I was so excited to finally get my hands on The Witcher, a PC RPG that I had been wanting to get into ever since it released but only recently had a gaming PC on which to play it. I bought the game before I even finished buying the parts for the computer, knowing that it was going to be a favorite of mine. Until today, it has been.
You see, at the end of the first act of the game there is this boss. Earlier in the game, you had the option of buying a potion from a witch that would make killing this boss easier. I forgot to get the potion and…well, come to find out when the developers said “easy” they really meant “possible.”
That is the problem with any kind of RPG except for the MMO variety: you are punished for not doing things just so. Unless you are either a pre-cog or an OCD gamer that must gather all possible pick-ups, you will get ganked by the Big Bad. It happens in every game that Square/Square-Enix has ever made (I swear they get a rise out of knowing that somewhere they have made a gamer cry), and it even happens with games that have RPG elements but are not themselves RPGs (I’m looking at you, Ninja Gaiden).
Isn’t this a bit unfair to gamers? I mean, I didn’t expect to breeze throug the boss fight; I expected it to be challenging, especially since I wasn’t pimped out with all of the requisite power-ups, but I didn’t expect the AI to slap their “I Win” button just because I made an honest mistake. I forgot the potion! Big deal! Let me load a game save right before the fight, run back to the witch, buy said potion, lay the hurt down and–Bob’s your uncle–I get to progress in the game that I paid for.
No. Instead, I’ve got to reload a game save from way the deuce back and buy the potion, then re-do a whole bunch of quests leading up to climatic moment. It’s poor design in what is otherwise so far a good game. No, it’s not poor design. It’s sloppy design. Sloppy, sloppy, sloppy.
That’s okay though; in a fit of frustration, I just started clean over; I even scaled the difficulty back to “Easy” for good measure. While I love overcoming a challenge and find more intense games more rewarding than cake walks (re: anything for the Wii), I get plenty of challenge playing competitively and/or working as a team in games with better balance.
Sure, I could uninstall and trade the game in, but I would lose money on that. Besides, I did inherently like the game: the lead character Geralt is cool, I enjoyed the short stories from which the game was inspired (look up The Last Wish if you want a good read; Blood of Elves comes out April 28th and I cannot wait), and it’s a beautiful game with some deep mechanics.
I just doubt I’m going to like it as much now.
April 7, 2009 at 12:48 am |
I’m a massive ocd gamer when it comes to RPGs, actually any game with an inventory. If there are multiple paths I always attempt to find the dead end ways, and will even back track if I manage to select the ‘correct’ way first.
It’s a painful process that I can’t stop.