Excellent game. Aside from the long load times and minor flaws finally a worthy successor of Fallout has arrived.
- The load times are pretty excessive, but that only gets annoying if you have to hop into and out off a lot of houses. The game just drops everything outside from memory when you go inside. I just read a study book during the 5-40 second loads. On the plus side, when the huge outside is loaded you can roam around it for hours without loading.
- The inventory system is rather unwieldy, but that can be managed by just selling or using anything you don't need. You have one infinite sized 'bank vault' in inns where you can store anything you want. You can retrieve anything stored in an inn in any other inn. There are several handy things, like color markers at the ingredients to compensate a bit for the lack of a decent inventory manager.
- Sometimes the storyline takes rather haphazard jumps and you go WTF ?, but in general it's very good.
- Very occasionally there is some sloppy Polish-English translation. This is very rare.
- There are a limited number of NPC templates, which can get confusing at times (is this the merchant dude or the traveler dude ?).
- If you speak with an NPC character again he will usually (unless it's quest related) have forgotten your previous replies so you can insult them and come back later.
- You can't jump over anything.
- You can't store weapons at your 'bank vault'. This isn't so bad really as you will almost always use the sword anyway.
Plus points :
- Gerald is cool beyond belief (in a brilliant B-actor kinda way like Ash from Evil Dead). You really start to identify with him. The put a lot of work into him and it really pays off in the little things, like the way his cat's eye pupils reflect the light from a fire at night.
- The dialogues are very well done and all speech. In general the characters are very believable and original.
- I love the fight system, it's very dynamic and exciting and so cool looking, but you can still micromanage (by pausing the game) if things get really hairy. The magic-melee combination works very well. Select a power and just right-click during combat to use it. Select a fighting style and just left-click on an enemy to use it. For example, use a telekinetic power to knock down half you enemies when you are surrounded and then wade it into the other half using the group-fighting style while the rest is getting back up. It feels very natural. They made the excellent decision to make a fight system with gives a lot of options, but is incredibly easy to use. I rarely pause during battles and you feel very immersed in the combat. They put a lot of work into Geralt's animations when he is fighting and it looks great.
- I actually managed to get killed playing the tutorial (on hard) ! A game that is so brutal that it actually kills you in its tutorial. I love it !
- The world looks amazing. It's a reworked version of the old Aurora engine of NN, but the attention to detail is excellent. It's 50 times better looking than NN easily. The little details are brilliant, like flocks of birds that fly away when you approach, the weather, that sorta thing. The background characters act very naturally, sleeping, eating, working and sheltering from rain. It is all incredibly immersive.
- The sound is brilliant. When you're being pursued by hell hounds and you can hear the howling coming closer the sweat really starts to break out. Again, a lot of attention to detail here, with very good sounds effects for basically anything and good background music.
- It's such a cool RPG experience. The choices are very realistic and have consequences. Not the general good vs evil choices, but often evil vs evil choices. Often you are left in indecision on what course to take (Are the elves terrorists or freedom fighters ? Should I interfere with this mob of racists harassing a dwarf ?). I personally really start to play as a Witcher should (I'll help you, for a price). The great thing is, it comes very naturally due to the excellent world background and story.
- The potion system seems a bit wierd at first, but after a while it comes very handy and interesting. Basically, you can 'power up' with potions you find/buy/make yourself, but use too much and you might overdose.
- The magic system works very well. You basically have up to five combat-related magic powers which (like all the three fighting styles) can be upgraded as the game progresses.
- Due to the games background (Polish) a lot of monsters are very original instead of the standard trolls and orcs. Even standard classes like mages can look anything like a tribal shaman from Siberia to a a shrouded mad max bad guy. Have I mentioned that they look great ?
- The journal system works excellently, and especially the quest system works extremely well. The ability to 'track quests' on the map is very useful.
- I haven't had a single crash yet (but a friend of mine has had several).
- The game keeps managing to surprise you. Just when I thought I was home free a bunch of wizard assassins sets me on fire before an evil-looking armored pitbull rips my flaming body to shreds.
Final verdict :
Finally ! A worthy successor to Baldur's Gate and Fallout ! Now if they could just get the load times down with a patch which caches the outside world in memory it would be flawless.