The Witcher - Reviews @ GameShark, DLA

Seems everyone is catching up on overdue Witcher reviews.  GameShark's review describes it as "the best CRPG to come down the pike since Baldur's Gate II", with a rating of "A-":

This is hardly the first game that asks you to make choices. Bioware and others have been doing that for eons. But even games that did very well at it, most choices you make are obvious in terms of their good or evilness. The Witcher gives you far more to think about when answering most questions. Will you risk condemning an innocent man in a plot against you if you’re not completely positive of his guilt? Will you bargain with a cannibal because he has information that’s of use to you? One quest, early in the game, forces you to decide the fate of a witch. Both choices have consequences and it’s not entirely clear, even after the choice is made, which was about the greater good. One certainly feels like the right thing to do, but the body count that ensues… well, even that choice doesn’t feel good when all the ramifications of it are made clear. Not since Fallout has a game so skillfully made the choices a player makes both vague and important.

You may also recall the Steel_Wind from DLA wrote some glowing first impressions a while back.  Skavenhorde writes that those impressions were updated a couple of weeks back with observations after completing the game, effectively making it a full review; score - 4.5/5:

Well I have finished the game now. There are some issues which surface as the game moves on I would like to draw attention to.

#1 - Vista Performance: Okay, we can say this the nice way, or say it the hard way. Vista performance is buggy as all hell in full screen mode. Played in windowed mode, the game is stable. That's the fix right now.

#2 - Crashes: I had some of these as the game progressed. Nothing that cost me a game or more than a minute’s inconvenience - but it did happen.

#3 - Pacing: I think this is the largest problem in the game from a design viewpoint. The game starts on a peak in the Prologue, then comes down to Earth a little too hard in Act 1 and even II to a lesser extent. That does not make these Acts un-enjoyable. They are fun. But after the high that the game starts off on, the plot ebbs away to a very large extent.

This is compounded by a sub quest design in Act II that is so large that the main plotline is lost for a lot of players for a looooong time. Not a big deal - but worth mentioning.