4d ago

I've started playing The Witcher. No, not the good one.

Steam had the entire Witcher series on sale for a few dollars. I bought everything for the first 3 games.

There was some discussion of it at the time, and folks seem to agree that the first one in the series sucks hard.
As that seemed to be the worst plan, I went with it.

Yes. "It's rough." I guess the engine and content have gotten some backports and extensions. I'm not sure if you could ~~play other characters besides Geralt before, but now you can~~. (EDIT ... Sorry, this seems to be BS. My bad.) They updated the graphics a lot. Its not great, but I think they fixed most of the really bad problems.

I don't know about the story. Seems pretty awful. Awkward acting. Its been fun just trying to play the damn thing.

Um ... I sort of like it. Gonna play some more now ...

44 comments

I get that people don’t like it for a wide variety of reasons. However, there are 2 things I absolutely adore about it:
The combat. Not so much the clunky clicking, but the way it strong-arms you into engaging with the alchemy and bestiary like an actual witcher would have to. Witchers don’t stand a chance against most of the monsters they fight without those stupidly potent potions and acute knowledge of their weaknesses.
The atmosphere. The game may be ugly up close, but every single map, every environment oozes with dreary medieval vibes or swampy fantasy. I don’t even think I can say that it’s good “for a low budget game” because the atmosphere stands the test of time. The developers had an idea for how the game should feel as soon as they started designing it and it shows.
I went back to play the first 2 games before replaying the third and finally finishing CP2077 a few years ago because I wanted to see how CDPR’s skills changed, and honestly? They haven’t, at least not in regards to making a game immersive. The only thing that’s changed is the budget and scope of their games because holy hell I’ll be damned if every one of CDPR’s major releases hasn’t been among the most immersive video games ever created.
- Your first point is why I often recommend playing the third game on the highest difficulty setting actually. It’s so much fun to actually use the ointments and oils and shit.

Folks do not agree that the first one sucks.
- Hard. Sucks hard. Do not misquote me.

It's been a while since I have disagreed so hard with anyone. With all due respect of course, can't really debate taste.
I disagree with the story being awful or awkward acting. Story is the best one of out the 3 (if you don't count Witcher 3's DLCs, those were superb.) and has the most innovative story quests. Also, not to spoil too much, but your decisions in that game actually affect the entire world and story a lot, what you do in act 2 can change the entire story, my mate and I had completely different stories because of what we decided in act 2, and I have to respect that. Not like that Mass Effect kind of "you were evil or whatever, which colour do you want as your ending?"
I agree, combat is terrible, engine is terrible, everything is unintuitive and clunky. I'd say for the best experience, drop difficulty to the easiest one and play for the story. Also, change voice acting to Polish, I can't stand Geralt in English in any of the games (Sorry Doug, cool guy, doesn't fit as Geralt IMO.) and the Polish really adds to the atmosphere, kinda like playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in Russian.
After a dwarf in the slums told me that my mother sucks dwarf cocks in hell, I haven't been the same as a person.
Good for you to give it a go even though it's pretty rough by today's standards. Totally worth it, love the game even with it's massive faults.
- I didn't expect my decisions to actually affect anything when I played it. Big surprise when I just clicked every dialogue option and things went poorly.
  You can also load your save file into the second game and have that affect the story in minor ways, which I thought was pretty cool.
  
  And then you can do the same with the third game too. It’s really neat
  
  Yes! I honestly enjoyed it when I tried the last dialog option and NPCs started telling me to 'go plow myself'.
- The story is not terrible by itself by any means, the problem is it rehashes some important aspects of the story from the books and does so in a way just doesn't make much sense in context.
  
  Yeah when they made witcher 1 they didnt think it would be part of a series and realy didnt see it as a canon addition to the books story.
  It makes the most sense to view the story on its own without the existence of Ciri.
- My friend, the witcher clan were dumbshits that let their hold fall and all their toys get stolen. I don't know the story as a whole yet, but there's some weird stuff going on. Since when do supermen get ostracized from society? They don't. Supermen run things and own all the stuff. Its hard to suspend disbelief when its so unbelievable.
  Combat ... I like the timed combo click thing. Maybe its an old or outdated style, but so am I. Honestly, I think its kinda fun. Rewarding when you get it right.
  So, you disagree that the acting is awkward, but you can't stand Geralt in English? Lol. That makes zero sense.
  Do you speak English? Was that English? :]
  Oh whatever. I'll try it in Polish. Can't be any worse.
  About that dwarf cock ... Is your mother short?
  
  Since when do supermen get ostracised from society?
  Ever seen The Incredibles?

One of my most controversial gaming takes is that I like the first witcher game the most of the trilogy. There is a lot of jank and some cringeworthy parts but overall it feels like a much tighter experience than the later games, notwithstanding some clearly undercooked parts. It takes a lot more cues from older rpgs in how it's structured and I suppose I might just have a weak spot for that.
To be fair, I've never gotten that far in the third witcher so maybe I'd like more it if I played it enough to properly get in to it. I just got kinda bored after a dozen or so hours which is not a problem I had with the first witcher.

I really liked the first one when it was new... Up until I got toward the end and encountered a CTD bug that, if was ever fixed, I didn't know about it and gave up waiting for.
The re-release probably works fine tho... Right?
- Why not just write crash to desktop for us non-technical people?
  It took me like two minutes to figure out what that meant.
  
  You haven't seen "CTD" before? You're yankin' my pizzle.
  
  People can search for it online at your preferred search engine
  People aren't always going to be there to answer questions people have

Witcher 1 is so bad it kinda goes full circle into having a certain charm.
It's like the gaming equivalent of a pug: so ugly it's cute.
...I recommend modding the fuck out of it to basically godmode blitz your way through the story so you can get on to Witcher 2 which is an actually decent game; and Witcher 3 which remains one of the best games on the market to-date.

The first is fine. The ending is great, some other parts are bad. Some are very questionable. On the whole, I enjoyed it.

There is no bad Witcher (rpg) game.

I started playing 1, but haven't finished it.
I don't think it's bad, more like it just hasn't aged very well, especially the combat. Which is the same thing I disliked about 3 despite enjoying it overall - clunky combat in a post Dark Souls world just doesn't cut it for me.
The game is alright, but I'm in no rush to go back and finish it. I hope that with 4 and the focus on Ciri they will work on improving the combat system some more.

I think there's a remake in the works, haven't played the original but I might try the new version

I’ve played the first one briefly. I don’t remember being able to play other characters. I remember the worst part being the combat system was an absolute slog. The later Witcher games don’t have great combat systems either, but it’s at least improved with each generation.
I might go back and play the older witchers eventually but I still haven’t finished Witcher 3 despite like 200 hours in it.

I quickly gave up on the first. I really enjoyed the second one though, and also that some of the choices you make carry over in the 3rd one.
If I had one complaint about Witcher 3, it would be the stupid crafting system, even 200 hours in I am missing bits and pieces... I could not stand Gwent at the time and actively avoided it, but some people love it.

The acting isn't awkward in polish. Shit's funny as hell sometimes, Talar gets quoted regularly by people who have played it
- Ok. So I won't understand it, but they won't sound dumb? Hmm.
  
  What you need to understand is that cdprojekt was basically a barely functioning, very new studio over 20 years ago when they made the first Witcher. Foreign markets weren't a focus. The game was made with Poland in mind - especially because nobody outside of Poland even heard of the Witcher then. In Poland, it was the best selling game of all time when it came out. That's why the acting is wooden in english - it just isn't the market it was made for.

The Witcher is the only game I've ever rage quit and then rage uninstalled. There's a mission a number of hours in where bandits get you into a swampy bottleneck, while one shoots you at range and the "Pain" animation stunlocks you into dying at the hands of his minions. Fuck that game. Live is too short to grind through that shit :P
- Um ... that sounds like a 'video game problem' that you failed to solve.
  Like a training mission that forces you to adopt some tactic, and if you don't do it their way, you die.
  And you died.

Heh, I loved the first one and then I tried the second one, hated how they changed the combat, and quit.

I also tried 1 long after release and couldn't get over the clunkyness and how much studying it requires to play. But I really enjoyed the 2, I even replayed it to see the other side of the story after the big branching, which is something I almost never do with games.

the first one has a standlone plot thats mostly disconnected witht eh latter two. 1's gameplay was rough, but its a decent introductory on the world and the Geralt as a form of a mentor.
It's visually a 3d action game, but plays like a top down ARPG(as it is an ARPG)
- That's because the first one was inspired by a Baldur's gate game (they were working in localization). But it got canceled because interplay was on the brink of bankruptcy. So CDPR repurposed all the work done thus far, including most of the script, with a new license they had just bought.
  Funnily enough, the mild success of the writing convinced CDPR to port the game to consoles and that also almost bankrupted them.

When I played 1 and 2 in a similar mindset as you, I eased the burden with some mods. But that might be cheating :-)

It's got some clunky gameplay but I love the bad or bad choices presented. Three are also a bunch of nice clues. Like checking your amulet regulary can reveal storey stuff.
The true identity of the main villain is great if you figure it out.

I tried playing the 3rd one and I really couldn't get past Geralt's voice and voice acting. I couldn't stand it. Probably just me though.
- Set the voice to Polish.
  
  That actually sounds like a good idea. As a half Pole I'd probably enjoy that
  
  I will try this. I'm playing one of the extra adventures, and the voices don't fire for some reason. Its an improvement, so putting the main game on Polish might work well.

Ya, I got the Vesna Hood escort quest while I was in the middle of killing devil hounds. I was like, "Lovely, my first slave." I was hoping this was a skyrim situation where you can tote around a half dozen unkillable allies, as long as you don't finish their quests.
Nope. She died. Fought pretty good tho. She was killin. I was almost sad. Now I want to give her some demon sword and immortality.
I don't know what the hell I read about using other characters. I was going to try that next. No such thing in my game. There's a number of 'new adventures'. So I'll see that that is. I'm doing something about a swamp. ... Brilliant. None of the voices are playing, in this extra adventure, just text dialog. Massive improvement.

44 comments