The sequel to 2007's critically acclaimed role-playing game, The Witcher. Players again take control of Geralt of Rivia in this story-focused adventure.
It's a good read and he makes valid points but as usual the score doesn't reflect the text. His scores have always been a bit "weird" but the actual review is usually good.
Yeah, his reviews usually have good points, but his scores are usually a little wonky.
Never played the first, never read the books, not a huge RPG gamer aside from some forays into Elder Scrolls games, and to me it's in the top 5 games I've ever played. I love how insanely hard the game is (I died 50 times before finally beating the Kayran last night) and I love how my CPU can run it in ultra. Everything about this games exudes class, from the character models, to the design aesthetic, to the characters themselves. I don't understand how anyone can objectively score this game any lower than a 9, but then again there are people out there who hate high fantasy (LOTR, A Song of Ice and Fire, etc) and I never really understood that either. People can have their own opinions, but I honestly feel that hating TW2 is starting to become the gaming community's opportunity to take a jab at PC gamers.
I can see it being a pretty divisive game (just like the first one) and I could just about see somebody genuinely scoring it a 6/10 depending on their taste.
It's a good read and he makes valid points but as usual the score doesn't reflect the text. His scores have always been a bit "weird" but the actual review is usually good.
Yeah, his reviews usually have good points, but his scores are usually a little wonky.
I believe the reason his review scores are slightly lower than other sites is because he is not afraid to use the whole number scale. I've seen sites absolutely trash a game then give it a 7. If a game is bad it deserve a score that reflects that not a 7 which should signify a good game with some problems. I don't particualy like Jim(he a bit of a dick) and I don't always agree with his reviews, but I respect that he is able to give a game the score he thinks it deserves.
I respect him because he's very unapologetic about his opinion and generally backs up his opinions but I don't like his purposefully antagonistic way of writing.
I don't think he riles up people as a strategy. He just rates his experience playing the game, and he didn't really enjoy playing it because of some things he percieves as huge flaws. He has a different approach than most reviewers, who take the game as a whole and try to weigh in the graphics, ambition and whatnot. He just plainly looks at the enjoyment he got from it. Giantbomb also sort of does this, but to a lesser extent.
Question - for those that have played it, how does it compare to the original?
I've only played 9 hours, but it still feels like The Witcher from the original. The art design, the way the characters act, the little conversations from NPCs and the music all make me feel at home to the original.
A lot has changed though. The combat is way different, also, a little harder and the world you run around in seems larger and more open. I just reached the first town and it's big as hell. It's much more open than any town in the first Witcher.
Overall, so far, it's the same Witcher but bigger and badder with a lot more production value. A pretty big leap from the first one.
Question - for those that have played it, how does it compare to the original?
I've only played 9 hours, but it still feels like The Witcher from the original. The art design, the way the characters act, the little conversations from NPCs and the music all make me feel at home to the original. A lot has changed though. The combat is way different, also, a little harder and the world you run around in seems larger and more open. I just reached the first town and it's big as hell. It's much more open than any town in the first Witcher. Overall, so far, it's the same Witcher but bigger and badder with a lot more production value. A pretty big leap from the first one.
Excellent, sounds awesome. Can't wait to get stuck in!
It's not that the points he brings up are invalid, but they're exaggerated and he then conveniently brushes over all the great parts about the game.
"I don't think I'd have completed this title, or even bothered playing for more than hour, if I wasn't writing a review."
That says what you need to know. He forced himself to play through it because he was reviewing it. His opinion is certainly not invalid, but with that perspective it's perhaps not very meaningful either. If you have such a negative attitude from the outset you're probably not going to enjoy the good parts of the game because you're already predisposed to disliking it. He brings up kill quests and lack of fast travel. The god damn kill quests aren't even that mundane, there aren't that many of them and they all have a twist, they're not just "kill x of these". As for lack of fast travel, I don't know what to say, I certainly don't think the game needed it, I just think this guy didn't want to play it at all so he got annoyed that he had to play it longer because there was no fast travel.
Jim's scores are weird a lot of the time but he always has valid points to back it up. Only thing I notice about him whenever other reviewrs love a game he doesn't like it but when it's a game that people hates he loves it. Not complaining but just noticed it.
Woah, a lot of unnecessary vitriol in here. @CL60's point holds; Sterling is a contrarian asshole. Obviously, everyone is entitled to an opinion (I've not yet played the game, so I can't corroborate or deny any of his misgivings), but it smacks of his style.
Not to mention that his closing comments are pretty snide, and basically dismissive of the one point which the series is held in high-esteem for; namely, its storytelling.
Question - for those that have played it, how does it compare to the original?
I've only played 9 hours, but it still feels like The Witcher from the original. The art design, the way the characters act, the little conversations from NPCs and the music all make me feel at home to the original. A lot has changed though. The combat is way different, also, a little harder and the world you run around in seems larger and more open. I just reached the first town and it's big as hell. It's much more open than any town in the first Witcher. Overall, so far, it's the same Witcher but bigger and badder with a lot more production value. A pretty big leap from the first one.
Excellent, sounds awesome. Can't wait to get stuck in!
I should also point out that the camera is different. Unlike the original, there is only one camera in The Witcher 2. It will draw close or move back automatically according to what you're doing; combat, walking around and so on. Much different than the original and took me a little while to get used to it.
Is this the same guy who gave ff13 a very low score without even beating it?
I'm pretty sure Sterling beat FFXIII. You might be thinking of similar professional troll Yahtzee, who made a video where he complained about the first 5 hours of FFXIII fully admitting that he wasn't going to play anymore.
In any case, getting incensed about this guy's review score is pointless. Getting incensed about CL60 posting a thread about this review is even more pointless. People shouldn't require the opinions of others to feel secure in their own.
" At times, Assassins of Kings is good. Great, even. For the most part though, it's just okay. It does the job and wastes some time, while providing no lasting impression or unforgettable experience. There are just far more fun and intensely more rewarding ways of wasting time."
If the game is good, why did you score it a 6 which is just "alright" according to your rating system?
You know what, even though I don't like Sterling because of the fact that he's such an obvious troll sometimes, I completely agree with his assessment that if a game forces you to basically wade through a really shitty experience for the first so many hours then it isn't an exceptional experience regardless of how well it recovers later. In my personal and humble opinion, if a game requires you to endure utter mediocrity (or complete and utter shit) for any longer than the first half hour of the game, then it has fundamentally failed to give you any reason to keep playing and loses any sort of recommendation I would give.
I haven't played the Witcher 2 yet so I don't know if the above applies to it, but I'm going to try it out at a friends house first before I throw cash down for it.
Taking a read though, it looks like Jim does not like the game, therefore it's not very good. I assume we'll hear the argument that a review is just personal opinion, but my expecting more from professionals is the reason I don't go to Destructoid in the first place.
@ArbitraryWater: But you need to look at the bigger picture. Sterling gets paid to play and subsequently review games. Because of this people feel he has a responsibility to write objectively. His reviews don't read this way and his scores are often made to an extreme out of spite or to draw attention or to just prove his point. Kane & Lynch 2 (1/10), Deadly Premonition (10/10). Developers often get paid bonuses based on review scores so I feel reviews and metacritic need to be taken seriously because like it or not the industry has latched on to them and once money is connected to something, people need to get serious.
You know what, even though I don't like Sterling because of the fact that he's such an obvious troll sometimes, I completely agree with his assessment that if a game forces you to basically wade through a really shitty experience for the first so many hours then it isn't an exceptional experience regardless of how well it recovers later. In my personal and humble opinion, if a game requires you to endure utter mediocrity (or complete and utter shit) for any longer than the first half hour of the game, then it has fundamentally failed to give you any reason to keep playing and loses any sort of recommendation I would give.
I haven't played the Witcher 2 yet so I don't know if the above applies to it, but I'm going to try it out at a friends house first before I throw cash down for it.
it really doesn't. The only thing is that it takes a while to understand combat, and the tooltips aren't the best, but they're totally saved in the journal for later reading.
and yep of course jim sterling rates games low because he wants page views.
You know what, even though I don't like Sterling because of the fact that he's such an obvious troll sometimes, I completely agree with his assessment that if a game forces you to basically wade through a really shitty experience for the first so many hours then it isn't an exceptional experience regardless of how well it recovers later. In my personal and humble opinion, if a game requires you to endure utter mediocrity (or complete and utter shit) for any longer than the first half hour of the game, then it has fundamentally failed to give you any reason to keep playing and loses any sort of recommendation I would give.
I haven't played the Witcher 2 yet so I don't know if the above applies to it, but I'm going to try it out at a friends house first before I throw cash down for it.
The tutorial is hard. Too hard for its purpose. It ain't bad. It's actually outstanding in terms of setting and presentation. Just frustrating. Being of the school of design, wherein you start-off with crippled functionality and 'unlock' basic functionality with character progression, doesn't help either. Basic melee just isn't at a fun place.
This leads to one of its fundamental flaws Jim Sterling rightly points out at length. Challenge is opposed to how it should be. It starts out frustratingly hard and gets gradually easier until it's child's play. More than half of the game is pretty much devoid of challenge. That's not how it should be obviously.
Jim's just needlessly harsh. It's a 6 out of 10 compared to what? That probably only works out in his own rating reality with absurd standards.
Pretty good review. I'm only about 9 hours in and all of Jim's points are valid. I had to turn the game down to easy after dying 10 or 15 times in certain battles. And having to meditate to drink a potion is just a stupid design choice. Also, anyone playing on a 4:3 monitor has to play the game in letterbox. That's weird.
I'm still having fun. We'll see where the game takes me.
It's not a stupid design choice. Geralt is the fantasy equivalent of a Ronin - he meditates and prepares himself before battle. Therefore his alchemical aspects are part of those preparations. From a UI perspective this means that players are taught to be a lot more methodical in this game when approaching difficult missions. You know, RPG.
Why are you all being so offensive to CL60 for posting this? He's just sharing it, because it sparks a discussion, and you people get all up in his grill over it, and be needlessly offensive.
Pretty good review. I'm only about 9 hours in and all of Jim's points are valid. I had to turn the game down to easy after dying 10 or 15 times in certain battles. And having to meditate to drink a potion is just a stupid design choice. Also, anyone playing on a 4:3 monitor has to play the game in letterbox. That's weird.
I'm still having fun. We'll see where the game takes me.
It's not a stupid design choice. Geralt is the fantasy equivalent of a Ronin - he meditates and prepares himself before battle. Therefore his alchemical aspects are part of those preparations. From a UI perspective this means that players are taught to be a lot more methodical in this game when approaching difficult missions. You know, RPG.
No, it means you go into battle, die and then hope you're not around any enemies so you can drink a potion out of a bottle. It's poor implementation if you ask me. I haven't tried to drink a beer yet, I wonder if I have to meditate to drink that too.
Totally agree with his gripes about the combat - goes from stupid hard to stupid easy, which is weird - but I don't agree with his points about the narrative and the quests. It's simply wrong, nothing more. The Witcher 2 is a quite excellent game suffering from poor pacing in terms of difficulty. That's it. If I was reviewing it properly I would easily give it a 9/10. You can't deny that the combat is kind of amazing after a while, it looks better then anything ever released, has choices that matter and give proper consequences, a great narrative in the main as well as sidequests, interesting characters that have both varying (in terms of different actors) and great voice actors and that it is fucking huge.
Pretty good review. I'm only about 9 hours in and all of Jim's points are valid. I had to turn the game down to easy after dying 10 or 15 times in certain battles. And having to meditate to drink a potion is just a stupid design choice. Also, anyone playing on a 4:3 monitor has to play the game in letterbox. That's weird.
I'm still having fun. We'll see where the game takes me.
It's not a stupid design choice. Geralt is the fantasy equivalent of a Ronin - he meditates and prepares himself before battle. Therefore his alchemical aspects are part of those preparations. From a UI perspective this means that players are taught to be a lot more methodical in this game when approaching difficult missions. You know, RPG.
No, it means you go into battle, die and then hope you're not around any enemies so you can drink a potion out of a bottle. It's poor implementation if you ask me. I haven't tried to drink a beer yet, I wonder if I have to meditate to drink that too.
Haven't played the game yet, but I'm pretty sure the point of these games is to NOT die. It sounds to me like potions are mainly used for healing after battles so you'll be ready for the next one, like SeriouslyNow said.
Pretty good review. I'm only about 9 hours in and all of Jim's points are valid. I had to turn the game down to easy after dying 10 or 15 times in certain battles. And having to meditate to drink a potion is just a stupid design choice. Also, anyone playing on a 4:3 monitor has to play the game in letterbox. That's weird.
I'm still having fun. We'll see where the game takes me.
It's not a stupid design choice. Geralt is the fantasy equivalent of a Ronin - he meditates and prepares himself before battle. Therefore his alchemical aspects are part of those preparations. From a UI perspective this means that players are taught to be a lot more methodical in this game when approaching difficult missions. You know, RPG.
No, it means you go into battle, die and then hope you're not around any enemies so you can drink a potion out of a bottle. It's poor implementation if you ask me. I haven't tried to drink a beer yet, I wonder if I have to meditate to drink that too.
Haven't played the game yet, but I'm pretty sure the point of these games is to NOT die. It sounds to me like potions are mainly used for healing after battles so you'll be ready for the next one, like SeriouslyNow said.
no, you regen out of battle pretty fast; you meditate and pop potions before a battle.
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