The Witcher Review

[GameBanshee News]

Game Over Online reviewed the Witcher and they're less positive than many others, giving it 78%.

But here’s the big problem. The loading, saving, and transition times are abysmally long. When I said that the Witcher has a 50+ hour campaign, I think that translates to about a 40 hour campaign with 10 hours of staring at loading screens. Worse, the game uses a dopey autosaving strategy, where instead of autosaving every X minutes, or right before something important is about the happen, it autosaves every other time you change your map location. That means when you’re wandering around a town, the game autosaves all the time (because entering a house or a shop triggers the autosaves), but when you’re in the wilderness killing creatures, there aren’t any autosaves at all. That makes the town sequences a real chore, which is unfortunate because there are a lot of town sequences (the Witcher has a fairly even balance between talking and fighting), but it has its effect on the fighting sequences, too, since if you die you have to load your game, and so you have to save frequently. The loading times really sap the fun out of the game, but supposedly the next patch (due out any day now) is going to address this.

Hopefully the first part of the review hasn’t scared you off, because the Witcher has some good stuff to it, too. First and foremost is the campaign. Instead of following the BioWare mold where you’re always given “good” and “evil” ways to solve quests, the Witcher swims in murkier waters. One of the themes of the Witcher books is having to choose “the lesser evil,” where you’re presented with a pair of options and neither one is right or wrong; they just have different shades of gray.

[Brother None]

"By: Steven Carter"?

[BuckGB]

Yep, same guy. Steven has been doing reviews for Game Over even before writing his initial Arcanum walkthrough here. Since I had already written a review for The Witcher on GameBanshee, he did one for GO.

[Brother None]

Steve hella negative again. That's one of the more negative the Witcher reviews that I've seen.

Oh well, huzzah dissenting voice and all

[Loki[D.d.G]]

I guess every game needs contradicting reviews. Just to add spice.

[Xandax]

Originally Posted by Loki[D.d.G]

I guess every game needs contradicting reviews. Just to add spice.

The Witcher have had a number of "negative" reviews, not just one.

I don't agree with all of the review, as the loading times did not sap my fun from the game at all, but was just a small annoyance. So while I agree it is a detractor (especially for some), I do not agree it "saps the fun".

As for autosave/quick save not saving in the same slot, that was very nice for me, as it meant it was possible to "roll back" to a previous save without having to remember saving often yourself. I was very glad for this strategy of saves the game had.

And well, I liked the inventory. "Smaller" then the huge "let's carry everything we find" type inventory found in so many other games, and it did require you to think a bit a head about what you wanted to carry.

[Loki[D.d.G]]

I wasn't implying that I agreed with the review, nor was I saying that it was the only one.

Xan, at least you can lambast SWC at our SYM forums to, uh, vent your... displeasure.