All right, you got me here. My temper caused me to exaggerate, which is one of the reasons I usually don't truck in scores. A 6 for a game like this is too low. I suppose I'd give it an 8 -- so far.
I'm still a bit mad about some of the mechanics. I stayed up late playing the game (probably a bit unwise), and I got into another boss fight...
So far, I stand by my analysis that this game has an excellent story but questionable game mechanics. Some magic is all but useless and some destroys your foes wholesale... Some buffs are essential and some do more harm than good. This problem is rife in this game, and while I'd hardly say it's bad overall, it definitely suffers from a lot of problems. Thankfully this doesn't get in the way of the overall experience, but I wish they'd done better -- a few tweaks and this could have been a masterpiece.
I find this assessment to be far more objective and fair, and I don't disagree with it.
I think the problem here is the application of much of this to the combat engine, which I think shows CD PRojekt's inexperience with action combat engines.
You can give a PC game dev studio a ton of credit for seeing what worked in other games and trying to duplicate that. But that doesn't mean they should get a pass on the stuff they ultimately produce.
My take on the combat engine is it their attempt to emulate the kinds of things they see in games like God of War, Darksiders and even Assassin's Creed (there is a direct tribute to Assassin's Creed in the prologue chapter, if you can find it-it's the corpse of a man dressed like Altair that looks as though he fell from a high altitude through a cart filled with straw and the whole thing shattered to pieces when he hit).
But if you play the first Witcher, it plays a lot like Diablo or DUngeon Seige, that typical 'top down-isometric' style gameplay. Just like in The Witcher 2, you can augment your abilities with magic and potions, but Witcher 2 tries to merge PC dungeon crawl style combat with console action style combat. Unfortunately, this is where their inexperience as a studio working on action games comes through. It feels like I'm still playing a dungeon crawl style combat engine rather than something more cinematic. There is something muddy about it.
That said, I still personaly love the combat engine in this game. I like what CD Projekt tried with it and I see how they tried to appeal to both PC gamers and console gamers with it. But ubiquity isn't always going to turn out how you want, and the game sort of shows its green parts in this.
I think an 8 is a fair review from someone who finds the experience uneven.
The only thing I hated, to be truthful, was the massive infodump at the end. For a game to have such an artful narrative, so perfect in its reveals, plot points, characterizations and gravitas, only to fuck it all up at the end with a single conversation that answers pretty much every question, is a massive slip. It makes the game feel rushed, like it could have gone on two more chapters to allow the knowledge to be revealed more organically and in a decompressed format. I wasn't ready to leave Geralt's world, but CD Projekt was pushing me out the door. It felt like they ran out of time and packed it all in at the end. A shame, really.
