of a command, a real pain for looting, and a totally different combat philosophy.


Beside the mouse, there is also the limitations of your vision of the field. That's why i don't use low isometric during fight. Even if it is still mouse based, you don't see enough field around you.

Not saying that mouse-based gameplay is automatically better. Just that it makes a huge difference, almost like black & White, IMO. This is just not the same kind of Game and both don't suit to everyone. I am OK with isometric/1st person/3rd games coexisting. Much less with it changing between sequels of the same IP, as it creates unecessary troubles.

Also, if is often related to crossplatform, games adapted mainly for console, and the gamepad limitations, the interface limitations, and maybe the console player mindset limitations, but these doesn't concern TW much.

Anyway, i do try some of those games sometimes, but it usually consist in accessing the lore & quest despite the gameplay, instead of enjoying the gameplay too. I have to channel some extra motivation to try it again.

All of this is mostly about RPG. I can use other handlings for platformers, FPS, combat games, that are more focused games.

PS: It isn't just a rythm clicking game. It works on at the beginning, but from mid-game to the end, you need quite an amount of preparation and a little bit of stategy if you want to survive, as every mook is almost as strong as you, and they swarm you.

 

[Lilura]

You mean like coating your blade with an oil or quaffing a potion? That's about the extent of TW1 "strategy". I can only assume those who think TW1 is tactical or strategic haven't played many real tactics RPGs. Even the NWN1 OC goes far beyond TW1 (and to call it tactical is a joke) and the former predated the latter (in fact, TW1 is built from Aurora - it's Aurora-lite, though). All you do is "build" one pre-defined guy, signs or swords! The options are over-fucking-whelming...

 

[naossano]

I would put potions/blade coating in the quite amount of preparation area. The preparation has an increasing role troughough the game. From meaningless in the first act to crucial in the last.

The little bit of strategy/tactical side during the fight themselves are more about using tricks and the environement to survive your better opponements, even with the good preparation. Or when you screwed your preparation and must find a way out. The game put far less emphasis on that, that it does on preparation, but is enough to go beyond the "rythm clicking game" label. I never said it would compete with Jagged Alliance. There is a huge difference between having a bit of something and being specialized on that something. You can aknowledge the former withouth pretending it is the latter.

But many toughest combats are, IMO, the less fair. I mean, you often end up surrounded by death machines, that manage to kill you as soon as the map finished loading. Those aren't clever ways to increase difficulty, IMO. It is the computer cheating agains't you.