To me, the main reason the Witcher is so cool is that it's different. I actually like many of the things that the original poster didn't like. For example, the fact that you only really ever have two weapons (you can upgrade and find new ones of these, but it's much rarer than in most RPGs). This just seemed to fit the world better. It doesn't really make sense how in most RPGs, there's this huge slew of weapons and that some of them, somehow, are orders of magnitude more powerful than others. In the Witcher, you're just a guy with two swords, but you get better at fighting with them, by learning new moves and how to deal extra damage and status effects.

It's true that the game isn't particularly "open", in that there are lots of places the game will just not let you go, but this also fits with the style of the game. It allows for a much tighter plot that's really interesting. And the real freedom of the game happens with the choices you make, which have important, lasting repercussions. Replayability in the Witcher doesn't come from trying a different character build so much as making different decisions over the course of the game.

I haven't played the Gothic games yet (looking forward to them) but from what I hear, they're designed differently, and really try to provide an open world where you can do whatever you want. The Witcher does not provide an open world, but instead gives you a compelling story to play through and lets you make a lot of important decisions along the way to determine how to handle obstacles and how events unfold. It presents a very focused experience but doesn't feel linear because I can make so many decisions that affect the outcome.

Also I just really like the style and world of the game, which is possibly more due to Sapkowski's fiction than anything else. Give it a chance, ideally get to Chapter 2 which is much better than Chapter 1 before making a final judgement.

I also highly recommend reading the Witcher short story that comes with the game first. It sets the tone and is also relevant to the plot of the game.

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I was new to computer games and my first RPG game was Oblivion and it was awesome to me especially since I learned to mod it.

Then I yearned for more and discovered Steam who had a sale on the Witcher which I grabbed up. It was beautiful!! (kinda like Oblivion after all the texture mods but very stylistic). Yea it had the longest loading times in gaming history but it was different and I loved the simplistic combat..then I found out abouit the Flash mod then, GLORY the FCR mod..I thought I died and went to heaven!! It made me really think about the talent choices(even with the easy combat mechanics).

Now, from my perspective after reading everything wiki had to offer and the inspirational stories that inspired the game I thought that the game with its "only" 2 sword choices was true to the intent of the devs ambition. It didn't break the game but made me actually embrace the role playing aspect...after all how many talents can a 'human-mutant' have? The characters pulled you into the storyline.. and they even swore like in real life!! And who can forget Naid at the Lakeside in Ch4?? [Make her turn around real fast]

Subpar is more apt for Gothic 2!


If your after brillance in a game what has transpired since the Witcher please point me in that direction!!

I think your mixing apples and oranges.. I haven't played Gothic except the travisty since 1&2 {here's my dumb opinion JoWood games suck and plagued with all kinds of issues!!}

So If your looking for brillance look in the mirror but wipe the steam off so you can see clearly!!

You may discount my rant but yours is equally dubious.

Two of your "complaints" are actually not mistakes on developers part, but rather conscious choices made so that the game adheres to the story it is based on.

Firstly, the weapons:
As Sapkowski's vision of fantasy world is more realistic, it would be improbable that every chest/barrel/whatever had tons of +x to fire weapons in it. Witchers, just like warriors/soldiers in real world, use custom fitted (their "own") weapons and don't tend to change them. It's all about the knowledge of how to use the sword, not the stats on the sword itself.


Secondly, the development:
Geralt was a badass character before he died in the novels. It is only logical that you can achieve that in the game. The development is centered about you choosing what to "remember" earlier and how to structure it so that you're most efficient.



I guess... ;)

On the contrary. What I hate in many RPGs is that you need to play the game several times / create several characters to get all aspects of combat and skills. As if playing the whole thing once wasn't already time-consuming enough. I agree. The combat system is really simplistic. It's basically like a minigame where you need to click with the good rhythm.
My 2 other complaints would be:
- world too scripted and too "corridor-ish"
- no possibility to store stuff in the various crates and such you encounter. Basically once you've picked an object you can either keep it (in you inv or in an inn) or discard it forever.

On the whole, it feels a lot like Fable. Except that you can't travel back to most places (e.g. in chapter 2 you can't go back to where chapter 1 took place). Yup, I too hope the 2 will be better.

This is a great example to show that there is simply no accounting for taste. I for my part, tried really hard to like "Gothic" but found it a highly overrated and quite bland RPG, that didn't give me much joy. So I decided to quit it after about 3 hours into the game. "The Witcher" on the other hand had me hooked from the very beginning. True, it has some flaws but I really enjoyed the story and some of the arcs where just great. "Vizima Confidential", anyone? If a game really interests me, I'm willing to look beyond drawbacks like some of the moster grinding in the swamps.

As you seem to like a challenge in your gaming I would recommend the "Realms of Arcania" - Trilogy. (Having been a pen and paper player of DSA since my 15th birthday I might be slightly biased here) If you get passed the dated graphics you will discover an absolute RPG gem.
Happy gaming everyone.

slash11 you forgot something very important, how could you :P

the witcher - act 1 takes place in... 1 village.
thats absolutely ridiculous...

Actually, the entire game takes place in a fairly small geographical area... pretty much just the city of Vizima and its surrounding regions. I actually thought that this was one of the cool things about the game... it manages to fit a ton of content into this small space, and it was a nice change from the standard, world-spanning, epic-quest RPGs that we usually get.

It all depends on what you're looking for. The Witcher is definitely not an open-world RPG, but there are plenty of those available if that's what you want (the Gothic series for instance, as the OP suggested). But so far I've never played anything quite like the Witcher, which is why it's so cool.

Well you can maybe compare The Witcher to Vampire Bloodlines.

If someone does not like gothic 1 then he should try gothic 2, it's different.
But Gothic 2 NotR was the last open world rpg.

@ Orlonrabenstein
I also played P&P "Das schwarze Auge" in my youth so maybe it could be interesting i will look on youtube for some gameplay videos.

Yeah, I like that about it. Something like Dragon Age Origins is meant to cover an entire country but when you add up all the areas (as in the area of all the areas) it's incredibly small and isn't even as big as a real life village, never mind a real life city, never mind a real life county, never mind... and so on. It's not even like they've developed the areas they've done either, so you basically have a small, underdeveloped area that's representing a whole country with a supposedly thriving culture.

The problem is even worse in Mass Effect 1 & 2 - both great games in their own right, though - because a whole galaxy is represented by less locations and area than you'd find on my street. Then you have the opposite, something like Daggerfall. That game world is as big as a real state in terms of area but is featureless, bland and very obviously randomly generated on demand. The Witcher seems to strike a nice balance in terms of giving you a limited area but spending enough time in those areas so they feel familiar rather than implying that you're free to travel over a whole country or even galaxy.

It lends it the feel of an adventure game like Zelda in terms of how developed and intimate each area is, but with a more complex story and roleplaying elements not normally found in that sort of game.

I cant dissagree that witcher game has well made city and its surroundings, its just that i wouldnt mind there to be 3cities.. or 5..

Does anyone knows how small/big witcher 2 will be? i mean how many cities, villages?

Being somewhere in act 2 by now, there is one thing i'm noticing that i really don't like:
seemingly optional quests in the end were not optional.

I find that rather irritating because it means you can't risk not accepting quests. :(
Okay, that's how life works, some things get unexpected turn of events. But within a game, it is not that handy imho.

To give one example (told as generic as possible to avoid spoilers):
At one point, you need to get certain items for a storyline related quest.
I stumble upon a random person asking me a favor. I decide to help him/her out because it would at least help me explore the region a bit. When i'm done with doing him/her a favor, i get one of those items.

Nothing at all indicated (s)he would have it, nor give me anything at all.
Now it may be possible that if i hadn't done the quest, i would still be able to obtain it in another way, but somehow i doubt that.

This would be my only complaint, along with the copious amounts of running back and forth. Otherwise, I wouldn't consider 'The Witcher' to be anything else then a very good RPG, whose shortcomings are hopefully fixed in 'The Witcher 2'.

I would have to say that yes, indeed, some talk about the first Witcher game as if it were, somehow, perfect; it's not. The fact that I can't recall a more pleasant overall experience since, say, the two KotOR games may have also played a part: I truly felt that the other modern RPGs were not as enjoyable - maybe because I'm not a major fan of the whole 'start a nobody, end up killing a god with a fork in an almost entirely open-ended world' idea, mainly because nothing from those worlds could really convince me to invest so much time in them.

The combat system, for a game based on a series of books whose author really knows his swordplay and fencing, was disappointing - but TW2 seems to have a better approach, I'll just have to play and see.

The engine they've used made a character that was much more agile than most beings around him unable to pass through a few trees and rather stumped when it came to jumping - not that a certain commander, a certain warden or some champion I could name were much nimbler, but at least the aforementioned TES games (not to mention the Gothic series, if I recall) gave me three functional dimensions to work with. TW2 has a different engine, so I'll have to see just how that solves my objection.

The game sometimes wanted me to do certain things in a certain order and I risked breaking it and having to load a previous save in order to solve the problem. I won't have a walkthrough handy for my first playthrough of TW2, so they'd better have that one sorted out as well. :D Exploration could have provided lukipela with the same item (as it did me) and the version I played had the NPC who was supposed to have only one of the items I needed for that quest also have the one previously mentioned, rather mysteriously, but being a bit on the anal side and taking a completionist approach to the whole game did have tremendous benefits.

The Sign system was a bit flawed as well; one could just invest in a certain two and live happily ever after, without ever having to resort to the others. TW2 also seems to have that under control, if the gameplay vids are to be trusted.

I didn't enjoy seeing the same character models over and over again, especially since there were so 'many' of them. Dwellings also had a lot in common amongst each other, but I can name a more recent game with a greater budget whose overall number of different maps was smaller than that of the aforementioned character models. It feels less bad when I know just how much worse it could've been.

I didn't find the prologue boring, but I was quite satisfied when Geralt left... wherever it was he'd been. It really managed to get a point clear: it didn't take place in a post-Tolkien, lovey-dovey, perfectly bland, entirely black and white world (not to mention how I didn't find the same-old beasts and myths that most Anglo-Saxon fantasy worlds boast), and I was going to have some major decisions to make. That was just one of the few things that made me tolerate the frustrating parts and enjoy every playthrough.