Must read before buying. (A brutally honest review)

[Ronin Ghost]

I"ll make this as Short and Sweet as possible. Or as Long and Sour....as necessary

Right off the bat any gamers who has played gems like "Shadow of Mordor" or the "Arkam Knight" series are going to recognize similar elements this game shares.
Such as "Witch Vision" which highlights items and areas of interest in the game to be investigated.

Blocking and parrying mechanics which are reminiscent of the previously named games.
However this title does not share in any way the fluid and nearly blinding polish the other games have in terms of mechanics and gameplay.
Shadow of Mordor plays like an experience. You block, parry, counterattack and perform killing blows in a manner that allows you to literally take on dozens and dozens of enemies at once. And these enemies are of varying difficulty levels, bosses included.

The Witcher III, well, not so much. Granted the games designed to simulate better games. But in practice its just not fun and fails to emulate the polished combat of other titles.

The first hour in game felt like work. Real work.
While trying to follow after one of the NPC's in the opening movement tutorial, I could not stop myself from falling off ledges, overstepping doorways, and bumping into walls.
Dozens of times I had to retrace my steps because the controls didn't allow a smooth approach to a door, or ledge.
The controls were just simply horrendous.

The same goes for combat. The combat tutorial was a chore. There is zero intuition in terms of parrying or blocking, and any enemy with a modicum of skill will have you backing up and cornered quickly.
Once out in the world and fighting actual monsters, your basically just locking on to them and swinging away with next to zero planning or technique.
Unlike games such as Dark Souls, Shadow of Mordor, Arkam Knight, where you feel like every ounce of combat is a carefully orchestrated chess match and balet combination, The Witcher III is soul less and empty combat.
Unlike games such Assassins Creed, where your movement through the world is amazing and fun, this game feels choppy, annoying and tiring.

Overall, this game is so far a big disappointment.
I've gotten over an hour into and without even mentioning how boring the cinematic scenes are, or how mediocre the Graphics actually are, I would recommend a big fat pass on this title.
Sadly, I'm not sure I can even mount the courage to continue playing past my first hour or so to see if it gets better. Because the flaws I've mentioned are not storytelling flaws, or commentary about the game not being fun due to nothing exciting.
They are issues with game mechanics, and handling which in essence are the cause for the game not being fun, or almost unplayable in my opinion.
Things like poor fighting and movement mechanics don't get better deeper into a game. And about an hour is all I needed. In comparison, Games like Shadow of Mordor, Arkam Knight, Dark Souls, etc... All had me fully entrenched and enjoying every second of combat within the first 10 minutes.

My Breakdown: 1-10 with 10 being best, and 1 worst.

Graphics: 6 (Sometimes the graphics inch up to be amazing, but mostly they're just ok)
Gameplay: 2 (Horrendous controls and combat mechanics)
Sound: 7
Cinematics cutscenes: 4 (They have you looking for the "Skip" icon every time)
Story: 4

Overall Rating: 3 (Because sound doesn't weigh as heavily as gameplay)
Unless your dead set on buying and playing this game I'd say STAY AWAY....

[SuccyB]

Nice joke. glad your stupid a$$ isn't a professional reviewer.

[jclosed]

Postat inițial de Лёха_Beliy:

glad i torrented

Well maybe you should be gladly reported than, hm?

[Jonboy]

Postat inițial de -shhfiftyfive:

Postat inițial de Smokin' Scream:

13 hours in, 2 freezes and both time cause I used Afterburner to measure FPS.

Game does not freeze all the time.

you're 1 player... good sample size. clearly enough to come to your conclusion that the game has no constant crash issue... cool story.

how about you read up on how many people are experiencing the crashes, or the part where cdpr has already come out publicly and acknowledge that yes, there are bugs that will cause the game to crash "all the time"...

cdpr disagrees with you...

but you're clearly too intelligent to argue facts with though, so i declare you the winner.

Ive had zero crashes or freezes. Im sorry to hear you have though. I would suggest its probably your drivers are out of date.

[-shhfiftyfive]

brand new drivers, can't be out of date...

[Morgan]

Postat inițial de -shhfiftyfive:

Postat inițial de Morgan:

I think if you enjoy what the game does well it eclipses its shortcomings.

said every fanboy ever with an obvious blind eye.

this game has a huge "shortcoming". i'd love the be enjoying this game. but i can't you know why? nope it's not the silly stuff described in this thread.... it's the over a dozen game crashes i've had in the 10 hours of time i've played this...

next you'll tell me its my own fault the game isn't stable... i await such wisdom...

If you think I’m a fanboy you’ve clearly not been in this forum very long. The only thing I’m a fanboy of is reason and commons sense. A fanboy would not say “eclipses its shortcomings”, a fanboy would not acknowledge the game had shortcomings. The game has some glairing issues in terms of optimisation, graphics and interface however I wouldn’t say that they are major issues, at least for me.

Stability is another issue, clearly if the game keeps crashing then you have a perfect valid reason to be unhappy with it. As for saying it’s your fault? Why would I do that? Stability is clearly a problem for a substantial number of people, it’s been widely reported in the forums and is a sign that CDPR did not conduct rigorous enough testing. This is something that should have been sorted prior to release and for which there is no excuse. I did suggest there would be a stability issue when they announced the review embargo.

Are we now done with this fanboy nonsense?

[Tawm]

>my opinion is so important that I require a dedicated thread
>spouts nonsense and sh*ts on the game for not being an Arkham clone

Stop acting like a special snowflake. Leave your opinion on the game in the user review section like everyone else outside of games journalism. You're presenting your dumb opinion on game mechanics as fact. It's not so much brutally honest as it is biased from the get-go. It's also essentially a first impression; not a review. Either way, it can't be taken seriously when presented in such a manner.

[hedop]

Postat inițial de rtukkers:

Postat inițial de Ronin Ghost:

If your only response is a comment about someones mother, then you're actually showing people more about your intelligence than you probably meant to.

Painter: "Y'are a dog."
Apemantus: "Thy mother's of my generation. What's she, if I be a dog?"

A quote from Shakespeare, who generally is seen as being quite intelligent ;)


Nonetheless, I played it for about an hour or two yesterday (Gog Galaxy) and it runs great on high-ultra (hairworks Geralt).

The things that annoyed me were slightly clunky controls and the cutscenes seemed to stutter a bit.

Might as well start it up in a bit ;)

Edit: specs, i5 4590, asus strix gtx 970

The stuttering is due to the hairworks. People claim it isn't as obviously they are prerendered which is bull since Geralt obviously has different clothes and hair in them all the time depending on your choices ;) Turn off the hairworks, cutscenes run absolutely smooth after that.

[Baumi]

The real problem here is that you only played one hour. I watched like 26 hours of a Witcher 3 stream and played like 2 hours so far myself. I can agree on the controls. They are sloppy, yes. But that can be patched. Rating it with a final score of 3, without going even further into the game, is just unfair. I really like the game but I expect a patch to enhance controls. That's the only issue I have with the game so far. Despite that, I really enjoy it.

[Loaderini]

You managed to play a whole hour? No wonder you were able to write a brutally honest review.

[Tumas Altaawus]

HOW DARE YOU OP!!!! GIVING 3 WHEN TRUSTWORTHY SITE LIKE IGN AND KOTAKU GIVE 10!!

YOU AREN'T ALLOWED TO HAVE AN OPINION OUTSIDE OF THE NORM! THIS IS GOTY! PERFECT GAME!

[Zoopy]

Postat inițial de Ronin Ghost:

While trying to follow after one of the NPC's in the opening movement tutorial, I could not stop myself from falling off ledges, overstepping doorways, and bumping into walls.
Dozens of times I had to retrace my steps because the controls didn't allow a smooth approach to a door, or ledge.
The controls were just simply horrendous.

I agree with this. Controls are for some obscure reason very bad. They're horribly imprecise compared to previous games. Sometimes I have to try multiple times just to go up a flight of stairs.

[Suguru]

Who the ♥♥♥♥ are you again?

[Rustknuckle]

This post more or less mirrored what I felt when playing the first hour. Now I find myself not being sure if I will even bother playing further because of the bad controls and choppy motion.

[Old Skool Raver]

Postat inițial de Suguru:

Who the ♥♥♥♥ are you again?

Just give up, i mean this thread has people who feel they can review after an hour and people who think their game crashing is somehow on the same magnitude as global warming.

You can't argue with stupid, all that ends up happening is you get dragged down to their level

[Cypher]

To all the "who are you", "who is this guy", "you're a nobody" people, I wonder; would it make a difference if the OP was a celebrity or otherwise linked to the game / devs/ industry?
I don't see how "who he is" has any bearing on the point.
I mean , this guy is YOU! A gamer who has shelled out a lot of hard earned money for a game that he expected to be of a certain standard.
Does that invalidate his review? (not whether you agree or not, but actually invalidates his entire post).

And please don't mention big review sites, they have a number of reasons for giving the scores they do, which i wont go into for lack of anything other than anecdotal and circumstantial evidence.

I'm inclined to see it from the gamer's point of view, especially when big review sites score a game as perfect! For reference, i've not seen a 'Perfect game' since Goldeneye on the N64, literally ticked every box but still had issues... and there were no [console] patches in those days, hell there was no Internet 18 years ago! You had to buy a game mag to get PC patches (or nick them from the front of the mag! Yes, i was young and stupid once :-s)