Finished the game last night. The final boss fight was cool. Favorite boss fight was probably Tinker Knight though they were all pretty memorable aside from King Knight I think. He just died too quick and it seemed way too easy to just recklessly attack against him.
I haven't gotten to Tinker Knight yet! King Knight was a bit boring aside from his fabulous confetti attack! I wonder why they put him right at the beginning of the game when they could have switched him out with a more interesting boss to get people hooked on the game from the start.
Then again, Shovel Knight does that long before that boss fight.
So, last week I finished Witcher 2 and I posted my opinions in the sale thread so obviously no one gave the tiniest fuck about it.
But, today being the FIRST WEEK SINCE ITALY WAS KICKED OUT THE WORLD CUP THANKS TO SALSA AND HIS CANNIBAL HOMIES I QUIT SMOKING, I decided fuck it and reposted because, I dunno, I cared about my post, and I was actually interested in reading some of your insights about it.
---
The Witcher 2, against any expectations, was a bit of a let down.
First and foremost, the graphics.
I loved TW1 art style and I loved TW2 even more, but for fuck sake, to fully enjoy it you basically need to take a screenshot, becase in movement... eh, it kinda sucks.
I mean, it has huge inconsistency in quality and polish between the art and the tech, if you get what I mean.
Colors, designs, compositions, everything really, are wonderful.
But then you get constant texture pop in, very obvious dithered shadows, bad collisions (even in cutscenes!!), huge "darksoulsesque" DOF blurring even in relatively small (or even closed) areas, and an overall feeling that this game was NOT polished at all, like they got to some point in QA and then just released it for good.
But I'm not a tech bitch, I played turning all details to zero for dozens (like, 1 dozen) of years, so I would still have been fine with it.
If the plot, or better yet, the writing didn't fail so badly in the last chapter.
(SPOILERS ABOUT WITCHER 2 - of course - BUT ABOUT WITCHER 1 TOO)
WARNING #2: I TOOK THE IORVETH PATH, so if you took the Roche path and don't want to know about Iorveth quit reading!
Until Loc Muinne I'd say that everything proceeds smoothly. Maybe the tutorial is a little too "in medias res" and too long, but still. After that, I found the plot intriguing and engaging. I was seriously challenged with moral decisions, and when I picked Iorveth over Roche, I actually needed a couple of hours off to think of all the pros and cons of supporting Scoia'taels instead of Dho'innes.
Vergen is great, even though crossing the battle of the damned 3 times is always a fucking pain in the ass.
But the city of Vergen and all the cliffs around are incredibly well designed, to the point I was actually speechless thinking of how much work (and talent!) they put in that chapter's level design.
So hey, great props to CDPR for being able to create a consistent world AND what is for me the most interesting fantasy setting ever for the second time (and after the sale, when the thread will be quieter, I'm gonna ask you all about Witcher novels).
And then Loc Muinne.
In TW1 the ending arc was full of suspense, a climactic run that spanned from the burn of Vizima to the very end. I don't remember what happened, but I do remember it was kinda frantic.
Loc Muinne instead is a location like any other. You proceed like always, with secondary quests, dice games, arm wrestling and all that stuff. Until you decide it's time to end the game, meet Iorveth and start a long cutscene with the final boss fight in the middle.
And then in the most anticlimactic moment of all, you get a 15 minutes long full fledged explanation of about every mystery you confronted during the game.
And then... they give you the choice to spare Letho. Like, WTF? 30 hours spent trying to find this guy's butt to kick it all day long, and then "eh ok, he explained everything to me, he's such a cool guy".
I spared him because after 15 mins of cutscene and 15 mins of Letho talking at 2AM, I just wanted to end the game asap. (also because it fit better my interpretation of Geralt, but really I didn't care to fight at all)
I don't know anything about TW2 developing history, but it really seemed to me that it all went exceptionally well until some point, where they just stopped refining and polishing the game.
You can see it in how the graphics work, in the ending arc of the game, in the combat system (I've played with the rebalance mod, so I don't know the original one, but I didn't like the rebalance at all), in menus, inventory management.
For fuck sake, even the save system is broken: every save is an almost 1MB file PLUS an almost 1MB bmp image. After a bit I noticed a HUGE slowdown everywhere, until I discovered an almost 1GB saves folder, that was impossible to cloud sync on Steam and, worse, crashed the game every now and then when I opened the load game menu.
So, I guess they REALLY should take their time for their games.
Think about Valve, but with a release date for the third chapter.
I'm not sure if I'd like this! I love visual novels, but I majorly suck at life sims for some reason. I always put all my points in the wrong category, start switching them around halfway through the game, and end up mediocre at all of the skills by the end of the game.
Instructions for participants:
I am giving away a Steam key. To enter this giveaway, send a PM to ModBot with any subject line. In the body, copy and paste the entire line below containing the key.
Rules for this Giveaway:
- If you are a lurker you are not eligible for this giveaway. You need five or more posts in either the current Steam thread or the previous one to be eligible
- This giveaway is a LIGHTNING raffle. The winners will be selected by random draw 15 minutes after the draw was created. Any games not claimed after that point will be given away first come first serve.
- Do not trade keys you win off-site to enrich yourself. Don't try to claim games you have no interest in collecting or playing. Don't claim games to give them to friends off-site.
- If the key is already taken you will not receive a reply. Replies may take a minute or two:
DLC Quest -- MB-A988E453F480F2AF - Taken by FiveElementNinja. 12 entrants total.
01 Jul '14 You played Cult of the Wind for the first time! £0.10
I booted this up today. Am I to assume that all the games I booted up the last few days for the "play for the first time" and didnt trigger wont trigger since a more recent one did?
There hasn't been a Blink Bundle in a while, hope we get one soon.. and is Humble Bundle ever coming back or are they strictly dealing with comics, ebooks and publisher shit-bundles now?
01 Jul '14 You played Cult of the Wind for the first time! £0.10
I booted this up today. Am I to assume that all the games I booted up the last few days for the "play for the first time" and didnt trigger wont trigger since a more recent one did?
01 Jul '14 You played Cult of the Wind for the first time! £0.10
I booted this up today. Am I to assume that all the games I booted up the last few days for the "play for the first time" and didnt trigger wont trigger since a more recent one did?
You guys are finally noticing Freedom Planet? Kickstarted it a while ago, they have made a ton of awesome looking bosses, areas, and music from what I've seen from their updates....
01 Jul '14 You played Cult of the Wind for the first time! £0.10
I booted this up today. Am I to assume that all the games I booted up the last few days for the "play for the first time" and didnt trigger wont trigger since a more recent one did?
Will those of us who got the Suguri Collection in the Groupees Build A Doujin Bundle 2 in October last year be getting Steam keys? Does anyone here know?
I'm not sure if I'd like this! I love visual novels, but I majorly suck at life sims for some reason. I always put all my points in the wrong category, start switching them around halfway through the game, and end up mediocre at all of the skills by the end of the game.
The game kind of encourages experimentation that way though. You'll inevitably run into a death at some point due to a deficiency in one or more categories, then you start over and aim to pass those skill checks there, but then fail others and die some other way, etc.
I usually don't get too into VNs, but I love LLTQ for some reason.
A last push before I get to sleep. Good night folks, I hope I have some additional entry in my messages when I wake up tomorrow. It's nothing big, just draw a picture or write small text
How it works:
- go to the animedreammachine and generate an anime until you find one that fits you. Make a screenshot of it.
- write or draw a gameconcept for the offfical game of said anime.
- send me a pm with the picture of your generated anime and your gamepicture or text
- I will decide by my own arbitrariness who wins while laughing manically
- first place picks first one game out of these three, then second place choose one of the remaining two and third place just get the last one
- you have 36 hours from the moment the original post was posted
That happened to me on the last day of the sale. I'm still trying to get my account unlocked so I can buy stuff again. Missed out on some last day deals yesterday.