The Witcher

This is a bump but does anyone have any news on when a demo will be available? The community site says the developers are working on it in addition to new content so I'm hoping this game turns out to be a sleeper hit. I won't be able to pick this up until the end of the year earliest so would like to know how gamers so far are faring.

 

I've had this game for about 2 weeks and the game wells very well on my pc. I have a 1.5 dual core processor and 8400 gs from dell. It looks best at native resolution of 1200 x 800 and can run on medium settings without depth of field, could probably run on high smoothly if I overclocked my Graphics a bit, but medium is quite enough.

The story is great. I havent' bought a game for pc since City of Heroes and even without a demo I could tell this game would be well worth my money.

The load times aren't that bad, but they could be better. There are some bugs and a few crashes, but with a few more fixes all this should be taken care of. This game came at the perfect time for me because I was looking for a mature game, not dumbed down for younger audiences, and one that adults can fully appreciate. I would certainly recommend this game to anyone looking for an original experience with a strong story backing it.

 

i wrote a quick review of it over at another site, this should help you.

The Witcher is an underrated game overshadowed by many larger titles coming out this winter. It is an action-RPG heavily focused on story and character development. It is a near-perfect game marred by a few technical flaws.

The game starts off with Geralt of Rivia, the main character, who has lost his memory and is soon discovered by fellow Witchers. You are returned to Kaer Morhen, the witcher headquarters, which is quicky attacked.

Apparently these witcher foke have the ability to remain calm in the midst of the equivilent of a 50-foot preying mantis and ~50 bandits. Anyhow, after some quick coordination you are given your first task and are thrown into the action right away.

The combat system is quite interesting, it involes left-clicking your opponent to unleash a series of attacks and then left-clicking again when the cursor turns orange to unleash further destruction. You can also parry, jump back, and do a variety of manuvers...unfortunently blocking is not included but that is done automatically. The witcher holds can hold one of two possible swords, silver & steel, the former used on magical/undead/vampies/etc enemies and the latter used on human/elf/dwarf/etc enemies. You can also adapt one of three stances (strength, speed, group) that you must switch to depending on the situation. Finally, as you level up your character you can learn new attacks that will be used each time you click the orange cursor. Overall the combat system is simple but fun and only gets better as you progress.

The leveling system consistes of bronze, silver, gold 'medals' you can think of as skill points which can be attributed to either your characters attributes, witcher signs (magic), sword types, or combat types. Because the different skills require a different type of medal at higher levels it makes sure your character can't get too powerful too quickly which is a nice touch.

The journal is very detailed and organizes everything you will need as you progress through the game. Quests can be tracked on the map, character descriptions are stored, formulas & ingredients are labeled in detail, areas of the game are listed & explained, etc. The developers obviously spent a lot of time and the presentation of the game speaks for itself.

The story is one for mature audiences but the U.S. version of the game is censored. Its quite funny to see a portrait of the person your having *** with over 3/4 of the scene, obviously which isn't there in the Euro version. Although the story is mature it isn't lacking in depth or quality. Cutscenes are a regular occurence, especially at the start of the game, but they don't detract from the game at all and actually add some action in most of them. A downside is the cutscenes are more demanding graphically then the game itself so you might need to lower graphical quality to make the cutscenes watchable although turning off depth-of-field helps a bit. The story blends racism, greed, power, corruption, lust, & all other human vices into a fantastic plot. Not to mention you can take dialogue with NPCs many different directions which will affect how the actual story progresses.

Alchemy is another part of the game important to survival (especially in the harder difficulties). Books can be purchased describing what plants need to be harvested and formulas can be found which makes knowing which ingredients to find much easier. The mixing system is quite simple but requires you to meditate for the alchemy option to appear on the menu bar. Meditating can seem like a hassel as you need to find a place to rest or find a fire/fire pit but it isn't out of your way or anything.

The game runs on the Bioware Aurora 2007 Engine that looks great on high-end machines but also scales back quite nicely on older machines. To run on higher settings you will need an x1800/7800 but it can scale back to a 6600/x600. The game also has some fantastic artwork that you will get a chance to look at while the game loads & loads. Although the game looks fantastic load times are an issue and the game even has a tendency to crash but this is highly unlikely (i.e. once every 10 hours). The load times are the biggest detractor but that is saying a lot for the quality of the rest of the game as this negative can be easily overlooked by the patient.

Sound is absolutely fantastic. While it isn't synced with character animations that can be overlooked as your paying more attention to what is being said rather than who is saying it. The soundtrack is an even bigger plus, it immerses you in the game and never gets annoying at all which is rare in most games (Oblivion music annoyed me for example).

The single player, although I haven't completed it yet, is supposed to last over 40 hours at the minimum so there is no shortage of things to do in The Witcher. Especially if you play it again to choose different options with the NPCs which directly affects gameplay.

Overall this is a fantastic underrated RPG that could have GOTY potential if it didn't have those technical issues. It also may take a few non-hardcore RPGers a bit longer to get into as it has a steeper learning curve than say another action-RPG that you can just jump into such as Hellgate: London. Finally there may not be as many item drops as you would expect in an RPG but that is really not what the Witcher is about. It has a fantastic storyline, great combat system, great sound, good dialogue, fantastic presentation, and a solid amount of content which will keep you entertained for hours on end.


9.5 Presentation
Developers paid attention to every detail, especially in the journal, and it shows.
8.0 Graphics
Aurora engine looks very good and the developers optimized it nicely. Cutscene FPS drops & long load times are the downside.
9.5 Sound
Good dialogue combined with a fantastic score helps immerse you in this RPG.
9.5 Gameplay
Unique, well-thought out combat system and a skill-set that doesn't have any major downfalls. Enemies are smart and in general the AI is well done.
9.5 Lasting Appeal
40+ hours at least of a solid RPG.

9.2 OVERALL

 

Thanks for the review link1313. It'll be a good game to tide over the new year while every other person is drooling over Crysis and the other FPS-type games. A shame games like these don't come along too often.

 

i still haven't got it yet, maybe in the next couple of weeks for the summer holidays.

 

I have it. It's very good. Unfortunatly, It's increadibly Buggy. Keeps crashing all the time.

 

I have the import version (from GoGamer it was only ~$2.00 more than the US version ), and when the scene takes place it is a blurred red hard to distinguish event (in other words you see nothing). From the sound of it what is shown in the US version it may be entirely different from what is shown in original version.

I must be lucky the game hasn't crashed on me (yet).

 

just got it.

i liek the classification....

MA15+
Strong violence,
*** scenes and
drug references :

my parents are going to be really wondering waht sort of game this is

 

I've played to about the second chapter, and have only experienced a single crash, during a still painting movie and OKAY load times (usually 3-25 seconds)

running c2d 2.2ghz 8600MGT 128mb GDDR3 OC'ed

 

I've only gotten 1 crash so far, although it was while trying to save (hence I lost a ton of stuff since the last save), eh...

The storyline isn't bad, although it's less immersive than I had hoped. My real disappointment is in the combat system really. The whole click-wait-click-wait-click thing is really repetitive and feels even more mechanical than a FPS.

Used to having a huge number of spells from NWN2 and the like, I found the combat rather boring and stale. Still, it's something to come back to now and then when I'm bored.

 

I'm guessing you haven't played past chapter 1, correct? Because your storyline/combat system complaints would be gone after that time.

 

I'm reading conflicting information on this thread. If I understand correctly the european version is the regular version and the US is censored, or is it the other way round? I thought since CDProjekt are a european developer then the european copy should be as is and not modified for US consumption.

 

Yes the EU version is the original (actually the Polish version is the real original, the dialogues in the English version are well toned down), whereas the US version is censored. The censorship mainly involves covering naked ladies with bits of cloth and object. Because apparently people in the US is old enough to kill and swear in a video game, but not mature enough to see some nipples.

For those who experience regular crashes, try playing it in windowed mode. Works great for me on the native resolution (1920x1200) with medium/high settings. Alternatively play it at low resolution (1024x640 / 1024x800) as suggested in the patch note, the quality is not as good though, even if you turn everything to high with max AA.

I don't have the long loading time other people are experiencing, but it would be much better if we have an option to turn off auto save in the next patch. fingers crossed

 

I play this game on my intel GMA 950 smoothly all options maxed and at 1280x800, 30+fps at least Just kidding

Does it run well on a 7950GTX, or better up a 7800GTX? I have only tried it on my desktop 8800GTX but would like to try it on my 7800GTX go.

 

Hot air shouldn't be contagious so no worries . Witcher official reqs are a 7800GTX so the go variant should be a touch below max settings depending on other system hardware.

 

How much more swearing can you fit into one game?! Reviews of the english version were surprised by the level of foul language, unless Polish lends itself well as a coarse language?

 

Is the first chick you get into bed (better leave out the spoilers ) supposed to have her breasts (barely) covered up by a white sheet on the picture you get?
The pic was shown while a brief red tinted s e x scene (couldn't really see much of anything) played out in the back.

Considering I live in Denmark - not exactly a country known for being prudish about something as natural as nudity - I found it rather odd that we might have ended up with a censored version (especially since it's rated 18+, hell, I think it may actually still be legal to sell hardcore porn to kids at 16 here).

Looking at the back of the box it says Atari United Kingdom, plus "quickstart in:" Finnish, Swedish and a flag I don't recognize.

 

In my version (the European English version) the first woman is also covered by a white sheet and a cat. I'm pretty sure it is normal for that character in all versions.
http://www.mypicshare.com/sd86kxlzpic.html (here is my card).

By the time you have gotten your second scene with a woman you should know if you have an uncensored version . Given that the event screens are all red maybe we need special glasses (some variation of 3d glasses?) to filter out the red to see the real scene .

 

Rather than saying there's more swear words, it's more fitting to say lazy translation. Here's an example:

took it from http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=175256

Yes that's normal, they didn't show much in the first scene. But hey you can't expect too much that's the prologue . Gets better once you get into act 1.

 

I got a 7950 GTX,T7400 with 2GB ram and it runs well on 1920x1200. windowed mode, high lighting and texture, low grass & shadow, AA off, depth of field off, view distance short. 20-40 fps outdoor, 50-80 fps indoor. Ultimately it does depend on how populated the map is, better at night compared to day time.

 

Is it always so crude in the Polish version? I'm starting wonder how you found the website with the original polish dialogue translated.

Is the English version throughout all of Europe based on the UK's version?

 

I learned about it from the witcher forum, here it is

http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=3855.0

there are alot of discussion on this, with people who played both version.

I have the UK version and I get to select several Europe languages except Polish on install. So I presume the EU version throughout Europe would be the same. Most likely you get a manual with language of where you buy it from.

 

I'm asking a family member to get it for me in the UK since I seriously doubt Asia is going to stock this game with its content rating. Good to know that bar the language differences everything should be as it should be for the UK version.