Is it worth getting The Witcher 1 and 2?

[Amaror]

Absolutely. They are really cheap right now and if for nothing else cpr is a developer worth supporting.
A lot of people say they didn't liked the first one and that they gave up on it in the third act and to be honest i did the same thing. But after a while i got into it again, i even read all the books, wich are really good, and it was sooo worth it. maybe you should try reading the books before starting the first game. You will have enough time until the third one will be released and i found myself much more interrested in the story, because i allready knew and loved the characters taking part in it. Besides the game has some really nice unique moments in it, that you will understand more when you know the books.

In conclusion: The first one can get a bit slow and difficult to get through, but if you can get through the second and third act, it's really worth it. Plus it gets better when you know the books.
The second one is faster and more cinematic and should be more enjoyable, without straining your patience.

 

[Whateveralot]

Never played the first game, but since I am playing The Witcher 2 now (I'm about halfway through the second act, I think), I'm loving it. I love how every decision matters, how paying attention and gathering information in the game really matters.

That and the fighting is good. It's a tad slower then Demon's Souls / Dark souls and definitely not as slow as some people say it is.

 

[Chris Tian]

Get both and just try them. You can see yourself that the opinions are all over the place.

My personal opinion: Both games are excellent. The Witcher games basically do what Mass Effect promised but never pulled of when it comes to non-linear story telling and choices that actually matter. Additionally its not always obvious wich descisions will have greater consequences or what those will be, also no bullshit moral-o-meter. One of the best rpg series in my book.

As for the two points in the first one that get hated on the most: The combat isn't all that bad at least not compared to other action rpg's of the time. I personally never understood how Mass Effect could get away with its unbelivably dull immunity-spamming, but the click and hit combat got so much hate.

The story is a bit of work, you have to dig up some of the details and connections, it does not all get handed to you on a silver platter and recaped in a conversation every few main-quest-steps.

 

[hazabaza1]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

How about the awful gameplay, terrible voice acting, bad player direction, unintuitive design, and just plain being boring?

But of course, I'm assuming that we have what we call a "difference of opinion". See, there are times when someone disagrees with what you think! Shock horror. There's a few way to deal with this. It seems you're a fan of "Jump on their face and assault them" going by this post and some of your others.

 

[JoesshittyOs]

I own both. The first Witcher I put down pretty quickly. It's combat was worse than terrible, and the story wasn't really going anywhere quick enough for me to deal with the boring and confusing combat. I'd in no way recommend that game to anyone.

From what I understand, I got about halfway through the second Witcher. While the story was a bit more enthralling and kept me hooked for a little bit, I too put that game down after a bit. After being stuck on multiple objectives for hours at a time because the maps were fucking abysmal and the quest objectives didn't help one bit, I decided that the little interest the story was generating wasn't really enough to continue through the sea of glitches and below par/confusing combat mechanics.

If you have to get it, get the second one for as cheap as you can. It does an alright job of summarizing the story from the first game as you go throughout the game.

 

[Above]

Both games are great, they have some flaws, but overall they're great games.

 

[Subscriptism]

I have both and if I were you I would only get The Witcher 2 Enhanced Edition, I found the first one to be so horrendously boring and I couldn't play more than two hours. The Enhanced edition fixes a lot of the issues the first release had I've heard.

 

[Amakusa]

I'd say they are both good. But only get them if you have the time to invest in playing them. You may want to watch some videos on both games thou, since their gameplay and mechanics are totally different.

 

[ninjaRiv]

I actually prefer the first one but the second one is pretty great, too. Although I haven't yet finished it, despite declaring myself a fan of the series.

The combat in the first one is nowhere near as bad as everyone here is telling you. It's pretty simple and it's not great but it works. You want to kill some monsters? It'll let you kill monsters. I found that killing monsters was just an obstacle in the way of a great story, great characters and so on. I tried to skip fights in the wild. That's a bad idea, it made boss fights difficult. But not impossible.

 

[spartandude]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

while i cant speak for the OP, to me the second and third act ground to a complete halt and it really felt i was trying to grind down a brick wall with sandpaper, while i usually dont mind some slow downs in stories this was just aweful to me, i pretty soon forgot what i was doing, what a i was trying to achieve and why i should even care. and i never had the problem in the second game.
i would also like to say i did prefer the combat in Oblivion over Morrowind but prefer Morrowind as a whole over Oblivion, i mean Morrowind had a much better setting/world and fuck that level scaling in Oblivion.

 

[Helikaon]

The first game is quite slow paced and has many faults, but despite this, I find it really quite special. The combat, like others have said, is not particularly ground-breaking, but I know that when I was playing it, the combat didn't really bother me.

The Witcher 2 however, is one of my favorite games of all time. I never really understood people's complaints about the combat in this game; I loved it from day one.

There has recently been a mod released by one of the developers of the Witcher 3, which changes the combat of TW2, and I'm having a lot of fun with it at the moment. It can be downloaded from here: http://redkit.cdprojektred.com/index.php?c=mod&m=show&p=77

The same developer also released a combat rebalance for the first witcher game which can be downloaded from here: http://www.moddb.com/mods/full-combat-rebalance1 I can't comment on the quality of this one personally, but I've heard great things!

If you're only going to play one of them, play TW2. Since it follows on from the first game, there may be a few story details and characters you might want to read up on, but the in-game journal does a pretty good job of getting you up to speed.

Hope this helps!

Enjoy!

 

[endtherapture]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

I (now infamously) prefer Oblivion to Morrowind but thought The Witcher 1 was a great game.

while i cant speak for the OP, to me the second and third act ground to a complete halt and it really felt i was trying to grind down a brick wall with sandpaper, while i usually dont mind some slow downs in stories this was just aweful to me, i pretty soon forgot what i was doing, what a i was trying to achieve and why i should even care. and i never had the problem in the second game.
i would also like to say i did prefer the combat in Oblivion over Morrowind but prefer Morrowind as a whole over Oblivion, i mean Morrowind had a much better setting/world and fuck that level scaling in Oblivion.

Prologue and Act 1 were both brilliant. Act 2 was very slow moving but all led up to the reveal of the main enemy, with the cool crime investigation plot. Act 3 was a bit nothingy but it also introduced some notable characters and fleshed out the two factions you chose. Act 4 was completely weird but I enjoyed it's change of pace and in hindsight it's very improtant to the plot, and also fleshed out the two factions. Act 5 and Epilogue obviously are the climax. It's a slow moving game if you do all the side quests but I didn't do I finished the game in like 40 hours.

 

[Rastrelly]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

How about the awful gameplay, terrible voice acting, bad player direction, unintuitive design, and just plain being boring?

But of course, I'm assuming that we have what we call a "difference of opinion". See, there are times when someone disagrees with what you think! Shock horror. There's a few way to deal with this. It seems you're a fan of "Jump on their face and assault them" going by this post and some of your others.

Wow! I'd never guess. So please avoid calling "garbage" something other people can enjoy. "Garbage" is an absolutely worthless product while I can't see any way to objectively state that first "Witcher" is less than mediocre. Yes it has long and sometimes boring - and mostly skippable - quests, yes it likes to hang at one place for a long time - but for a reason. And this game works a lot better then sequel mostly due to immersiveness of the world. It's not cinematic, it's opened. It ALLOWS to roleplay ALL THE TIME, while Wither 2 does this from time to time and tends to be overall action game with wide RPG elements.

 

[hazabaza1]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

How about the awful gameplay, terrible voice acting, bad player direction, unintuitive design, and just plain being boring?

But of course, I'm assuming that we have what we call a "difference of opinion". See, there are times when someone disagrees with what you think! Shock horror. There's a few way to deal with this. It seems you're a fan of "Jump on their face and assault them" going by this post and some of your others.

Wow! I'd never guess. So please avoid calling "garbage" something other people can enjoy. "Garbage" is an absolutely worthless product while I can't see any way to objectively state that first "Witcher" is less than mediocre. Yes it has long and sometimes boring - and mostly skippable - quests, yes it likes to hang at one place for a long time - but for a reason. And this game works a lot better then sequel mostly due to immersiveness of the world. It's not cinematic, it's opened. It ALLOWS to roleplay ALL THE TIME, while Wither 2 does this from time to time and tends to be overall action game with wide RPG elements.

Alright. You can think all that stuff, whatever. That's fine. I still think it's garbage and I can't understand how anyone could play more than a few hours of it.

Am I saying this objectively? No. Fuck no, I'm not an idiot. But it's fair to assume that when I post an opinion it's my opinion and I don't state that it's objective fact. Unless you want me to add a disclaimer to all of my posts that you might not like? Because you really seem to dislike the idea of differing opinions.

 

[Zac Jovanovic]

They are both in my top 10 list, Witcher 1 is low though. It has horrible combat, took me 3 tries to get over it, but the story more than made up for it.

Witcher 2 is one of my favorite games ever, I can't find a flaw in it after they added the tutorial. Perhaps too high hardware requirements, but the gorgeous graphics justify them.

 

[Rastrelly]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

How about the awful gameplay, terrible voice acting, bad player direction, unintuitive design, and just plain being boring?

But of course, I'm assuming that we have what we call a "difference of opinion". See, there are times when someone disagrees with what you think! Shock horror. There's a few way to deal with this. It seems you're a fan of "Jump on their face and assault them" going by this post and some of your others.

Wow! I'd never guess. So please avoid calling "garbage" something other people can enjoy. "Garbage" is an absolutely worthless product while I can't see any way to objectively state that first "Witcher" is less than mediocre. Yes it has long and sometimes boring - and mostly skippable - quests, yes it likes to hang at one place for a long time - but for a reason. And this game works a lot better then sequel mostly due to immersiveness of the world. It's not cinematic, it's opened. It ALLOWS to roleplay ALL THE TIME, while Wither 2 does this from time to time and tends to be overall action game with wide RPG elements.

Alright. You can think all that stuff, whatever. That's fine. I still think it's garbage and I can't understand how anyone could play more than a few hours of it.

Am I saying this objectively? No. Fuck no, I'm not an idiot. But it's fair to assume that when I post an opinion it's my opinion and I don't state that it's objective fact. Unless you want me to add a disclaimer to all of my posts that you might not like? Because you really seem to dislike the idea of differing opinions.

I love different opinions. And you know what? Your favourite movie (whatever it is) - garbage. Just because.

I repeat: I love different opinions. Until they turn into statements. I can argue why Witcher 1 is one of the best RPGes ever released for hours. Gladly. But I hate people who express their "opinions" in one sentence without even attempting to add arguments to it. HATE.

 

[hazabaza1]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

How about the awful gameplay, terrible voice acting, bad player direction, unintuitive design, and just plain being boring?

But of course, I'm assuming that we have what we call a "difference of opinion". See, there are times when someone disagrees with what you think! Shock horror. There's a few way to deal with this. It seems you're a fan of "Jump on their face and assault them" going by this post and some of your others.

Wow! I'd never guess. So please avoid calling "garbage" something other people can enjoy. "Garbage" is an absolutely worthless product while I can't see any way to objectively state that first "Witcher" is less than mediocre. Yes it has long and sometimes boring - and mostly skippable - quests, yes it likes to hang at one place for a long time - but for a reason. And this game works a lot better then sequel mostly due to immersiveness of the world. It's not cinematic, it's opened. It ALLOWS to roleplay ALL THE TIME, while Wither 2 does this from time to time and tends to be overall action game with wide RPG elements.

Alright. You can think all that stuff, whatever. That's fine. I still think it's garbage and I can't understand how anyone could play more than a few hours of it.

Am I saying this objectively? No. Fuck no, I'm not an idiot. But it's fair to assume that when I post an opinion it's my opinion and I don't state that it's objective fact. Unless you want me to add a disclaimer to all of my posts that you might not like? Because you really seem to dislike the idea of differing opinions.

I love different opinions. And you know what? Your favourite movie (whatever it is) - garbage. Just because.

I repeat: I love different opinions. Until they turn into statements. I can argue why Witcher 1 is one of the best RPGes ever released for hours. Gladly. But I hate people who express their "opinions" in one sentence without even attempting to add arguments to it. HATE.

Alright, well I've said why I dislike the game before and once more in this very thread. If it really bothered you that much I might expect you would search out some of my posts about it or ask my politely why I think so, rather than acting condescending and getting uptight because I insulted a game you like.

Honestly I'm wondering something. I explained why I dislike the game and we've recognized that we differ so... why are you still going on about this? And if you hate the way I expressed my opinion, why aren't you arguing with one of the several other people in this thread who have done the same?

 

[Nonomori]

Don't bother with the first, it's garbage. Second is pretty good though.

We've got a cultural expert here! I just wonder, what makes it garbage? One of the best implementations of non-linear story? One of the best implementations of long-running consequences? Unique designs? Best link to the books? Let me guess: you also prefer Oblivion over Morrowind because of combat system!

How about the awful gameplay, terrible voice acting, bad player direction, unintuitive design, and just plain being boring?

But of course, I'm assuming that we have what we call a "difference of opinion". See, there are times when someone disagrees with what you think! Shock horror. There's a few way to deal with this. It seems you're a fan of "Jump on their face and assault them" going by this post and some of your others.

Wow! I'd never guess. So please avoid calling "garbage" something other people can enjoy. "Garbage" is an absolutely worthless product while I can't see any way to objectively state that first "Witcher" is less than mediocre. Yes it has long and sometimes boring - and mostly skippable - quests, yes it likes to hang at one place for a long time - but for a reason. And this game works a lot better then sequel mostly due to immersiveness of the world. It's not cinematic, it's opened. It ALLOWS to roleplay ALL THE TIME, while Wither 2 does this from time to time and tends to be overall action game with wide RPG elements.

Alright. You can think all that stuff, whatever. That's fine. I still think it's garbage and I can't understand how anyone could play more than a few hours of it.

Am I saying this objectively? No. Fuck no, I'm not an idiot. But it's fair to assume that when I post an opinion it's my opinion and I don't state that it's objective fact. Unless you want me to add a disclaimer to all of my posts that you might not like? Because you really seem to dislike the idea of differing opinions.

I love different opinions. And you know what? Your favourite movie (whatever it is) - garbage. Just because.

I repeat: I love different opinions. Until they turn into statements. I can argue why Witcher 1 is one of the best RPGes ever released for hours. Gladly. But I hate people who express their "opinions" in one sentence without even attempting to add arguments to it. HATE.

I'm sorry, you are not arguing with me, but...

Honestly, you're upset for nothing. Garbage isn't even that strong of a word. I'm used to write "in my opinion" because of reactions like that (see my last post in this topic), but this was never necessary, everyone understands that it is a matter of taste.

 

[BloodSquirrel]

The first game was alright. There were some really cool old-school sensibilities about it, but it was also highly unpolished with a log of broken dialog trees and quests. The setting was also one of those "dark and gritty" fantasy settings which have been all the rage lately, which is to say that it was unpleasant and hard to care that much about.

The second game... I put it down after a few hours and couldn't bear to pick it back up again. It felt like a crappy console port. The combat was clunky and unrewarding, and the beginning of the game is a highly linear slog through action set piece bullshit.