The Witcher -- violence, sex, and alchemy as part of your daily balanced breakfast

I like this game, including the bits where you can gamble on and participate in bare-knuckle fights in taverns, like Philo Beddo.

Switching between polish and american language tracks, I find that the polish voice actors better represent the characters, but the language is too rough. Japanese would be fine, but I switched back to the american track, which is your standard mix of American and various English accents.

so this is pretty badasss~~~ killing some undead in the STRONG STYLE

lol my friend gave me the two books this is based on and instead of a synopsis or w/e the back is just like "inspiration for the critically acclaimed video game"

The way they're rolling out Witcher 2 is pretty awesome - you can preorder on gog, and if you buy in europe and pay 15 extra or whatever they give you a credit based on how much you overpaid compared to the us version

i got high and ordered this from amazon? i've never played it! i read exciting INTRICATE INTERCONNECTED PLOT STRANDS things. plus it was like $5.

'better than expected' is a shitty compliment but this was way more fun 2 play than i had anticpated it being

this is awesome -- had no idea the spirit of '97 was still alive. being able to switch between over-the-shoulder WoW mode and isometric planescape mode made me giddy. plus it is a noir! with a compelling shadowy morally tumultuous plot! a little lolzy with its dialogue sometimes, especially when it's being Adult (like, before the first hour of gameplay was up i'd had sex with a sorceress in fishnets who afterwards told me not to say goodbye because "you don't want to see a sorceress cry") but that's okay. i have the ENHANCED EDITION and it came with a MAP, i could hardly believe it, although it still just crammed like six discs on top of each other onto one plastic spindle. here's what's wrong with capitalism: as video games made more money, their packaging got worse.

also i am a big morrowind fan but this game's alchemy system is simultaneously deeper and easier. but then morrowind's alchemy system is admittedly no fun at all.

this game is better than most movies.

i feel like ill have to upgrade my pc just to play witcher 2 but gd do i want 2 play witcher 2

Stop that, stop that right now

I started playing the 1st one again and like it a lot more with 1) a faster computer and 2) the add-on where you can play it in its original russian with english subs. Fits the atmosphere of the game a lot better and makes the character seem that much more alien and weird. any option like that on witcher 2?

i think the original language is polish, isn't it? but i'm playing in russian too, because the english voice acting isn't great and i thought it might help my russian. the english subtitles leave a lot of things out, but i can only understand half of the excess.

anyway, this game should not be played in english because one of the things that makes it so great is how eastern european the world is. monsters like rusalki and koschei, orthodox-looking priests, lots of references to the secret police. "they wore long grey coats over their armor and thought they had fooled me," a girl in the game said to me in her apartment, "but i learned to spot their kind in university." later we had sex, of course.

Watched a bit of this last night. Very cool game. Definitely gotta watch it in Polish.

I played the original w/ Polish audio and I couldn't do so for too long. Something about the language and vocal direction made it way too harsh or coarse to listen to, and so I had to switch back to English. I wonder if Russian would go down smoother.

Being trying to play Witcher 2 but I just can't get into it. The story is ... convoluted. And sort of boring. Does it get any better?

I gave up pretty early. The gameplay seemed way too complicated to translate to console, and the English version of the dialog was pretty bad.

under 20 bucks for the 360 version. I went for it but am still heavily ensconced in tokyo jungle, xcom and dark souls, so....

Tried 2 again today. Not worth it. There are just too many game mechanics with the mutagens, oils, potions, skill tree, magic spells. The controls are difficult. The story/cut scenes take forever and makes no sense. Selling it.

I got distracted from this. I enjoy the universe and vibe of the game, so maybe I'll come back to over Christmas.

20 bucks?? i thought this was on the regularly-less-than-a-fiver stratum of videogames

i bought this. and played through the prologue on hard and then restarted and played through it on easy because i figured the combat was never going to be interesting or fun enough to warrant the extra investment in time.

hey somebody give me a good critical review of this plzzz

feel like i'd love a good technical non-dumb rpg but if this sucks i don't want to be disappointed

W1 or W2? Witcher 2 has been described by everybody as being far more playable

i loved witcher 1, didn't like the 360 version of witcher 2 (for technical reasons) but people love the pc version and i could see why.

it is dumb and grim and dark and grim.

witcher 2 takes awhile to get going. it has maybe the worst prologue i have ever seen. a ton of dialogue and random game mechanics that have nothing to do with the game. spends a lot more time on boring backstory then showing you how to play.

its good enough that i am still playing but

- quests that you can either google or spend 6 hours trying to solve are bullshit
- the target lock system of fighting makes fighting vs groups stupidly difficult
- no fast travel gets really old really fast i.e. you end up running the same path probably 20 times per "chapter".

if you like dragon age games, you'll probably be on its level.

hmm thx for the responses everybody but i think i'll pass

i'm kind of burned out on engrossing but mechanically/narratively frustrating rpgs (read: rpgs) right now

n e 1 played witcher 1 enhanced edition? i know i can't run 2 on my lolmacbook but apparently i meet the specs for 1. the one for mac is a wineskin which i didn't realize steam was in the habit of selling

ok

i loved witcher 1 for a while but never finished it. lots of hokey problems and i set the voice acting to russian so the performances wouldn't bother me as much, but if you're into classic late-90s rpgs (fallout, torment, etc) it's an acceptable substitute. i still love the corrupt decaying slavic fantasy world even if some of its Look! Racism! moments are heavyhanded, and i dig the idea of your being a professional monster-hunter in an age when the really dangerous monsters are less slavering-fangs-in-the-woods and more well-dressed-diplomats-at-parties. be sure to download the TITTIES PATCH (it does other things too, i guess): http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher:_Enhanced_Edition_Director%27s_Cut

combat is diablo with one extra mechanic, so dumb fun until it isn't.

lol ( @ Y @ ) patch. did you play 2 at all

i did not.

looking upthread i found a post of mine that sums up why w1 was hard to resist for me:

"they wore long grey coats over their armor and thought they had fooled me," a girl said to me in her apartment, "but i learned to spot their kind in university." later we had sex, of course.

haha. i'm not sure whether that makes me want to play it more or less

Tried playing 1 in Polish, but the language was so harsh I didn't enjoy it. Didn't try Russian.

i might go back and try the polish trick.

what got me was, i put it in hard so the combat wasn't trivial, but it was not-trivial in such a boring way i wished i'd put it on easy so i could basically skip it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A2bDHd-nUM

uh wait thats not even the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpcjUkG2FI4

$3.39 on steam

so witcher 1 sux. o well.

fiddly tactical gritty fantasy rpg seems like it wd be right up my alley but i couldn't get thru the tutorial areas of this. looks really labored and unenjoyable.

witcher 2 i mean

silly ass intro movie too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0i88t0Kacs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx8kQ4s5hCY

soon?

i think i'm going to skip this. Souls games have ruined me, i don't have the patience anymore for rpg conventions like "dialogue" (also endless quests/objectives, maps, etc).

holy shit @ this game tbh

there is an absurd amount of dialogue and very little combat compared to most of these games but the red dead-style 5am wilderness trekking with random little vignettes to stumble on seems to be the real star of the show

I got it yesterday and got as far as Charles Dance, between staring at moving foliage and sunsets

true, the video i watched was surprisingly reminiscent of Red Dead. would love a next-gen sequel to that.

speaking of Souls games, pretty sure the ol' Crestfallen Warrior turns up about 0:02 in to this

downloading Witcher 2

Restarted Witcher 3 and I'm really enjoying it. Just about to go and see the Baron which is about where I stopped a couple of years ago. Not getting too hung up on doing all the quests this time round is helping

One of the biggest annoyances in the entire game is having to repeatedly haul ass all the way from the fast travel marker at the front gate of Crow's Perch all the way up the hill into the main courtyard because they didn't just put the fast travel marker at the top of the hill to begin with! It wouldn't be so bad, but a number of missions entail going back there, so it gets tiresome.

That and accidentally lighting/extinguishing candles when you meant to loot a container next to them.

(one too many "all the way" in there)

I felt really bad about accidentally putting out someone's Aga.

So I can run Witcher 2 on my MacBook Pro ... at 1024x768 ... the screen only goes blank once every few minutes or so, and I can read small text (like objectives under the minimap) if I lean close to the screen ... I'll see how long I can deal with this, might just play Witcher 3 on my Switch.

One of the biggest annoyances in the entire game is having to repeatedly haul ass all the way from the fast travel marker at the front gate of Crow's Perch all the way up the hill into the main courtyard because they didn't just put the fast travel marker at the top of the hill to begin with! It wouldn't be so bad, but a number of missions entail going back there, so it gets tiresome.

That and accidentally lighting/extinguishing candles when you meant to loot a container next to them.

― Dan I., Monday, April 20, 2020 8:13 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm. it's really annoying, especially when you over hear the same bit of monologue over and over again

Okay, there is another bit of bystander npc "dialogue" that I love and will never get sick of no matter how often I hear it: when you run into someone, sometimes they will let out a big, nasally, Francophonic "HONNNH!" and it kills me every time

So far the music in W2 is pretty generic compared to W1. I was also hoping that getting out of the prologue meant I'd spend more time playing than in cinematics, but no luck so far.

Atmosphere-wise, it's a step down all around, but its branching paths are unparalleled in the series.

Last night, I wrapped up the main Witcher 3 quest line at 130 hours. I've got Mastercrafted Griffin and Mastercrafted Wolven Gear, and I'm level 34. I completed all of the main quests, the 'main' secondary quests, and probably about half of the witcher contracts. I failed three or four quests, ignored the question marks in Skellige and gave up on the undying werewolf in the garden storyline, because I couldn't find my way round the map.

The first twenty hours of playtime were rough. I almost quit a dozen times. I despised the design of White Orchard and the west/central areas of Velen that open at first. The fighting was hard, and I didn't understand how to use signs. The landscape design was muddy, cinematically war-ravaged, and filled with cynical and 'world-weary' characters that just seemed like bershon teenagers. I found the game .. gross and drab and leached of color. It was depressing, and not in a fun way. Only two moments kept me hanging on: visiting Keira Metz in her weird hut (when I thought 'oh! this game has colors in it!) and the stupid goat quest.

But then I got to Novigrad and ... things got better? I think that exploring the Skellige islands was my favorite part. They're so expansive and beautiful and such a contrast to the ugliness that comes at the beginning.

I haven't played with different builds yet. I invested heavily in Quen and Aard, and then the whirly rapid-attack. Potions aren't ... I haven't quiet figured them out yet. And I don't understand the adrenaline points stuff, but I have a potion of clearance, so I may play around a little.

I loved:
World-building (after Velen, anyway)
Novigrad, the most lived-in city I remember from any video game ever
All of Skellige. Pretty sure I *still* haven't visited every village on Skellige, and there are at least a few in SE Velen I haven't done more than run past
Treasure hunts for armor (I had to look up some locations)
Weird monsters (except for devourers/rotfiends)
Stumbling on random complicate caves
How the last act of the game takes you back to locations you visited like 50 hours before, and there are changes (big and small)
Oxenfurt / the fancy hidden places under the city

Did not love:
Consistent male gaze-iness
The weird direction the story takes in the last act. Portals? Space? Boring Elvish shit? IDK, I lost interest, and a lot of the ending felt slapped together.
Blah blah political intrigue blah blah
Kaer Morhan is cool, but there's not enough to do there. .
Kaer Morhan fight was boring and easy and I thought it would be better. I was also over-leveled by 4, so there wasn't much of a challenging
Map integration. Too small, too hard to follow. GPS dumb.

Hated:
First fifteen hours.
Bloody Baron quest
Witchy / Crone quest
Bad armor and weapons until act 2 made difficulty WAAAY high at first
Playing as Ciri, who always felt under-leveled or over-leveled, and too on-the-rails
Wraiths
Gwent

Gonna start DLC after a few days. Which first? Hearts of Stone or Blood & Wine?

potions are really just buffs

Start with Hearts of Stone. Blood and Wine is an epilogue.

Great post Remy. yup that was my first feeling when I started the game. 'this is so drab and depressing!', but once it gets going it's so much fun.

I liked the Bloody Baron and especially the Crones. I kind of hate Skellige as there aren't enough fast travel points and I kept having to do the same tedious journey around this enormous mountain about 4 or 5 times for some reason

I'm trying to do all the armour treasure hunts now I've completed everything but crafting the gear is super frustrating. I can't believe I still can't seem to craft a whole set of Mastercrafted gear yet for one reason or another.

I'd say the DLCs are so worth it though. Blood and Wine is like a whole new game in itself and the beauty of the new map is jaw dropping.

If you hate drabness and like color you’re going to loooove blood and wine

Is that the fairy-tale one? I'm excited. In my head the DLC are coded as "fairy tales epilogue that is difficult but fun" and "bourgeoise vampires with a good story, armor, and a lot of fetching stuff." That may be wrong.

I played this game on Nintendo Switch, so I understand the dreariness might've been exaggerated by (very) bad rendering. But man, what a rough intro to a game! I read a review on reddit or something, and it said that the (slow, brown) beginning of the game is necessary to appreciate the artistry of the latter half. To which I say: baloney. kept going mostly out of guilt that I'd spent $59 on the game, and I didn't want to waste my money. I don't think I would have continued otherwise.

@ dog latin: I am legitimately terrified of ghostly stuff, and I got freaked out during the 'wraith by the well' quest in White Orchard and couldn't sleep. Whatever, I'm a wimp. Since I didn't want to get wigged a second time, and I was already turned off by the battlefield violence and blood smears at the gates of Novigrad, I googled walkthroughs of Bloody Baron and Crones quests. I didn't really make my own choices in the game, as much as follow the script that lead to the least-freaky outcomes. For both of those quests I felt pretty anxious both at the stories themselves and that I'd *choose an unfavorable outcome* and make the game more depressing and scary. It was a weird kind of dramatic irony, but it kept me playing. After I while I (habituated? accepted? embraced?) the spookiness and realized it was mostly kind of corny, and a little tongue-in-cheek, and that's when I really started to like the game. On two other occasions I got turned-off by creepiness: the Tower of Mice story, and during the end of Hjalmar an Craite stuff on top of the mountain, where I ran into a bunch of dead things that tried to eat me in the snow. Neither was as bad as the first scare, but the gory grimness wore me down a bit.

The first twenty hours of playtime were rough. I almost quit a dozen times.

Oh god when I first encountered the wraith... no I agree with you, it's quite arresting

The words 'Fyke Island' (is that where the Tower Of Mice is?) are enough to send a shiver up my spine.

Once you get into the flow of the game though, it's a lot less creepy. For a lot of the game, I'd be investigating a room or a cavern half expecting someone or something to sneak up on me in a 'WHO DISTURBS MY SLUMBER / WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE' kind of way, but this isn't really something that happens in the game. There aren't too many jump scares. And it is a relief to get to Novigrad and see so many people after wandering the wilderness of Velen for ages.

Hearts Of Stone DLC has some of the creepiest moments of the game, but it's so imaginative and the story is really intense with some absolutely amazing twists. Blood & Wine is a lovely respite though and well worth saving for last. Geralt's 'Year In Provence', I've heard it accurately described. I think it's my favourite part of the whole game. Once I got to Toussaint I felt like I could SMELL the fields and warmth coming off the Earth. Strange to have a game that starts so drab but gradually blooms and becomes more light-hearted as it goes

How's everyone getting along with this game now?

I've managed to complete all the question marks in Toussaint, Velen,
Novigrad and White Orchard and now I'm slowly chugging through Skellige.

Hoping to achieve the medal of crafting and wearing a whole school of Witcher gear, but is it just me or is it an absolute dog to do?

I think I did everything except the question marks in the middle of the ocean in Skellige. Everyone recommends skipping those and I'm inclined to agree.

this can help you figure out which points of interest are worth pursuing (ie which aren't just smuggler's caches): https://witcher3map.com/

I'm a pathological completist so I even did those. :/

Eek. At some point near hour 120 I stopped caring about the ?s. I am 50% of the way through Touissaint, which I love, but I am pretty sure I'm not going to finish the dumb vampire story.

I've started to resign myself to the idea that my Witcher fever has passed and I'm not going to finish. I was going strong up until the pandemic--playing a few hours after work every day, seeing when I could squeeze in a few more on weekends--but it's been about three months since I've picked it up.

It's not because I got tired of the game, really--I'm near the end of the main plot, took a detour for the Heart of Stone content--but a combination of pandemic listlessness and moving in with my girlfriend took me away from regular playing, and it lost that urgency/compulsion to play it. I suppose it's like exercising or learning an instrument: once you break a regular routine/habit, it gets harder to jump back in.

I feel vaguely guilty not finishing after all the time I've invested playing and modding it. This seems to be a pattern: I think I want this big open world games like Red Dead Redemption (never finished either), though because I'm enamored with the idea of being immersed in months of game play, and I become obsessed for a good stretch, then it just tails off.

Toussaint story was my favourite of the whole thing. It really escalates and it's enormous fun by the end. I really didn't like the knight trials though. I'm not looking forward to going back and doing all those frustrating horse racing quests which I'm TERRIBLE at

Playing W3 again, this time modded to the gills. I don’t care for graphical overhauls, but I installed a bunch of quality-of-life mods that do things like turn off weapon degradation, give practically infinite carrying weight capacity, auto-loot every container within like 10 meters radius, fast travel from anywhere, and keep Witcher senses on all the time without fisheye lens effect, audio muffling, or the inability to run and jump. It’s really great! The game just flies by in a fraction of the time without any of the annoying time wasting aspects—just story, scenery, and fighting.

The auto-looting is key; I never realized how much I hated humping every corner of every shack to get every broken rake. Now I just poke my nose in the door and it all flies directly into my inventory. It’s also great for “discovering” secret chests under bridges and stuff. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the “thrill” of finding a chest behind a bush during my first play through, but this time I’m content to grab the loot and go.

I've been meaning to replay this again once I'm finally done with Bloodborne and do it on the hardest setting. Might even give Gwent a go this time. It's such a great game. Possibly the greatest game of all time. Just wondering whether to start fresh or do NG+

I originally intended to do NG+, but didn’t realize that the enemies all scale up with you, to the extent that they’re harder than they ever were the first time through, so you start the game getting your ass kicked by wolves and such. Other systems are similarly affected (eg you get to keep all your weapons and armor from before but they will quickly need to be replaced by new high level items in ng+). A “new challenge” isn’t the experience I was looking for, so I started a fresh game and am very happy.

And yeah, after initially ignoring it I became a Gwent fanatic 2/3 of the way through my original play, so this time I’m keen to not miss any cards. I’m definitely skipping the “instantly win every gwent game” mod.

Free next gen update/upgrade arrives tonight.

Comes with full cross save too, so while I'm looking forward to playing the PS5 version I might actually end up getting more use out of being able to transfer my PS4 progress to PC.

It looks like it's not actually tonight though? Midnight Wednesday: https://www.thewitcher.com/en/news/46916/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-next-gen-update-global-release-timings

My bad, you're right, the 14th.

Also got a feeling it's going to be one of those cross save situations which requires you to a) reinstall the ps4 version, b) update the ps4 version, c) go into the ps4 game and upload your save file to the cloud, d) exit and delete the ps4 version, e) install the new ps5 version, f) launch the ps5 version and then download your save file from the cloud within the game.

it'll all be worth it when you get to have PS5 sex

I read that they credited and paid people for the fan mods they chose to implement in the final product, that's pretty cool. As is, frankly, the fact that this is a free upgrade.

i forgot, have you played it before josh? and/or are you planning to get the ps5 version?

I have not! I bought it on sale years ago for ... $5? Something like that. So I will be playing it for the first time on the PS5, probably late winter/spring after I clear out a couple of other games that take only a mere 30 or 50 or 70 hours each, lol.

Still haven't started this, because of the aforementioned, but also because they keep patching it. In fact, I just saw this morning that a new patch is imminent ... and maybe 20GB. That seems huge to me.

CD Red Projekt really haven't done themselves any favours over the last few years have they?

they've made one of the greatest RPGs of all time and sometimes it has some comical issues, i don't think they should beat themselves up too much

The next gen upgrade was free, so there's nothing really to complain about. Though iirc people *were* complaining that the next gen upgrade sometimes made the game run *worse* so, yeah, maybe there is something to complain about.