Witcher III: Complete Set is back on sale on the PSN. $14.99 for the original game, all the DLC and the two expansions. That's not bad---if I can get into it. So far, that's not going so well. MOSTLY these are things that I believe I could adjust to with more game play but I'm not sure I want to invest much more into it. That's disappointing.
Cut scenes are great. Based on those few I've seen, I imagine the story will be good. My concerns are in combat controls, NPC dialogue, PoV, and a few minor glitchiness.
Controls will probably be easiest to overcome with a bit more practice, but even during the tutorial combat I could never seem to get my character to do anything useful. That may partly be a result of the constant instructional text pop-ups pausing the combat. I know it's necessary, but the method is distracting. I survived my first few encounters but I felt like my button set was upside down for what I'm used to with other games. I'll look into the setup tonight. Maybe I can customize that.
NPC dialogue feels very clunky. Choices are fine, but I half expected that my choices would change based on what I select and the NPC's narrative response. Like, say I have the options of:
- What do you know about Apples?
- Where are you from?
- What is your name?
Select option 2, "Where are you from?" then prompts a decently-acted reply. Cool. The NPC says he is from some mystic land and is a traveler like me. Then alludes to more information. However, when I'm prompted to follow-up with another question I get the same options rather than drilling deeper into the originally selected topic. So it feels weird then to abruptly select option 1 to ask about a completely unrelated topic on apples. Too, I've noticed that I get additional responses with more information if I ask the same question twice. That is VERY strange, at least from my experience with other RPG type games.
This may evolve the deeper I get, but this is throwing me off a lot.
The point of view is a little overwhelming right now. This happens switching from one third-person game to another, sure. I've just put in two months of play with CONTROL, where the character takes up less screen real estate with a slightly wider field of view. I might be wrong on the second part, but I get a bit of vertigo walking around with this character. That could be from several smaller factors like environment textures, animations, turn speed, etc., and I'm trying to be mindful that this too may pass with a little more play time.
I hope so. It was a cheap purchase, so no biggie if I can't get into it. Just sucks with how much praise I've read about (here and from friends and family) to not be able to experience it.
Finally, I've noticed a lot of odd audio and animation jumps. I don't know how to describe it, but it seems to mostly occur during transitions from game play to NPC interactions and transitional animations (like riding into town /cut to close-up of dismounting). It is as if the animation cues start just before the dialogue audio has ended, then hiccups for half a second, then replays correctly. Or that the audio may play into the transition. It can be quite jarring.
I get that this is a 2015 title, but it did win Game of the Year and several other awards. I'm taken aback by this, at least with the introductory play, as I'm having a hard time squaring the accolades with what I'm experiencing so far.