The Witcher catch-all

Greg wrote:

I am trying to avoid spoilers, but does the pace pick up after Chapter 2? I loved the prologue and Chapter 1, but running around the inside of the town and getting owned in the swamps kind of sucks.

Also, if you're getting owned by the plants in the swamp, just run past them until you get a few levels.

I found that everything started to click as I finished the investigation. Everything clicked together nicely and the game started to feel a lot more cohesive.

Yeah, TW1 has pacing problems early on, and also each chapter starts slowly, and events come quicker as you progress.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Greg wrote:

I am trying to avoid spoilers, but does the pace pick up after Chapter 2? I loved the prologue and Chapter 1, but running around the inside of the town and getting owned in the swamps kind of sucks.

Also, if you're getting owned by the plants in the swamp, just run past them until you get a few levels.

Mostly it's this. Don't worry about just running by enemies. A lot of the quests and sidequests in the swamp area invovle a lot of running around. These quests can take forever if you fight your way to every point on the map. Just blow by enemies unless they are plot specific or you are collecting their brains.

Scratched wrote:

Yeah, TW1 has pacing problems early on, and also each chapter starts slowly, and events come quicker as you progress.

It's not just pacing problems. The second chapter is bad at laying out clear goals in general, and the fact that you can do things out of logical sequence compounds the problem.

Alien Love Gardener wrote:
Scratched wrote:

Yeah, TW1 has pacing problems early on, and also each chapter starts slowly, and events come quicker as you progress.

It's not just pacing problems. The second chapter is bad at laying out clear goals in general, and the fact that you can do things out of logical sequence compounds the problem.

It could certainly be improved, but I quite liked how you stumbled onto some things that progressed you. It's a very skilfully made game that can make something that feels like a fortunate accident happen to the player, but is scripted to be reliable and predictable. A game really does need to make clear that you'll be doing useful stuff to further your interests rather than just spinning your wheels, moving away from 'gamey' just following instructions 100% of the time is a good thing I think.

All this Witcher talk has made me re-install it. Maybe this time I will make it through Chapter 2.

It's funny, chapter 2 is where I really started getting into the game. The investigation was fun, and was enough to get me through the swamp sections. There's a LOT of complex scripting going on, and I think I broke a few scripts doing things in weird order, but it all resolved itself in the end.

This will be my fifth run at it. I have no idea why I think this time will be any different from the other 4. But I am using some mods to alleviate some of the tedium that killed it for me the other times. Summonable shopkeeper and teleport from swamp back to town are two of them. I figure at this point, I still want to see the story but the actual game part has always killed it for me, so why not remove as many of the impediments as possible.

If I stall out on this play-through, I will just YouTube it.

tboon wrote:

Summonable shopkeeper and teleport from swamp back to town are two of them.

Nice! Those seem like they would help, particularly the teleport mod.

F*cking swamp.

MrDeVil909 wrote:
Greg wrote:

I am trying to avoid spoilers, but does the pace pick up after Chapter 2? I loved the prologue and Chapter 1, but running around the inside of the town and getting owned in the swamps kind of sucks.

Also, if you're getting owned by the plants in the swamp, just run past them until you get a few levels.

This is such good adivce. I didn't do this and spent about twice as much as most others seemed to playing the game- and I honestly loved it that much more for the struggle. That said, don't be stupid like me- run when you need to and avoid the toil.

demonbox wrote:
MrDeVil909 wrote:
Greg wrote:

I am trying to avoid spoilers, but does the pace pick up after Chapter 2? I loved the prologue and Chapter 1, but running around the inside of the town and getting owned in the swamps kind of sucks.

Also, if you're getting owned by the plants in the swamp, just run past them until you get a few levels.

This is such good adivce. I didn't do this and spent about twice as much as most others seemed to playing the game- and I honestly loved it that much more for the struggle. That said, don't be stupid like me- run when you need to and avoid the toil.

Things are looking up...

I am at least leveled up enough to kill the plants. But I am still in a tangled web of dribbling quests. Getting tired of running around town talking to people, but I decided to gut it out.

Also use the shield spell before running past the plant. It will help save you some vitality

I suggest doing as much of the swamp as possible during the day. Those mobs of drowners at night get tiresome quickly. All told, chapter 2 feels like half the game in terms of length. It's ambitious, but doesn't quite work in that if you do things in the wrong order the story just gets kind of confusing. The remainder of the game is definitely great though.

I completely forgot how long it took me to finish the game. Looking back a page or so I see it took me 77 hours. Holy crap was that a (enjoyable) slog. Most people seem to cap out well before the 40 hour mark. I will say that if you like parts of the game don't let yourself be put off in completing it. The way that the sidequests ended up winding into one another, helping me get a sense of the world, and helping to define who I was ended up being one of my favorite things. But yeah, some of those chapters take some time for sure.

I spent so much time in those swamps.

"Hey Vesna! Keep the hell up!"

(A barghast eats Vesna's tender skin...again)

-- I call this performance piece "The Joys of Escort Missions"

(I think Vesna got hit by one of the guys assaulting her. I saved right after that fight so now I am kind of stuck: my previous save is quite a bit before this sequence )

Seeing The Witcher 3 unveiled during Microsoft's E3 press conference really got me jazzed to reinstall the original on Steam. Wonder of wonders, enough time has passed now where I can play this game on Medium detail settings (ok, had to dial down Shadows to Low) and get excellent frame rate on a modest, 1-year old HP media laptop.

I really ran out of steam on The Witcher 2 and always preferred the original. The only reason I stopped was because I was playing it on even more feeble hardware and could not for the life of me deal with the slideshow antics of that demon dog boss fight in Vezima.

I'm hoping a full playthrough of #1 will give me more context for #2, inspire me to finish that one and be all set for #3 next spring.

Just wanna throw a shout-out to The Witcher. Just finished up, and really enjoyed the hell out of it. After 65 hours it certainly felt like an epic journey. It's a little too long in parts, especially the second half of chapter two, with some tightening it would have been even better, but overall just highly recommended. Looking forward to part 2. For anyone interested, keep an eye out at the end of the steam sale as I got part 1 last year for $2.49, and part 2 earlier this winter sale for $4.99.

Great game.

random elusive wrote:

Just wanna throw a shout-out to The Witcher. Just finished up, and really enjoyed the hell out of it. After 65 hours it certainly felt like an epic journey. It's a little too long in parts, especially the second half of chapter two, with some tightening it would have been even better, but overall just highly recommended. Looking forward to part 2. For anyone interested, keep an eye out at the end of the steam sale as I got part 1 last year for $2.49, and part 2 earlier this winter sale for $4.99.

Great game.

I played this a couple times, twice getting stuck in chapter 2.
I never got the hang of that chapter. I ended up completing it in some strange out of sequence manner that made the mystery completely incomprehensible.

I still can't believe this game took me 77 hours to completed. I was reminded of this when I looked through my timespent by game on Steam. I really hope that The Withcer 2 either A) doesn't take that long and/or B) Is worth however much time it takes to play. The first one was certainly a real treat.

I'm determined that this is the year that I finally play all three of these games. This will be my third try at starting this one, as I bounced off almost immediately the first two times.

I'm doing better this time! I'm into chapter 2, which is way farther than I made it before. I just went to the swamp, and got immediately demolished by one of those plants. Then I realized that one of the things modern games do much better than older games is consistently autosave. My last autosave was from before I even left the city to go to the dike. Makes me feel better to see comments on this page that the swamp sucks and to just run past those plants.

So far, I'm having trouble following what's going on in chapter 2, but I'm soldiering on. There's so many threads, and the "main" storyline's been so light thus far, that keeping everything straight is tricky. Still, I'm soldiering on. I really want to get through this one so I can move on to the second and third.

Good luck Chaz. I am planning to do the same sometime in 2016 (Actually read all the books in preparation). Interested in how your experience goes.

Yeah, chapter 2 is a challenge. It's hard to tell main quest from side quests as they are intertwined, and some side quests can only be resolved in the next chapter. It's also loaded with back tracking.

What got me through was playing until I wasn't having fun, then exiting and coming back the next day. It takes longer, but cuts down on frustration build up. And it's so worth getting through chapter 2.

I think I'm almost through chapter 2. I've got 9 of the 10 do-dads, and it seems like a lot of the quest lines are either done or on hold until the next scripted gate bit. I did have to check the wiki for a few to see if I was missing something, or if I just couldn't do it til later. I do have one that I'm 90% sure is bugged, with a messenger not showing up, but it could be that it's tied to a specific time of day that I just keep missing.

MrDeVil909 wrote:

It's hard to tell main quest from side quests as they are intertwined...

I do love that about the Witcher games. Makes it feel more organic. This happened to me quite a bit in TW3 specifically.

Chapter 2 saw me shelve The Witcher. I have yet to return. Up until that point I was soaring through the game. I've always meant to return, but too many games and all!

Finally out of chapter 2. Man, this game really likes to throw little annoyances in the player's way. I lost track of the number of times I was looking for someone, only to find out that oops, they aren't available at this time of day, and I had to go find a fireplace to advance time. Or during a story scene, you get drunk. Except in this game, when you're drunk, you stumble around at 1/4 speed, and unless you have the sober up potion, you get to s..l...o...w...l...y stumble your way to someplace that you can advance time so you can move at normal speed again.

Still, I'm pushing through. It sounds like they're about to get started on forcing me into picking sides, which is more interesting than what I've been up to.

It seems like the game is constantly finding new ways to annoy me. There's a quest in Chapter 3 (Blue Eyes) telling me to go back to a knight with a piece of info. The quest tracker says he's in the inn. He's not in the inn, and I have no idea where he might be. Not sure if it's a bug or just an NPC scheduling thing.

A lot of my frustrations seem to come out of the time of day scheduling, really. Frequently, I'll want to do something, only to find out it's the wrong time of day, and then have to waste time hunting down a location to pass time. Or there's an innkeeper who has several conversation options that result in him refusing to talk to you more, unless you exit and leave the inn, which re-sets that. If I can reset it that easily, there's no point in having the stop, it just frustrates the player.

If I didn't think I was past the halfway mark, I'd probably just give up on it. It's proving to be a super annoying experience to play.

Finally into Chapter 4, and liking it a lot more. Not sure if it's that there are fewer threads cris-crossing, or if I'm just really happy to be out of that city. Still looking forward to finishing this one up so I can move on to 2 and 3.