The Witcher 3 is not a bad game, but not an excellent one either. The world is very large, but the actual number of different environments is limited. Graphics are very good, combat a bit clunky. Selecting an item on the floor can become an exercise in patience, both with keyboard and controller. Most of the game is a walking simulator; riding is, as usual in RPG games, worse than running. Of more than 200 hours of play, I spent almost half in moving back and forth. Markers on the map are sometimes misleading, e.g. they refer to something underground, whose entrance is elsewhere. There is a large number of quests, but a large percentage of them are boring and repetitive (with a few notable exceptions). The main story is not bad; of the two expansions, I found Heart of Stone incongruous and not fun at all; on the other hand, Blood and Wine is very enjoyable: nice environment, a good story with unexpected plot twixts. If the whole game had been shorter (less diluted) and more similar to Blood and Wine, I would have given it 5 stars.
Interesting tables, but moving camera and partial view: a no-no for me. Unless I missed an option to see the whole table... The flippers are pretty weak and unrealistic in behaviour, rather similar to those of poorly designed pinball machines.
Well-designed game (for its time) loosely based on Verne's novel. It would have been nice to play, but there are timed sequences, that I hate in a point & click adventure. Moreover, some situations can cause motion sickness. I had to quit.
I fail to agree with the good reviews. The game is playable, but has lots of faults. I especially disliked: - most battles consist of hordes of identical enemies. - the tiny inventory requires to throw away things, or to go back (possibly a long, long, long way) to sell items. - there are very few meaningful choices. - for no apparent reason, view control must be switched between two modes to zoom fully. - there are lots of long and quite boring backtracks. - tactics seems to be useless. Maybe I didn't understand it, but I told an archer "stay put" and he happily ignored it and ran to be butchered. - money is useless (well, lots of RPGs are badly balanced here). - loot is utterly insignificant. The best weapons are found almost at the beginning. - on my i7, the game uses 70% CPU when in background. - pathfining is sometimes broken, especially on stairs. - graphics are all the same almost-monochrome reddish tint. On the plus side, two chapters are decently satisfying: the one where you have to use magic in creative ways (no spoilers here) and the final chapter. At least it isn't an utter failure.
Despite the slow pace and the interface that requires constant pressing (bad for my tendons), I liked this game a lot. Graphics are simple 2D, but well suited to the game atmosphere. It starts slowly, looking at first like teenager comedy (I almost quit after a few minutes), but after a while it gets very interesting. Some elements of the interface, of the story and of the game design in general are quite original. Audio plays a significant role in many creative ways (I won't say more to avoid spoilers). I would suggest to leave a bit more time for player choices, though. Fast-disappearing balloons are in stark contrast for the generally relaxed pace of the game.
This is probably the best JRPG I played so far (though, admittedly, I didn't play a large number of them): a decent story and characters, not too many maps resembling a maze, very good music, good character progression and a bit of battle strategy. Almost all battles are quite easy if you put a bit of effort in leveling up, distributing items and assigning capabilities. It is a bit short. Not enough to regret the purchase, but enough to give the impression of beng the first half of a larger game: it ends at the point where you expect it to develop into a larger story. It is a sort of very good prequel. It has two drawbacks common to many JRPGs: the lack of a map while exploring and a savepoint system that prevented me to play for a few minutes at a time, before leaving home and turning off the PC. Also, my characters reached maximum level a bit too early in the game. But, on the whole, it left a good impression.
I just finished playing the Ancaria campaign as a Battle Mage, using no health potions, a lot of magic and almost no battle skill. Bad things first: scrolling is uneven in an annoying way, finding passages can be exasperating despite the (vague) map, entering doors and passages can be a pixel-hunting exercise, pathfinding often fails and goes into a surreal dance, horses tend to die rather easily, there is a lot of back-and-forth boring travel, money is useless. Now the good part: the world is open and you are free to meet most challenges in any order (e.g. to commit suicide by attacking a dragon while at level 1), the map is *huge* but does not feel randomly generated, there are a lot of secondary quests, some trivial, some hilarious (I don't think I discovered half of them), you can explore around for hours and often discover small hidden settlements or little surprises, some monsters require a bit more of tactics (especially for the first character levels), graphics are good and decently varied. A problem: I don't know if I missed something here, but I couldn't export my character before the final battle: I found no way to type a name, clicking on available slots had no effect. In short, not a great game but a nice pastime. I gave it four stars also because of its hypnotic quality: you find yourself saying "let's just play a few minutes" and end up having spent half an afternoon and completed a sizeable number of sub-quests.
Light, poetic, charming and full of original ideas. A masterpiece.
Who says new games are better? I just played Avernum 1 and I found that it alone is worth the price of the whole collection. Don't expect fancy graphics, but if you like RPGs this is a classic (and shame on me for not knowing it before). It seems to be inspired by the early Ultima games; on the whole it does not reach that level, but is much more than just playable. It is also quite large. A few minor annoyances: auto-mapping is limited (I captured and joined the minimaps), money is capped to a rather low level, you have sometimes to wander back and forth in a large map looking for small hidden passages. But it has an hypnotic effect: like all well-designed turn-based games, you'll find yourself typing and clicking madly as if something with sharp teeth was chasing you.
