Why I've fallen in love with The Witcher

1) "Your mother sucks dwarven dick."
2) Characters of dubious virtue and mixed motives.
3) Great graphical style and great soundtrack.
4) The main character, Geralt, performs a lot of vaginal penetration in the course of his adventures.
5) A deep, finely-crafted, engaging and intriguing world rendered in beautiful, gritty detail.
6) "I fucked a she-elf once."
7) A novel combat system.
9) Interesting and varied side quests.
9) Whores, whores, whores!
10) An engrossing plot line filled with twists, turns, and very well developed major themes.

I'll go into more depth later, but if you want to play an adult RPG that replaces black and white good and evil with shades of gray and incorporates real-time combat without resorting to a Diablo-style clickfest, then I would highly recommend The Witcher to you. So far, it's been hands-down the best RPG experience I've ever had in a single player video game.

Have you played Oblivion? If so, how does it compare?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rick Scarf

Have you played Oblivion? If so, how does it compare?

Well, I played Oblivion for a while, but I never got caught up in it enough to actually get near to completing the game. Also, I don't remember it all that well, but I'll see if I can make a fair comparison...

The Witcher is quite different in that the game world is more circumscribed with fewer locations you can explore at any given time in the game as well as fewer side-quests. Also, your character cannot select from multiple character classes but instead is the eponymous witcher Geralt, a mutant who was once human (though still maintains a human appearance) but underwent enhancements to give him super-human combat prowess, endurance, and resilience as well as the ability to perform limited magic in the form of signs and to imbibe alchemical potions of his own preparation that enhance his abilities.

The trade-off is that everything is much more finely honed. Pretty much all the characters in the game have very unique and three-dimensional personalities and good to great dialog, and the main character's identity as a witcher is strongly integrated into the plot. Furthermore, even though you will always generally approach combat from the same way since you always play the same character class, the combat system feels to me at least to be much more solid than that of Oblivion for this reason, and with out a doubt it is certainly unique. My one criticism is that side quests could have been a bit more interesting, but they definitely do the job of maintaining interest, and I think that other aspects of the game make up for that.

Let's face it-- Oblivion had a lot of dialog, but how much of it was good dialog? Oblivion had a lot of characters, but were any of them that memorable? Oblivion had a lot of side quests, but how many of them really that great? And in the end, didn't the massive hodge-podge of spells, abilities, and weapons available make combat feel sloppy and unfocused?

Firstly, let me point out that this is, without a doubt, a mature and gritty game. The world, based off the novels of Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, is full of moral ambiguities, with everyone acting according to their own agenda and no one being clearly "good" or "evil." All the other RPGs I've played recently, notably Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights 2, have often made me cringe with their childish characters and simplistic "black and white" morality. This is probably one of the reasons why I find the game so engrossing, because I can actually take it a little seriously. Also, it really feels like an uncensored "fairy tale" of the old sort, with the violence and sex preserved and unsanitized.

As I said above, the combat system is certainly unique. It seems to me to be most based on Diablo's click interface, except that combat is slower paced and against smaller groups of mobs, so it never devolves to a click-fest and has a very tactical feel to it. The witcher has 3 ways of dealing with enemies: his sword, his signs, and his potions.

Your main method of dealing damage is with sword slashes, which you can deliver in 3 stances whose effectiveness depends on the enemies' characteristics. If you time your attacks correctly, you deal greater damage in the form of combos, which allow you to chain up to 4 attacks. However, devoting attention to one mob means that you leave yourself vulnerable to other enemies, so often you have to be aware of the situation and place yourself intelligently so as to maximize the amount of time you have to deliver combination attacks. You can do fast dodges to help you do this.

To supplement your combat, you have access to a handful of signs which are mostly AoE utility spells, though one deals direct damage and another acts as a shield. These greatly enhance your combat prowess if used wisely.

Finally, you have access to a large variety of potions which give you special enhancements if imbibed such as increased damage, increased parry/dodge chances, sight in dark areas, or increased vitality (HP) regeneration. However, potions also increase your toxicity, limiting how many you can imbibe at a time. Potions are mostly made by the player himself using ingredients collected from plants and creatures and are concocted when the player rests. In addition, the player can also make oil that coat his blade and enhance its damage against certain enemies as well as bombs that he can toss at his foes. Note that unlike in Diablo, there is no "instant heal" potion, and you can't just drink and infinite number of them, so HP is much more meaningful than in other games. Also, unlike in Oblivion or any D&D based title, you mostly can't just rest where ever, so again HP becomes much more meaningful.

I have to say that thus far, I would like combat to have been a little tougher, though I am still perhaps a bit early in the story, and I have noticed that the game has started to get a bit harder. Also, I am playing on "normal" mode, so I might replay the game on "hard" mode and see if it is more of a challenge. As I said above, the side quests could have been a little more varied and interesting, but there is still enough in them to keep me going. Finally, I think that the cards you get of each of the women the main character has sex with are a silly and a concession to the horny teenagers that play this game, but I don't take them too seriously.

So even though The Witcher is on a smaller scale than Oblivion, I feel that that the game has taken full advantage of this by making everything feel tighter and more whole. Also, I feel like the world and characters aren't insultingly simplified and puerile.

Oh right, and here's a couple more criticisms of the game to add to the few critical remarks (but mostly glowingly positive remarks) in the above posts:

*The game crashes too frequently.
*The Alchemy interface could have been implemented better, with a better way of sorting ingredients and viewing recipes.

Still, the game is really incredible and unique, and I recommend it to any RPG lover.

Cool thanks for the good comments. I rep'd you for whatever that is worth.
I will make a mental note to check this game out at some point in the future.