I've been playing videogames since, well NES was the first and the Genesis the second. Then I switched to PC and the only reason I got a PS3 (and the only reason I would have got a P2) is for a MGS game. My point is that I'm a gaming veteran, but no expert, so I don't write a 'review' or analysis. I just want to give you a friendly recommendation: either you pirate it, or buy it, you should play The Witcher 3.

So, let's go very quickly in the pros and cons etc:

Pros:

- Wide game. Probably the vastest sigle-player gaming experience I can recall. We're not talking like variety, like in GTA in which you can shoot, drive, fuck, play tennis, golf, etc. What I mean is that the world really feels like a world. Sometimes, you will have no choice but to travel to a place. And belive me, the atmosphere and everything makes you enjoy your ride in the horse with some nice music and beautiful landscapes. Adding to this the amount of quest you can feels like it's neverending. I found myself postponing main missions to find the ingredients for a potion, to kill a monster, to get an armor that was like 5 levels ahead of me, and I enjoyed it.

- Atmosphere. As I told in the previous point, the game does a very good job with the world settings. The game is settled in a medieval world in which magic things are seen more like a problem or 'pest' rather than the traditional 'standart'. Even if in your adventure you will deal with magic things in a way it looks like its 'normal', normal people tend to fear it or detest it. Not only that, the music, the way cities and villages are shaped. All comes toghether in a really nice world that urges you to explore it.

- Gameplay mechanics: the game is complex. Or at least, is far more complex than the traditional Assassin's creed, Batman, GTA or Call of Duty. It's actually a game that demands you read most of the tons of info it throws at you. Yes sometimes quests are repetitive in the patter 'travel here, beat up this shit'. But the way you must face different monsters and bosses makes the gameplay feel very unique. So if swordfights and spells are not good enough for you, there's always the loyal fists to punch an idiot in the face. Oh wait... that's not good enough? well there's gwent for you! what is gwent? is a card game in the game. Yes, basically a mini-heartstone inside the game! I didn't played it.... but it was there! You can play different people in the game and there's a couple of quest related to the card game aswell.

Cons:

- woah woah woah hold there! Can you say that again? A wide game brings LOTS of information: mechanics, menus, enemies, long dialogs in which you have to make decisions (which I like, but if you skip dialogs you will end up asking WTF WHATDOICHOSE!). You will spend lot of time reading, so be ready for it. I don't expect a kid to enjoy the game to be honest.

- Soft porn: There are titties, so you can't have your mom and dad watching you playing. You never know...

- There was a story? The story is not bad, but since this is The Witcher 3 you don't know much about pasts games. And the game supports a lot of stuff in past games. I don't blame them for that. But when you have THIS MUCH of things going on, you can't blame writers to have some boring story-related stuff here and there.

- Kind of unforgiving game. Since you start as a weak, the very first enemies will present a challenge you are not that much ready to go. I was getting my ass killed a lot because I fought some level 4 Drowners like if I was level 10 or something. All enemies have a special way to face them and to gain some advantages you have to complete a lot of side quests. Another thing is that when you are negotiating the price of your contract (a kind of quests in which you get rewarded by a contractor), is very hard to tell if the quest is going to be hard or easy (you have to previously chek in the menu, but who the fuck does that everytime lol) so you can't really know if you have to charge a lot or go soft. I was like level 10 and I ended up facing a level 30 or so giant ass spider. When I realized I dealt 0 damage to the spider I ran my ass off as quick as I could.

- Some glitches. The game glitches a lot more than you can expect. Few things are game-breaking but is normal to see models appearing in a obvious bad spot and that kind of stuff. My game at least had the tendency to freeze like 1/10 times at random moments.

- Experience system (I'm not sure about this one). I don't know but it feels like the experience system works like this: you complete quests which give a fixed amout of experience and even if you kill a fucking level 9999 dragon, you get your fixed experience points. This means that farming experience killing powerfull enemies wont work. Again, I'm not really sure but I remeber a quest in which some lvl25 drawfs ambushed me (I was like 10) and even if I killed them by 'glitching' them by moving in and out and stuff, I didn't got 1 level out of that fight. And they were like 4.

There's a lot to tell for this game, I still haven't finish it since I already did ....... something that I belived it was the end. And I still have stuff to do!

Try the game while the network is do---- nevermind, go play dota bitch.

Cya!!! :D

rebdomine

6040 Posts

August 24 2015 02:36 GMT

Have you played other witcher games prior? I wanna know how it compares to witcher 2.

Never really been fond of open-world games and I believe they made 3 open-world?

We Are Here

Australia1810 Posts

August 24 2015 02:42 GMT

Should I start with witcher 3 skipping the previous titles? How does it compare to Skyrim?

yookstah

Australia655 Posts

August 24 2015 07:29 GMT

You get somewhat caught up playing the Witcher 3. You don't have to have played the previous titles.

Honestly I preferred the story over Skyrim, and the gameplay was a bit better in some areas.

@Rebdomine: If I were to comment, it's an improvement over Witcher 2 for sure. Mostly in the technical and QoL areas - less grindy for sure.

We Are Here

Australia1810 Posts

August 24 2015 09:56 GMT

Is it worth buying or just playing. I got about 180 hours out of Skyrim, I think if i can get at least 100 out of this is worth the money. I'll probably end up buying it either way, i like to support the industry

uberxD

412 Posts

August 24 2015 16:15 GMT

I haven't play Skyrim, given that I can't give you a fair comparison. I'm not really sure if you can get 180 hours out of TW3, but I guess that you can get way more than the average 15-20 hours. This is because if very, very difficult to get through some main-story battles without some kind of advantage in levels or gear, which means you will probably have to get some additional hours of play completing some side quests to get an easier time in the main quests (I played in... I think is like 1 level above medium difficulty, which forces you to regenerate vitality by drinking/eating).

ZeaL.

United States5955 Posts

August 25 2015 05:41 GMT

Main differences between W2 and W3:
-W3's story is much less focused on political intrigue compared to W2. Much simpler plot but also much more similar to the books the games are based on.
-W3 is open world but it's more like a very expanded W2 rather than skyrim or something. There is still a strong storyline, there is just a lot more you can do exploration wise.
-I would say crafting/gameplay mechanics/horseriding etc. are an improvement overall over W2

Compared to skyrim I would say outside of being "large" they are in no way comparable. W3 storyline and sidequests have 100x more thought put into them with much better voice acting/writing. The melee combat system is also not garbage. On the otherside there is less diversity in crafting/talent builds/customization because Geralt is Geralt. Also, modding as of now is pretty much non existent. tl;dr, skyrim is a sandbox where anything goes, W3 is a very large story driven game.

Zaphid

Czech Republic1860 Posts

August 27 2015 19:59 GMT

On August 24 2015 18:56 We Are Here wrote:
Is it worth buying or just playing. I got about 180 hours out of Skyrim, I think if i can get at least 100 out of this is worth the money. I'll probably end up buying it either way, i like to support the industry

W3 blows any attempt at storytelling Bethesda has ever made, along with most of the industry out of the water. I can't praise their writing and animation enough. I won't spoil anything, but not doing all the Bloody baron quests sould be criminal. Same when you finally reach a goal you have been striving towards all game long.

I nolifed the game over the course of a week doing all the side quests and contracts, only skipping a lot of the open world filling which is repetitive anyway and clocked in around 70 hours, if you take more time you can easily get 100 hours. The game has much more in common with other RPGs made in EU, like Divinity or Gothic games than bethesda games. It has static levels, so sometimes you will stumble upon mobs that will simply destroy you due to being higher level and eventually you get almost overpowered thanks to the witcher gear and skills

There are some rough edges, like bugs and clumsy UI, but I heard they have been addressing those on PC. Some quests in the later acts imply that they have much bigger impact than they have on the world and the leveling curve is a bit clunky. I'm willing to forgive almost anything to a game that makes me cry, laugh and despair with such elegance like this one.

The earlier games were really good IMO, but they are also a lot rougher around the edges, so if you jump straight into TW3, I understand, but it pays off to read the ingame journal to fill some of the holes.

uberxD

412 Posts

August 29 2015 01:26 GMT

Just finished the game, gotta say that the ending part was really good in terms of storytelling.
I loved the ending I got, not gonna give spoilers. What I liked was that I've realized which decisons, I think, are the ones that I took correctly to that ending.