| Platform | OVERALL |
|---|---|
| PlayStation 4 | 8.20 |
| Overall | 8.20 |
|
A new standard for RPGs, a masterpiece of storytelling in gaming; these are some of the general praises Witcher 3 has been getting. If this is a new standard for RPGs then I think the genre is in trouble. What I played was a great game but with issues in the areas that mean most to me. Witcher 3 has a lush gorgeous world to explore but fills it with repetitive simplistic gameplay. CD Projekt Red's goal with Wild Hunt was to take the open world RPG and put the focus on telling stories not fill it was busy work. They made it a point to describe how story will govern all quests as a way to do away with the dreaded fetch quests. From a certain point of view I could say they succeeded, but not entirely. What witcher 3 excels at, what it may do better than any game I have ever played is building a living believable world to explore. The world of witcher is amazingly detailed, every area hand crafted to make sure the large landscapes feel unique. My journey took me through large plains, dense forests, up the highest snow capped mountains, under the sea, and to a massive city. Exploring the world is an absolute joy, not just because of the impressive eye candy but because of how quests are around every corner. Ride around the countryside pathways and there will undoubtedly be some random person or small village with a quest in your path. These are always accompanied by some story, normally a sad tale of some family member gone missing or killed by a monster. As a witcher it is your job to exterminate monsters, for a price. The first few side quests will be very interesting as being a witcher is fresh and new. After running into the fiftieth poor sap, who lost a son because the moron went into the "death cave" to prove his manliness, I really stopped caring as much. Yes your idiot son is dead, yes I killed the monster who did it, give me my money. Everything has some small story to it, even random loot chests often have a dead body with a note saying how they acquired the treasure and their plan to escape with it which obviously failed miserably. Every town has a notice board which give out quests, usually contract kills where a monster needs to be slain. Don't get me wrong, this approach is better than MMO style fetch quests where you are told to run and collect 10 of something but in the end it's still another form of doing repetitive tasks. The main story missions and a few major side quests are more involved than the normal quest fodder. Primarily the story of Witcher 3 follows Geralt of Rivia on a quest to find the girl he raised, Ciri, who so happens to have elder blood which makes her a chosen one that can either be used to save or destroy the world. The Wild Hunt, a group of magical horsemen that portal in from an outside world, cause havoc want Ciri to bring about Armageddon. This story is mostly self contained, in fact most of the relevant backstory is not found in either previous game but in the novels they are based on. Newcomers can jump right in and follow along using the database to cover events of the last game. The main quest will take you across various lands as you interact with kings on opposite sides of a war, deal with a love triangle between two sorceresses, and of course battle the wild hunt. The main story is well done with some amazing highlights; if the entire game had the same level of amped up energy these missions inject into the game it would be masterpiece. If one focuses on just the main story the game could be finished around 30 hours, though you would be missing out on exploring the world and leveling up on various side quests. The main missions do what they should, they are the best designed, the ones with the biggest surprises and best boss battles. It's the balance of side quests to main quests that messes with the pacing, that said the pacing is entirely up to the player. I am a bit OCD when I play open world games so I get distracted easily by side quests meaning I went 10 -20 hours between main quests at times. I also felt the story and flow hit a snag when Geralt reaches the largest city in the world, Novigrad. Now almost all quests take place within city walls limiting exploration and making most fights be against regular humans. These quests have Geralt run from one side of the city to another countless times. I actively started to hate the game during this section, it lead to me quitting the game for a month. Luckily once the story leaves novigrad the pacing and quality of quests rise dramatically. Skellige, a norse inspired land, served as a great second continent to explore and made the second half of the game a joy to explore. Player choice is one of the defining features of the witcher series and a lot of praise witcher 3 receives is because of how your actions shape the world. Witcher 3 does this trick where it puts the best choice heavy quest of the entire game right near the start so that everyone experiences and it makes it seem that the entire game will be like it. The Baron quest line is without rival the best side quest in the game and it comes around the 10 hour mark while the game still has that new game smell. This quest has different paths one could take depending on the choices presented. There are two sides to this story and Geralt needs to make major decisions based on your gut feeling on who should be believed. Your actions shape the lives and maybe deaths of this family across multiple quests. In terms of gameplay it could lead to potential boss battles or change entire missions. It was extremely impressive and gave me false hope as to how the rest of the game would play out. It reminded me of GTAV and the first heist being the best one, filling the player with hope then later realizing that was probably the highlight. To put it bluntly, nothing in the rest of the game makes choice matter as much as that quest. Even the main quest which can lead to three different major endings is chosen by simple almost random dialogue choices you make across a few missions, they are easy to miss and the results of your actions are not seen until the end. Yes there are loads of quests that have choice built in whether it's choosing sides in a domestic dispute, making some difficult choices between letting a monster who is trying to live peacefully live or kill it as you were hired to do. All these lead to a different quest end, essentially a different cutscene. occasionally an entire town may wiped out (because I accidentally freed the evil tree spirit, my mistake) but outside of seeing the town destroyed there is no lasting impact. Some support characters will live or die, some quests may never occur depending on what you do, so I am not saying choice doesn't matter it just never lives up to the potential of that Baron quest. I don't see how witcher 3's approach to player choice is any different than Mass Effect or Fallout New Vegas which I still consider to be the standard of player choice in a large scale RPG. Witcher 3 expands on the real time action the series is known for. Combat is a nice improvement on Witcher 2 but still can't hold a candle to the better action games. I will give credit for witcher making each battle dangerous, even when battling a trash mob if Geralt leaves his guard down for too long death can come quickly. Fights come down mixing sword slashes and some magic spells with a few potions in the mix. The sword combat feels fluid and all the normal moves one expects are there like blocks and parries. There is a new adrenaline meter that fills as you fight which supposedly allows for some cool cinematic kills though I could never tell exactly how it works. There are fast and strong attacks and as these skills level up there are some expanded moves like a charge up strong attack or a whirlwind attack. The combat flows a bit like the arkham games with Geralt locking in to the nearest enemies and able to jump between them with the flick of the stick. Witcher combat isn't about combos or fast reactions. It's still a bit slow and methodical rewarding careful play. As in the previous games using potions in prep is a major aspect of the combat, luckily this time you can take healing potions and buffs during a fight. There sheer number of potions is very impressive and they have a wide range of buffs. Some are useful in very specific moments like against one type of enemy. Others offer great buffs like healing yourself as you deal damage, or speeding up the stamina meter. I stuck to a core group of four buffs and used others as needed. These potions are earned as you explore the world through recipes that can be made in the alchemy tab of the inventory menu. The best part is that you only need to develop the potion once, they are refilled every time you meditate from that point after, which encourages the use of potions. There is a toxicity meter that limits how many potions Geralt can drink at a time and this can be extended by building the alchemy skill tree. Prep can be fun, it can turn the tide of a tough battle but all too often you are fighting easy enemies that take less time to kill than to go into menus to drink stuff. Magic is the third pillar of combat and the improvements from the last game are easily apparent. Gone are the over powered signs like yrden which used to freeze enemies for huge chunks at a time, now it creates a ring that slows down enemies. The spells are easier to cast and blend into the faster paced combat naturally. Upgrading spells opens up secondary uses like a flamethrower secondary attack with the flame spell. The most useful I found to be the shield which at high levels can be used to absorb damage into health. Magic is too weak to be relied upon solely during combat, even when maxed out; so there is no true Mage build but one can make it the focus of your attacks. I found that focusing on only two spells was the right balance for me, and like everything else once the game got too easy spells got less and less important. The major question that I want to answer here is "does Witcher 3 have good combat"? It has serviceable combat which in a massive 100 hour plus game is not ideal. The other major issue is how unbalanced the game gets as players level up meaning the game gets easier as you play. I played the last half of the game on death march, the so called super difficulty level, and almost nothing challenged me. Combat becomes extremely repetitive because there are only so many ways to kill things. Boss battles are the only time fights get spiced up, even the contract kills against larger creatures end up being longer versions of the same fights you have been doing before. The game pulls another fake out by making the first contract boss battle have a built in horse chase, a multi tiered boss battles which made me believe all battles and all bounties will be like this, nope, that never happens again. When fighting monsters that are a higher level than you or during the initial hours, when strategies are still being formed, the combat is good. Most of the game is against easy enemies which takes away any of the strategy and thrill of combat. I feel difficulty balance is an issue that developers of these large scale RPGS don't seem to have a grasp of. The problem stems from players having the freedom to do loads of side quests or none of them. Those that spend their time doing side quests will level up far faster than those who stick to the main quest. Difficulty options are supposed to alleviate the unbalance of being a higher level, but I have found all too often in games like this even the highest difficulty level becomes a cakewalk. I played the last half of the game on "Death March", it was a death march for my foes, almost all challenge was swept away as I leveled up way faster than the quests did. Is it that hard to scale difficulty? I understand the criticism of losing that magic feeling of finding a high level enemy; well then adjust it so there is only scaling up and never down, how hard is it to do that? There are moments in the story where the player takes control of Ciri who has a different skill set than Geralt. Ciri's combat is faster paced with an emphasis on quick strikes rather than proper planning. I loved how these sections provided a much needed change of pace to the gameplay. Her moves evolved as the game went on so each time one of her segments arrived there was a new move to try out. Her combat suits my personal action game preferences as I like my combat fast paced. As you could imagine I wanted more of Ciri. For such an ambitious game I find the lack of variety in the actions Geralt performs to be surprising. I don't feel the game needs all sorts of silly mini games or extra padding, I feel the core actions Gerlat takes could have been more interesting. The investigation mode plays a prominent role in the majority of quests but all it really boils down to is holding a button and following red glowy stuff; no thinking required. Battles are always locked into a certain location, a dragon isn't going to randomly show up and create a dynamic moment, every creature stays in its pre programmed location. The lack of any emergent gameplay is why I can never put this game on the same level as the Elder Scrolls. In Skyrim I could be wandering the forest and all of sudden be in a 15 minute battle with a giant that takes me from a hill top, down through a forest, into a river; it was MY gameplay moment, unique to my game. Witcher 3 has nothing like that, everything will happen just as it is designed to happen. There is potential for interesting puzzles using Geralt's magic powers that is never fulfilled. I feel the game is even lacking in something as simple as the "how do I reach that" moment, most every quest or treasure is marked on the map making it easy to find. While there is a lack of general minigames there is a full on card game called Gwent. This is the best card game mini game I have played since FFVIII. Gwent is a blast to play and simply collecting a full deck from winning various matches against high level players becomes addicting. Building the right deck is as important as the in game strategy. It doesn't have the depth of a true card game but it is surprisingly deep for a mini game. I spent many hours playing Gwent and it makes up for there not being any other mini games outside of racing which is atrocious or fist fighting. With any RPG loot plays a large role and in a game of this size it can be difficult to balance the frequency of good items. For the first 30 - 40 hours I will say the scaling loot worked well, I was constantly finding better pieces of equipment or finding blueprints to craft higher level items. Quests loot would matter, there was always some new potion recipe or a new kind of rune to find. Eventually you will find some treasure maps for witcher gear, these quests are basic treasure hunts with a small story written on a document which lead to the best gear in the game. This gear can be upgraded in four stages, each requires a craft document to upgrade. This equipment if upgraded when supposed to will always be the best in the game and this breaks the loot system. Once you get witcher gear every piece of loot, every random treasure found means nothing. For the last 80 hours everything I found was the equivalent of trash. Doing side quests loses its luster as no rewards are needed and exploring never leads to anything of significance. Managing the inventory went through some changes as I played. At launch the menu system was lacking any kind of sorting options or general organization options. This meant slogging through pages of materials just to find the one item you needed. I have to commend the developers for their constant support of the game. One of the first patches added sorting options and fixed many of the inventory menus problems. It is still not the most user friendly menu but it is far more manageable after the patch. Witcher 3 is a gorgeous game that runs incredibly well for project of this size. Graphically it has some of the most beautiful vistas I have ever seen in a game. Watching the sunlight beam through the trees in an early morning creates a sight to behold. All models are quite detailed but the face animations are not too high level. Technically on the PS4 it runs very well though there is some frame rate drops at certain locations. There were no major game breaking bugs that I know of, all glitches are minor and simply create weird moments and the occasional need to reload a save. Some quests are bugged, you will see the occasional NPC not do what he or she is supposed to, some get stuck in animations. Most of the quest bugs get addressed with the many updated patches and very few actually make a quest unfinishable. Thankfully none of these glitches affect the main quest line. During cutscenes there is usually some bad pop in at the start so you will see the characters speak to each other while the background is materializing around them, it's a weird effect. The music is standard fantasy fare with the usual highs and lows in tempo. Exploring the lands is accompanied by soothing music that mostly serves as background noise. The voice acting is of good quality, the voice actor for Geralt is memorable and gives him a nice sense of dry humor. The cast does a good job but there isn't anything that really stands out as award winning voice work. This review comes off more negative than I truly feel about the game. I spent well over a hundred hours playing because I enjoyed it despite the issues that I felt kept it from being a masterpiece. The game world and how every area leads to a story is impressive and something I wish other games would be inspired by. Serviceable combat, repetitive quest design and limited role playing options I feel holds the game back. When Witcher 3 hits the highs during main quests I see what could be a very special game but those moments are spread too thin across such a huge game. Many believe Witcher 3 is a masterpiece, It's do not see it. It is great, it is ambitious, but it needed to tighten up many of the core gameplay elements to really be something special. |
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Posted by Dvader Mon, 17 Aug 2015 19:32:53
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robio (6m)
Beautiful open world that is a joy to explore with a good story all held back by repetitive quests, combat and limited gameplay freedom.
Compared to RPG'S from 10 years ago, the world and mechanics in Wild Hunt obliterate any of them. But it does lack that certain something that say KOTOR had.
Honestly the game is too big.