- The graphics are obviously terrible. This game came out the same year as Mass Effect, yet it looks far worse than TES: Oblivion. In fact, I would sooner compare it to Fable. There is only a handful of character models – all horrendously ugly – and the entire game is practically devoid of colour.
- The music is almost as bad. It's equally colourless and strangely confused: the battle music is mostly decent, if unengaging, but some of the regular ambient music dramatically shrieks every so often for no reason, and is otherwise exceptionally dull.
- The story, oft-cited as the game's greatly redeeming quality, is underwhelming. It does deal with some interesting themes, and it isn't entirely bad, but it goes downhill in the Epilogue. It is certainly not strong enough to carry the entire game on its own.
- The writing ranges from stale to weird, making many a character look like a buffoon and Geralt look like a confused mess of a ”badass chick magnet”. There are one or two moments where they managed to get in some nice symbolism, only to cheapen it by having some inane character explicitly explain it.
- Speaking of characters, most of them are some combination of flat, silly and infuriating.
- The voice acting goes hand in hand with the dreadful writing and dead expressions on everyone's faces. Geralt obviously doesn't have so much as a vestige of emotion in his body, and everyone else has only just that – a vestige.
- The sidequests are laughable. Every single one would have you hunt a specified number of a specified monster – sometimes to collect a specified number of some body part, which requires that you first hunt down a book about the monster so you can proceed.
- The main quest, on the other hand, doesn't really require any action at all. Instead, it involves running back and forth between half a dozen geographical points to talk to people with nothing interesting to say before they send you off on your next errand – usually with ridiculously great distances devoid of anything meaningful between each given point.
- The cutscenes are needlessly abundant and the editing is atrociously clumsy. Very often can a cutscene end with a fade-in from black to a battle sequence, which actually begins as soon at the cutscene ends – while the screen is still momentarily black.
- The combat, as has often been pointed out, is lame. Admittedly, I played on Easy (making the playthrough only a big waste of time instead of a huge or enormous one), but I don't see how higher difficulties would be much different. Fighting is a simple matter of clicking and watching, and sometimes switching between the three battle modes. A ”challenging battle” merely involves enemies with higher defence and/or health (forcing you to add potion-chugging to the mix) or lots and lots of stunning.
Also, targeting properly becomes a great feat whenever there are multiple enemies nearby, forcing you to use Group Mode if you want to be sure to hit your designated target.
It doesn't help that it feels buggy, either. Sometimes, when you time a second attack, Geralt will simply freeze in place.
- The enemies come in very few different shapes and are mostly uninspired. In terms of gameplay, they are completely interchangeable.
- The game is rife with horrible design choices:
A great deal of quests require that you ”come back later”. To make time pass, you can meditate – but only at fireplaces, which are few and far between, or at certain NPC's, except when it is these very NPC's who tell you to ”come back later”, in which case they will refuse to speak to you until the required time has passed.
Intoxication causes severe loss of movement speed, and is at times required – or at least the most favourable option – to proceed in a quest.
The old lady in Shani's house, who will react randomly to your entrance and most often throw you out, is nothing but a nuisance.
The ridiculous ”kill contest” with White Rayla, where you must gather 20 tokens from slain enemies to proceed. The problem is that looting enemy remains is not possible while engaged by an enemy, and this takes place in a war zone with infinitely spawning enemies. The same goes for opening doors, which is what you have to do in the middle of that war zone upon winning the contest.
The terrain is often not designed with the controls in mind. Tiny ledges and elevations and barely visible objects can easily stop you dead in your tracks, as can any ingredient-yielding plant. City layouts are reminiscent of labyrinths, where roads often lead to insurmountable non-obstacles like barrels or little fences.
The quest marker often doesn't know what it's doing.
The map sometimes gets confused. Most of the time, opening the map lets you view the local map. Sometimes, however, it randomly decides that what you want is the world map.
Geralt's obnoxious habit of sheathing whatever weapon is drawn whenever any nearby enemies die or go away.
The one thing – one and only thing – that this game does well is the choice-and-consequence aspect. The choices you make do affect the remainder of the game in a noticeable and potentially meaningful way. The problem, however, is that when the things you affect are all frustrating, boring and pointless, this doesn't really affect the enjoyability of the game at all. At best, it makes the game an interesting subject of study in terms of game design.
What am I missing? Why is this game held in such high regard? I can only assume that most of the high scores this game received were due to the sex cards and other superfluous nudity.
Edit: I LOVE formatting bugs!
Modifié par Kurremurre, 10 février 2014 - 01:45 .
Retour en haut
watching Geralt swing his sword around like a monkey as you occasionally press the LMB, I don't see how that constitutes a plus.
