The Witcher

**AggonyDuck** · 10-29-2007, 02:36

Played about an hour now, but so far I'm loving it. It remains to be seen how important the decisions I've had to make will prove to be, but overall it does seem like a nice game. That said I do suffer from CTD's every now and then, but it is just a matter of saving often.

**Mouzafphaerre** · 10-29-2007, 06:49

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I'll get this one sometime.

Saw the screenshots at the chatroom.

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**frogbeastegg** · 10-29-2007, 10:32

From the bits I've read the fighting system seems a lot like the one in Summoner, an old PS2 launch RPG which also had a PC release. I expect I'm the only one here who played that game. It had a great storyline; the main combat feature, other than summoning monsters to fight at your side, was the chain combo system.

You'd order your character to attack. As the animation executed you would see an icon appear above his/her head, at which point you needed to hit one of the other buttons assigned to a combat move. Time it right and that move was executed right after the other finished, and the icon would appear again. Get it wrong, or try to use the move already being executed, and your character would need to wait a bit before attacking again. You could keep on building up chains of moves theoretically forever. As the timing got harder with each consecutive attack it never got to the point where you were doing absurd damage in one go. As you advanced in the game and performed sucessful chains you gained extra abilities to swap with those you began with.

I played the PC version of Summoner and completed it. The controls worked very well with a mouse and keyboard.

EDIT: The review scores currently look like this:
* Joystick review (France) 9/10 + Megastar award
* PC Jeux review (France) 90% ‘Hit PC Jeux’ award
* Online welten (Germany) 84%
* Gamewelt (Germany) 84% (version with day one patch - 90%)
* X6 (Norway) 6/6
* 3djuegos (Spain) 8.8/10
* Gry-online (Poland) 92%
* Onet.pl (Poland) 9.5/10
* Gildia.pl (Poland) 9.5/10
* Eurogamer 7/10

**SwordsMaster** · 10-30-2007, 17:35

Hey, this game has caught my eye too, but since i'm unsure if it'll run on my laptop, can you tell me what the requirements are? What are you guys running it on? Does anyone play it on a laptop?

On the game itself, do you get to create your own character? What makes it stand out? How witty is it? What is the tone of the game? Is it too Tolkien ish? I hate the ones that would speak in "thous" and "m'ladies"....

**AggonyDuck** · 10-30-2007, 19:08

Originally Posted by SwordsMaster

On the game itself, do you get to create your own character? What makes it stand out? How witty is it? What is the tone of the game? Is it too Tolkien ish? I hate the ones that would speak in "thous" and "m'ladies"....

You play as a pre-designed character called Geralt of Rivia, a witcher, with no real customisation prior to the game. To me what made me get it was that Bioware recommended it and the fact that I figured this might be a nice warm up for Mass Effect. Comically I've found the game rather dry, but there have luckily been some moments where I've laughed. The tone of the game is dark and the themes are rather mature. That should already point out that it is far too gritty to be Tolkien-ish.

**Kekvit Irae** · 10-30-2007, 21:00

How "Mature" is the game? I might pick it up if it has the three B's: Boobs, booze, and blood (and oddly enough, they all have two O's)

**AggonyDuck** · 10-30-2007, 21:43

Yup, seen plenty of all three ingame.

**Zenicetus** · 10-31-2007, 03:15

Originally Posted by Kekvit Irae

How "Mature" is the game? I might pick it up if it has the three B's: Boobs, booze, and blood (and oddly enough, they all have two O's)

I just noticed while browsing the official forum that there are TWO versions... Euro and U.S., and the U.S. version has some censored graphics (but not language, or gore, apparently). Can't let us Americans see to much, 'ya know. Apparently it's just one NPC with clothing instead of nude, and some images on Tarot cards. Here's the thread:

http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=3130.0

The workaround if you really care about it, seems to be buying the download version from the UK.

Other feedback seems pretty solid. I think I'll order it -- the U.S. disk version, since I don't like keeping track of more archived download purchases than I have to. And I've seen enough of the real thing...