[DISCUSSION] Witcher 3 - Reviews

[CoconutChriss]

Don't worry too much about balancing issues, folks. Remember Witcher 2 after launch? And now think about the games final state in the Enhanced Edition. Things like that can easily be tweaked.

And the Day 1 Patch is still to come.

 

[dygovilar]

It's simply impossible to have an RPG without fetch quests in some form.

The awesome thing that CDPR are doing is putting a lot of effort even into such small quests so that they have a back story and character to them and so they feel interesting and not like a fetch quest.

In any case, I take the opinions of some reviewers with a pinch of salt. Especially when some of their 'conclusions' are not very accurate or actually correct, just proves that they may not have bothered to get deep into the game systems.

I think what CDPR actually said is more like val.mitev said. They promised quest that have something special about them, not just the regular fetch 10 feathers. So I guess they delivered that, based on the reviews I read.

 

[Geralt_of_bsas]

I wound t pay too much attention to IGN's comment on fetch quests.

CDPR have no problem in doing those, but making them valuable with awesome stories and characters, thats their deal.

As for true literal fetchquests, 95% of all quests in all RPGs ever made are fetch quests, so remember that.

 

[TearOfTheSun]

Having read several reviews the biggest complaints are technical problems. Especially fps drops and pop-ins.

Lets hope with Pc everything will be ok.

 

[MrSaberra]

Gamesradar- "A big one, yes. A beautiful one. But not open, and certainly not a sandbox in the way Skyrim’s environment operated. As Dragonborn, you could disappear for months ascending the ranks of various guilds, getting married, buying property and clearing dungeons while everyone waited patiently for you to save the realm. As Geralt though, you’re rarely able to shake off the grip of the developer’s hand as it guides you from point to point."

I was prepared to see this in a youtube comment, not in a review.

 

[P1ckleJ4r]

Calling it.

Skyrim launch overhype debacle 2.0

The reviews seem to have a structure of trying to pull something out of nothing, like they are looking for a reason to give it a good score but there's not much their in regards to 'grandeur' we've been "promised" (lead to believe all this time by CDPR).

Both Gamespot & IGN have talked about Major bugs (that seem to be game breakers) by the way they try to fluff the words. Bland main story & the maps being too long? (Bland?)

Red Dead Redemption got higher scores but by the way the 'talk' has been is that TW3 is the next best thing of the coming of jesus. If so why has it scored so low on major sites in comparison to the 'hype' that screams for tens? (Not hype by players which is a given but the talk up by CDPR all the way through).

So, from what I read so far, people who believe in not pre-ordering will be saying "I told you so".

On the bright side, got a 7 day return policy so it's as easy as walking back in store if it's crap.

Tis but honesty.

 

[shinobi2u]

There is only one sequence that came to mind reading these snips.

Spoiler

Telegraph
There is no saving the world, here, no great evil force pervading the landscape, or a doomsday clock ticking down to inevitable destruction, with only you to stand in its way. The story of Wild Hunt is a personal one, set in a huge and unrelentingly beautiful world.

Eurogamer Poland
The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece, and in many respects simply the best and most exciting game in recent years. It captivates players with artistic vision, a huge world and an epic story. The developers were not looking for cheap applause - game design is uncompromising, consistent, thoughtful and nuanced.

AusGamers
It’s a story worthy of a place in the more accepted subculture of dark fantasy ruled across media by Game of Thrones. First-timers will easily love this facet but may also be surprised to learn that this series, and the books it’s based upon, have been the at the fore of adult and mature storytelling for a long time. Wild Hunt is both at times brutal and sexy, with a juxtaposition of hard-edged steel (or silver), blood and death being met with soft, naked skin; passion, lust and even love.

Impulsegamer
This game has got characters that you actually care about, a story that is very engaging from the get go and almost flawless gaming mechanics.

Spoiler

GameSpot
One of the best role-playing games ever crafted, a titan among giants and the standard-setter for all such games going forward. Where the Witcher 2 sputtered to a halt, The Witcher 3 is always in a crescendo, crafting battle scenarios that constantly one-up the last, until you reach the explosive finale and recover in the glow of the game's quiet denouement.

Game Informer
It stands out for its wonderful writing, variety of quests and things to do in the world, and how your choices have impact in interesting ways.

Meristation
The end of a fantastic journey, it´s an extremely ambitious game, a real tour de force that shows CD Projekt will continue to shine. Really big, dense, with a nice narrative pace that mixes well with the open world structure. A stunning game.

JeuxActu
The Witcher 3 is a captivating game and a gorgeous title. Thanks to a very inspired artistic department, offering an even more accurate view on the gloomy world Geralt lives in, this third part proves itself as one of the most beautiful games ever made. But there is more: if CD Projekt took its game open-world, it's not simply for the sake of doing so. They handcrafted a very lively, very concrete universe in which you can enjoy your freedom to be the witcher you always wanted to be.

XGN
The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is one of the best RPG games ever made. Its (main) story, excellent visuals, challenging quests and beautiful world makes this one of the best games in 2015.

Spoiler

3DJuegos
An amazing amount of content and a great story with many possible choices and consequences work pretty well with The Witcher series’ sandbox twist despite its numerous shortcomings.

Hobby Consolas
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the best reason to make you buy a new console or a high-end PC. The new Geralt's adventure is huge, adult, surprising and always stunning. Everything we love about videogames.

LaPS4
RPGs have a new king with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CD Projekt RED has turned Adrzej Sapkowski's work into an amazing interactive spectacle in terms of visuals, plot and gameplay mechanics. Every hour invested in this game will be an hour of fun. The only disappointment is the optimization of the game on PS4. Frequent frame rate drops blur the experience. An issue we expect to be solved with updates but, for now, are quite a burden while playing.

Vandal Online
The amount of content we find in The Witcher 3 is outstanding, as is its quality. It is true that there are some aspects with some room for improvement, but it delivers such a rich and unique universe that you will soon forget about them.

IGN
Even if the plot isn’t terribly interesting, the many characters who play a part in it are, and along with the excellent combat and RPG gameplay, they elevate The Witcher 3 to a plane few other RPGs inhabit.

IGN Italia
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt isn’t perfect (yet?), but it’s one of the best written RPGs ever.

Spoiler

Gameblog.fr
Gorgeous, generous, incredibly well written and fun to play, The Witcher's story conclusion is far from a disappointment. It's an amazing open-world RPG, looking like Skyrim and Grand Theft Auto's child, offering so many wonderful and lively places to explore, so many tasks to accomplish, so many fantastic stories and characters, so many great battles to fight, that it will take hours to explore the entire thing. A solid masterpiece that you can't seriously miss if you like RPGs - and have plenty of time to play.

Metro GameCentral
A colossal achievement in technical terms, with a level of interaction with the game world and its inhabitants that is unsurpassed in modern video games.

Eurogamer Italy
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an awesome dark fantasy game, with perfect storytelling, a beautifully crafted world and powerful characters. Due to the open world structure and its huge dimension, this game has some technical issues, yet the final experience is still one of the best around for RPG lovers.

Everyeye.it
When it comes to story, lore and characters, The Witcher 3 is simply stunning, a milestone in western RPGs. Although the gameplay is quite varied, and the offer in terms of quests and exploration rich, the combat system still lacks depth, and structure as questing never changes. As it is, it's a perfect game for whoever like to dive deep into a believable and vast imaginary world, but not for gameplay purists.

GRYOnline.pl
The Witcher 3 is a game aiming for highest praise - you simply can't get enough of it. The need to see what happens next kept me glued to the console for many more hours than I had planned. Unfortunately the The Wild Hunt isn't perfect - the number of smaller and bigger issues can surprise (in a bad way, of course). It is an amazing game but right now the amount of bugs is simply too high.

Spoiler

Destructoid
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a huge step up from its predecessor, mostly because it manages to tell a more compelling and personal tale. At the same time, that intimate feel is juxtaposed against a gigantic, sprawling open-world adventure that may hit some snags along the way but still comes out on top.

GamesRadar+
Sloppy combat and ongoing optimisation can't quite spoil this dark fantasy adventure, set in a stunning world of blood and black magic.

Playstation Official Magazine UK
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a surprising failure as an open-world video game, but within its beautifully lit world of monsters lies a much more traditional story-driven RPG of immense quality.

 

[Gerudon]

I don't get it either, I was bumned out when I read on IGN that the main quest was a bunch of fetch quests. But that in mind I don't hold IGN in high regard about their reviews. They always have something to complain about. I still remember that they complained about DAI and in the end it was chosen as game of the year.

"fetch-quest" seems to be the wrong word for it. I'm just listening to a talk of two critics and they say, that specially during the first third of the game you constantly have to look for other characters and those quest seem to be a little dragged out.

 

[Geralt_of_bsas]

Calling it.

Skyrim launch overhype debacle 2.0

The reviews seem to have a structure of trying to pull something out of nothing, like they are looking for a reason to give it a good score but there's not much their in regards to 'grandeur' we've been "promised" (lead to believe all this time by CDPR).

Both Gamespot & IGN have talked about Major bugs (that seem to be game breakers) by the way they try to fluff the words. Bland main story & the maps being too long? (Bland?)

Red Dead Redemption got higher scores but by the way the 'talk' has been is that TW3 is the next best thing of the coming of jesus. If so why has it scored so low on major sites in comparison to the 'hype' that screams for tens? (Not hype by players which is a given but the talk up by CDPR all the way through).

So, from what I read so far, people who believe in not pre-ordering will be saying "I told you so".

On the bright side, got a 7 day return policy so it's as easy as walking back in store if it's crap.

Tis but honesty.

I actually see the opposite, reviewers looking for "bad things" to make the game fall shorter than the popular bethesda and rockstar favorites who get a lot of score points out of company/studio history alone.

 

[Scryar]

"fetch-quest" seems to be the wrong word for it. I'm just listening to a talk of two critics and they say, that specially during the first third of the game you constantly have to look for other characters and those quest seem to be a little dragged out.

Doesn't surprise me. Half of the screens released in the last weeks had the quest

Spoiler

talk to Yennefer at xxxx. Talk to keira Metz at yyyyy. Talk to zzzzz

. Personally I'm looking forward to this kind of quests

 

[Lyvean]

Lets hope with Pc everything will be ok.

FPS will be ok with a good PC. PoP exists in all versions no matter what. Let's hope that in the PC version is not so horrible as the PS4.

 

[gogmeister777]

Playstation Official Magazine UK
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is a surprising failure as an open-world video game, but within its beautifully lit world of monsters lies a much more traditional story-driven RPG of immense quality.

Yeah, I read that one and I have to say, I thought that was an awful review.

He refers to Skyrim several times in a slightly antagonistic and baity way, seemingly relishing the opportunity to claim that CDPR have 'taken swipes at it' but that many criticisms CDPR have of Skyrim are ones that TW3 falls foul of itself..

Also, despite having a main huge world with no load screens, he tells the reader that they are wrong to think of it as an open-world game since, technically, there are several smaller areas which have a load screen.

I'd finally also mention that he said he can't ignore the technical problems despite an upcoming patch since he has to base his review on the product he has in front of him. Very true. Unfortunately, he then immediately calls out the game for not being quite what he imagined it might be - as opposed to simply basing his criticisms on the
product he has in front of him.

EDIT: Just remembered. He also criticised the fact that the game "hardly ever feels like it’s keeping its head above 30fps during combat".

 

[Talabriga]

I am worry about three things, the side quests, the main story being to long and boring on some parts and Ciri as a character, especially after reading this,

Spoiler

Ciri is at once chaste and comely, a daughter figure and eye candy, which, yes, is awkward. She’s given a rushed romantic subplot but robbed of the chance to consummate it; she’s a strong fighter and arguably more deadly than Geralt with a blade, but she spends the entire game with the center button of her blouse undone and her bra showing. Wild Hunt, then, is somewhat like Geralt—surrounded by powerful, complicated women, enthusiastic but not always sure of how best to proceed.

 

[Scryar]

I am worry about three things, the side quests, the main story being to long and boring on some parts and Ciri as a character, especially after reading this,

Spoiler

Ciri is at once chaste and comely, a daughter figure and eye candy, which, yes, is awkward. She’s given a rushed romantic subplot but robbed of the chance to consummate it; she’s a strong fighter and arguably more deadly than Geralt with a blade, but she spends the entire game with the center button of her blouse undone and her bra showing. Wild Hunt, then, is somewhat like Geralt—surrounded by powerful, complicated women, enthusiastic but not always sure of how best to proceed.

let me guess, polygon or kotaku?

 

[dygovilar]

Yeah, I read that one and I have to say, I thought that was an awful review.

He refers to Skyrim several times in a slightly antagonistic and baity way, seemingly relishing the opportunity to claim that CDPR have 'taken swipes at it' but that many criticisms CDPR have of Skyrim are ones that TW3 falls foul of itself..

Also, despite having a main huge world with no load screens, he tells the reader that they are wrong to think of it as an open-world game since, technically, there are several smaller areas which have a load screen.

I'd finally also mention that he said he can't ignore the technical problems despite an upcoming patch since he has to base his review on the product he has in front of him. Very true. Unfortunately, he then immediately calls out the game for not being quite what he imagined it might be - as opposed to simply basing his criticisms on the
product he has in front of him.

I tend to agree with the reviewer on this one. The way CDPR advertised the game made it look like Skyrim, when in reality it is more like DA:I, but bigger. When Bioware advertised DA:I, they didn't promise open world, but huge zones open world-like

 

[Xvenger]

Really take the whole "fetch quest" part from IGN with a grain of salt. Honestly IGN's reviews can be quite sporadic at times. To me, the worse definition of fetch quest would be the games such as Destiny and Dragon Age Inquisition where it's in the realm of mmo quality style of questing that merely serve its purpose to reward the player a certain amount of exp or items.

What makes it funny is I can't even fathom a game that's "fetch quest-centric" with my definition of it to even have a score of 9.3 and so I believe this is once again a strong case of subjectivity.
Yes it's probably true that at its core, all that Geralt does in many quests is press a button for witcher sense, and slice and dice enemies (kill) or pick up items, and then move on. HOWEVER, that doesn't mean it ends up being meaningless which is what usually qualifies something to be a fetch quest. In every preview that I've seen that dealt with this, there usually was, at the very least, a small twist or unexpected outcome that came from doing the quest. The point is, IT WASN'T SHALLOW.

Anyway as for the rest of the reviews, these technical issues everyone seems to keep mentioning really feels to me like they were just looking for something definitive to lower the rating and justify it. It isn't perfect after all and I actually would be more suspicious it someone claimed that it was. I highly doubt it is this severe problem that happens rampantly and it was after all expected from the consoles in the first place. Lastly, we can also hope for the day one patch to fix some rough edges.

 

[Lieste]

Doesn't surprise me. Half of the screens released in the last weeks had the quest

Spoiler

talk to Yennefer at xxxx. Talk to keira Metz at yyyyy. Talk to zzzzz

. Personally I'm looking forward to this kind of quests

That is only the currently active quest though. You can sit down at any time, pull out your journal and select a different quest to have active, while meandering towards wherever it is that Yennefer is going.

 

[Jinal]

Noticed that many reviewers spotted some bugs. Not a big surprise, but i would again like to see an easy and simple method to report bugs and crashes after release. like this: Some button in the menu, when you click it, you can file a short report and - if you wish - attach a screenshot and allow (or not) the game to check your settings and specs you are running it on. Report is then sent to CDPR.

Bugs can be annoying, but it gets worse if you have to post in some official forums or create an account somewhere so that you can file a bug report on some official website. More reports help solving the issues, the easier it is, the more reports will be made.

 

[gogmeister777]

I tend to agree with the reviewer on this one. The way CDPR advertised the game made it look like Skyrim, when in reality it is more like DA:I, but bigger. When Bioware advertised DA:I, they didn't promise open world, but huge zones open world-like

Oh, I can see where he's coming from but is he reviewing the game, as in what's in front of him to play, or CDPR's marketing campaign?

 

[Rednuht912]

let me guess, polygon or kotaku?

yep, kotaku XD