Witcher 3 first impressions: what do you think?

[DJfern94]

I've logged four hours now and the game itself seems great, a lot to do, the combat system is fun and the side quests are interesting. I know it is day one and all of this will probably be patched soon, but SLI isn't working properly for me, I actually get higher FPS turning SLI off. Also the game has frozen a couple of times, moving to a loading screen and not coming out of it.

 

As I said though, this will probably be patched!

[Octagoncow]

I posted earlier in this thread after only playing 2.5 hours; but, I wanted to give an update after playing 10.4 hours now. I'm not going to say much about the graphics since I only have a 670 so I have almost everything on low (textures are on high and terrain is on medium I think that's it). All I really have to say is that my frame rate has been fairly consistant at 50-60fps with no major dips. Other small things to note is that I'm playing on hard and I've played The Witcher 2 before this game, but not The Witcher 1.I think my thoughts are best summed up by saying the more I play this game the more I enjoy it.

 

Initially I had some problems with how Geralt moves. He likes to kind of slide around which is problematic when you're just trying to move short distances. I wouldn't say that it has gotten better, but once I understood how he moves the game became less frusterating. This was more of a problem in towns and buildings where you didn't have a lot of space to move around.

 

Combat:

I found combat to be well put together. It's definitely more focused on planning out your battles instead of randomly running in swinging your sword randomly. I've managed to die to creatures a few levels below me when I've done that. Minor gripes include bombs being awkward for me to use (I always end up throwing them at the enemy directly in front of me) and I can't seem to get parrying down properly.

 

Quests:
The quests I've done are fairly interesting and are frequent enough that I haven't found myself not knowing what to do. There are plenty of areas to explore and discover without having to go very far.I have run into one unmarked quest bugging out though. A key was supposed to drop from some enemies to free a merchant but it never did. I hope that poor merchant enjoys his new life in captivity. I also found it slightly odd that I somehow managed to get a level 33 quest mixed in with my level 7-10 quests.

 

Crafting/Alchemy:
I have a few problems with how alchemy works now and I'll do my best to explain how it works. Instead of being able to make as many bombs/potions as I want; there is a set limit to how many items you can hold. Bombs and potions are created one time and are refilled when you meditate if you have alcohol in your inventory. So when I created a grapeshot bomb 2 are placed in my inventory and no more can be created. Once the two are used up I need to meditate to refill those. I really miss being able to stock up on a ton of bombs and go to town on groups of enemies like I did on The Witcher 2. In my opinion it just seems to limit what I can do in combat. I keep collecting plants but I don't really know why anymore. Crafting works the same for the most part as it did in The Witcher 2 and I have no real complaints. The only major difference I can think of is that there are now armor smiths and weapon smiths (I'm pretty sure that it was just combined into 1 in The Witcher 2) so you can't have a weapon smith create armor and vice versa.

 

Durability:

It's probably because I'm not used to durability from The Witcher 2 and Skyrim; but, I REALLY REALLY hate the durability system in this game. I know it's more realistic but it just seems tedious. I don't want to take time away from having fun to repair armor and swords. Durability doesn't seem to drop too fast, but it's just annoying. I really hope that a tweak will be found that can remove this part of the game.

 

Final thoughts:

If I had to rate this game 1-10 with 10 being a gift from the heavens  (5 being an average game, not bad) it's a solid 8. Unless this game goes downhill fast, it's easily going to be one of my favorite games of all time. It definitely has some things that I'm not so fond of, but it doesn't harm the game so much that my experience becomes negative. I'd very easily recommend this game to anyone who is looking for a solid RPG. Hopefully this mini review makes sense to some degree. I'm on about 4 hours of sleep so I'm pretty sure this entire thing is absolute nonsense though.

[Mightyinvader]

It's ok, I don't know I guess I have kinda lost interest in the series, I refunded the game on steam

[WereCat]

It's ok, I don't know I guess I have kinda lost interest in the series, I refunded the game on steam

Was it because of the controversies or graphics or just lack of interest?

[srolle]

looks horrible, not worth 60 bucks. i'll buy it if they optimize it for PC later on.

[Humbug]

and yet the architecture is about to be brand new... again

I don't think they will recycle the 7950/7970 again. Think they will use and where needed scale up the R9 285 architecture since it's newer, has better freesync, better VSR support and good tessellation performance.

[Adreyu]

I don't think they will recycle the 7950/7970 again. Think they will use and where needed scale up the R9 285 architecture since it's newer, has better freesync, better VSR support and good tessellation performance.

thats probably fair. the outlook didnt seem great though with the leaks we've been seeing

[Remilia]

Anyone know how to deal with werewolves? Trying to kill the one underground beneath the lodge, but it's regenerating hp crazy fast.

 

I guess the game is kewl, dwarfs too.

[Kamina]

Looks like the PS4 version yet requires a beefy card to play it.

 

I smell nvidia chopping our nuts to have us buy their 980s.

[mr195]

Great game absolutely shit optimization, can't hit even close to 60 fps with gtx 680 and i7 3930k on LOWEST (yes lowest im not a fucking idiot hairworks is off na na na...etc)

Not sure why you're having such problems. With one 780 I'm able to run at 45-60 fps with everything ultra except foliage distance (and hairworks off, of course). Then when I popped another 780 in there today, I'm doubling my frame rate. This game is very well optimized and scales very well. Frames are always consistent. People are playing this game with 560s, so I can't say what your problem is.

[Pomfinator]

Anyone know how to deal with werewolves? Trying to kill the one underground beneath the lodge, but it's regenerating hp crazy fast.

 

I guess the game is kewl, dwarfs too.

If you have a save that is before you even engaged the werewolf at all, use it.  If you go back to town to repair or run away from the battle, the werewolf starts off with it's OP regen.  There are a couple of things you can do, you can try to poison him with bombs, or burst him down before the regen has any time to act.  Grapeshot does a ton of silver damage, and Igni reduces armor, couple that with Thunderbolt and you should be able to burst it down quickly.

[Remilia]

(＾◡＾)っ✂

 

I seem to just have been underleveled, still had the starting silver sword when I fought it, so damage was pretty crap. Grapeshots seems to be a nice way to quickly burst him down after reaching the regeneration trigger threshold, yeah.

[Dezz]

I really like the game and also combat system.

 

Things I don't like is the horse movement, it just feels so strange if you are on some tight paths surrounded by fence/buildings or trees. Also I noticed a small glitch when I was at the Baron's house, there is a big wooden gate and when it is closed and I try to go through it, the gate opens but there is a small step and horse can not walk through, you have to jump.

 

And also I've never played witcher game before so I'm not sure if the combat system is the same in previous games. But I'm such a noob in combat and when there are more enemies (4+) I sometimes can't kill them, I had to switch to easiest difficulty when I was fighting warriors in front of sorcerer's house (when I was looking for Baron's wife). Yea, i'm mega noob, but I love the game!