gamingeek said:Uh Uh yeah, Uh Uh Uh yeah yeah uh uh.
WAN TOO THREE FOR!!
FUCKING TROLL!
ONE BY ONNNNNNNNEEEEEEE. INTO THE SUUUUUUUUN
Since I have continued to be internetless, I have been playing only TW3. Reached Skellige which astounded me with its vistas and changing landscape, and thoroughly enjoyed the big story arch with the an Craite clan. I ditched most of the HUD save for health bars and combat items, so that means when I am traversing and not in combat I get all of the screen to ogle at. Really soaking in all of the sidequests, even the smaller ones, reading the notes and getting involved. Most of them I believe should offer more than easy choices, say I am trying to get a heirloom sword back, I should have the option of being bribed by the thieves, as well as getting it back from them. And if I do side with the thieves, there should be at least some repercussion to it.
SteelAttack said:Since I have continued to be internetless, I have been playing only TW3. Reached Skellige which astounded me with its vistas and changing landscape, and thoroughly enjoyed the big story arch with the an Craite clan. I ditched most of the HUD save for health bars and combat items, so that means when I am traversing and not in combat I get all of the screen to ogle at. Really soaking in all of the sidequests, even the smaller ones, reading the notes and getting involved. Most of them I believe should offer more than easy choices, say I am trying to get a heirloom sword back, I should have the option of being bribed by the thieves, as well as getting it back from them. And if I do side with the thieves, there should be at least some repercussion to it.
The game has some great side ops, but that's the problem...you spend so much time on them that you get burned out before the game is even close to done. That's why I ended up ditching the side ops at some point and just focusing on the main quest.
I loved Skellige. The British Isles' Viking heritage is great fun.
The music in this game is the tits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOn1xdGkyHY
The music that plays when you are doing the crookbag bog questline gives me the willies. Creepy.
Towers, I have mixed feelings about the overall combat.
So structurally I get what they are going for and there are things I'm willing to meet them halfway on. For instance I'm never going to really bitch about the fact that he pivots and dances when he fights, in theory that's because they are being lore specific, and frankly some of the best games ever are based on deliberate attack animations: The original Castlevania, Resident Evil 4, Demon's Souls for starters. The back slash is still where you do the most premium damage, so in theory the combat is all about gaining positioning. Using one or two of your dodges, there is the swift close quarters dodge which naturally puts you in closer position to attack when you dodge, but if the attack has the range it's not good enough of a dodge. The long dodge comes at the expense that you won't be in a position to use a sign (which again I went with a sign heavy build for death march as opposed to alchemy). So during some of the best encounters there is a neat little balancing act going on for positioning, and once you got the right skills you can make Geralt a pretty badass machines. Crowd control with aard, heavy damage with igni fire stream/melt armor, using your active shield to heal, or your exploding shield while you play keep away. It's a delicate dance where you work for positioning vs say Demon's Souls where you circle strafe and call it a life.
Problem is that the camera is fucking awful, and its the encounter designs that kill some of the games momentum at times. Initial Golem fight for instance when you are with Keira, pretty cool encounter. A lot of breathing room, you got time to figure out what's going to hit hard and learn his moves, and you get to play the whole field. Same type of enemy, except smaller, in a way smaller room, as an optional enemy gargoyle is somehow more frustrating becasue you're in this enclosed space where you can't dodge certain moves, and your defensive move (the parry) is fucking useless. And scenarios like that happen a lot, for instance doing the Bloody Baron mission on death march and god forgive me for not having invested more in magic trap, what an asshole fight that was. Still the hardest part in the game, just for how frustrated I was with the camera.
The game has this enemy that effectively teleports all over the map, and proceeds teleport behind you, where the damage output is even more severe, and added bonus there are like 5 or 6 of them in this again limited space with not a lot of room to move around. Because if you get too far you deal with a different beast, who at the halfway point summons these teleporting wraiths. Oh did I mention that magic traps the ones i like to use are a wind up themselves, and if you just go with a regular one, that's fine it'll lock one of the wraiths, but because 5 of them are there they are constantly teleporting on you, and soft dodge doesn't work as well. FUCK EVERYTHING
Oh and the other beast you can't hard lock, so the game has two locks. Soft lock you automatically lock in on the enemy, and it gimps Geralts movement (The idea being that you need to move with your dodges and sidesteps), which is fine EXCEPT AGAINST ENEMIES YOU CANT HARD LOCK. WHICH IS FINE WHEN ITS A FUCKING GRIFFON IN A FUCKING FIELD NOT IN A MOTHER FUCKING CORRIDOR YOU POLISH FUCKS!! so your just dodging endlessly while battling this camera designed by a prick. I am astounded how the modern gamer is too pansy to handle Ninja Gaiden's camera, which is every other action games camera, even has a fucking reset, you little bitch, but The Witcher which has this sluggish, poor angle camera, that doesn't have a reset button on either the keyboard or the gamepad is totally fine? Nigga what?
But that stuff also isn't frequent, but at the same time the core feel of the combat is limp. Rarely have I played a game this violent and pretty dark in tone in spots, but the act of hitting something with a sword is limp as fuck. Don't get me wrong, it's like light years ahead of any battle system Bethesda has come up with, and EA Bioware, isn't exactly rolling in the D&D glory days combat these days as much as they make shit. But that's a low ass fucking bar.
There were points where the action wasn't holding the game down, and the difficulty made everything have some tension to it to make it all enjoyable and exciting during the game, and complimented what is a pretty dope world and and characters (overall plot is whatever, but the subplots have been terrific), but when The Witcher 3 hits some lows? Holy shit it some lows. Which I'm starting to think is something that only really gets exposed on Death March. A lot of those scenarios against multiple foes highlights a lot of the weaknesses of the battle system, as opposed to extreme difficulty showing you the strengths of Metal Gears systems, or Master Ninja separating men from children.
Because the lack of difficulty in the 2nd half or even it being "shallow" isn't a real issue to me, because it's not shallow necessarily. There are ideas in place that would translate to an enjoyable battle system, lord knows the game feel is all that really needs to make a major overhaul, but the encounter desgins are pretty lousy and those are a much larger issue to me.
Which is why I think the combat is okay, not bad, but also not good. Okay, it's fine, it works, it functions.
Your description makes it sound so shit, though. So it's time to hand in your Certified Combat Elitist Badge if your giving this garbage a pass.
Anyway, the base mechanics certainly can function, but these are mechanics that for a long time require you to be actively involved in combat...and being an RPG, you'll be in combat for tens of hours. So that means if your combat breaks down like this: 30% of the time, the mechanics are straight up broken due to idiotic encounter design, 60% of the time, the encounter design is "functional", sure, but unbearably boring (which describes every RPG ever, the difference here is that until you can cheese everything, you have to be actively engaged in the shit, rather than just being able to zone out and ignore it compeltely)*, and 10% of the time, the cool encounter design makes the functional mechanics actually kinda fun. And another 10% of the time (the combat is so bad, we need to break 100%), you can cheese everything so who gives a fuck, and it's no worse than combat in other RPGs.
Still a really fucking good game, don't get me wrong.
*As a fellow death marcher, definitely agree that people playing on lower difficulties are less likely to be as disgusted as you and I.
See that's my central conflict, how much of this is CD Projekt Red can't design difficulty, where as the lower difficulties at least mask the deficiencies. The camera is stupid, but not broken, the combat is limp, but not irritating in practice, on Death March man Velen was a test of patience. I still refuse to call it poor mechanically, because there are plenty of cool systems as well for instance. Did you know that if you burn something, then throw a dragonbreath bomb thing on another enemy or near a group, and aard push said burning person into that bombs gas= max explosion. It's not quite Divinity: Original Sin, but it gave me a similar moment of glee.
I still don't agree that it's poor mechanically though: The camera and the parry animation need some fine tuning, and then the overall audio for the combat needs to give it some impact (better enemy animations as well I guess), but the general crux of it I think works. Dodge to move around and get position, best dodge coming with managing stamina, spells, alchemy, bombs (I rarely use alchemy and bombs for my build, but shhh) and more than enough of the game is spent outside. It's the rare moment the game chooses a close quarters corridor section that I want to run over the dudes behind this game. It's not Bayonetta, but if there is excellent tier, there needs to be layers below it. I would still put The Witcher as the tallest midget. The mediocre combat system out of the triple A rpg franchises: Fable, Dragon Age, Mass Effect, Elder Snore. I'd shit on Dragon Age's name as well, but that name is plenty shitty on its own, no effort on my part needed ; >
Also gonna give Chris so much shit about how many fucking monster nest and guarded treasure sequences flood that map. Real winners over there.
My official word (review) is that the combat mechanics are "action game-lite", i.e. a snide way of saying they're mediocre (which is good for an RPG, I suppose?). But the combat overall is horseshit, because in practice those mediocre mechanics are so ineptly used within the game.
I don't see how people don't play on death march, the difficulty is broken in witcher 3. You get five million side quests that raise your levels and no real balance to the difficulty. Everything outside a few encounters that you should wait till later to approach was a cake walk. It all ties together with the simplistic combat system that is almost never utilized correctly. It feels like a tier above Zelda combat but Zelda combat actually has interesting enemies that make use of your abilities it's just easy as shit cause damage is basically insignificant.
And I really don't get comparisons to Bethesda games. Witcher 3 has no freedom in the combat, it's as stuck in place as an action game. Most encounters basically have invisible walls where the enemies won't cross. Bethesda games are OPEN, they have emergent gameplay. Sure the base mechanics are kind of crappy it still allows a level of freedom and spontaneity that witcher does not have. In TES if see a giant spider it can chase me half way across the world so I can maybe lead it to a Giants lair and now those two things are fighting and I can fight the winner. Plus the combat options available to you take a giant shit over what witcher allows. In witcher you can press the alchemy attack or the magic attack, it's the same shit with a different animation, the battles for the most part always play out the same way. In TES if you want you can become an invisible knife murdering in your sleep serial killer, or when you have a magic build its an actual MAGIC build. You can stealth, you can brute, you can avoid many things entirely, again cause it is open.
I'd rather play with Bethesda combat and everything it allows me to do any day over the repetitive boring witcher 3 combat.
I know I set my difficulty to be harder than normal. I did not gain health from Meditating. I absolutely HAD TO use bombs and oils to win. Even late in the game, getting surrounded by Nekkars or Foglets could still lead to death. I honestly don't remember encountering any jankiness with the camera though. Most of the times I didn't even bother with lock-on, unless it was a flying enemy that was harder to track. I never played a Witcher game on normal or easier levels, so I have no idea how it differs. I noticed different color enemy Drowners and slight variations with differing names among the common enemies sometimes. Don't know if that was dependant on the level or if they were always in there. I liked how some contracts beefed up common enemies and gave them unique names. It was those battles where things differed slightly.
Now, in Fallout, I'll be fighting Legendary Enemies in battle and they'll ocassionally mutate in the middle of the fight. That IS indeed based on difficulty! I wish Witcher had something like that in it.
If you don't do the side quests the normal difficulty is fine.
Dvader said:I don't see how people don't play on death march, the difficulty is broken in witcher 3. You get five million side quests that raise your levels and no real balance to the difficulty. Everything outside a few encounters that you should wait till later to approach was a cake walk. It all ties together with the simplistic combat system that is almost never utilized correctly. It feels like a tier above Zelda combat but Zelda combat actually has interesting enemies that make use of your abilities it's just easy as shit cause damage is basically insignificant.
Which Zelda game would that even apply to at this point?
Twilight Princess? No, the very nature of those extra skills Link gets being optional meant that all the enemies are built in a manner to make those moves completely useless or just there when you want to show off with a combat system isn't exactly DMC.
Wind Waker? come on
Skyward Sword? That game sold out more item centric enemies, for relatively specific sword slashes.
Otherwise Zelda has been use the item you got in the dungeon, and rarely anything more than that. The boss designs are cool, but they've been pushovers in terms of the 3d zeldas, and the regular enemies have been the same shit for the longest time, with the same brand of wait and attack procedure that's been there since Ocarina?
Also The Witcher's combat when it works actually has tools and systems meant to be used properly, half the beasts you fight are better suited for you to use a specific spell/achemey item since simply slashing away at the thing is just a drawn out process of taking advantage of the enemies tether range. Which would then be no different than Zelda asking you to use all your abilities or any of that. Can't speak to Skyrim (will get around to it next year) or Fallout 4, but the mechanics in any of The Witcher games have never been the sheer shit barrel that is how sword play has worked in Morrowind (especially with cliff racers) or Oblivion, Daggerfall getting a mild pass because it was more dungeon crawler rules than anything. Ditto Fallout 3's dull shooting. They are emergent, except the enemies don't animate or do anything anything since anything works, it also helps that The Witcher is hand crafted (yes Tomas, hand crafted shitty at times) where as Elder Scrolls just gets lazy and has procedural shit. So if you went with a stamina build, congrats all your caves for the rest of the game have an ice guy. Since that's how they balance thing. Witchers enemies are a bit more active and inherently more interesting to me from a creative standpoint since I like folklore type stuff vs Elder Scrolls brand of fantasy. To be fair what I've seen of Fallout 4, enemies move around and animate a bit more. Which is nice, and long over due.
The Witcher 3 definitely dialed back the RPG though, more in line with the basic things you expect from a RPG, and not as heavy on the lore appropriate stuff that the previous games asked you. I get that actually reading notes and trying to figure out the monster on your own, and meditating and all that jazz before fights for potions, and actually needing to take into account what time you go to do a quest had its own level of tedium, but it added a lot to that first game (lousy combat and all). The game found a way to do a different spin on role playing, without not actually being a RPG in the process (Mass Effect's sequels) or an out right poor one (Fallout 3), so not necessarily the biggest fan of that. I would have preferred some of that stuff transfer over, but given how big the game world is, I could see why they didn't roll with that route.
As for difficulty balance, I'm all for a hard game when I think the game can validate its higher difficulties, but The Witcher 3 simply doesn't, and I don't always look at a game being a push over as some death sentence. You get a shit load of quests in the game, and yeah the trade off they took for that was if you do everything, you'll overlevel quickly. Which isn't necessarily a new concept to RPGs, the only "solution" to that has ever been has either been make the core play inherently more tense and challenging (souls stuff, and even then if you build it right you can wreck things), or level scaling, and fuck that. I'd rather the game take that L and make it up else where, besides sans treasure chests and monster hunts, outside of other crpgs, this is probably the most I've been into the side missions in a game in a long time, including a lot of the triple A rpgs.
Foolz said:My official word (review) is that the combat mechanics are "action game-lite", i.e. a snide way of saying they're mediocre (which is good for an RPG, I suppose?). But the combat overall is horseshit, because in practice those mediocre mechanics are so ineptly used within the game.
Fair enough, I still think the games general groove is fine, and the rare high point sequences here and there. There are just a smattering of sequences where you go, yeah Poland sucks at combat, no wonder those fucks always got rekt two World Wars running.
phantom_leo said:I know I set my difficulty to be harder than normal. I did not gain health from Meditating. I absolutely HAD TO use bombs and oils to win. Even late in the game, getting surrounded by Nekkars or Foglets could still lead to death. I honestly don't remember encountering any jankiness with the camera though. Most of the times I didn't even bother with lock-on, unless it was a flying enemy that was harder to track. I never played a Witcher game on normal or easier levels, so I have no idea how it differs. I noticed different color enemy Drowners and slight variations with differing names among the common enemies sometimes. Don't know if that was dependant on the level or if they were always in there. I liked how some contracts beefed up common enemies and gave them unique names. It was those battles where things differed slightly.
Now, in Fallout, I'll be fighting Legendary Enemies in battle and they'll ocassionally mutate in the middle of the fight. That IS indeed based on difficulty! I wish Witcher had something like that in it.
Can't tell, but the different colored ones are just a higher grade enemy that shows up in spots. The games answer to difficulty is the standard move most video games go with: They hit hard as fuck, you don't take a lot to go down. There might also be a level bump, but I doubt there is anything more than that to the difficulty without looking at a wiki. The Witcher contracts and questing enemies in general tend to have more effort since there is some direction there.
edgecrusher said:If you don't do the side quests the normal difficulty is fine.
Yeah, but in this case you'd want to do a lot of the side quests in the game. The contracts have the cooler monsters, while none of the side quests have had the same level of multilayered quests I've seen in the Main Quests, there is a reasonable amount of work put into them to actually make them part of the overall adventure. Of course I say this as someone who historically will ignore the side shit, and stick to the main quest and move on with life.
Oh and Tomas....so I got to the part where I freed Anna and had the whole Bloody Baron, Witches of the Bog and all that quest play itself out where it ended for me with Baron killing himself, mid conversation the game does this comic book reel of Geralts opinions on the decisions he made? What a stupid fucking addition. They get so many other story beats and writing elements of their game down, but botch this shit.
And they do it like 3 times in the entire game, just so it's as jarring as possible every single time lol...
Why though? They were smart enough to go 3 straight games without a fucking morality system, they probably have been handling choice and consequences better than any wrpg dev of the last decade outside of Troika (RIP) and Obsidian, but they do this inFamous tier shit. The Witcher 1 doesn't do that, hell I can't even remember if that was a thing Witcher 2 did.
Wait you just got to the bloody baron?! That's the best quest in the entire game. You just started. Get back to me after 100 more hours of the same combat. Witcher combat could have been great, you describe it well but it never gets past the level of its potential. Once you learn to fight you use those same tactics from hour 5 till hour 100. There is plenty of enemy variety and yes they use different tactics but I feel that the tactics don't feel all that different. using fire in a fight, throwing a certain grenade, using slow, it just feels like a slightly different attack.
When I compare it to Zelda it's just the feel of the fight, obviously witcher is deeper. But you enter a combat area, enemies appear, you dodge around and slash at the right moment. You have a bunch of skills to use that can hamper or hurt the enemie and certain enemies are designed to be attacked using a certain item/magic. It's not like a DMC kind of action game, it's not like a traditional RPG where you have a party and need to use team tactics. So the closest thing I compare it to is Zelda, it's clearly not the same, it's just a loose comparison.
I'm way past Bloody baron, I'm on skelliga, and I don't think between the 3 of us we are that far off, neither of us are willing to call it good for instance lol. My thing is I wouldn't go all the way with calling it mechanically poor as much as some of the encounter design is jsut fucking stupid, based on the limitations Geralt has, some of these scenarios shouldn't have made it past play testing. Which my guess is that they are a total push over for most of the games other difficulty settings, so no one really cared to notice.
Uh Uh yeah, Uh Uh Uh yeah yeah uh uh.
WAN TOO THREE FOR!!