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So, having played the poo poo out of The Witcher 3, and having through pretty much everything in the Blood and Wine DLC, I got this idea to go back to the start of the series and do a full series run. Ohhhhhhhhhhh god. Was that ever a terrible idea. Between:
...this "game" is such an infuriating, desultory slog that makes me want to smash Geralt's bored, monotone face in with a cannot-be-used-with-witcher-arts sledgehammer. The Witcher 3 is a fantastic work of art. The Witcher 1 is a goddamn loving piss-poo poo of a mess.
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Aug 17, 2016 05:55
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My two favorite roguelikes on Steam are Caves of Qud and Dungeonmans - they're both more traditional roguelikes, but Dungeonmans is like Dredmor but way, way better in terms of tactical combat and not becoming a grindfest. If you're brand new to the genre, I'd rec Dungeonmans first as with every death your characters become more powerful and eventually you can just curbstomp the game with little to no trouble. There's a lot of variety in the skills and playstyles, and it's funny to boot. It'll get you used to the turn-based combat and diagonal movement and so on, which sets you up to enjoy the rest of the genre. If you want something more hardcore and more survivalist-oriented, I'd rec Caves of Qud, as it hands you a boatload of mutations and choices, then sets you down in the world with a few quests and otherwise unlimited freedom. It's really, really hard, but unlike Dungeonmans it has an easily accessed debug option that asks "do you want to die y/n" and you can just say no repeatedly to avoid sudden death at out-of-depth enemies like slumberlings. Both are goon-made (or at least the devs post in the roguelikes thread a lot!) and worth a look.
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Aug 17, 2016 08:12
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Rampant Dwickery posted:So, having played the poo poo out of The Witcher 3, and having through pretty much everything in the Blood and Wine DLC, I got this idea to go back to the start of the series and do a full series run. As for thread content, Witcher 2 has a branching path that determines which 50% of the game you're going to go through. Normally I'd say that's amazing and a great thing, but as much as I loved W2 the first time through, the gameplay isn't quuuite good enough to warrant another full playthrough even with a completely different second act. Which I guess is ironic since everyone seems to dislike W3 gameplay too but despite it being a massive game I had fun playing through a second time on the hardest difficulty.
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Aug 17, 2016 08:34
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smuh posted:Well, Witcher 1 got a lot of praise for the time, which is probably the only thing going for it these days. Thankfully W2 was a big jump forward despite being nowhere near the level of the third game. What winds me up about Witcher 2 is how it has the really clunky Crossroads heavily telegraphed with "this is an important decision" conversations at the branch point. A more natural branch would be the earlier fight in the rosè garden where you have to quickly choose whether to free Iorveth or help Roche. Would fit more naturally with the whole series' thing about living with the consequences of your decisions.
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Aug 17, 2016 10:57
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smuh posted:Which I guess is ironic since everyone seems to dislike W3 gameplay too but despite it being a massive game I had fun playing through a second time on the hardest difficulty. what's everyone's problem with witcher 3? witcher 2 had some bad stealth sections edit: VV the hosed up part is that it's still better than 2. the patched alternate controls aren't any better then? Action Tortoise has a new favorite as of 11:26 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 11:14
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Witcher 3's combat is very clunky and limp-feeling, and Geralt on foot controls about as well as a boat.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:20
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Action Tortoise posted:what's everyone's problem with witcher 3? It was kinda wonky at times...?  I don't get it either. If I'd rate Witcher 3 it'd be something like, Setting: Perfect Dialogue: Perfect Story: Perfect Combat: Good Open World: Good How anyone who struggled through Witcher 1 and 2 could possibly have any complaints about the combat system in witcher 3 is beyond me. Action Tortoise posted:edit: VV the hosed up part is that it's still better than 2. I mean seriously, Witcher 2 had its most difficult combat encounter as the second fight of the game. It's a miracle that Witcher 3 after 2 passable to bad combat systems actually managed to push through something good. It's not like Bethesda who never improve anything.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:28
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MiddleOne posted:Story: Perfect wtf happened to saskia? does this get answered in any of the dlcs? it's such a big turning point in 2 and all the major players are in 3 but nobody ever goes, "hey remember that bigass fight we had with henselt and the dragon coming out of loving nowhere? ahhhh, good times." my only real problem with w3 is underwater combat with drowners. actually underwater in most games is terrible.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:39
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Never has chopping a dude's head off in slow motion been as unsatisfying as it is in TW3 imo. There's no oomph to it in general. Hacking away at a big deer centaur monster thing's ankles feels like stabbing it with a toothpick, even though it takes off chunks of health at a time. Anything bigger than a person doesn't even flinch when you drive a sword through its frickin neck. edit: also this goddamn combat song was driving me so bonkers that I just turned off the music completely https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQS4o_bYA_M CJacobs has a new favorite as of 11:46 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 11:42
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Action Tortoise posted:wtf happened to saskia? does this get answered in any of the dlcs? it's such a big turning point in 2 and all the major players are in 3 but nobody ever goes, "hey remember that bigass fight we had with henselt and the dragon coming out of loving nowhere? ahhhh, good times." It's not Witcher 3's fault that Witcher 2 was so poorly plotted.  Plus, Witcher 3 does stand alone really well.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:45
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I played Witcher 3 right after finishing Bloodborne. The difference in playability was like following the finest steak by munching on a turd dipped in piss.
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Aug 17, 2016 11:49
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Well sure, Bloodborne is one of the best games ever made.
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Aug 17, 2016 13:58
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Witcher 3 made me retroactively appreciate Witcher 1's combat because at least I could rhythm my way to victory most of the time and get on with it.
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Aug 17, 2016 14:26
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I always find it dickish when a developer puts in a "no-dying" achievement in a game, especially when you can lose the chance of earning it through a beginners mistake in the first five minutes, or through a bug. Has there even been a game where you can replay missions and get a better score, and even decrease your death count because you've shown a testament of skill in redoing the level without dying?
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Aug 17, 2016 15:50
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I dunno, clearing a game without dying sounds like a quintessential achievement to me. You aren't entitled to all achievements in every game.
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Aug 17, 2016 17:12
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Rampant Dwickery posted:So, having played the poo poo out of The Witcher 3, and having through pretty much everything in the Blood and Wine DLC, I got this idea to go back to the start of the series and do a full series run. I played the first Witcher when it came out (before it was cool) and enjoyed it. It was that period after Neverwinter Nights 2 when very few developers were making RPGs primarily for the PC or even Western RPGs in general. I think people's standards have just become too high. Outside of maybe the combat, Witcher 3 just has amazing production values all around. It's incredible how far they've come. If you play the first game after that, of course you're going to be disappointed.
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Aug 17, 2016 17:14
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if you don't like Witcher 1 now you probably wouldn't have liked it back then either, people had all the same complaints at the time. Thing dragging Witcher 1 down is that I got the UK Limited Edition at no extra cost because GAME was out of normal editions, and if I hadn't been a dumb 15-year-old and opened it, it would now be worth something like £1000 to insane ebay collectors. Instead, it's worth about £20
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Aug 17, 2016 17:40
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I always find it dickish when a developer puts in a "no-dying" achievement in a game, especially when you can lose the chance of earning it through a beginners mistake in the first five minutes, or through a bug. Has there even been a game where you can replay missions and get a better score, and even decrease your death count because you've shown a testament of skill in redoing the level without dying? MGSV? Also, "not dying" is pretty straightforward. I feel like it's a lot harder for a game to get balanced around no-kills achievenets . Double-gently caress Deus Ex: Human Revolution for it's absurd achievement for that and trying to relate it back to the theme. For those of you that never played/don't remember Human Revolution, the very end of the game gives you a really lovely slideshow ending based on what button you push and how many people you've killed throughout the game - if you killed people, Jensen comments on it, and if you slaughter a ton of people he mentions losing his humanity. The thing is, the intro level to the game requires you to get through a laboratory under siege by terrorists armed with only a lethal gun. At the time of the intro, you are an un-augmented, 100% human being who works as the chief of security at the lab being attacked - that's why you have that big gun in the first place. The attackers are not some benevolent hippies or anything either, they're gunning down helpless scientists left, right and center. It is literally your career to protect these people and secure the building, and it's very clear that the only way to do that is to shoot to kill. But for whatever reason, the whole segment still counts against your "losing your humanity" kill count, even though it's one of very few times that just outright shooting everything that moves is a viable or morally acceptable choice. If you play that level the way that you're meant to for the best ending and the no-kills achievement, it involves crawling through the blood of the workers you were hired to protect and shirking your duties to secure the area, all to go check up on your girlfriend. Jensen is not good at his job.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:20
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I always find it dickish when a developer puts in a "no-dying" achievement in a game, especially when you can lose the chance of earning it through a beginners mistake in the first five minutes, or through a bug. Has there even been a game where you can replay missions and get a better score, and even decrease your death count because you've shown a testament of skill in redoing the level without dying? super meat boy. like there's definitely an ironman achievement buy there's the personal feeling of achievement u can get seeing only one meat boy clear the level on replay.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:31
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Things dragging TW down TW1 - Ugly even for the time. Poor voice acting. Vague times given for exact time-based triggers were unforgivable. I never had a problem with meditation since I modded in the ability to do it anywhere, but I agree that the way it was set up in vanilla wasn't ideal. TW2 - Can't decide if it wanted to be a kb/m or gamepad game (on PC) so instead it opted for the worst of both worlds. You can choose if you want terrible combat or terrible menu navigation. Or be like me and switch inputs every time you were about to do something that required it. This was hugely jarring to me after TW1's relatively straightforward kb/m controls. TW3 - I only just got to Novigrad so it's hard to judge this one. Gear degradation has always been a thing but it seems more annoying than usual in this installment, but maybe that's just because they should have learned by now. I like the open world so far but I'm not a huge fan of unlocking lv.20 quests when you're lv.5 and then just sitting on them for a dozen hours, if only for immersion's sake. "Help my wife's gone missing!"..."Sorry, I'll be back after I've ran errands for a dozen other people, she can hold on that long, right?" Series-wide - Geralt has lots of women in his life but they're all the same couple of people with varying hair colors and necklines, especially any sorceress. I don't understand why Yenneffer is so special when Triss or Keira Metz are around, and I've read the books. Every interaction with a sorceress follows roughly the same flowchart of bemusement --> flirtation --> insult Geralt's intelligence or hygiene --> gently caress or imply loving is in the cards --> point Geralt at something to kill. I know as a player I have some degree of control in this, but at this point I just like to think it's part of Geralt's character that he falls for the same poo poo from the same people every time.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:47
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Deified Data posted:
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Aug 17, 2016 18:57
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I don't think the sorceresses are that interchangeable, they all have pretty distinct personalities. Unfortunately with Yennefer I liked the voice acting but not the character's personality, and with Triss it was the other way around. It's true that he gets played by all of them in mostly the same way, though. Worst part is that he's fully aware of it, yet he always goes along with it anyway. I don't like that you, as the player, don't have the option to tell someone like Philippa Eilhart to gently caress off, even if it would have negative consequences like making the game harder.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:16
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You can't really influence Geralt's character, you can nudge it in a couple different directions but he has years of existing character development by now, so allowing you to go against that just because you can now choose your dialogue would be weird to long-time fans of the series. I think they found a good compromise.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:19
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Ryoshi posted:If you play that level the way that you're meant to for the best ending and the no-kills achievement, it involves crawling through the blood of the workers you were hired to protect and shirking your duties to secure the area, all to go check up on your girlfriend. Jensen is not good at his job.  u jelli?
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Aug 17, 2016 19:33
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Ryoshi posted:If you play that level the way that you're meant to for the best ending You can kill several dozen people and still get the "I used restraint where necessary" version of the endings.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:34
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CJacobs posted:You can kill several dozen people and still get the "I used restraint where necessary" version of the endings. I like that doing the rig completely non-lethally then blowing it up at the end still counts as non-lethal. 
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Aug 17, 2016 19:43
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CJacobs posted:You can kill several dozen people and still get the "I used restraint where necessary" version of the endings. Are you sure you're not thinking of low-chaos Dishonored? Because in my game I only killed a handful of people (about half the guards in the tutorial, the guys that raid the slums, and like two of the people attacking Malik that got caught in a bot explosion), and Jensen basically admitted to being robot Hitler.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:47
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Ryoshi posted:Are you sure you're not thinking of low-chaos Dishonored? Because in my game I only killed a handful of people (about half the guards in the tutorial, the guys that raid the slums, and like two of the people attacking Malik that got caught in a bot explosion), and Jensen basically admitted to being robot Hitler. The ending narration is also incredibly buggy and usually gives you the wrong one because the ending of DXHR is awful and rushed in every way, which tbh is a thing dragging it down in its own way.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:48
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CJacobs posted:The ending narration is also incredibly buggy and usually gives you the wrong one because the ending of DXHR is awful and rushed in every way, which tbh is a thing dragging it down in its own way. This actually makes a ton of sense. And not to beat a dead horse but it really can't be overstated how much the boss fights suck poo poo in the vanilla version of the game. I know they were outsourced but it boggles the mind that anyone played through the game and thought "yeah, flows great, let's ship!"
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Aug 17, 2016 19:57
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I feel like the phrase "outsourced boss fights" stands by itself as an indictment.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:21
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Food and water in subnautica are annoying as heck. I like the idea of them being in the game, but it's hard to get a good consistent food source for how fast your meters drop.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:44
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ilmucche posted:Food and water in subnautica are annoying as heck. I like the idea of them being in the game, but it's hard to get a good consistent food source for how fast your meters drop. I feel this way about almost every survival game. Hunger/thirst should be a limiting factor to how much you can do before you have to take care of your needs. It shouldn't be a dumb bar that you have to constantly babysit.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:21
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The reason I do poorly at those kinds of games is I prefer stat bars to be either full or in some cases empty. Many survival games with hunger or thirst stats don't enact a penalty until the bar is close to one extreme so I spend a lot of time topping poo poo off when I should be foraging or whatever. It's hard for me to let go of the concept that full is better than half-full.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:53
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I always find it dickish when a developer puts in a "no-dying" achievement in a game, especially when you can lose the chance of earning it through a beginners mistake in the first five minutes, or through a bug. Has there even been a game where you can replay missions and get a better score, and even decrease your death count because you've shown a testament of skill in redoing the level without dying? Dark Souls 2 gave you rewards for beating the game with no deaths and no bonfire uses. I started my run as a wizard because I thought "Well I haven't done a wizard play through yet" and forgot you had to sit at bonfires to change spells. So that was a bad idea. Still beat it though. The reward was some cosmetic rings I never used.
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Aug 17, 2016 22:58
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ilmucche posted:Food and water in subnautica are annoying as heck. I like the idea of them being in the game, but it's hard to get a good consistent food source for how fast your meters drop. Whats wrong with the edible fish swarming in like every biome? Food/Water is also trivial later on when you find a planter and accompanying food crops that let you basically farm fruit that replenish both food and water in one bite
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Aug 17, 2016 23:01
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Ryoshi posted:This actually makes a ton of sense. The only good thing about the boss fights was that you could get an augmentation that let you basically skip them.
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Aug 17, 2016 23:03
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Phlegmish posted:I played the first Witcher when it came out (before it was cool) and enjoyed it. It was that period after Neverwinter Nights 2 when very few developers were making RPGs primarily for the PC or even Western RPGs in general. I think people's standards have just become too high. Outside of maybe the combat, Witcher 3 just has amazing production values all around. It's incredible how far they've come. If you play the first game after that, of course you're going to be disappointed. I'll be honest, I only started TW3 with a TW2 save file because even early on I found the original game to be an infuriating slog. I never cared for the RNG/rhythm-game/vageuly MMO battle systems Bioware used in its Jade Empire/KOTOR games, and the moment the game introduced the Pain status effect (i.e. when the damned Hellhound revealed itself), I shelved the game. TW2 had its own problems, of course, none the least of which were poor Sign tutorials and the fact that Geralt steers like a drunken cow in that game. At at the very absolute least, though, the event flags either (a) weren't tied nearly so much into the time of day or (b) I never noticed it because I could at least meditate wherever the gently caress I wanted. Seriously, if you're going to do time-of-day event flags, you need to either (a) make the day move quickly enough so it doesn't break immersion, or (b) not tie them into two-loving-hour shifts in a 24-hour system. Raymond Maarloeve's Chapter II plot twist should be absolutely hilarious from a metagaming standpoint - but the rest of the game's mechanics are so rusty (and the rest of the chapter's characters have such out-of-sync event flags) that it's impossible to appreciate the commentary for what it is. ...Speaking of games getting a sequel in the next few months, hoo boy, Empress Caldwin, but your intro to Dishonored just sets that game up for a litany of monotone deliveries.
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Aug 17, 2016 23:14
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Okay, so I've obviously been hitting DX:HR lately because I wanted to try to get a no-kill run in before Mankind Divided, but I realized halfway through the Sarif plant that my tranq rifle has been stone cold killing assholes about 50% of the time. Not cases like they were on something tall and rag dolled off when they fell asleep - I just checked a dude that I tagged in the leg with a dart as he was smoking a cigarette and he's dead on the ground where he stood. How does that even happen?!
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Aug 18, 2016 00:09
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Lunchmeat Larry posted:if you don't like Witcher 1 now you probably wouldn't have liked it back then either, people had all the same complaints at the time. The thing dragging The Witcher 1 down was that before they did that enhanced edition or whatever it was called the game had a shitload of really long load times. The update reduced a lot of them to a split second.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:10
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kazil posted:I feel this way about almost every survival game. Hunger/thirst should be a limiting factor to how much you can do before you have to take care of your needs. It shouldn't be a dumb bar that you have to constantly babysit. This is how The Void handled things with Colour - combing time/movement into one resource, which could also be used to power your spells. They also built the entire game around it, wrapping it up into health, stats and currency. It's an elegant system.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:11
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