The best witcher story, the worst witcher gameplay
This game did the unthinkable for me, when I was reading books, I was thinking about how mr. Saphowski sucks at naturally connecting multiple people and plot points to each other, he shows multiple kingdoms, their conflicts, their ideals and the war that goes around them, but what it amounts to the Geralt(main character), just a couple of pages of slicing army guys... That's it. Books(especially novel ones) just really loves to throw unnecessary plot points and characters that breaks the pace, goes nowhere, have nothing to do with Geralt's main objective. So I thought what if they really connected to Geralt in more ways than one? And this game... Man this game gave me that.
A witcher that blamed for killing a king, now needs to prove his innocence to the world while magicians and kings try to take advantage from his unfortunate situation. Not just that, game have 2 big sides this time, kings side and elves side. Depending on your desicion about helping the which side in the first half changes the last half ENTIRELY and that is simply amazing.
Unfortunately all big ambitions have it's setback tho...
World
For some reason this game ditched to travelling between maps option from witcher 1, what it means is once you do enough main story, you need to say bye bye to old map and say hello to new map, so this means this game is lineer right?
Yes and no, it's more of a sandbox type. What I mean is, every map still have it's own side content, it's own characters and it's own atmosphere, unfortunately it sometimes results with tiny frustrating moments because if you leave a sidecontent in the old map, it instantly marked with fail sign, but at the same time I am happy because this move makes sure the player never breaks the pace with going between maps and waste time until they get bored to never return to the game again.
Also this time maps feels smaller yet dense with content, what I mean is, fortunately you don't need to walk the amount you do like in the witcher 1 or 3 but still get the same or even more amount of side content in less time. I found it awesome and in my opinion that's why world wise it's my favourite in the trilogy(also sidecontent is awesome just like the witcher 1, only thing I dislike is how they butchered the fist fighting minigame)
Also damnn... The world really feels handcrafted. Even though like I said it's small, it really doesn't feel like that with how it's full of with details in Every. Step. Of. The. Way....
Also I have to say this game have one of my favourite cities and that's a really unique dwarf mountain city. Unique word is an understatement so see for yourself I would say. It's one of my favourite fantasy maps in the ENTIRE rpg genre. It's that amazing.
Also do you want to know what is even more awesome? Remember that I said depending on who you side, second half of the game changes, yeah maps are also different too! You go to an entirely different map depending on your choice and how awesome is that???
Even though I kind of like the depressing atmosphere of the first game(this game chooses to be really colorful), I can still say this game's world is a hard slamdunk for it's favor
Gameplay
Unfortunately when I was talking about setbacks I was thinking this when writing that line because this is the place I have to get immensely negative
This game have the worst action rpg combat I had played in my entire life. It's really that really glitchy and broken:
Lock on that breaks constantly???
Attacks that doesn't damage the enemies randomly???
Enemies that have some of the worst hitboxes known to man or in gaming EVER(fighting with giant enemies is a chore with how they can damage you without even touching you???)
Potion system sucks hard with super short timed use???
Really stingy skill system???(even with doing every side content you can only fill %65 of it)
Attack animations that randomly decides to f##k you over(because game randomly decides to do a long sword animation and gets you killed, funnily enough same problem exists on witcher 3 on lesser amount)
Also quick time events that comes from nowhere without any warning????
And last thing is, I don't think even the developers themselves tested the Letho fight, it combines every bad thing in the game into one giant shitty fight with bad hitboxes, randomly missing attacks, lock on that does not work etc. It's one of the worst boss fights I had pleasure to experience in my life...
Do I need to continue? I think I really give what a clusterfuck of a game that is. If I didn't enjoyed the story I would give this game 1/5 like I am not joking it's that BAD. I never thought I would but this game made me miss the first game's gameplay, because at least it worked...
So an awesome World and Story and Shit broken gameplay...
If this game had the good gameplay I would say this game is 5/5, not just that, I would say this is the greatest Witcher game everrr(In my opinion witcher 3's story isn't good and filled with empty npc quests, compared to it's nice characters), but unfortunately with every big ambition, there is shortcomings as well...
It's sad to say this but for this reason it's impossible for me to go higher than 4/5 with all of the frustrations it caused. But still wants to recommend people that likes choices and uncovering political mysteries, seeing incredible fantasy worlds, but I don't want to recommend this to people that expects a good action... no a functional game. Because it's not.
This game did the unthinkable for me, when I was reading books, I was thinking about how mr. Saphowski sucks at naturally connecting multiple people and plot points to each other, he shows multiple kingdoms, their conflicts, their ideals and the war that goes around them, but what it amounts to the Geralt(main character), just a couple of pages of slicing army guys... That's it. Books(especially novel ones) just really loves to throw unnecessary plot points and characters that breaks the pace, goes nowhere, have nothing to do with Geralt's main objective. So I thought what if they really connected to Geralt in more ways than one? And this game... Man this game gave me that.
A witcher that blamed for killing a king, now needs to prove his innocence to the world while magicians and kings try to take advantage from his unfortunate situation. Not just that, game have 2 big sides this time, kings side and elves side. Depending on your desicion about helping the which side in the first half changes the last half ENTIRELY and that is simply amazing.
Unfortunately all big ambitions have it's setback tho...
World
For some reason this game ditched to travelling between maps option from witcher 1, what it means is once you do enough main story, you need to say bye bye to old map and say hello to new map, so this means this game is lineer right?
Yes and no, it's more of a sandbox type. What I mean is, every map still have it's own side content, it's own characters and it's own atmosphere, unfortunately it sometimes results with tiny frustrating moments because if you leave a sidecontent in the old map, it instantly marked with fail sign, but at the same time I am happy because this move makes sure the player never breaks the pace with going between maps and waste time until they get bored to never return to the game again.
Also this time maps feels smaller yet dense with content, what I mean is, fortunately you don't need to walk the amount you do like in the witcher 1 or 3 but still get the same or even more amount of side content in less time. I found it awesome and in my opinion that's why world wise it's my favourite in the trilogy(also sidecontent is awesome just like the witcher 1, only thing I dislike is how they butchered the fist fighting minigame)
Also damnn... The world really feels handcrafted. Even though like I said it's small, it really doesn't feel like that with how it's full of with details in Every. Step. Of. The. Way....
Also I have to say this game have one of my favourite cities and that's a really unique dwarf mountain city. Unique word is an understatement so see for yourself I would say. It's one of my favourite fantasy maps in the ENTIRE rpg genre. It's that amazing.
Also do you want to know what is even more awesome? Remember that I said depending on who you side, second half of the game changes, yeah maps are also different too! You go to an entirely different map depending on your choice and how awesome is that???
Even though I kind of like the depressing atmosphere of the first game(this game chooses to be really colorful), I can still say this game's world is a hard slamdunk for it's favor
Gameplay
Unfortunately when I was talking about setbacks I was thinking this when writing that line because this is the place I have to get immensely negative
This game have the worst action rpg combat I had played in my entire life. It's really that really glitchy and broken:
Lock on that breaks constantly???
Attacks that doesn't damage the enemies randomly???
Enemies that have some of the worst hitboxes known to man or in gaming EVER(fighting with giant enemies is a chore with how they can damage you without even touching you???)
Potion system sucks hard with super short timed use???
Really stingy skill system???(even with doing every side content you can only fill %65 of it)
Attack animations that randomly decides to f##k you over(because game randomly decides to do a long sword animation and gets you killed, funnily enough same problem exists on witcher 3 on lesser amount)
Also quick time events that comes from nowhere without any warning????
And last thing is, I don't think even the developers themselves tested the Letho fight, it combines every bad thing in the game into one giant shitty fight with bad hitboxes, randomly missing attacks, lock on that does not work etc. It's one of the worst boss fights I had pleasure to experience in my life...
Do I need to continue? I think I really give what a clusterfuck of a game that is. If I didn't enjoyed the story I would give this game 1/5 like I am not joking it's that BAD. I never thought I would but this game made me miss the first game's gameplay, because at least it worked...
So an awesome World and Story and Shit broken gameplay...
If this game had the good gameplay I would say this game is 5/5, not just that, I would say this is the greatest Witcher game everrr(In my opinion witcher 3's story isn't good and filled with empty npc quests, compared to it's nice characters), but unfortunately with every big ambition, there is shortcomings as well...
It's sad to say this but for this reason it's impossible for me to go higher than 4/5 with all of the frustrations it caused. But still wants to recommend people that likes choices and uncovering political mysteries, seeing incredible fantasy worlds, but I don't want to recommend this to people that expects a good action... no a functional game. Because it's not.