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Off-Topic Discussion => Gaming Discussion => Topic started by: deathspeed on April 25, 2017, 07:17:43 am

Title: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: deathspeed on April 25, 2017, 07:17:43 am

Ars Technical and GOG are teaming up to give this away thru Ars (https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2017/04/ars-and-gog-two-great-tastes-that-go-great-together/) for 48 hours.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2017, 07:30:09 am

why would you subject yourself to TW1's gameplay though

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: Lorric on April 25, 2017, 08:31:10 am

Thanks.

Ha. I have this and Witcher 2 Enhanced now both for free through GOG.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: karajorma on April 25, 2017, 08:37:37 am

Quote from: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2017, 07:30:09 am

why would you subject yourself to TW1's gameplay though

For TW1's story.

The original isn't that bad. It's definitely not as good as the third one but it's not that bad. In fact I was replaying it earlier this year.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: Phantom Hoover on April 25, 2017, 10:01:36 am

I'm sceptical. I remember on IRC seeing Frikgfeek, a man whom I suspect of clinical gaming masochism, saying that TW2's gameplay was too **** to suffer through; so I can only assume that TW1's would leave me a burned-out husk incapable of recognising joy.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: Colonol Dekker on April 25, 2017, 11:41:17 am

It looks like they've blocked registration due to bot overload.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: MP-Ryan on April 25, 2017, 01:26:39 pm

As someone who has been playing through all the Witcher games in the last 8 months:

W1 can be considered an early-2000s flawed RPG with a few glimmers of excellence.  The combat system is not terrible, it's just quite boring.  The character development is not nearly as well done as W2/3, but there are considerable forays into character complexity that one can be appreciative of, and it is worth playing for the story as it ties into the sequels.  In other words, having played it at moderate difficulty, I'd recommend that any fan of the series should play it (if you have played W2/3 and found them merely okay, then skip).  It does take a while to get into, and it suffers the most of the three games from quest-interference problems, particularly in Act 2.  Honestly, I'd suggest putting it on easy so you can safely ignore most of the mechanics (though that does the unfortunate disservice of also ignoring alchemy, which is important to the universe) and going straight through the story.  One thing about the Witcher series as a whole is fetch quests are blessedly rare, and all the fetch quests in W1 can either be skipped, or you may end up completely them in regular gameplay - don't go out of your way.

W2:  I'm surprised anyone called Witcher 2's gameplay "****" because it is a straight-up improvement in terms of action and excitement from W1.  It does have QTEs - love them or hate them - and it basically requires an awful lot of roll-roll-mash-mouse1-roll in the combat (and the way it handles alchemy is disappointing compared to the first and third titles), but I played through both paths and found the characterization, plot complexity, and even sidequesting enjoyable (played on Hard, which is the 3rd of 5 difficulties).  In fact, W2 is a game I'd say is well worth any RPG fans' time even if you opt only to play on the lowest difficulty because I think the morality, characterization, and plot lines rival or exceed anything BioWare has put out, period.  It's a game where there is no real "good choice" or "bad choice," merely decision results that have different consequences.  That in and of itself makes it a must-play, because any departure from straight up -good-or-evil consequences in games is a rare gem, and W2 does it exceptionally well.

W3:  I'm still in White Orchard, so just starting out.  Mechanically, W3 appears to take most of the best mechanics from the first two games and combine them, resulting in a much more mechanically satisfying experience (dodge vs roll in the combat, for example, is fantastic; alchemy works properly again and doesn't force you into absurd predictions ahead of time; QTEs are gone), and it seems to take up right where W2 left off on characterization and plot development.

TL;DR:
-If you've played any Witcher games and enjoy the story and universe, get W1 (especially if free).
-If you haven't played a Witcher game before and are interested in following the story from the beginning (keeping in mind that gameplay evolves immensely over the series), get W1.
-If you've played any Witcher game before and didn't find anything about it compelling, then give W1 a hard pass.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: karajorma on April 26, 2017, 03:19:15 am

Yep. I'd agree 100% with the way you summed it up and I'm enough of a fan to have read all the books too.

Quote

In fact, W2 is a game I'd say is well worth any RPG fans' time even if you opt only to play on the lowest difficulty because I think the morality, characterization, and plot lines rival or exceed anything BioWare has put out, period.  It's a game where there is no real "good choice" or "bad choice," merely decision results that have different consequences.  That in and of itself makes it a must-play, because any departure from straight up -good-or-evil consequences in games is a rare gem, and W2 does it exceptionally well.

I'd say W1 does this fairly well too.

Spoiler:

You can remain neutral, side with the Knights (some of whom are virtuous but a lot of whom are basically racists), or side with the squirrels (who are fighting for freedom against oppression but often go too far into flat out terrorism).

And yet none of those is actually the wrong choice. They just lead to different story outcomes. Witcher 3 is in some ways the most traditional in that it does have choices that lead to good or bad outcomes. But it still also has choices which merely lead to different outcomes. A lot has been made of the fact that there are multiple endings to the game. In fact there are only a three main endings but there is an added dimension of a lot of the outcomes of your actions being revealed in the ending.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: FrikgFeek on April 26, 2017, 03:55:08 am

To be fair, I said TW2 is a game only worth playing through for the good writing and pretty graphics because the combat is terrible. Yes, walking around and talking to people is a big part of the game and if you consider that "gameplay" then that part of it is fine. Unless you feel obligated to set the difficulty to the highest one by your inner demons just leave it on normal or easy and enjoy the graphics and writing.

Because I have clinical gaming masochism I finished TW2 on Hard and later on Dark difficulty and the combat is really not very enjoyable. Just because it's more action oriented and "exciting" than TW1 doesn't mean it's a better system. It's way more broken and  ultimately just come down to roll-dodge spamming because attack animations are slow, backstab bonuses are insane, and hitstun animations are way too long. Like most RPGs, the higher you go in difficulty the more exploration, leveling, and crafting is required but while TW3 is enjoyable if you have the right stats, buffs, and potions TW2 is not, simply because the combat system doesn't ask you to do anything but avoid hits. Getting in damage is extremely simple and even avoiding hits just comes down to not overcommitting and spamming dodge-rolls.

The stamina system is also really stupid. Blocking and casting spells costs stamina and your melee damage is reduced depending on how much stamina you have, up to 50% if you have 0 stamina. So at the start of the game with only 2 stamina bars if you block once or cast a single spell your sword damage goes down by 25% which is just stupid and a bad system. The game actively punishes you for using spells and blocking attacks instead of just spamming dodge roll and light attack. TW3 improves on this system not only with the player having more options but with enemies having more interesting attack patterns. With simple melee attacks, dodges, and mid-range lunges you constantly have to think about your positioning and attacking, but if you're good enough with dodging you can remain on the offensive and even use that short-range dodge to close the gap. With TW2 you get in 2-3 hits and roll away and you're 100% safe in most cases because enemies can't really avoid your blows and can't lunge at you from range. And Geralt constantly rolling all over the place just looks ****ing stupid. Hit, hit, hit, dodge, hit, hit, etc. isn't a very interesting thing to be constantly doing.


With TW1 I don't think it's actually worth playing through. It looks crappy, most of the voicework is pretty bad, and the combat is boring. If you just wanna enjoy the writing you can look up a Let's Play or something. There are superfans out there who recorded pretty much every meaningful choice-route in the game so you can 'make' your choice by choosing which routes to watch. A big upside of this is that you can also just skip through the boring grinding and combat parts and just watch the dialogue.

Title: Re: FREE - The Witcher: Enhanced Edition
Post by: MP-Ryan on April 28, 2017, 01:36:17 am

I won't deny TW2 had some definite mechanical problems in its combat system (use bombs!), and The Operator in particular infuriated me on Hard because the design of that encounter was utterly broken, but after the monotonous boredom of TW1 combat it was a welcome improvement.... especially as you level up.  But there is so much richness to that entire game that makes it easy to look past the combat.  TW1 is much rougher.

Aside:  I am doing my first playthrough of W3 on Death March.  Go big or go home, right?  So far:
- Dodge is amazing and I'm getting good at it.  Parry/counter less so.
- I die a lot.  But it's worth it.  Smacking down that Level 6 bear at level 1 was oh so satisfying.
- Drowners all need to die in a fire, quickly.  Ugh.