The Witcher.

After work today I think I might go and do a little video game shopping. I am tempted to purchase The Witcher for PC. I just want to know if anyone else has played this game and whethber or not it lives up to the hype that surrounds it?

I don’t know anything about its hype, but I do know that it’s so obtuse and unintuitive that it requires a manual large enough to bludgeon an elephant to death. Then again, that’s something of a PC gaming tradition, and it’s certainly never stopped me from playing such games.

I heard it gets repetitive fast.

As for living up to the "hype" around it, well I’m not exactly sure what hype there is. It came with one of my video cards, had good reviews, and looked interesting, so I played it.

Personally, I think it’s one of the best RPGs released for PC in the last 4 years. The world has a good deal of depth and an interesting story/concept behind it. It also has a plausible grittiness that few RPGs seem to possess. The characters are pretty well done, though the english voice acting is rather bland. Combat is a bit odd at first, but once you grasp it, it works quite well and is not overly complicated. I found alchemy to be rather annoying, but I can see how some people would like messing with it.

I was not pleased with how castrated the english dialogue was or with the fact that certain aspects of the north american version are censored. However, I found a way around this.

There is an "uncut mod" that restores the (mostly trivial) nudity, the original Polish voice acting (which seems a good bit better to me), and allows you to see a less half-assed translation of the dialogue text. Some people were disappointed that it removed the english voice acting, but I vastly prefer subs to shitty dubs.

If you do get the game, I recommend applying the newest patch (1.3 as of thsi post), the uncut mod, and playing on hard (normal is quite easy after the first act).

You can get the uncut mod here: http://www.rainesrevolution.com/witcher/download.php

I don’t know anything about its hype, but I do know that it’s so obtuse and unintuitive that it requires a manual large enough to bludgeon an elephant to death. Then again, that’s something of a PC gaming tradition, and it’s certainly never stopped me from playing such games.

I found The Witcher to be more intuitive and to have a shorter learning curve than a great number of "RPGs", PC or console. In fact, I completed the game before reading the manual at all.

The Witcher was awesome, for what I played of it. Far better than the average RPG, at least. Unfortuantley, it has crippling long loading times on anything but the best computers (and I’ve heard complaints with people who HAVE top of hte line computers), and that made it unplayable for me past the like second area (the first place you have freedom to go aroound and do stuff). I seriously watched TV waiting for things to load more than I actually played.

Luckily, they’re releasing an "Enchanced Edition" (free download) that is supposed to reduce load times by 80% later this year. It also has some additional scenarios and a scenario editor.
I’d recommend just waiting until that comes out so you don’t have to deal with the frustratingly ardous loading times… but obviously people have beat it and enjoyed it as it is now, so YMMV.

The 1.2 patch decreased load times by quite a bit, and I find them to be quite manageable, though I do have a reasonably quick system.

I heard it gets repetitive fast.

Your right, my friend bought and was extremely exited to play but after a week quit. He said the loading combined with the obnoxious battle system was over kill so he quite within a week.