If you can get past all the crashes that occur during the last part of the game, you will find yourself playing a repetitive game. Go there, kill bad guy, go somewhere else, blow up this facility. All in all it hat it's sparks of good moments but due to the fact that you have to pay most of the game on low health and pray that you won't get a crash makes the game a drag.
In the beginning, when I had heard about the witcher I thought it to be just another game about medieval times with knights, dragons and monsters of all sorts. When The Witcher 2 first came out, I thought I should give it a try. The game seemed weird and I couldn't understand anything that was happening. Scoia'tael? Witcher? Demavend? What are these things? I immediately uninstalled and never touched the game again. Some time passed and the Witcher 3 came out. As it grew poplr the third installment seemed more and more badass so I finally gave in and bought it. It was amazing. The graphics, the story, the feeling of being surrounded by mystery and nature at the same time. But yet, it felt like something was still missing. After a couple of hours sinked into the game I thought enough was enough. So i bought the first game as well, ready to take it from the beginning and get engulfed into the Witcher universe. But yet again the books had so much more history to reveal to me than just the first game. So i bought them as well. Thus, my journey through the life of the witcher Geralt and his friends had started. The books were piling up on each other. Day by day, night by night, i could understand more and more about this universe and how everything was put into order. The beauty, the essence, the good and the bad times, the boring political parts and the amazing de the books so much more important for the story of the games. I tried hard not to play any other game until I finished the book so that I could be done with the reading part. A couple of months later (because of work and other life related issues) I was finally done with them. The first part of my journey was complete. Though i was feeling a bit sad that the books had ended, I could finally start playing the games. And boy was I not prepared for what was to come. As I am writing these lines I am trying to be as objective as possible due to the fact that the first game is quite old and has not aged well at all. From the clunky walkig cycles to the long and mondane combat sequences this game is nothing but a small miracle (as in 'it's a miracle that the franchise would get another installment just after the first game') The first installment had to deal with alot of issues presented as features. First of all, the story seemed like it was forced onto you. Too many times I felt as though I didn't know which quest to finish in order to progress through the story, or which one is a side quest that I could skip in order to get on with the game faster. The two antagonists were so blatant and felt so annoying especially when you had to fight against them. Invoking all sorts of enemies to fight alongside them or even for them, the final battles seemed so annoying that I was ready to give up on the first gamr entirely. But i persevered and managed not to smash my keyboard in the process of finishing the game. The second issue that I thought to ve game-breaking was the combat itself. Having to switch between the three combat stances because the enemy you wanted to hit was dodging your every move, while others were already cutting through your life bar like a Zerikanian sword cuts through skin proved to be quite annoying. In the first chapters of the game this fighting mechanic proved rather challenging, forcing me to addapt to new situations. With each enemy I would have to think about a new way of defeating them. But as you progress, the enemies get tougher and tougher to the point where even a minion could not only dodge your attacks but also inflict a stun on you, rendering you impossible to dodge or attack. By the last chapters, this feature made me hate not only the game itself but also the entire francise, annoying battles with enemies that stun you then beat you to a pulp are not something you should add to your game, especially when you don't give the player a chance to rest or gain a bit of health between fights. The battle with the main villain 'Azar Javed' seemed so unfair, the villain stunning and beating you to a pulp every second you were near him. A good stratedy I found was to run away and them when he stopped chasing me, wait to gain some health and power, go near him, stun and burn him then run again and save the game so as not to lose progress. Half an hour it took me to beat him, time in which i would cuss and swear at the screen because of the unfairness. This is not how you do a boss battle. Third, the health gaining system seemed broken. Having so many types of drinks but not giving you health was such an annoying thing. I would often find myself in the midst of battle in need of health but only having beer and whine in my inventory. Why is drinking with your buddies more important than having food in your inventory, food that can ultimatel save your life? The fourth and probabbly the last issue of the game were the quests themselves. Too many quests that required you to go bacl and forth through places just to talk to some npc or just to deliver an envelope, and the npc's wouldn't even be in the same town. You'd have to go through swamps and swarms of enemies just to deliver a few lines of dialogue. It felt so annoying to go through the same blatant scenery and see the same pale environments and things each time. Although engulfed in an aura of bad omen, the game had its good moments as well. Seeing Geralt do a spin in the middle of a battle, sword in hand just to evade an enemy just as he did so many times in the books filled me with joy. The moments when you met the famous characters and interacted with them. Triss Merigold, Zoltan Chivay, Dandelion, even King Foltest. The idea of Geralt losing his memory was a neat way of tying the gap between the books and the games. How did Geralt get to the place where he was found by the other witchers? What happened to him? What happened to Yennefer? Questions that keep you going through the game. All in all I wouldn't recommend this game but only to the most die-hard fans of the Witcher lore as it just isn't worth the time and effort. For those who wish to know everytinh about the legend of Geralt of Rivia the game is necesaary in order to understand bits of the second one and to understand the universe in which the protagonist develops.
