(Post below is regarding the latest 1.04 PS4 version):
After the release of the game and seeing all the 9/10, 10/10 ratings I was wise enough to look further. Sure enough, soon as many reports of lag and stuttering and bad performance were swarming the net..
A week or so later I figured the developers would have come up with fixes by now and fix the issues this game is plagued by.
Starting up the ps4 version on my brand new ps4 it wasn't too bad throughout the the first hours. It is obvious some optimatization has gone into the starting area...
Smart from the developers, at least that way you get decent/good ratings and the game doesn't show its major, major issues. And oh boy, does this game have issues.
Soon enough after 10 or 20 hours later, leaving the starting area, framerates began to plumeth and the lagging and stuttering was more frequent than not.
Now after 30 or 50 or so hours (don't know exactly how many I'm still lagging around in novigrad) I cannot take it anymore. The game has gone on the shelf.
This game is utterly and outragiously in beta stage still.. It seems the developers have just made quick work of porting it from the PC version to consoles. I cannot for the life of me explain why they would otherwise release a game that performs and stutters (Well BELOW 15 FPS) in a lot of areas.
It seems the game AND PS4 cannot possible handly any sort of effect in this game whether it is a little fire, smoke, fog, rain or whatnot. Combining these with 3 or 4 monsters you are trying to fight and you are almost playing a slideshow.
Not sure why the rain make the game slow down to a crawl from an already locked laughable 30 fps to <15) since if you pay attention to it, there hasn't been a release of any game that has such poor rain effects as this one.
I decided to wait out the next 15 patches from the developer because I cannot take it anymore.
OH wait.. Did I mention the 2-3 minute constant loading times..... this is just unacceptable in this time. It totally kills any immersion and willingness to give beating that monster or boss another try. Seriously Fix the loading screens.
The gameplay and mechanics are ok and this game has the potential to get an 9/10 rating... Right now... Even hard to give it a 6/10.. This game should have never ever been released in its current (1.04 PS4 form).. Oh wait it wasn't even released in this form.. It already had 4 patches (6 on pc I believe). Shame so many people were fooled with their silly 10/10 ratings on this game.. it is obvious they based their conclusion on the first few hours in the starting area.
I was at some point tempted to get the PC version but this software house will not get 1 single cent from me unless they fix the PS4 version. There are other ways to try it out.
In short:
- Extremely lackluster alpa quality performance (both in the world with any non standard visual effect it seems).. Inventory UI gets very, very slow as well with a little more items.
- Rediculous amount of loading times (sometimes over 2-3 minutes).. And yes I do die in this game every now and then.
- Fonts are stupidly small all over the interface... Unusable on a 40" super quality TV.. Cannot read the stuff in my inventory
- Some very poor visuals like the rain effect (just look at it closer and look at rain a bit more in the distant, exactly the same, no depth, no fading, just weird).
- I can add so many more and also smaller annoyances but this post is already long enough.
- Great world design/textures and cinematics (which I do love, character details and such is nice)
- Core gameplay mechanics are pretty decent although the game appears to be very badly balanced especially a bit later on, monster levels, loot etc.
- Plays well with the controller
6/10 in its current state. Sorry but I've been playing games for more than 30 years... Hopefully at some point I can give it a 9/10 as I really want to.