The Witcher series, especially wild hunt, does for me what other sandbox RPG's generally fail to do - get me invested in the characters and story. Some developers feel that it's enough to fill their sandbox with toys/attractions and fun just happens. Unless I'm really into the setting or said attractions/gameplay scratches a certain itch it just feels pointless to me at worst and a minor diversion at best. Doing a replay of wild hunt after seeing the first trailer for 2077. <3
It's been a while since I've played the first two games, so I can't get detailed, but I enjoyed them both greatly. If you don't mind the text and like characters that aren't just walking archetypes/tropes that is typical of Japanese fiction catering to otaku. Don't get me wrong it's still there to some extent but they don't hit you over the head with it nor have it be the sole method of characterization. The story, in hindsight, might not tread much in the way of new ground, but it has interesting characters and subtle charm/humor to it.
Yeah, I knew this installment switched protag and I thought I'd be ok with that, but it turns out that I just can't get invested this time around. Especially with the dungeon crawl and recycling of assets. Which, to be fair, the second game did as well, but this felt more deliberate. It felt like an afterstory told from a different PoV. At least from what little I played of it and how they try to hook you with little morsels of story about characters from the previous games. /Shrug. I might come back to it someday but I couldn't finish it.
This "DLC" highlights one adherence to the old infinity game engine style that doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Quite frankly it gets boring looking at the same static portrait for an entire game. It would be more engaging if they at least had a few different character states/emotions the game could use for dialog as well as to give feedback during combat (at least more than simple status bars). It would certainly take more artwork but I'd gladly have quality over quantity.
I've never really been one to play games like this but I'm glad I gave it a try. Some of the side missions/activities have wonky controls or just not my cup of tea but overall its a good time that has made me a fan of the series (I've bought 3 and 4).
2.5 Stars Pro's Decent graphics Lots of ships to choose from Lots of weapons Tactical overlay gives needed combat info reminiscent of certain MMO hud mods. ... Con's UI. It looks like it was designed for an MMO. Overall the UI elements are oversized for the information or utility to provide. The context menu is the most used UI and it's accessible via a hotkey rather than be part of visible UI. Some outdated help/tooltips that refer to defunct buttons/options. Unintuitive weapon loadout screen (weapon icons look like turrets but aren't turrets). Crashing. It's not that frequent (and ymmy) but it's very frustrating at times when you've been towing a captured ship or haven't visited a station in a while. Speaking of towing. On their forums the devs defend the slow nature of towing as a consequence of easy ship capture. To which I say - Make it more difficult to capture. Don't penalize me with a very tedious mechanic because of balance issues. Balance issues. The game is altogether too easy on normal. Sure I could play at a higher difficulty. But it's seriously a cake walk as soon as you start upgrading to larger ships. Largely because it's so easy to make money capturing ships... ahem. Combat. Easy mode (at least on normal). Set turrets to auto and try to keep up with the looting in the mid game. Missed opportunity to make ship capture both difficult and interesting - tactical boarding combat w/the ability to outfit your troops. Looting itself is a chore. There is a loot all option but it quickly fills your hold with worthless stuff. There is also a manual loot in the context menu but you have to do so for each loot "pile". Would prefer to have a loot all option that allows you to select what you want to keep of the loot in range. Mining/Trading/Economy. Overshadowed by capturing/scavenging and are really underdeveloped aspects of the game. i.e. Mining = shooting asteroids. Overall I didn't find it all that fun or challenging and didn't finish it.
