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I've beaten The Witcher 1 and The Witcher 2.

The point of the Witcher series is the literary installed base and the sardonic realism. It's a kind of Slavic, fantasy environment where you're the mutant hero but everything else in the environment is worse off than you are.

The games are utterly fantastic, and if you're having trouble finishing them, then I encourage you to grit your teeth and keep moving, because there is so much there in terms of solid choice and consequence RPG mechanics and solid storytelling that it is worth the "unpleasantness" of the world. In true point of fact, much of the real world is unpleasant, which is what the game's lore is meant to mirror - if it troubles you, focus on the storytelling and ancient Slavic storytelling/fairlytales. Both games were well worth the experience of the complete story arc and Slav lore, IMO. They have that Eastern European sense of authenticity that really appears to me- similar to the movie Stalker.

I thought Witcher 3 was terrible. Controls were horrid, and you just sit there and watch the dude talk and talk and talk and talk.

Wish the video game industry would get over the dumb Q&A stuff.

I'm not sure I'd recommend the first, though it's been almost a decade since I played it. Good story, gameplay and alchemy was a little hard to get into, as I recall.

I really really liked the second one. It was linear, but a great story, and fun to play. Highly recommend, cheap, graphics, gameplay, and story still hold up well.

The third one is good, though I honestly didn't like the story as well as the second. I also felt that the complex ethical choices which were a hallmark of the first two were oddly absent. It also suffered from a pretty crazy power curve. Enemies don't scale with your level, and there's all sorts of random levels of enemies salted everywhere.

Like, early in the game, you'll be adventuring, kill some bandits your level, wander down to a nearby river and be jumped by a dozen enemies somehow 20 levels higher than you and just be instantly killed.

And later in the game when you're leveled up and geared out, you'll see a miniboss flying up in the air, and think "cool, I get to fight a world boss!" - and when you get him on the ground you 2-shot him.

The game is good, but I feel that they could have tuned the difficulty better. Because it's randomly punishing at the beginning and becomes faceroll easy by the end.

 jasper76 wrote:
I thought Witcher 3 was terrible. Controls were horrid, and you just sit there and watch the dude talk and talk and talk and talk.

Wish the video game industry would get over the dumb Q&A stuff.

Hahahaha.

What a guy, maybe you should look this way: https://www.callofduty.com/mw3/
No scary big words.
Killstreak! Pewpew!

I loved The Wild Hunt. Amazing game. Sounds like games with narratives and stories may not be your thing. I'd stay away from Uncharted and Last of Us.

 TedNugent wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
I thought Witcher 3 was terrible. Controls were horrid, and you just sit there and watch the dude talk and talk and talk and talk.

Wish the video game industry would get over the dumb Q&A stuff.

Hahahaha.

What a guy, maybe you should look this way: https://www.callofduty.com/mw3/
No scary big words.
Killstreak! Pewpew!

No thanks, I'm not a CoD fan, either.

The fact that I don't typically enjoy the dialogue subgames that permeate fantasy video games has nothing to do with my vocabulary.

 TedNugent wrote:

 jasper76 wrote:
I thought Witcher 3 was terrible. Controls were horrid, and you just sit there and watch the dude talk and talk and talk and talk.

Wish the video game industry would get over the dumb Q&A stuff.

Hahahaha.

What a guy, maybe you should look this way: https://www.callofduty.com/mw3/
No scary big words.
Killstreak! Pewpew!

No need to be rude. I liked witcher series because of the narrative, but it's not for everyone.

Finished Hearts of Stone. Simply amazing! Bring on Blood and wine!

And then its over. :(

Gaunter O'dimm is an amazing character.

The first and second games are both great, 1 is probably my all time favorite game (in terms of story) and 2 is close behind. I highly recommend them both.

 jasper76 wrote:
I thought Witcher 3 was terrible. Controls were horrid, and you just sit there and watch the dude talk and talk and talk and talk.

Wish the video game industry would get over the dumb Q&A stuff.

That's precisely why I did like. The narrative was just so well done, can't remember the time I cared so much for characters in a game. More than the last of us I think, which says a lot.

But, horses for courses and all that - understand people wouldn't like the game if that's not the kind of thing they want !

Witcher series has always been a bit flawed in the gameplay department but it tries to offset this by having interesting world building and characters.

I haven't played tw1 in a long time but it was generally ok game but it's odd.

tw3 is propably the best because it's more conservative in its' gameplay but still keeps that witcher world building. Even though most quests are basic in their gameplay they usually have unique story to drive them. This prvents the game becoming a chore. Only real problem is that the game is too easy. After you get hang of the combat most encounters become trivial. I also hated the batman vision and bs skull enemies.

tw2 is the worst one. It has lots bizarre design decisions, skyrim level quests and some downright bad ideas. The best way to experience tw2 is look a story synopsis at some wiki and fap to triss sex scenes.

Skull enemies?

Witcher 2 was awesome.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Skull enemies?

Presumably the ones who are a lot higher level than you are.

You need them though as otherwise the whole world would be level scaled and no one wants that...

That's what I thought. They're hardly 'bs'. They're just enemies that are a higher level than you. Go do something else and come back when you're 'ard enough.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's what I thought. They're hardly 'bs'. They're just enemies that are a higher level than you. Go do something else and come back when you're 'ard enough.

If an enemy is 6 levels higher than you they become skull enemies and they get massive damage resistances against geralt. This leads to geralt doing almost damage to the enemy. If the level gap drops to 5 these resistance drop to zero and suddenly geralt does 20 times more damage. On top of that if you happen to kill a high level skull enemy the loot that enemy drops is level scaled to your level so you don't even get rewarded if you kill a high level enemy. I once chiseled a ?? griffin and I got sword that was shittier then the one I already had. If that is not bs incarnate then I don't know what is.

Funny thing is that this also applies to geralt if he is 6+ levels higher than the enemy. Geralt himself gets the silly resistances making the enemy completely harmless even though the actual stats of geralt haven't changed that much.

Witcher 2 was gak. The combat is just an exercise in frustration. Dodgy hitboxes, unclear attack patterns and unresponsive controls are just tip of the iceberg. Then you have exiting quests like "sack full of fluff" where collect harpy feathers, uncover secret plot and break into a n ancient dwarven vault to get unique sword diagram. Oh wait you don't uncover a plot or get cool sword you just collect 80 harpy feathers. I can't really comment on the story because I don't know what it was but I don't think the writers know that either.

 illuknisaa wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
That's what I thought. They're hardly 'bs'. They're just enemies that are a higher level than you. Go do something else and come back when you're 'ard enough.

If an enemy is 6 levels higher than you they become skull enemies and they get massive damage resistances against geralt. This leads to geralt doing almost damage to the enemy. If the level gap drops to 5 these resistance drop to zero and suddenly geralt does 20 times more damage. On top of that if you happen to kill a high level skull enemy the loot that enemy drops is level scaled to your level so you don't even get rewarded if you kill a high level enemy. I once chiseled a ?? griffin and I got sword that was shittier then the one I already had. If that is not bs incarnate then I don't know what is.

Funny thing is that this also applies to geralt if he is 6+ levels higher than the enemy. Geralt himself gets the silly resistances making the enemy completely harmless even though the actual stats of geralt haven't changed that much.

Witcher 2 was gak. The combat is just an exercise in frustration. Dodgy hitboxes, unclear attack patterns and unresponsive controls are just tip of the iceberg. Then you have exiting quests like "sack full of fluff" where collect harpy feathers, uncover secret plot and break into a n ancient dwarven vault to get unique sword diagram. Oh wait you don't uncover a plot or get cool sword you just collect 80 harpy feathers. I can't really comment on the story because I don't know what it was but I don't think the writers know that either.

Depends on the quest. In Witcher 3, for the Masterwork Sword quest, I ended up doing that like 15 levels lower then I should have been able to (took a handful of tries and a lot of bombs...). Getting access to that sword that much earlier though helped out quite a bit.

For the most part though, you are right, there really isn't a reason to go after the skulls.

I beat Witcher 2 on the highest difficulty without dying once. I actually had a really hard time getting used to Witcher 3 combat. Hahah. I was the master of it. I'm talking PC version.

It's definitely worth the first 2. I don't know if you've played The Walking Dead, but that emotionally drained feeling you get after completing a season is comparable to my experience with the Witcher 2. The story is just SO GOOD.

Yeah that's how I felt after all of them really. Even Witcher 1's story is so good. I still think Witcher 3's is the best, but maybe Hearts of Stone surpasses the main story. I'll see how I feel once time has passed.

I really enjoyed Witcher 2. I'm holding out for the GOTY edition for 3 though.