The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt

[RJ43]

Hmm I hadn't heard that about the consoles version. It runs flawlessly on PC for me. Both Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are really too demanding for their consoles though

I've had an unusually poor experience with it for some reason. My friends haven't had nearly the issues I have.

 

[KidBaize]

I've had an unusually poor experience with it for some reason. My friends haven't had nearly the issues I have.

I don't remember having any performance issues when I played it on PS4. Mind you, that was a year ago so maybe the patches since then have added some bugs.

 

[blaseblah]

Hmm I hadn't heard that about the consoles version. It runs flawlessly on PC for me. Both Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are really too demanding for their consoles though

I never had any issues with either game. I played Skyrim on 360 and Witcher on PS4.

 

[Blayt7hh]

I never had any issues with either game. I played Skyrim on 360 and Witcher on PS4.

Maybe it's and XBOX problem them, or maybe Rj's bone is on the fritz.

Everybody had problems with Skyrim though, no matter the platform. Bethesda games are always a buggy mess it's part of the charm.

 

[Bob Gray]

I bought this game a couple of weeks ago based on all of the rave reviews, and I must really be missing it.

• Story starts off pretty lackluster. He's trying to stalk down an ex?
  
• Controls/mechanics are very weird.
• Graphics are good and polished.
• Combat is awkward.
• User interface is confusing and a total mess.
• Popup tutorials are very annoying, but a tutorial is evidently needed to sort through the terrible UI.
  
• Gwent was a lot more "simplistic" than I thought it would be. It just seems to be whoever was lucky enough to draw the most powerful cards, with modifiers thrown in.

I was trying to power through this game, because judging by the consensus, evidently, I'm the one in the wrong, but it's been a total chore so far.

Nah, you're not wrong. Witcher is really popular and gets a lot of accolades but theres still a noticeable split in the gaming audience. I mean, the combat sucks. The combat has always sucked. They just cant nail it for some reason.

But their characters, writers and world building is second to none as far as RPGs go. Its one of those games that nails all the big things but stumbles with the mechanics. For a lot of people they see those kinds of weaknesses as forgivable when the broad strokes are done so well. For others those kinds of mechanical details are important because you're using them so much and it can dampen the enjoyment of everything else.

 

[BAM]

I bought this game a couple of weeks ago based on all of the rave reviews, and I must really be missing it.

• Story starts off pretty lackluster. He's trying to stalk down an ex?
  
• Controls/mechanics are very weird.
• Graphics are good and polished.
• Combat is awkward.
• User interface is confusing and a total mess.
• Popup tutorials are very annoying, but a tutorial is evidently needed to sort through the terrible UI.
  
• Gwent was a lot more "simplistic" than I thought it would be. It just seems to be whoever was lucky enough to draw the most powerful cards, with modifiers thrown in.

I was trying to power through this game, because judging by the consensus, evidently, I'm the one in the wrong, but it's been a total chore so far.

UI has been redone with the new DLC. The combat can be annoying, but once you get your spells leveled up it becomes really fun. You can use mind control on enemies, unleash a shockwave that freezes enemies, have a bubble shield that explodes, places spirit traps to slow down enemies, beef up your sword skills and start hacking people apart with counterattacks, tons of buffers and effects to play around with. Turn up the difficulty, and it can be like playing chess at times. Each enemy has its own strategy to beat.

Story builds, he's trying to track down his surrogate daughter and the bad guys are the Wild Hunt who are like trans dimensional sorcerers and warriors, but it's more about the journey for me. The side quests are great, the choices made in the main quest are similar to Game of Thrones or the Waking Dead in that sometimes there are no clean good or bad choices, sometimes you have to live with a bad one. Do you save a town or let children get butchered? Lots of morally grey characters and choices, especially when involving the northern politics. The whole thing is very dark once you get into Velen and come across citizens hanged by the dozens, murdered children, people impaled and burned at the stake, etc.

 

[blaseblah]

Maybe it's and XBOX problem them, or maybe Rj's bone is on the fritz.

Everybody had problems with Skyrim though, no matter the platform. Bethesda games are always a buggy mess it's part of the charm.

I never ran into any game breaking bugs. Granted I dont buy Bethesda games on release day.

 

[Insmoke]

I finished the expansions and now I'm sad it's over. Damn good game, definitely one of my all time favorites.

New game plus looms

Had a couple of glitches towards the end of the game on Xbox. All were fixed when I reloaded a save game though. Nothing too serious. Roach couldn't gallop a couple of times, some warped visuals. Nothing major really.

 

[Losfer Words]

I finished the expansions and now I'm sad it's over. Damn good game, definitely one of my all time favorites.

New game plus looms

Had a couple of glitches towards the end of the game on Xbox. All were fixed when I reloaded a save game though. Nothing too serious. Roach couldn't gallop a couple of times, some warped visuals. Nothing major really.

 

[Tamriel Terror]

My girlfriend is playing it right now and it makes me really want to buy it for my pc lol.

 

[blaseblah]

UI has been redone with the new DLC. The combat can be annoying, but once you get your spells leveled up it becomes really fun. You can use mind control on enemies, unleash a shockwave that freezes enemies, have a bubble shield that explodes, places spirit traps to slow down enemies, beef up your sword skills and start hacking people apart with counterattacks, tons of buffers and effects to play around with. Turn up the difficulty, and it can be like playing chess at times. Each enemy has its own strategy to beat.

I played on the hardest difficulty and the strategy never became any more strategic than get 2-3 hits in and then dodge the counter, while having Quen up at all times.

 

[Turkleton]

I played on the hardest difficulty and the strategy never became any more strategic than get 2-3 hits in and then dodge the counter, while having Quen up at all times.

u could say the same about Dark Souls though
get 2-3 hits then dodge or block, rinse repeat

 

[RJ43]

u could say the same about Dark Souls though
get 2-3 hits then dodge or block, rinse repeat

You could say that but it would be intentionally misleading in terms of the massive gap in game-play quality between the two games.

I love both series to death, but Souls curb stomps Witcher in terms of actual game-play. I can still play Bloodborne just for the gameplay alone without any direction or overall goal other than to fight.

In Witcher, as much as I love Blood and Wine, combat is by far the weakest part of my final experience with this game.

 

[Turkleton]

You could say that but it would be intentionally misleading in terms of the massive gap in game-play quality between the two games.

I love both series to death, but Souls curb stomps Witcher in terms of actual game-play. I can still play Bloodborne just for the gameplay alone without any direction or overall goal other than to fight.

In Witcher, as much as I love Blood and Wine, combat is by far the weakest part of my final experience with this game.

don't really disagree here, the combat is by far the weakest aspect of the Witcher and the Souls series wipes the floor with almost any game when it comes to combat

but the combat of the Witcher 3 still has a lot of depth. every monster is weak to a different type of oil, sign, bomb etc. some encounters get easier by useing specific potions, flying enemies need to get shot down first and overall you have multiple different options how you wanna take each encounter.

ofc it also depends on the player how many of those options you want to use. yes, you can get through the game by just spamming quen and nothing else, but then it's no surprise that the combat feels boring.
in DS1 you can just chain backstabs on 90% of the mobs which also makes this game incredibly boring and easy.

so alot depens on the player how much fun you have with the combat system. imo once you get used to it feels good and rewarding and especially some of the boss fights in Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine were really good and much better designed than most bosses of the main game

 

[blaseblah]

u could say the same about Dark Souls though
get 2-3 hits then dodge or block, rinse repeat

The basic enemies maybe, otherwise we'll have to disagree. I never struggled with the Witcher the way I struggled with Dark Souls. And I never had to run away from enemies the same way. Dark Souls is a much more challenging game.

 

[AronaBeatsJones]

UI has been redone with the new DLC. The combat can be annoying, but once you get your spells leveled up it becomes really fun. You can use mind control on enemies, unleash a shockwave that freezes enemies, have a bubble shield that explodes, places spirit traps to slow down enemies, beef up your sword skills and start hacking people apart with counterattacks, tons of buffers and effects to play around with. Turn up the difficulty, and it can be like playing chess at times. Each enemy has its own strategy to beat.

Story builds, he's trying to track down his surrogate daughter and the bad guys are the Wild Hunt who are like trans dimensional sorcerers and warriors, but it's more about the journey for me. The side quests are great, the choices made in the main quest are similar to Game of Thrones or the Waking Dead in that sometimes there are no clean good or bad choices, sometimes you have to live with a bad one. Do you save a town or let children get butchered? Lots of morally grey characters and choices, especially when involving the northern politics. The whole thing is very dark once you get into Velen and come across citizens hanged by the dozens, murdered children, people impaled and burned at the stake, etc.

Since making that post, I powered through the first ten hours and finished the rest of the game (finished Blood & Wine just a couple of hours ago), and boy was I wrong.

The choices in the dialog tree and subsequent consequences on the story are absolutely incredible. Like revolutionary. I really couldn't believe they put in so much content where they could afford not having players go through a linear storyline. Although, at times, you regret some of the choices you make, and you try and go back to get the best possible outcome.

The graphics and the world are extremely impressive, and once you get in the groove of handling all of the features through the UI, you really begin to appreciate all of the features they put in the game (IE: alchemy, crafting, abilities, etc). The dialog animations/cutscenes are probably the best I've seen, and put Bethesda to shame.

The thing I was wrong about the most was Gwent. For a good portion of the early stages of this game, I played primarily so I could seek out more Gwent games. Once you find a challenging opponent, and start spamming spy cards for a tactical advantage on quantity of cards, it becomes an insanely rewarding minigame. I just wish there was more of it, because there was not enough Gwent!

One of the things I appreciated about Witcher 3 which was a problem in other games was the accumulation of money/gold. Everything seems to cost money (IE: crafting armour, making potions, etc), and only a few times throughout the game did I find that I had a noticeable excess of what I needed. Otherwise, throughout most of the game, I was at the position where I had some gold, but not a whole lot. This made taking contracts and getting paid via missions even more rewarding for the ongoing character development, and when there was a point in the game where you needed A LOT of gold (IE: the Ofieri sword upgrades which were like 30,000 gold for all of them in "Hearts of Stone"), it gave you yet another reason to play.

I'll still maintain that the mechanics/combat are terrible. Probably the worst I've ever seen in an AAA game. Aside from Igni, I found using signs to be mostly tedious (breaking away from the live action), and the sword play was very formulaic (swipe, swipe, dodge). But the mechanics are the real issue (especially Roach), and the UI decision to have a "Press A" popup (which often times doesn't pop up) in order to do things like mount Roach was horrible. Actually, I'll also maintain that the UI / UX is also the worst I've seen in an AAA game. Nothing like having to go through the inventory and select each icon one-by-one to find what oil/potion/bomb you're looking for.

But all-in-all, it was an excellent gaming experience. For the next one, they just need to focus in on making the first 5-10 hours as accommodating as possible, and not throw you into the deep end with the lore, characters, pre-existing storylines from the previous game, etc.

 

[Tamriel Terror]

I've put in quite a few hours recently and i can say this game is fucking great. It destroys fallout 4 imo (fallout 4 without settlement building would have probably been one of the biggest gaming letdowns ever) and i personally think it has quite a few characteristics that make it better than skyrim.

 

[El Che]

Hi guys, I was thinking of starting Witcher 3. Should I play the first 2 to understand what is going on, or is just picking up 3 and going fine? How necessary are the first 2? Thanks

 

[Ashton]

Hi guys, I was thinking of starting Witcher 3. Should I play the first 2 to understand what is going on, or is just picking up 3 and going fine? How necessary are the first 2? Thanks

Not really necessary at all. The start of witcher 3 sorta goes over the major plot points of the first two games, I think there was even a catch-up movie that recapped the first two.

The Witcher and Assassin of Kings are good, but nowhere near as good as Witcher 3. I wouldn't bother playing them just to catch up on the story.

edit: the movie

 

[Tyrannosaurus rex]

Did most of you actually complete the entire game? Like every question mark, every gwent card and every contract or side quest? Considering going for it, but not sure if it's worth it.

Especially the gwent cards and 8000 smugglers cache's in Skellige. Gwent is fun, but it's a bit tedious to collect all cards when you don't know who you've played already.