The Witcher

[frogbeastegg]

The books are meant to be hitting English shelves in early/mid 2008.

I've got my copy, all I need now is the time to play it. It's a nice production; embossed card sleeve for the DVD case and a prodigious manual

[Xiahou]

I got my copy yesterday and managed to get in a couple hours of playtime. I immediately installed the patch before attempting to play. When I went to review the video settings, I saw that everything had already defaulted to max quality, so I stuck with it. I have yet to see a single crash and the game has been running pretty smoothly.

Combat is nothing to get excited about one way or the other (so far). But overall, I'd say it's an enjoyable game with a mature theme that's seldom seen in games.

[Bob the Insane]

Got this a while ago but only installed it last night...

I was thoroughly impressed... Excellent visuals (really puts NWN and even NWN2 to shame IMO) and controls. Engaging story, great fun...

I have Assassins Creed, Crysis and The Witcher on the go at the moment and I got to say it was The Witcher I was up late playing last night...

[Sarmatian]

This game is a gem. An upolished gem, but a gem nonetheless. I just started playing, I'm still in the first chapter. There are some blunders, like huge loading times (although CDProjekt promised a patch to fix that pretty soon), some nonconvincing parts of the story (Geralt seems totaly disinterested about his past, even when he meets people who knew him before he "died") and such stuff. The storytelling is not of Bioware quality, but all these flaws fade when compared with the good things. Towns actually look alive, buildings are scaled properly, eye candy is great and maybe most importantly, the dark medieval atmosphere is represented properly.

I'm really shocked that gaming sites gave it an average review, emphasizing the bad side while overlooking the good side. But it can probably be explained with the fact that CDProjekt didn't pay for a review...

Anyway, take it from a guy who enjoys rpg games, and played just about every rpg game that came out in the last ten years, this is a game worth having if you have even the slightest interest in rpgs.

[Kekvit Irae]

The English translation was butchered from the original Polish. There is FAR less dialogue explaining the story and sidequests than the original.

I played it to the end of Chapter 1, then left it alone for a few weeks to play things that are infinitively more interesting, then picked it up again tonight to play some of Chapter 2 in the sewers. I wasn't impressed.

[AggonyDuck]

Well the game slowly gets better with each chapter and the ending is thought-provoking to say the least. So I'd advise to stick with it if you have the time to actually play it.

[Husar]

The English translation was butchered from the original Polish. There is FAR less dialogue explaining the story and sidequests than the original.

Hmm, maybe I should try the german version then.
Wanted to get the english version from here but we usually don't butcher the translations IMO. It's cheaper on that site though than anything I could get in stores here. Yes, that includes shipping.

Of course there is a chance that you mean english as in US english? Since we established before that the british english version is less butchered.

[AggonyDuck]

The english translation should be the same in both versions, but that said I was content with the dialogue provided.

[cegorach]

Hmm, maybe I should try the german version then.
Wanted to get the english version from here but we usually don't butcher the translations IMO. It's cheaper on that site though than anything I could get in stores here. Yes, that includes shipping.

Of course there is a chance that you mean english as in US english? Since we established before that the british english version is less butchered.

Probably it would be a good idea - most likely the have based the german translation on the Witcher novels published in Germany some time ago so the original flavour wouldn't lose too much.