Arionfrost

Exactly this. Saw an interesting review, posted it on this thread for everyone's information. Nothing to do with the combat discussion. What? Not trying to accuse you of making a point either, or take offense. They devoted a full two paragraphs as to the issues with the combat system in their review, which pundits of the game conveniently leave out every time they repost this same review. Even I posted the link to the review in my original post here, which, I dunno if you saw, tied into my points about there needing to combat balances... In other words, if you would have read my post in it's entirety, you would have seen it.

...and it's combat. You left that part out.

Adjusting difficulty does nothing to alleviate finicky controls and unresponsiveness. You wanna play a game with great controls and combat tactics, yet preserves difficulty, play demon's souls, or (venturing into action territory here) God of War III and Castlevania Lords of Shadow. Those games feature combat done right.

Quite possibly the opposite for me. I was hoping for the swan song to modern rpgs and ended up somewhat dissapointed. Riddle me this, how is the combat any less repetitive in witcher 2 than it was in witcher one? This one has the same formulaic approach to pretty much any situation: meditate, drink potion, use sign, get quick hits in, kite enemies until you regain vigor, go back to step two, rinse repeat... I'd venture to say more frustrating than tactical. The flow of combat is unevenly interrupted by moments where you are waiting for vigor to recharge and running around trying to avoid getting hit. Another thing: Dragon Age 2 removes tactical combat elements present in the first game, fans express resentment. Witcher 2 removes tactical combat elements present from the first game, fans rejoice and call it very much improved. Role playing gamers sure are a fickle bunch... Overall, if the combat works, fine. Fact is, as been stated, there is a lag in between the time you choose to do something and the time that happens that really hurts such an action based combat system as there is present here. I'm sure I will slog through it, but playing through such a sub-par combat system only makes me wish 11-11-11 were upon us already...

Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. Dragon! Take Cover. To The Hoardings. I hear this is a common thing in the prologue. Which is funny, because a prologue supposed to be just that, an introduction to the game, how to play it, how combat works, what skills you should use, etc etc. Nothing in this part said: "By the way, I see that you are on fire. Perhaps you should use quen to you know, give yourself some fire resistance to survive the dragon attack." I've been following the development of witcher 2 for quite a while, and even participated in the forums there (which sadly were taken down on launch day angering alot of folks). Difficulty spikes, difficulty walls, glitches, mechanics, and lack of instructions or commentary are all things that can be caught during the public playtesting / closed beta phase of a game, which to my knowledge, Witcher 2 never had. Someone at GOG.com coaxed an official response from support at CD Project Red that they are in the process of fixing tweaking over 10,000 bugs and issues in the game, several of which will be addressed in next week's patch. Notwithstanding, it's as close to perfect as a next gen rpg we are going to get until Skyrim. I told a buddy of mine, who can barely play the game due to crashes and ATI card errors: "It's as if someone took the Mona Lisa and got a framed it using something store bought from target or a common store." It lacks that final gloss of polish to put it up there with the assassin's creed's, metal gear's, or oblivion's of this generation.

Probably going to get flame-baited for posting this here, but I did a post on GOG forums concerning combat issues. Figured I would post it here to see the general opinion is of the game. "Disclaimer: I am not saying that I hate the game, far from it. I love the game. It looks great is very refreshing for an RPG, especially since it was designed with the PC in mind. However, flaws are flaws and I am not the one to let love of a franchise or a developer get in the way with what I believe to be sub-par game mechanics... I buy and play pretty much anything that I come across that interests me, from sports games to fighting games to third or first person shooters to rpg's of japanese and western origin. These are just collective thoughts from a well rounded gamer, and other gamers are encouraged to participate and comment on this thread. As a note: please comment only on what you feel needs improvement combat wise. If the combat is fine for you, please move on and don't derail this thread. This isn't a complaint thread, but an idea thread to speak out to the Dev's who no doubt read this forum. Let's get some ideas generating people To set the mood, here's a review from PC Gamer. Notice one of the weaknesses mentioned is indeed combat: http://www.pcgamer.com/2011/05/19/the-witcher-2-review/ Personally, I think simple fixes would improve the combat immensely, such as: Speeding up Geralt's run speed. If you move the camera to the side, and run at full speed, it looks as if he is doing a hop-trot, not a full blown gallop. I think it has something to do with the fact that Geralt only has two speeds, due to keyboard controls, you hold shift or press capslock to go into run or walk. It would have been great if they implemented an analog system if you are using the controller, controlling the speed based on how much you move the stick. If you can recall from the Witcher 1, geralt uses a tactical run for overhead (power style) sword technique, and a ninja inspired cautionary free-run for his speed style sword technique. Just adjusting the run speed to match his animation would suffice, seems a bit slow right now, even if by a few microseconds. Something just doesn't seem perfect about it, but I can't put my finger on it. Also, Geralt needs some other sort of evasive maneuvers. The roll just flat out sucks. You can't really use it for escapes (there is a very minute window of time that you can effective use roll to escape being surrounded), and he rolls barely above the speed that he runs, almost negating the usefulness of using it. Witcher 1 had flips, back flips and cartwheels or side flips. It would be cool if they brought those back, but not totally necessary. An easier facilitation would be to adjust stamina/vigor so that the roll uses a bit more vigor, but provides instant acceleration to get you out of a tough spot and give you some distance between yourself and your enemies. The block needs to be more effective. I don't know if you noticed yet, but you have to "press" the block key or button every time you want to initiate a block, because he effectively resets his stance each time a successful block is made. Even then, the block is finicky, sometimes I die just because block doesn't seem to want to engage. It may make sense from a realistic perspective perhaps, but it does not make much sense from a gameplay perspective. It would be better if he could constant block by holding the key down, and reposition each block automatically from each and every attacker within a 90 degree angle in front of him. Geralt will not be able to block attacks behind him of course. Blocks will still take stamina to use, and health will still be depleted, but this would stave off many a cheap death from being overwhelmed. Targeting just flat out needs fixing. It seems to have a mind of its own. Not sure what's wrong here, but targeting the wrong enemies is quite frustrating. Even when you hold the key or button down, sometimes the targeting system loses lock, if you change direction or what not. As a gamer, as long as I hold that targeting button down, I expect that target be locked on like missile from a cannon. The camera focus should be on the target as long as auto lock is held. There should be no guessing who your target is, because both the combat system and you know who your target is. Those are just a few improvement suggestions as far as defensive postures go. I'm sure someone could give a few suggestions as to sword play. I don't know how to describe in words how I would improve sword play, it's pretty good at the moment, but as many of the combat complaint threads show, it's far from perfect. Perhaps animation speed could be sped up just by a few microseconds? I get that you must commit to an attack once you initiate, but other games have approached sword play better. We aren't arguing the game's aspiration towards tactical gameplay. Tactical gameplay is a good thing, something that some rpg's these days are missing. But tactical gameplay does not equal a lack of balance. Normal mode is just that: a mode that most gamers will be able to handle with a negligible amount of deaths and setbacks. It seems there is a wide gammut of skill level here and on the steam forums. It's great that there are many gamers playing this awesome game. That said, not everyone is an expert, and expert players should be playing on expert difficulties, while average gamers should be playing on normal difficulty, approximately where 70-80% of anyone who is experienced with rpg's will start. Suffice it to say that for every vocal gamer that makes a complaint or a suggestion on a message board, there are a few that do not. That said, there are those that are "fans" of a game, and look to message boards to express their love for a game, it's lore, it's combat mechanics. Thus, it is easy to get a skewed opinion as to whether a feature of a game is good or not, because for every one common gamer who has an issue, there are anywhere from 3-5 fans that will denounce him or her on their ability to enjoy and play a game "correctly". In closing, let's not kid ourselves here. We are all here predominantly to watch a beautiful story. The story of a Witcher, set in the world of a tumultuous kingdom. If the mechanics of a game work against the telling of that story, then those mechanics can be considered a weakness of the game. Thoughts on improvements as far as combat goes? Let's hear 'em! " /Endquote So far I like the game. I'm in chapter one, but I must say the amount of cheap deaths really put me off during the prologue. At the part in the courtyard, I switched it to easy, and now the game is too easy. I switched it back to normal at the start of chapter 1. I've played and enjoyed some hard games before, but the prologue to this game really takes the cake for being a bit unfair, especially if you are new to the Witcher universe. I am deffinitely going to finish the game multiple times, but I do hope they address some of the gameplay issues.

I actually purposefully destroyed one of my trading ports yesterday, because I didn't want to leave a garrison of troops in one of my cities to quell christian rebellions. Matchlock arigashu are overrated, who needs em when you have armored katana and bow samurai? I feel like I am playing at a very slow pace. So far I have capture 7 settlements on the short campaign and its already 1554 I believe? I was up playing late last night. I am playing my cards very cautiously, keeping at least one strong alliance and a vassal who has a strong army, but only one province as an addition to my army through while expanding. Also, from what I keep reading, food is pretty much your most important resource, so I am making sure I do everything I can to produce surplus. I might actually do that realm divide mod so I can keep my ally and vassal, I don't see the point in everyone stabbing you in the back when you make a bid for shogun, even after decades of continual friendship and trust. Kindof breaks the immersion of the game, not to mention makes it really difficult. I have already started over once, I really just want to have fun playing rather than worry about challenge.

Which, in all honesty, was a very poor representation of the end product. The multiplayer demo was a total letdown.

Sounds like a sense of self entitlement to me. There are alot of things that just work in the game, and if you would give it a chance without resorting to PC vs Console debate or previous expectations on what a PC game, or what a Crysis game should or should not be, you would find that it is a pretty great cohesive experience overall, and far from the typical Call of Duty fare. I'm not trying to "sell" the game as much as I am trying to state, Crysis 2 is a great experience, and if you would let your preconceptions go and look at it objectively, it's alot better than you give it credit for. I would say that it plays like Metal Gear Solid on steroids, but since you obviously aren't a console fan you can't really relate. I hate to resort to calling you out on your own forum, but you're not looking at the game through an objective lens, but rather from the viewpoint of a PC gamer who feels jaded that the game went multiplatform. In my opinion, if they can juice this much performance out of such a sophisticated graphics engine and put it on 6 year old technology and make it playable, more power to them. I can't wait to see what else can be done with Cryengine 3. I will agree that the Multiplayer greatly leaves something to be desired, but I will say that there is still room for mods and first party support down the line with regards to the PC version, so 6-8 months from now we will see if Crytek holds to their claim that they haven't forgotten about the PC gamer. I would like to to see Bad Company 2 sized maps myself utilizing Crysis 2's framework... Again, my entire opinion is based on the experience I have had with the single player portion and how the game plays in comparison to other $60 first (or third) person shooter single player story driven games.

You are really missing out on an entire dimension of gameplay. You really owe it to yourself if you like civ to try out shogun 2. It's my first total war game and honestly I could give a shit about napolean or medieval, but I always liked the feudal era of japan. Each battle for me lasts about 15-30 minutes, they aren't all that long. At first I sucked bad, but once you understand basic battle tactics the AI in this game is phenomenal. It's less about slaughtering the other army and more about diminishing their morale. Each unit has another unit that it is strong against and weak against, and since there are only a handful of units the game isn't too taxing on your memory and not to hard to pick up and just play for someone new to the series, or someone who just doesn't have alot of interest in micromanagement. Seriously, give it a shot if you are at all interested. I don't have the patience for Civ, but this game really took me by surprise with how fun and engaging it is, I can't say enough good things about Shogun 2.

How many of you have actually sat down and played it? To me, it's the most fun I have had with a first person shooter since, well, the original Crysis. Let's get down to the nuts and bolts: There is nothing wrong with simplification as long as the end result is a well balanced and fun game. Case in point: Assassin's Creed 1 was huge! Fucking huge, and dwarfed both AC2 and Brotherhood. But that hugeness came at the expense of actual gameplay elements. You were given a sandbox with just the bare minimum ammount of toys and no real sense of direction with what to do with everything. The overall narative was weak compared to the later entries. Same seems to apply for Crysis 1 vs 2. Don't get me wrong, I loved every second of Crysis 1. It still is an excellent game, but the overall narrative was weak and the open endedness of it did little to push an overall sense of urgency. It seemed you could easily pull yourself out of the realism because doing sandbox style stuff was just as fun if not more fun than actually progressing through the story. Crysis 2 narrows the scope quite a bit without sacrificing too much on visual detail and gameplay length. I don't know exactly how far I am into the game, but suffice it to say that most first person shooters seem to just sputter to an end around the 5-6 hour mark. It seems the story just kicked into overdrive for me around this mark. For every new area I encounter, each environment is different and refreshing and there is focus on what exactly needs to be done to get through the area and on to the next one, all-the-while never lacking in narrative. I like that. I don't mind the directed experience as long as I am not walking down endless corridors and hallways, or just a straight tunnel (insert pretty much any call of duty game here). As far as the suit being less powerful, seems like a bullshit claim to me. The suit feels better in two that I does in original crysis. The recharge time is excellent. It always seemed like you were waiting for your suit to recharge in the first game. when you were surrounded, do you use it all on stealth in hopes to flank 2-3 dudes? Do you run away and drain it on speed? Always waiting for the thing to recharge really killed the action bits when you were endlessly pounded by a massive force of dudes. In this game, recharging is done within 4-5 seconds if you're empty. You eventually get suit mods to tailor how much energy usage the suit consumes. I can sprint a pretty decent distance before completely draining now, which in practice means, I can be surrounded in all angles during an ambush type event with maybe 80-90 percent, go into cloak and sprint to a location that I know is safe out of harms way and still have energy left. Add on to the fact that the closer you are to to full energy the lesser the lag on full recharge time. That wasn't even possible in the first game. If I want to pick someone up and power throw them, I don't have to switch to a specific mode to do it, I just do it. Balancing between strength and speed is no longer a pain in the ass, you are much more able to change your tactics on the fly. Really adds alot of dynamism and flexibility with your suit that was somewhat lacking in vanilla crysis. Overall I like what has been done to the game so far, and I keep having to tear myself away from it because I don't want to finish the campaign so fast. Not many action games can hold my interest the way that this game has. But then again, I'm one of the crysis fanboys so as long as they didn't fuck it up too much I would be happy.

Hold SQUARE or X(?) depending on your console to grab a dude. Press R1 or RT to throw them, longer press = longer throw. So I have to hold it? Cool. Kept pressing x, or clicking to melee. Didn't even think of holding it down. Thanks!

Hey everyone. Great game here, I recommend anyone who is on the fence about it to give it a shot. At 10-12 hours, you are getting much more for your money via the single player campaign, and the tactical options make replaying the same areas slightly varied each time, encouraging multiple playthroughs and neat strategies. I would be describe it as metal gear solid meets Battlefield Bad Company with some Crackdown mixed in. Also, I'm a little bummed over some of the dumbing down of the physics. Crysis 1 was a monumental triumph of graphics and physics technology in a video game. I am suprised that they scaled back some of the physis such as breakable objects etc. Doesn't really detract from the game all that much if you aren't paying attention, but it was cool to lift a heavy wooden crate throw it at a soldier and watch it crack into individual non-prerendered pieces, take a box and put it next to an open fire and watch it burn, or shoot the tires of a moving vehicle and watch it topple over. Maybe it's just a console limitation, not present in the PC version. One question though: in the original crysis, you could grab soldiers by the throat and give them a good chuck off of the roof of a building or into the water. Can you still do this? I can't figure out the control to grab a person. Also, let's not turn this thread into a bitchfest concerning broken this or PS3 vs 360 that. Every other thread on EA's forums and gamefaqs is like this, and it's really annoying. You guys were the lifeblood of the kotaku community, one thing you were good at was coming to consensus about games and having above the par exchange and conversations concerning games.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU! I have been dreading the whole realm divide sequence. I'm new to total war. My first playthrough with the hattori clan ended up with me losing my starting capital because I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I am slowly making my way with the shimazu and doing much better, but I am just scared shitless of the realm divide event, Especially since I am so far away from Kyoto.

You get Ninjas with every clan, they can be freely recruited if you have the money. The hattori clan just specializes in ninjas (every clan has some sort of specialization). Basically you are paying for the extra clan. It's a steamworks game, so anywhere you purchase a key or physical copy, you can register it with your steamworks account permanently. I WOULD HIGHLY RECOMMEND that you get a hold of a physical copy through gamestop, amazon, or some retailer. I bought the physical and it came with 2 DVD's with about 13 gigs of data, plus post install I had to download an extra 1 GB worth of update data. If you were to do this via steam, you would be waiting practically several hours just for this to finish, not to mention taxing your monthly bandwidth allotment (if applicable). In all, physical is the way to go with this one.

I got it on release day as well. I have never played a total war before. I gotta unlearn all these starcraft strategies. RUSH RUSH RUSH doesn't seem to work all that well... I first played as the hatori clan all this week and was steamrolling through the weaker clans, but I should have been setting up alliances and being more diplomatic. My one ally sat by and watched me feebly try to take a castle, failing misreably. Then out of a nowhere a stronger clan just marches right in and takes 2 of my provinces. SHAMEFUL DISPLAY!!!! Needless to say I suck but the game is very very addicting. I get bored with Civ, can't play more than an hour before I get sleepy, but Total War strikes a balance between diplomatic tactics and combat tactics. If anyone is still sitting on the sidelines and wondering, yes, the game is great, and fun for newcomers looking to get into battle style strategy games as well. /sarcasm: I would consider Shogun 2 to be the best JRPG to come out in the last 5 years...

The mobile site works better for me, because I am work most of the time I decide to comment anyways, or was the case when I commented on Kotaku.

Hey. I'm Will, aka arionfrost. Fresh off the boat from Kotaku. The whole gawker deal left a bad taste in my mouth so I am moving here. I imagine more will follow...