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It was a dark and boring night...

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 14 / 28
Date: November 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I start this review with a confession: I haven't finished the game yet. In fact, I've only played through most of the quests outside Vizima; I'm not yet into the city proper. Alledgedly the game "picks up", but I'm seriously running out of patience after investing many hours, bored out of my skull. Here are a list of observations:

The graphics engine is really lovely (excepting a lot of random aliasing at night, which I try to tell myself are fireflies) and so are the sounds. The voice acting is above average, but the conversations are often structured poorly and are therefore not believable. People offer the same dialog choices over and over even though previous conversations should have made them obsolete, resulting in conversations that make no sense. (Especially annoying, the conversation trees frequently dump you out when you intend to continue speaking, so you have to click on a character again, to hear his/her oddly identical opening phrases once more.)

This game ships with a hefty manual, but it is amazing how little information is actually provided. Like most recent game manuals, it's just installation instructions, a pile of spoilers for those interested, and not much else. This comes to your attention as you level up and find yourself navigating the most senseless skill tree of all time. Pre-requisites are unclear, skill distinctions are unclear, so what the heck, why not just select them all at random? That will be really fun.

So character customization is out the window. 8 hours into the game, inventory has proven mostly useless, so trading is equally uninteresting. Gameplay is reduced to repetetive combat, and walking from place to place waiting for the odd conversations to spawn new quests and/ or cutscenes. Oh, had I forgotten to mention the walking? The outdoor environments are relatively large, and walking from point A to B happens essentially in realtime which, again, is insanely boring. Never have I seen a game so desperately in need of a fast travel solution. (Top it all off with long fences, your inability to jump over a fence, or even step off a ledge without a staircase, and the whole world becomes a big, dull maze.)

When you do finally get to where your going, the boredom theme reaches it's apex: eternal load screens. Everytime you enter or leave an indoor location, you'll see as many as four delays. The current screen will pause for a few seconds, followed by a saving screen, followed by a generic loading screen, followed by (I couldn't make this up) a location-specific loading screen. And *each* of these are longer than any loading screen I've seen in any video game ever. If you suffer through this only to find your destination less interesting than you hoped (quite likely) you'll have to turn around and wait for it all over again, just to go back outside. Enjoy.

Other niggles: if you expect the map to aid in your travels, note that there are no notations on it. You'll need to mouse over every location waiting for text to pop-up over its mysteriously identical dot markers. After you've waited a couple of seconds for it to - you guessed it - load.

I could go on and on with the little niggles, but in many ways the game is very polished. The real issues are pacing, and the nearly meaningless skill tree. As for pacing, how many hours are we expected to invest before a game begins to entertain, or even make a point? I started to think about this during one of the "minigames", essentially rolling dice with the locals. I guess this is somewhat appropriate for a simulation of a boring rainy night in a medievel 'burb, but you know, I've got a Playstation in the next room, and could probably find something more fun to do. Failing that, maybe I could get some chores done.

Unless something miraculous happens in the next 15 minutes of gameplay, I'm giving up on The Witcher. Even worse, this is the sort of game that makes me wonder whether I still like RPG's, after 20+ years of considering them "my genre".

Phenomenal

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

An amazing an engrossing game. Easily the best RPG I've played in years no question. If you are an RPG fan, you owe it to yourself to pick up this masterpiece. Spread the word!

The Witcher hasn't ceased to amaze me....

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 8
Date: November 14, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Love this game! The Witcher is not only one of my favorite games of '07, but it ranks up there with my all time favorites. After being extremely disappointed by the poor quality of Two Worlds earlier this year, I was a bit wary of purchasing another RPG. But rather than disappoint, The Witcher hasn't ceased amazing me. The developers of this game obviously took an enormous amount of care and effort to ensure that its story, characters, environments, quests, etc. were rich and immersive. Everything feels so authentic. Maybe that's because the creators of this game grew up in Eastern Europe surrounded by all that old world beauty. I also find the adult nature of the story refreshing. So many games claim to contain adult content, but the only adult content they seem to really have is violence. While The Witcher certainly is violent at times, it truly does offer other forms of adult content. I greatly enjoyed Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion, but quite often with Oblivion, the NPCs in the game come off as too tame. There are so many games out right now that promise the world, but often only end up disappointing. The Witcher on the other hand is sure to delight any RPG fan (or really anyone who appreciates stunning visuals and a rich story). Oh yea, and a fun combat system too!

Game crashes constantly on Vista

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 17 / 38
Date: November 10, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I really, really wanted to like this game because I love the premise. However, I was unable to play it more than 30 minutes at a time due to it crashing constantly. It would happen when the game was loading a new screen and when I tried to save my progress. My computer specs go above and beyond what is recommended, I have downloaded all of the patches available, I have tried everything under the sun to get this game to work, and yet it STILL crashes. This is now a well known issue and there are tons of people, besides myself, having this problem.

If you have Vista wait until they come out with patches that fix this because the game is unplayable.

A Dark and Forbidding Story

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: November 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

On a whim I purchased this game from Direct2Drive, and had it downloaded in no time to play.

The opening video had me captivated and very quickly I was deep into the game. Although the story is engrossing, the voice acting is utterly terrible, which isn't that surprising. It's something you'll overlook quickly as your hack your way through multitudes of enemies and make split second decisions that influence the way the game plays out.

Graphically the game is impressive for running on the Aurora Engine from BioWare, however it oddly slows down drastically during cut-scenes; the cut scenes are rendered in-game so I'm not sure why that happens.

Unlike most games, the entire storyline is seriously going to depress you. There is rarely a clear-cut good/neutral/evil path to take. Each choice you make has a consequence, and rarely do they turn out well, but are usually choices between a greater or lesser evil. It seriously gives the game a more modern take on life, as in the real world, very little is truly black and white. Do you save that guards life - the one that will later rape and murder a young woman? Or do you let him die, and he can no longer defend against bandits, and even more lose their lives?

Version 1.2 exceedingly good

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 6
Date: January 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I play games on my PC much of the time, but I rarely review them. I felt the need to go on the record saying this one is unusually good.

To me, the most important parts of a game are:
* The story line -- is it involving, compelling?
* Artwork/Graphics -- is it realistic, beautiful?
* Combat/Gameplay -- is it fun, intuitive?
* Complexity/Replay value -- do I look forward to playing it over?
* Stability/Maintenance -- does it crash a lot, are issued addressed?

I rate this game very high on all counts but the last. In that area they are only about average.

The story line is complex and contains many choices and side quests. Quests are so interrelated that it is a challenge to organize the Journal in a truly useful way. This is one of the most "Mature" games I have played, definitely not intended for the little ones.

The player character is not customizable, and is always therefore male. Females who don't care to play a lusty male probably won't care for this.

Scenery is quite beautiful, and background sounds are surprisingly realistic. I sometimes feel I would play this game just to see the orange sunset reflected on the water.

Combat isn't quite as "hands-off" as it is in many RPGs. I like this. It is more involving while still being easy to learn.

It does crash a bit too frequently, especially if you "Alt-Tab out" of the game. If you are using a walkthrough, plan on printing it out for reference.

All in all, I am very impressed with this game and hope to see more from them.

An RPG that is fun to play.. at last

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 4 / 4
Date: November 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

For me, this is the game of the year. I haven't enjoyed gaming as much for quite some time (probably not since Baldur's Gates and Torment). The story is simply stunning and all characters have nice depth, no black and white choices in the world of Witcher.

If you like story driven rpgs, this game is a must buy. Not only is the game huge (about 40+ hours in and I still have 2 chapters left) but the choices you make affect the story greatly so there's also quite a bit replay potential.

Only issues I have with the game are fairly limited inventory space and load times. Loading new areas takes a bit longer than I'd like, though they aren't too bad for me (in the 15-20 sec range usually, longer if the game autosaves). The next patch supposedly solves the load time issues, if so this is definitely going straight to my alltime favorite games list.

WOW!!! THANKS ATARI

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 6 / 9
Date: November 21, 2007
Author: Amazon User

After reading the reviews, I don't see where I can really add much. I bought this game several Days ago. I saw it on the shelf and it sorta jumped out. I picked it up and read the blurbs, and decided to give it a try, based on two things: Bioware and Atari. After having played through Neverwinter Nights several times, I got kinda excited and as it turns out, for good reason. I am happily trucking along and having a blast playing this. You can really lose yourself in this. Yes, the load times are a little agravating when leaving a building or cave, as you want to get on with it. I quickly learned to just tolerate it. The graphics are really good, lots of detail. Unfortunately, this game has either gotten very little notice or I have missed it. As i said, I just accidentally ran across it on the shelf at the store, and I wasn't even looking to buy any games. I gave it 4 stars for fun based on the agravating load times, otherwise it would have been 5 stars across the board. Charlie S. Richmond Va.

One of the best RPGs to date

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

One of the next generations of rpgs, the Witcher delivers all that it promises. Comparable to oblivion but much more story-driven and lacking a true sandbox enviroment.
This game is what happens when you turn a great story into a video game. The world is much more mature,rough, and realistic then any other i've played.
The story does have a guiding hand throughout it but it is so thoughtful and immersing that you feel like that's what you want or should be doing anyway. The trapping of old stagnant storied rpgs are not present in the Witcher. The game allows you to progress the story to your own tastes and the resolution can be reached in each chapter multiple ways.
If you have a decent computer and a fan of rpg/action games, The Witcher is a must buy.

Fantastic world, between Tolkien and Homer

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 5 / 7
Date: November 05, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I rather play the strategy and military games. I love Medal of Honour and Europa Universalis III. But this time I bought it because I've heard about book, which the game is based on. I am really stoned. I am a director of big company, but this day I stay at home, just to play.

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