The Operator on hard difficulty was a nightmare for me with my pure mage build, one hit from the Operator's fireball or a hit from the gargoyles took my quen down in one hit.

I even watch a video on youtube of a guy beating the Operator on hard but he was swordsman build. I notice is easier to down him with swords build with the improve dogde and less damage you take from the back. I kill him after an hour of trying with my pure mage build, but it was painful even trying to cast Yrden was too slow and Aard was most effective for me during the fight.

I was even afraid to use bombs and knives cause it bug the controller three times and I die because I couldn't do anything after my controller lock.

The Operator is a totally optional boss fight, though. It's like in the old days of Super Nintendo RPGs where they would hide a secret boss that was 10 times harder than the end boss of the game somewhere.

The controller lock is awful, I'll agree with you on that. It's only happened to me twice, but one of those times was while fighting the Operator. I promptly shouted some things that took my monitor's innocence :)

Yeah I know is optional, but I didn't want to respec my character cause I like my build. That's why I wanted to see how valuable was the loot that he drop, his staff is cool, but I don't feel it fits Geralt character so in the end it was pointless to fight him. However, it felt so rewarding to kill him after he torture for an hour with all those fail attempts to beat him.

The problem with the boss fights are that they rely on gimicks to beat or just luck. For example running in circles waiting for Letho's quen to run out so you can spam bombs is a gimmick to me. Sort of like playing tag except I'm running in circles with a forward roll every couple of steps.

The Kayran fight is very luck based it seems to me. I place a yerden and maybe the tentecle is stuck and maybe not. It doesn't matter on where I'm at or which way I roll around. Do that four times, ride a QTE event and then you can hide till vitality and vigor are charged up. Then run to bridge, dodge a few rocks and run up bridge.

Edit: I just read that the middle two tentacles can't be trapped. OK that was an important piece of information that the game maybe should have given to us.

You know you can spam Aard on Letho when his quen is up and he will still stagger and bring his quen down much faster than running in circles. You can even drop Yrden after you hit him with Aard so you can get a free hit on his back.

actually Letho is a joke after you stay away from him long enough to learn his atk patterns

I died a lot the first time fighting but...
later i could easily wear basic to nothing equipment and kill him

Its easy queen, roll around ...estimate when his queen end and jump in
atk till he guard
aard
atk till he guard (you can repeat this and win but its cheap)
alternatively you can just jump out and quen where he will queen too
repeat =o

His swordmanship is kid's play. That his weakness. The guy swing his sword like a hammer-easy to guard and dodge.

Just dont let he corners you or you toast with his full combo

Well, I just got to the dragon. Seems pretty much impossible...on normal. But that's not my complaint. With this boss fight, there seems to be no rhyme or reason unlike the other ones. It seems to have been done for pure spectacle more than anything else, and as such is the weakest encounter in the game. I'm somehow reminded of going to a drive-in theater and watching a cheesy 3D horror movie. I think the way it was implemented was a mistake.

The kayran especially where i feel as if i excel at a game mechanic as opposed to just excel. Click this button when the screen prompts you what is this Dragon's Lair circa 1983.....Yes i am that old that i spent hours feediing quarters into that machine at the local gas and gulp. I had a bigger problem with the fact that the kayran was such a huge monster and that it was some sort of boss fight typical of WoW trash. I know it would be boring to have simple hack and slash mechanics where the boss does nothing but stand there while you whittle down an enormous health pool, which is why i think this kind of shit should be left the the wankers who play WoW and stay out of my Witcher. I want to fight monsters, bandits, the occasional mage, more realistic stuff. If one remembers the premise of The Witcher, drowners, bruxa, basically all the monsters have some root in human vice which creates and suckles the manifestation evil that is a cemetaur, or spectre. In my humble opinion the drift to High Fantasy with dragons and over sized monsters is a drift i think should be resisted as typical and cliche'.

Asai

Totally agree with the OP. Letho's boss fight is ludicrous, and so was the Kayran. The Kayran had nothing to do with skill but luck, and Lethro cheats right in your face! He's a Witcher, I am a Witcher, and yet he has skills 20 x more than me!

Both these first two Boss battles also took place in small areas, making it all the more difficult when the boss was already difficult. To have to deal with the legs of the Kayran is hard enough, and yet you get the gluey mucas spat at you, you get a camera that breaks your concentration by showing you the bridge and bringing the camera back to your normal view (for what reason I have no idea!), then the tentacle ride where you don't see the text "space" because it's so small (thanks to console design elements!!)! Just half of that would have made it a brilliant Boss Fight, but twice as much just made it so hard it broke any immersion in the game.

Now Letho's boss fight: This would have been a great boss fight if he had extra vitality and stronger spells. But to be able to use a Sign while using the shield is a joke! So as soon as you see that, your immersion breaks as you are reminded it's a game! Add to that that you have to fall into a tiny room where you can't swing a cat to make it even more difficult.

It took me an hour to Kill the Kayran, and I have spent 40 minutes on Letho and not got more than a millimetre off of his vitality bar! Yes you can use fire or air, and yes, he staggers. But you don't see a jot off his vitality!

So both these bosses have three layers of difficulty instead of one. And once word of these bosses get out to 360 players, I doubt CD Projekt will see more than a few 100 sales. Because if PC gamers hate the bosses in this game (which based on multiple forums they do!), console gamers are going to throw their DVD disk out the window!

I am now going to have to spend about 6 hours killing creatures and taking the most obscure quests to level up, because this game also forces you to put points into TRAINING skills for God's sake! So I haven't even had the chance to put skills into sword or alchemy or whatever and yet here's the game telling me I have to fight a cheating NPC like Letho!

So far then, between the console UI and controls, these boss fights, and some of the most aggravating main NPC's I have ever had to deal with (Roche anyone?) in an RPG, this game is slowly moving backwards to be behind the first Witcher.

You can all flame me now, but that's my opinion on these bosses.

Typical bossfights in TW1/2/3 seem to be very hard or even impossible on the first sight (and on the second too). But there is always a king's way (or more than one).

The key to the Kayran fight is Quen; Geralt can't be hurt by any tentacle as long as he is protected by Quen. This is the Kayran ballet in dark mode:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BB_O-3sbBQs

Not that difficult in my eyes. What do you think?

The other boss is Letho? The crucial insight here: His bombs are worthless as long as Geralt stays in melee. And his Aard doesn't help Letho when Geralt reacts faster. The Letho fight on hard:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OvUQHmL1bsY

If Letho is caught by Yrden he shouldn't escape any more.

If you know *exactly* what to do and when to do it, I'm sure it's easy. Most people don't like to try 100 times to get to that stage, though.

As for the Letho fight, it's another total bullshit fight. I tried another 10 or so times, and the best I could do was get him down to maybe 70% health. Using Quen, Yrden, Aard and everything else I saw mentioned as what was supposed to work. Thing is, it's kinda hard when he can block and hit you with swords and bombs, signs at virtually the same time.

Eventually I made the sensible move and said "Fuck this" and turned down to Easy. Then I could 'beat' him in about 20 seconds by just quick attacks without him even blocking me once or insta-hitting me with signs or bombs or other crap.

Total bullshit.

RPGs (if we can call this that) often have difficulties early on due to low levels, but there are ways to go about it. Baldur's Gate don't pit us up against a Dragon at level 1.

Can certainly understand better now why I'm seeing countless threads all over the place about "Please beat Kayran or Letho for me". All I can do now is hope the game turns good (again) and stops throwing untouchable bosses at me. If it continues like this I won't finish the game. Which means I'll never buy Witcher 3 either.

This is part of the problem, but no remedy. Stay in melee, so Letho's ranged attacks can be prevented. Did you play on normal before you changed to easy? Using Aard Letho is almost defenceless:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juMEEvPQ9Rs

Geralt's first Aard just at the beginning of the fight, before Letho is able to react!!! Any Quen from his side makes the fight longer.

Yes, I've played on Normal, and tried that fight ~20 times on Normal before switching to Easy to get past him. Tried a plethora of different approaches, including Aard right at the beginning. That got me about two hits on him, but then he blocked me or Aarded me away, before instantly hitting me with a sword attack or bomb. Managed to Yrden him a few times too, but basically the same story. I got in a few hits, but then he blocks me and then it's the same frustrating dance again.

Like with the Kayran, there is probably an "easy" way to beat him if you know *exactly* what to do and the *exact* timing and sequencing, but that's not really about skill, and that's the problem with these boss fights. You have to try and fail over and over and over again, until you either get lucky or happen to do the exact things you have to do to punch through the game design.

I've got used to the combat system now, but sadly in boss fights it falls apart. Liked the Witcher 1 combat much better. Less dynamic perhaps, but it simply felt better, and was more about skills and execution, rather than essentially roll around, hit people a couple of times, roll around again, ad inf.

Thankfully the game so far (into chapter 2 now) is good outside of boss fights.