And now for my next trick I shall say unkind things about The Witcher 3.

[Adam Jensen_v1legacy]

Too many people overuse that 'Mary Sue' phrase, I'm really starting to hate it. It seems like any time someone doesn't like a character or finds them boring it's become the default go-to passive insult. "Oh no, I guess it's an alright character, just kinda a Mary Sue." might as well be the go-to internet catch-phrase for reviewing stories.

You don't get it. Yahtzee said that Geralt is a "Mary Sue" character so it MUST be true. Nevermind the fact that he's anything but. He's good at some things, bad at others and completely useless at some. And depending on player choices he can fuck up royally simply by trusting the wrong person.

 

[Amaror]

Well i disagree. The combat might be simple, but it manages to be very enjoyable nonetheless. After 110 hours of gameplay i am still not bored of it, which i can't say for any other rpg combat honestly.
The Story and characters are fantastic, the sidequests are phenomenal and the collectibles/questionmarks are fast enough to clear, that they don't mess with the pacing for me personally. Despite being a completionist.
And i really don't get the "Mary Sue" complaint thrown at this game, because i simply cannot think of a single RPG were this is not the case.
In Inquisition you're literally hailed as a messiah and build a world-spanning organisation from the ground up.
In Skyrim you are a legendary figure of old with powers beyond any other, deciding the fate of nations and wars.
In Fallout: New Vegas you are uniting or forming nations through your abilities, shaping the face of the entire mohave wasteland.
Personally i think that a lot of people just don't like that they can't create their own character in this game and since Geralt is a good character in it's own right, they just tried to come up with something to criticize the character.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

That's fair. I honestly don't see those things as particularly "unkind" or anything above general criticism. The game does have an issue with padding and pacing towards the end, but in my case, it was due to a lack of a sense of progression. Things being spread across 4 areas, with which we changed locale ever so often just felt like events were less epic than they appeared, which was a bit disappointing.

In terms of combat, it varies on difficulty. I played it on Blood and Broken Bones and I generally had a good time. Oils and potions(of all variety) were practically essential, and monster hunts felt more like uneasy encounters than anything else, always having to wait for them to strike and then go in for a hit yourself. Playing it on "normal" is just a cakewalk and the other elements on hand don't really do much.

Story was pretty good. If there's anything where I'd say "this is the standard to which RPGs should be held to" would be the story, the quest design and the writing. Honestly, Bioware look like absolute chumps next to The Bloody Baron quest.

 

[sanquin]

--sniiiip--

Oh I agree that Gerald barely has any personality. I guess they tried going for the 'blank slate' thing, but they failed at that too. As he still has too much to say, and still has that bit of personality to make it hard to see him as a blank slate.

As for not being able to have both great story and great combat. That's not what I meant. I meant not being able to have it -all-. The witcher clearly focused less on combat mechanics and tightness, and more on other aspects of the game. Because CDProjectRED realised RPG's aren't meant to be fighting/action games. Most 'rpg's' these days are more action games than actual rpg's. Also, I wasn't talking about the amount of combat, but about how polished it feels.

And please give me some RPG examples that have good story/setting, good graphics, good gameplay, good quests, good voice acting, and good music all in one. I'm not saying they don't exist, I'm just wondering which games you're talking about.

 

[Zhukov]

My first major complaint is the combat. It's not bad. It basically works as intended. But it is way too damn shallow for a game that fucking long. All you do is press dodge when enemies are trying to twat you about the head and press attack when they aren't. For like 80 fucking hours.

... Isn't that batman?

Sorry, I just don't understand.

Thinking about it, everybody loves for the combat in the batman games, so much so that many other games have copied it but it's the same combat as assassins creed has but that is somehow inferior to batman?

Kinda.

Thing is, the Batman games use that as the base on which to build the rest of the combat system.

To begin with, yeah, it's just mash attack and dodge or counter when prompted. But then they start throwing in enemies who can't be countered, only dodged. Then enemies that can only be attacked after being stunned. Then enemies that must be countered in a different way. Then enemies that can't be countered and are only vulnerable to aerial attacks. Things get pretty hectic later on when you're fighting a crowd of six different enemy types plus maybe a mini-boss for good measure.

On top of that they have a combo system that lets you use a bunch of special moves after getting your combo up. The special moves each perform a separate function. One insta-KOs a single enemy, one disarms a single enemy and destroys the weapon preventing other enemies from picking it up, one does AoE damage and so on. You can also eschew the special moves and just focus on building your combo which causes Batman to move with increasing speed relative to enemies until you get to about x40 and it's like fighting against slo-mo opponents.

The Batman games also feature a lot of stealth. I never much liked it, but there's no denying that it adds variety to the gameplay.

It also helps that the combat is beautifully animated and has a sense of flow that I don't think I've seen anywhere else. (Well, except Shadow of Mordor, but that's because it uses the exact same system.)

As for Assassin's Creed, I'm not the one to defend that. I think the AC combat is shit. Iffy controls, overly long animations, too few enemy types. Sure, those counter-kills looked pretty sweet back in 2006, but the world has moved on. Shadow of Morder is now easily the best Assassin's Creed game ever made.