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[Beggars` Sect]

So many people I know say 'oh, I need to upgrade my graphics card before I can play X' just because the game company have put the newest AMD as their recommended one, and the second newest as their minimum.

Sorry, but this is just nonsense. While it`s no big mystery that devs and hardware folks often cooperate - for better or worse - this example is too extreme. Setting minimum specs at some "second newest" fantasy level would hurt sales badly plus it`d be found out by benchmarkers immediately bringing more bad press to deal with(pretending that downgrades don`t exist is enough I suppose).

Coincidentally (?) the "i5 or over, 6gb+ Ram, 1gb or over Graphics card" are the Witcher`s minimum requirements btw. By this I suppose they mean the game "will run" in some sort of playable state... And yeah, I`m sure some folk will manage to fire it up on lower specs but...

...but that leads to bigger issue, which is different people have different levels of acceptance when it comes to gfx quality. They also have very different way of defining these levels - so one person`s "hey, it runs fine" is another`s "slideshow". if you can enjoy this game playing on a laptop in medium with whatever fps this yields, fine - personally I rather wait (In fact I`m a bit of an extremist - 60 fps with vsync, which is why I just started on the first Witcher because  I didn`t have a rig capable of this till now).

Another angle is that I find it quite funny how PC Master Race does their gloating and console bashing only then to proceed and meekly stick with medium & 30 fps when a new game is released because there really is few people who can afford a system to run this in Ultra HD (this last remark is not actually aimed at you Retropunch since I don`t know if you subscribe to that silly ideology)

[umiman]

I'm level 7 now, still on the second highest difficulty. The game is still brutally hard but I'm getting the feeling I'm going to start leveling faster than the game can keep up soon.

But the thing about levels is that it feels like it doesn't change anything. The changes are so small and incremental and you can only have so few skills active at once. So I still get owned by drowners and wolves and everything.

When I fought the golem boss my sword was doing 15 damage to him per hit. I felt like I was hitting a brick wall (probably accurate). At the end I only managed to speed it up by spamming igni on him and running like a little girl every time it was on cooldown.

I think if the Witcher books were written about my Geralt, it would go like this:

"And Geralt, in his usual display of brilliant combat tactics, spent the entire fight rolling around and shooting his crossbow to do a microscopic amount of damage while exploiting the weak AI of his opponents where they could not go over walls or cliffs and couldn't leave their areas. However sometimes he gets lightly scratched by a fingernail and dies instantly."

--------------

I also love the facial animations and dialogue in this game. I thought it would be the kind of thing where they play it up heavily in the start but all the normal quests would be have standard conversations but it never stops. The incredible facial animations and emotions continue for everything even down to the crappiest fetch quest. Same with the extensive and interesting dialogue. I haven't skipped any dialogue at all, something which I do a lot in many games. You can even see the cheekbones move underneath the skin, or scars opening and closing with the skin movements. It's crazy. And everyone looks different too, no clone quest characters at all.

I love that the writers use facial animations like subtle winks or nods to express the characters instead of just words. Even just silence is great. Everyone has so much character. For example, there was a fist fight match where I went in completely underlevelled. The bookie asked me to throw the fight but I refused. I could feel his hate and disgust through the screen from the way his cheekbones moved and the furrow of his brow. Then they showed the guy I was going to fight. A big bruiser with a massive forehead who didn't say anything but gave me a knowing nod. When I actually lost the fight I could see the spit come out of the bookie's mouth when he taunted me for refusing to throw. Then my opponent came up and gave me another, friendlier nod, and thanked me for the fight. He didn't say anything other than that but I could tell he liked that I didn't accept to throw the fight and disagreed with the bookie too.

Hell, you even start noticing things like how one of the sorceresses will avert her eyes slightly when she's not telling the whole truth.

It's crazy! How can these animations be this good?!

[Vendayn]

Well, if I only get 30 FPS average on low/medium...that won't be playable at all. That means FPS would drop below 30 and become laggy or slow depending on what the engine does. I need 40-50 average in games for it to be playable, because it often drops in intensive areas.

I'll see when I get my "demo" downloaded and installed what I get out of it. But if the other guy has about same specs and gets 30 on a lower resolution, I probably will be glad I didn't waste my money.

[ThtblovesDF]

The Dialog is great. Pause. But it does not really feel right. Pause. Not Smooth, to segmented. Akward Pause.

They could have filled the pause with ... interruptions, ähhss.. and errs.... or just made the audio closer on each other, I don't need 3-5 long long secs to think over a single sentence, just say your words dang it.

Btw, Golem boss @umiman - he has a gigantic flesh-hole in his back, which is where he takes damage. You can either just role there, stun and role there or place down the trap/slowdown sign (thou agni works, too) and then go behind him. Same with ghosts/wraiths, bait them into the circle, they take like 5x the damage.

Sorceresses are never telling the truth! But triss is alright.

Some boss fights are very easy when you just ride your horse, i.e. the gigantic cock shrieker - let it land, ride, hit for nearly 3 times the damage you would do normally (or more) and be to fast to get hit.

Other then that, there are vastly different playstyles between people, some spend a lot of time collecting stuff - i have never had my inventory full (overweight) or "to much" money - lvl 13 now - others complain about weight and other issues. I'm a witcher, I ain't here to loot village houses for 3 hours.

[Neonivek]

To me the graphics is only a HUGE issue if the scalable graphics scale... badly so to speak.

It is no mystery that some games if your not playing at the highest possible settings that the game looks ugly...

While others where the highest settings are unnoticeable.

For me it just matters if the game is still aestetically pleasing at lower graphical settings. I played Skyrim at middle to high-res and I actually didn't notice anything while I was playing it... and that is the effect I want in games.

If I play a game at low or mid res... I should be able to play the game and think what I am seeing on the screen is meant to be the way the game is supposed to look.

[CaptainLambcake]

was able to play the game for the first 2 days of release, but then randomly tried to hit Play yesterday and was met with a quick flash of black as if starting, then nothing.  i did the local cache thing multiple times, restarted computer, installed latest drivers.  i could try to re-install but i'm worried about losing progress. wat2do?

[Wimopy]

was able to play the game for the first 2 days of release, but then randomly tried to hit Play yesterday and was met with a quick flash of black as if starting, then nothing.  i did the local cache thing multiple times, restarted computer, installed latest drivers.  i could try to re-install but i'm worried about losing progress. wat2do?

I hear there was a new patch released, might have something to do with that. If not, then download it anyways...

(On a non-related note: I have a 4GB i3. I tried the game and it's totally unplayable, even at low. I really will have to wait until I get a new rig. Then again, my laptop is roughly 4 years old and it was never high-end, so I guess it's acceptable. Witcher 2 also ran bad until a few patches though, hmm...)

[Haspen]

The soundtrack is wonderful <3

[lordcooper]

I have a 4GB i3.

A what?

[sebcool]

Well, you aren't gonna be able to play this without a GPU. . .

As for the levels, yeah, they're really incremental, and it ramps up really slowly, but unlike most games the EXP cost doesn't seem to scale at all, so you might end up getting multiple levels from the later quests. Also, you can apparently get reset potions that allow you to change your skills, if you f-ed it up.

This game seems to take way more emphasis on learning your enemy, preparing well, and just plain getting better; than just leveling up. Also, does anyone know just what adrenaline does now? I haven't seen any abilities that use it, besides the skill that lets you use it for signs.

[miljan]

One of rare negative reviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIeEZeKN8JE

He is mostly nit picking, but is the combat thing true? I heard the combat in older witcher games sucked, is it same here?

[Stuebi]

Well, you aren't gonna be able to play this without a GPU. . .

As for the levels, yeah, they're really incremental, and it ramps up really slowly, but unlike most games the EXP cost doesn't seem to scale at all, so you might end up getting multiple levels from the later quests. Also, you can apparently get reset potions that allow you to change your skills, if you f-ed it up.

This game seems to take way more emphasis on learning your enemy, preparing well, and just plain getting better; than just leveling up. Also, does anyone know just what adrenaline does now? I haven't seen any abilities that use it, besides the skill that lets you use it for signs.

Can confirm the reset potions thing. Costs a whoopin' 1000 crowns tough.

Also, leveling is initially slow yes. But at around Level 6, you'll start to outrun the game in terms of level to quest ratio. I had a little problems finding stuff for level 4 and 5, but after doing the Bloody Baron and Mage quest, I'm Level 8 now and some of the Quest start to fall below my recommended Level.

One of rare negative reviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIeEZeKN8JE

He is mostly nit picking, but is the combat thing true? I heard the combat in older witcher games sucked, is it same here?

Depends on who you asked. I disliked the combat in Witcher 1 and "liked" it in Witcher 2. It wasnt anything special, but it wasnt awful either. Witcher 3 fixed most of my issues with previous installments when it comes to combat (Mainly that Alchemy isnt a boring, unintuitive slog and actually has uses in it.). It isnt anything groundbreaking. You have a fast and strong attack, a dodge roll for big Monsters and a sidestep for the rank and file. Signs mix it up a bit.

The guy in the Video just comes off as very bad at it, at least for me.

[umiman]

One of rare negative reviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIeEZeKN8JE

He is mostly nit picking, but is the combat thing true? I heard the combat in older witcher games sucked, is it same here?

He's completely wrong about the combat. I could spend an hour cherrypicking his nonsense but just trust me he has no clue what he's talking about and clearly hasn't played the tutorial. Or maybe can't understand it.

[miljan]

One of rare negative reviews

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QIeEZeKN8JE

He is mostly nit picking, but is the combat thing true? I heard the combat in older witcher games sucked, is it same here?

He's completely wrong about the combat. I could spend an hour cherrypicking his nonsense but just trust me he has no clue what he's talking about and clearly hasn't played the tutorial. Or maybe can't understand it.

How does the combat work. Can you attack normally or its all done through locking to target like on MMO games?

[kcwong]

My GTX460 is cool (~60ºC while gaming) and reasonably powerful, but it can't possibly do Witcher 3 justice. Tried it in the tutorial room at Ultra and it was like swimming in oil. Turning settings down to low just isn't an option for a new game.

Titan/Titan X are overpriced for a meager 30% performance gain over 980; while Radeon R9 is cheap and powerful, my past experience with ATI drivers aren't that good.

So I'm going to buy a GTX980 probably, to replace my GTX460... if the weather's not too bad. Forecasts said thunderstorms.

Turning Hairworks off or down a bit (in INI) should make it work in 980.