Liked - Lighting and shading. - Environment design. - Most of the music. - Searching for treasure. - Distinct combat styles. - Plenty to read. - Smart-weapons. - Mocap acting for some of the characters. - Ran smoothly (3080 rtx). - The epilogue. Disliked - There's no grand adventure, no empire-building, no wrongs to right. - Denies player agency to force a linear story. Like holding up the whole game until you sit on a chair. - Limited replay value given the above. - The cheap & nasty advertising doesn't work. Clashes with the cyberpunk aesthetic. - V's character doesn't develop during the story (see Farcry3). - Story ends just as it gets interesting. - No way to switch sides at the end, roll-back all the damage you've done. - V's voice was over-acted, especially the male version. - The Silverhand character was a disgusting wet-rag... far worse than Geraldt. - Driving navigation lacked a visual overlay (outside of racing), this could've been an ocular mod. - Lifeless set-dressing NPCs. NPC AI was accomplished way back in Hardwar (1998). - Heavily scripted truman-show-style scenarios, just adds to the lifelessness. - Cringey juvenile design & acting of certain female characters. - Generally morbid associations with sex throughout the game. - Prudish sex scenes, prudish lack of nudity outside of inventory. - Lack of sandstorms/haze; clear blue sky should be rare. - Locked-doors everywhere; most buildings are just 'textured boxes', so to speak. - Heaps of cultural cringe, like chopsticks-in-hair cringe... I guess its an 80's themed game. - Player character physique doesn't change with playstyle; you can't go full animal or maelstrom. - Mako-style vehicle physics. - Weapon damage and armor makes no sense, - Plethora of glitches and omissions, game could use another year of refinement. - No console + commands to cope with the above (especially noclip or setstage).
liked * Gaming the system. * Large, complex game, takes ages to finish. * Complex character building. * The fx artwork (fire, magic, particles, etc.). * Epilogue revealing consequences of your decisions. * Replay value (as a different class or alignment). * Deadline pressure. * One particularly touching moment in the story, though it was probably not intentional. * That it was made at all. disliked * You have to be seriously unemployed to get the most out of this game. * Sluggish: movement, combat, animations, ui interaction... all slow & laggy. * Some areas felt unfinished towards the end. * Inconsistent writing, varied from juvenile to razor-sharp. * The finale was a bit underwhelming & tedious, given how long it takes to get there. * The dated style; early MMO stodge. * Generic-fantasy-game music, though some of the tavern music was interesting. * Pretty juvenile stereotyping and portrayal of companions, lacks insight. EG: Amiri, with the bikini outfit, anime sword and armored shoulder... just stupid. * Camp Tolkienesque setting. * Uninteresting 'kill the monsters' challenges. * Government nagging you to return every time you leave its borders. * Most attacks are the same speed regardless of weapon. * Calculations ('rolls') are way too random, this wastes real-world time spamming save/reload. * Magus micromanagement. * Moral-alignment system is contrived and inconsistent, sometimes modern, sometimes primitive. * General lack of in-situ info on exactly how numbers are calculated. * Certain classes/combos are demonstrably superior to others, leading to a limited choice of 'viable' options, especially for the late game, where certain builds will be fine while everyone else will constantly require greater-restoration.
liked: * Artwork. * Some of the voice acting. * Rae was pretty convincing. * Its description of the (d)evolution of a tech company (have been there). * Some of the client stories were uncomfortably real. * Some belated player-agency towards the end. * Sound. disliked: * Found the protagonist to be unconvincingly bland. * Couldn't tell Soren to fuckoff early in the game. * Lack of menace. At one point I thought someone was being mis-prescribed drugs, but nothing happened. Also worried about protagonist being forced into transparency mode late in the game & cause trouble for others, but again nothing happened. * No mention of how transparency mode violates non-consenting 3rd-parties. * No plot-twists. I was hoping Nora was a new kind of proxy (like an ad-buddy), given her sudden coincidental appearance. * Padded dialogue; ended up clicking through a lot while skimming it.
liked: * The program itself is fast; rare thesedays. * Artwork. * Maps. * Replay value. * Distinct factions. * Reversal of fortune; can go from winning to loosing to winning again. disliked: * Animations are too slow, no option to speed them up. * No campaign mode . * The occasional CTD. * Some factions missing. * City UI looks like its placeholder (simple black & white icons). * Some late-game balance issues with certain factions.
Liked: - Gaming the system, as usual. - The AI editor is brilliant. - Watching an all-Hellwalker party on autopilot. - Every faction has a serious downside. - Attention to detail in writing. - Good variety of loot. - Good replay value. - Tavern music. - Doesn't feel as camp as its predecessor. ... Disliked: - Main story wasn't very compelling; no conflict to resolve. - Lacks some of the interesting philosophy of PoE & Tyranny... like Skaenites or the Chorus. - Game ends before I could enjoy top-tier abilities; definitely needs expansions. - Game really tries to push you to the pirate faction early on. - Too easy to break quests, especially if you preemptively massacre a faction (one guy even re-spawned!). - Simple implied naval combat, no wind/currents, only one type of shot. - The level-up UI; PoE UI was more practical. - Level-locked utility abilities. - Too much voice-acting bloat, skipped most as its faster to read. - Wizard/Druid classes needs an update; badly underpowered. Slow FF-AOE spells are useless given new mobility mechanics & lack of chokepoints in most battles. - Couldn't figure how to pre-stealth rogues before ship-boarding battles.
The comparative scores are evil; 20% of time is spent solving the problem, 80% getting it into the top tier for all 3 metrics... Otherwise great intro to Assembly, I wish we could create 4k executables with it!
This is a stodgy, uninspired but well-made action-adventure game with some basic RPG mechanics. The only thing that kept me playing was the story & scenery... especially the scenery - hats-off to the environment artists. Gameplay is mostly combat with some token RPG elements (including grind unfortunately), weak character development, stilted dialogue, few choices. Hated Geralt, hated his appearance, voice, personality, his cringeworthy cut-scenes, hated having to look at him take-up screen-space all the damn time. Hated how he always asked for money even though the loot was far more valuable... where I'm from this is extremely distasteful behavior. Also found his relationships with other NPCs to be unconvincing, which harmed the main story. Loved Dijkstra and Zoltan, the Barron, Johnny and the bog crones, Roche and Radovid were also pretty interesting. Found Skellige & Toussaint characters were too bullshitty & comical to care about. Game mechanics are basic: limited character progression and customization, limited controls, super-simple magic system, limited dialogue options. There is no inbuilt console (have to install from a 3rd party source), lacks a noclip command to get around the bullshit parts of the game like not being able to climb over an easily climbable scaffold. NPC handling is standard lifeless MMO theme-park style: roaming cardboard cutouts with a basic routine. Enemies congregate in clusters, usually around loot and respawn quickly (except named enemies). There is no NPC economy or ecology. Felt alone in the game. Player actions have little noticeable impact on the world.
The reward here is just the story & scenery, both of which are passive so can be had for free via youtube without enduring all the contrived & repetitive puzzles and spongy arcade fights. liked - graphics. - use of voice acting to create tension where it definitely wouldn't exist otherwise. - interesting story. disliked - very sluggish mouse control, no (in-game) way to adjust it. - repetitive and contrived puzzles. - simple arcade style combat. - super spongy opponents. - no 1st person mode. - no jumping. - very linear. - no collecting, modifying & using stuff. - the creeping permadeath thing, its the opposite of character progression. - cheesy nordic-mythology kiosks. - suffers from samurai panda syndrome - granted few care about northwestern european history (and most who do are revisionists) so no biggie. - the last-minute live-action video. - the music - not really disliked, just can't remember any of it.
Some people just don't understand. Its not just the horsey, its the sun & grass, searching for cheap furs & salt, finding that balanced hammer in stock, keeping the men from getting bored, toughening up your companions, keeping the larder stocked, cashing-in those prisoners, teasing out some fool Lord from his warband, the thud of hooves, the snorting, the rain of arrows, the roar of hatred, the clash of steel... the celebration of victory - full of arrows & bloodsoaked.
