You can hop on any site and find out what makes this game good, so I'll just lay out the four problems that broke the camel's back. 1) Boring quests, boring combat. Almost all the quests are the fetch type which is definitely not okay for such a story based game. Throw in the LONG travel times... The combat just amplifies this problem. It's kind of neat at first, but soon enough you realize that it's less exciting than Diablo and more cumbersome than D&D style RPG's. On top of that, I don't care what people say, you don't need to specialize in alchemy on "any level above easy." I made it through chapter one, two, and three with just Swallows (healing potions). This makes the much touted pre-combat strategy element of the game negligable. (Oh, and before you say "play it on hard, then!" I tried, and it was a grindfest. Not my cup of tea, but it might be for you.) 2) The "grey" decisions that everyone talks about. They're not grey. Sure, the way they wrote what you say might be a little grey sometimes, but you WILL be forced to make a bright-line choice involving obvious morality. I never experienced a situation even approaching the muddled complexity of the Krogan or the Geth scenarios in ME2. Sure, there is no system telling you which of your choices is "right" by the developers, but it is pretty plain who is the bad guy(s) and who is the badder guy(s). 3) The storyTELLING. If you sat me down with my dad and we told you the same campfire story, I promise that he will come out on top. This is the Witcher compared to [insert your favorite long-standing developer here]. If you wiki the plot for the game, it is deep, complex, and intriguing. If you experience the plot while playing the game, it is mundane, distorted and boring. It's so disjointed that you need to force yourself to care about it. The worst of the worst is the quest ordering; far too often, the game let's you complete quests that need an explanation from another quest. When I don't know who X is, Geralt shouldn't know who X is, yet he does. This completely destroys any immersion. The broader problem is the writing. I'm no literature major, so I can't throw technical terms at you; suffice it to say that the writing is unemotional and out of place at times. For instance, you find out that X is doing Y, a serious breakthrough in your hunt for justice. Your (spoiler-free) response: "Yay." Really? Geralt is not getting paid for the main quest and he isn't passionate about it (per the writing), so why should I care about it? 4) Character development. None. At least not for me. This is always hit and miss in any media presentation, since people connect to characters in different ways. But it seemed that the developers didn't even attempt to get you to connect to Geralt and his Witcher brothers. I cared more about the brothel madame than I did the protagonist and his archenemy! I hate to be the naysayer. I love a good RPG, and I love a good story. The Witcher appeard to have both. But this game is like a rough gem; some people will be able to see through the imperfections, others won't. I fall into the latter category. The flaws outweigh the potential, and I can't justify putting more time into the game than I have. If I could redo things in my quest to prepare to play TW2, I'd save my ten bucks and just wiki the plot and characters. This game isn't worth the backplot.
This was a hit and miss game for me. The meat of the story was well told, if a little cliche. Also, the wit that the developers threw in was very well done (I loved the species names for the humanoids!) - always a big plus! (HERE'S THE SPOILER!) The ending, however, was just wacky. You can get it to make sense in your mind, but compared to the rest of the trip, it was C grade. I hate to include stuff like this in a review, but it REALLY dragged me down. I mean to the point where I told my wife "That really changed my mind; the story was okay before, but now...." The gameplay was simple at best. The only thing I flat out enjoyed was taking pictures of different creatures. Loved it in Bioshock, too. It's too bad combat couldn't compete. Other reviews have said it before, so this shouldn't be a big surprise. Combat gameplay is just a massive clickfest. You can try and ingest some strategy into it, but you'll die more. It's not very interesting and could be removed from the game without taking away anything. The stealth sections are much better. Still, they boil down to extremely simple timing games and very obvious puzzle sections. I understandthat it's been a while since this came out, but it still seems like this was designed for a younger audience. To sum up my opinions on the game, I wouldn't recommend BGE, but I wouldn't shoot you down either. Okay, that was the review of the game. Now, for the technical side. This is a port. I get it. But come on! This thing was buggy as heck! The controls are weird, the camera is flat out attrocious, the graphics would come in and out on me, I gave up on it for a while because it kept crashing... I won't dock a game for its glitches, but be warned: your patience might be tested.
