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Go Buy This Game!
The Witcher – an oldschool RPG where you make real choices in a dynamic world, follow an only occasionally badly translated story that is over-the-top with sex and violence in pure Conan style. Still not convinced? This intro gives a good feel for the game.
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about 2 years ago
WHY AM I NOT PLAYING IT RIGHT NOW?!
about 2 years ago
Because it’s still loading.
about 2 years ago
This game really is fantastic, with two exceptions:
1. The loading times are ridiculous, and too common.
2. The US version lacks boobies.
I demand boobies in my game, goddammit.
Something else I would like to add: The whole thing is based on a series of books, of which only 1 or 2 are translated to english, unfortunately. There is also a tv series, which … can be…. found…. on the intarwebs, if you look hard enough. Its been fan-subbed to english, often poorly. But its worth the trouble, because it’s awesome!
about 2 years ago
Addendum: I’m astounded that it uses a modified version of the first NWN engine.
about 2 years ago
“The US version lacks boobies.”
FCUK!
about 2 years ago
Done.
about 2 years ago
The link allows you to purchase the uncensored UK version.
I’ll probably buy it next week.
Scott, have you played through this? Hopefully it isn’t 15 hours of gameplay for 50 bucks.
about 2 years ago
I’m about 20 hours in, and it’s still got quite a while to go. It’s pretty deep.
I included a link to the uncensored version; there’s not much that was censored though; there’s a collectible “minigame” for women you bed, and the cards you win from those were censored in the US version. Everything else is the same.
about 2 years ago
Yes, the game does appear to be fun. But the load times are absur . Is this something that will get better with a patch (beyond the 1.1a they’ve already released)? Or do I really need to go out and buy 2 more gigs of RAM on top of the 2 gigs I already have.
about 2 years ago
I came to the comments section to tell people to buy the import version, but clearly that’s already well in hand.
Glad to see great word of mouth on this title. I’m hearing a lot of talk about it!
about 2 years ago
At 20 hours in you’ve probably spent 10 of them looking at the load bar, but you got to cut some slack for a game where one of the quests involves getting drunk, stumbling into a house, beating up the father, then going upstairs and nailing the daughter.
about 2 years ago
Can you play as a female character?
about 2 years ago
Yeah, great game. I just finished a strip about it last night:
http://zapalley.com/comic/2007/11/11/the-hazards-of-card-collecting/
about 2 years ago
“While trying to regain his lost memory….”
GROAN….
about 2 years ago
Order placed! Looking forward to it.
about 2 years ago
I think I read the game taking 60-80 hours to complete depending on pace, I am in the beginning of chapter 4 and it feels about right. The loading isn’t as bad aslong as you have a somewhat fast harddrive, i’m running it with a 7200rpm SATAII drive that was defraged after installing the game and big areas take about 20-40 seconds, smaller things like house take about 5-10 seconds. It is kind of strange seeing all theese people mention ram size, videocards and whatever when discussing loadspeed, missing the most important part. As a point of reference I had my BIOS messed up when I started playing, with the drive in compatible mode, meaning it ran as IDE, I think a large area avereged about 3-5 minuites with that, so get a faster HDD.
about 2 years ago
I have to say, wonderfully done game, the combat’s interesting, the story is interesting
Now if only he wouldn’t decide to stand JUST outside of melee range of those stupid plants without a crapload of micro management.
about 2 years ago
Load times are maybe 10-20 seconds on the warez version, using a somewhat older machine (AMD X2 4600+ 3GB RAM), though you have to follow an instruction list of Dead Sea Scrolls-like length to get it working properly. The price you pay.
Was expecting Engrish and bad voice acting based on some early reviews and my prior experiences with European games translated from the original Swahili, but there’s little of either. (An early instance of the on-screen text referring to an item as a cauldron while being spoken of as a ‘bell’ threw me off, as it was pretty important in that scene.) The camera is pretty annoying in all of the predefined modes, but it always has been (for me) in the NWN2 engine.
This is probably one of those games that, if I like it enough, I’ll go out and retroactively buy. I usually only do that for Paradox releases, but this is definitely worthy of vote-with-your-dollar-to-support-more-games-like-this status. Plus I want to see more European games brought over here in general, since they seem to be able to avoid the staleness and genre shrink that’s been hurting the American market.
Jury’s still out for me on whether it’s good or great, but all-surface crap like Oblivion isn’t a patch on this thing. If the days of BG2, PS:T and (hell) Deus Ex are dead and buried, then THIS is a good model for what single-player RPGs should be.
about 2 years ago
I saw this game at the 2005 E3. It was one of those gems hidden down in Kentia hall. It looked awesome back then, glad to see it finally got released! Definitely an interesting game.
about 2 years ago
It’s a bit on the chauvinist side it has to be said (the card-collecting seems a bit tacky, but strangely I’m drawn to collect them all anyway…) – the missus commented “can tell that game was written by a bloke” upon first sight of a wood nymph.
Good game nonetheless. The actions with consequences is a nice change from the usual “are you superevil or nicey nicey, with no inbetween”.
I do occasionally get the feeling I’m playing the first NWN again (that “go north, then go east, or south, take your pick and clear 3/4 dungeons” adventure) – though that’s usually when I’m trying to reorganise my backpack to fit in the fourteenth “rubedo vitreol” ingredient.
about 2 years ago
For anyone having problems on a machine they feel they shouldn’t be, go to Options > Advanced and set it to “Low” which is actually the second setting from the left (the first is “User”). I don’t know why it works but if you turn enough features down, the loading times shoot up in a non-linear fashion. It is certainly worth the effort of fiddling around since the time and frustration you save is HUGE.
about 2 years ago
Oh my…… Purchased. Now for the wait ’till it arrives…..
about 2 years ago
I purchased it too, should be in by Wednesday or so.
I have nice and fast HD set up with 4 drives in Raid 0, but ‘only’ 2 gigs of DDR2 ram, so I’ll report back about load times.
about 2 years ago
Dammit. Now I need like a PC, don’t I?
about 2 years ago
This game is excellent. I’m almost done with Act 2, about 20 hours in.
Scott, I can assure you the Dryad has a different skin in the US version. Full frontal ftw!
And – aren’t all the hooker cards the same? I only had sex with two, but both were the same card. No luck with Carmen, yet.
about 2 years ago
So *that’s* what happened to Blanka!
about 2 years ago
Another little tip for improving loadtimes is get the mini-image and daemon tools pro, since alot of time is spent accessing your CD drive otherwise.
about 2 years ago
I bought the downloadable UK version from their site, and I haz de boobies (I live in NY).
Also, it is pretty unstable under Vista. It crashes after you save 4-5 times, and sometimes when loading a new area. Not unplayable, but annoying.
The game itself is excellent, enough so that I put up with the instability and continue playing it.
about 2 years ago
I haven’t had it crash once in Vista, strange. It does get some slowdown after 2-3 hours though.
about 2 years ago
http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/10/24
about 2 years ago
I hate seeing redheads being beaten up by blondes.
about 2 years ago
Got it yesterday, I’m having a great time with it. I really like the moral ambiguity of a lot of the plot choices – most fantasy RPG’s stay pretty black and white. The combat was occasionally annoying, until I realized that my system is a lot more responsive if I turn the graphics down a bit in the larger boss fights.
about 2 years ago
Completely, Utterly Absorbing!
I haven’t lost this much sleep since Asheron’s Call. The end of the first act was getting long in the tooth, but the boss fights and the start of Act II are fantastic! I’ve not played anything that was this morally vague, and the NPC comments about locking up your wives, here’s a Witcher are quite amusing.
about 2 years ago
I bought it that same weekend, played it for a few hours then put it down. I didn’t like the 3rd person perspective or the graphics. And at the beginning you only know a couple sword moves so I wasn’t very impressed.
So last week I had nothing much to do and played some more. Once I got out of the starter area I started really loving it. The skills are varied, interesting, the fighting is new, and the “building” of attacks forces you to choose your style carefully. You can’t just spit out fireballs or blast waves or mind-altering spells between attacks whenever you want, or vice versa. Well you can, but if you do you have to start over your series of attacks. So you actually have to pay attention and think, but it’s still easy for those of us who are not twitchy fps players.
It’s also pretty big. Full of side quests and choices that only affect you much later, and varied skills supports playing it twice at least. In this game you definitely do NOT want to read any sites for advice, even if you get stuck.
I think this is one of the best single player rpgs since Baldur’s Gate.