I had issues with combat in 1 and 2, not so much with 3. Part of that is due I’m sure to my growing comfort level with 3rd person stabby games like the AC stuff, but part of it is due to the combat being more straight-forward hack and slash, mechanically. I find I can do ok with the sign-charge-attack-dodge/roll loop, with bombs as needed. I have been paying close attention to oils too which helps, and going into the skill tree that buffs them and gives you defensive benefits as well. I’ve found I can often, though by no means always, defeat monsters several levels above me if I’m careful and have the recipes.
As usual with this sort of game, the biggest challenge is often figuring out what gear to use. Deciding what is more important, raw damage or armor values or the specific bonuses, for instance, is a big part of it.
I plan on going through 3 again when they release the enhanced edition. Technically I could just mod the darn thing myself, but I’m lazy. There’s some pretty insane gfx mods out there to improve the textures.
The trick with Witcher 1 combat is to realize it is mostly automated. The only thing the player has to do is choose the optimal sword/style and just get the click rhythm down and Geralt will handle the rest (based on his stats), dispatching foes with pizzazz. I remember there being a lot of cool kill animations. It’s sort of random when it happens but very memorable.
I fully understand what you’re saying here, and to an extent agree. It was sorta like a Batman/Shadows of Mordor-style (probably a bit lighter). I kinda liked just clicking the right things and watching the fun combat that resulted because I was there more for the story than action combat. I didn’t exactly play W2/W3 on Deathmarch.
I found the combat in 3 borderline unplayable, which may be strongly related to the fact that I have it on console (controller!) while I have the first two on PC. The rest of the game was still good enough that I stuck it out, and while I loved it overall and strongly recommend it, it keeps it off of my “best ever” list where it seems to have landed for many.
I had the complete opposite reaction to Witcher 3! I’m a hardcore PC gamer, and play almost everything with keyboard and mouse. Witcher 3 was one of the few games where it is so much better on a controller than KB+M that I dusted off the old Xbox 360 wireless dongle thing and played the whole game through with a 360 controller.
This is not to negate your experience at all, but just to say that we all experience things differently. Weird.
W3 with K+M was a no-go when I first tried it, but after playing a ton of other 3rd person games and coming back to it, it worked fine. Probably has more to do with personal experience than anything inherent about the interface I guess.
Witcher 3 was one of those RPGs that was so obscenely long that I ended up burning myself out on it and now I wouldn’t play another in the series if you paid me. I couldn’t even watch the Netflix TV series because I had flashbacks to playing the video games when I tried to watch it but tbh that series is pretty bad in its own right, so…
I also have a negative association for technical reasons for disliking Witcher games. I had an ATI/AMD video card when I tried to play Witcher 1 a couple of years after it came out and discovered that the drivers were so bad for ATI/AMD cards that I had to try 3-4 different ones to play W1 without artifacts. insert “Ain’t Nobody Got Time For That!” meme here
I can certainly understand that. If I had had those experiences, I’d be in the same boat.
For me, yeah, the game is long, but I like the world and the mechanics, as well as the side stuff, enough that I haven’t burned out on it yet. Just over 80 hours and getting to the end of the main quest line I think; have not even touched the two DLCs as I am barely high enough level to even start those.
And I like the TV show, so it feeds into the game in a supportive loop. YMMV of course.
So if I wanted to give Witcher 1 another shot and bring the graphics up to date as much as is possible, but without adding instability or screwing up the design, any suggestions on what to install/avoid?
(Also happy with any mods that make the combat easier. I’m in it for the story, not twitch challenge.)
