The Witcher Review (PC)
Gameplay
There are few cameras that you can set, according to your style of gameplay. You use the standardized W, A, S, D to move around (if you choose the "F3 Gameplay Camera", a semi-first person mode) or clicking your mouse a la Diablo in Third Person view camera. Fighting involves pointing and clicking your mouse to an enemy that you want to attack. You don’t do rapid clicking though, but based on timings. On easy to normal mode, you will see an indicator as to when you should click next to perform a successful combo. Clicking on the right timing gives you a continuous combo. Clicking on the wrong time, however, and the combo is cancelled and you’ll give your enemy a time to counter attack you.
There are 3 kinds of attacks: Strong, Fast, and Group. Fighting a big slow enemy? Switch to "Strong" attack and deliver a massive damage! Fighting an agile enemy that always dodges your attacks? Switch to "Fast" mode, a-lesser-damage-but-guaranteed-a-hit -attack. Being surrounded by more than 1 or 2 enemies? No problem. Switch to "Group" attack mode to make sure you hit all enemies and giving them no chances to attack you back.
You are going solo in this game. At some points of the game, there will be NPCs that will follow you during a quest and help you to fight. Don’t expect them to do the dirty work for you though and they usually don’t stay very long.
Inventory & Alchemy
Horrible inventory system
The inventory system is horrible (sorry to say). It’s basically an unsorted inventory where all things are everywhere. You’ll have to roll over your mouse to find whether you have vodka in your inventory or not. You can sort and rearrange your inventory, but you have to do this often.
The alchemy though, is quite interesting. It allows you to make potions based on some ingredients or extract nutrients from plants or monsters. It’s kind of hard to figure out though, what formula is missing for potion A or B, unless you do massive mouse roll over here and there. I don’t find making and drinking potions are interesting enough, as I can play through most of the battles without drinking potions.
Other interesting stuffs to notice
NPCs will walk around and interact by themselves (doing conversations). There is a day-night cycle when you are playing the game (robbers in the city come out at night, some monsters/spirits appearing near the cemetery, traders close their shops, people go back to their houses and go to bed, etc), rains (NPCs will start running around looking for a shelter and start complaining about the rain as we usually do 
), birds on the ground flying when you get too close to them, guards will help you to kill monsters or bandits that have been chasing you around, and there are many more.
Hide! It’s raining!!"
Crashes
There are many people on the web experiencing crashes. I had that experience before where The Witcher crashes every few minutes on my Vista. I found a post somewhere on the internet that suggested me not to play the game in full screen. I followed the advice, and since then, I only have a few rare crashes. Besides, playing the game in a window helps me a lot: I can chat in MSN and browse the web while waiting for those horrible loading times (ALT-TABing)
Go and buy this game, now!
Conclusion
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Despite the long loading times and a few crashes in the game, The Witcher is one of the best RPG that I’ve ever played. I loved Oblivion and its open-ended gameplay, but the main story line didn’t impress me at all. The Witcher has a good main story, good side quests, some decision making, attachment to the game characters and many more. There is also a mini game of "poker" in the game. It’s quite fun to play and you can gain orens from it (mm I mean, cash) I’m now far in the middle of the game. It’s time to stop writing this and find more ladies to ..*ahem* I mean, find more monsters to slay! Hope this small review is useful to you. What are you waiting for? Go and buy the Witcher for PC, the best RPG of the year, now!..Ditch your Oblivion and its expansion packs! ^^ DISCLAIMER: Some of the screenshots are taken from The Witcher’s official website |
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To all,
One big issue I have with the game is, once again, game developers decided that altering the game playing level of difficulty should ONLY be allowed at the very begining of a game. So if you start at one level of difficulty, there you are stuck unless you start the entire game over from the beginning. Not fun, not nice, and very poor marketing choice in my opinion.
Wow BMD! You are so right! What a way to almost ruin a really great game. No way to reset the difficulty level after having started the game. Lazy programing!
I actually like the idea that we can’t alter the difficulty of the game once it’s set. It keeps me challenged throughout the game (Maybe it’s just me)
Which difficulty level did you choose? I chose err was it Medium? And my Geralt was slicing through the enemies like there’s no tomorrow even till the end of the game (I rarely drank potions)
Actually Michael, you make my point for me! The issue is not the temptation to reduce the difficulty level after getting hours into the game, the issue is not being able to INCREASE the difficulty after being hours into the game. Specifically because slicing through all the enemies gets to be TOO easy. But no, yer forced to play five hours all over again to increase the level of difficulty.
By the way Michael. The lack of player input in naming “Saved” positions and the saved positions NOT indicating the level of difficulty selected at at that save point in time… all completely sucks rotten eggs. So does not being able to find a “Saved Game” folder in order to save and move prior saved games while a person works through what difficulty level is best for them.
I have just bought this game and can’t get it to work. We get to the screen where you assign points to attributes, signs, steel swords and silver swords and then can’t get out of it. It even looks like they are saying we have played the game…which we haven’t. Can anyone help us to get started?
Thank-you
There’s an enhancement patch to the Witcher, which may or may not fix your problems.
played through the game.great game!! with exception to the load time and more importantly the ability to save a game and not be able to indicate on it that is “your” game and not someone elses game. this is messed up!! they should of made it possible to have multiple players open a menu and be able to go their set of game saves under a name of their chooseing this would have made a much improved game!!
Have you installed the Enhanced edition of the Witcher? It should reduce the load times significantly, among with other great updates: http://www.cravingtech.com/blog/the-witcher-enhanced-edition.html