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[Imp the Dimp]

Dragon's Dogma is not like Souls and it's great. Some of just want good combat.

Correct. Witcher's combat and controls are a disgrace for a game with this budget. I cannot believe it got a pass in the press because it had great visuals. Dragon's Dogma is worse than W3 in anything but controls and combat and I think it's easily the better game. Gameplay is king.

Witcher 3's combat is repetitive, unresponsive and feels like there is no weight to Geralt's movement and sword thrusts. It's just extremely unrewarding and a pain in the ass against multiple enemies in the beginning of the game. Quen, run in, slash, slash, roll back until quen is available, repeat. That doesn't even pass for mediocre combat.

 

[Sou Da]

Correct. Witcher's combat and controls are a disgrace for a game with this budget. I cannot believe it got a pass in the press because it had great visuals. Dragon's Dogma is worse than W3 in anything but controls and combat and I think it's easily the better game. Gameplay is king.

Witcher 3's combat is repetitive, unresponsive and feels like there is no weight to Geralt's movement and sword thrusts. It's just extremely unrewarding and a pain in the ass against multiple enemies in the beginning of the game. Quen, run in, slash, slash, roll back until quen is available, repeat. That doesn't even pass for mediocre combat.

Big Witcher 2 deja vu

 

[Playsage]

I don't why I'm laughing my ass off this much

 

[Iksenpets]

I don't mind W3's combat, but it definitely has a floatiness to it. There's not a great sense of impact, or sense of your button presses being directly translated into action. Also, it didn't help that the game released in the immediate aftermath of Bloodborne. It made the comparison between the two inevitable, and W3 just didn't do that.

That all said, I think compared to its peers in the Western RPG genre, The Witcher's combat is actually really good. It blows stuff like the Bethesda games away. It's just not a dedicated combat game, and it can't compete with those.

 

[WeAreStarStuff]

I absolutely loved it. I would never had known anyone had any issues with it if not for GAF. It's also my first Western RPG; so maybe that has something to do with it.

 

[Johndoey]

Fairly early on I just used a guide to grab an armor and weapon set, upgraded the shield, got my oil game on lock and mashed my bleeding heart out so I could get to the parts of the game that weren't painfully dull.

The only positive i'll say is seeing a dude get bisected by a swing was cool once or twice.

 

[Sora the Cat]

I thought it was really fun ¯\_(&#12484_/¯. Didn't feel unresponsive to me. Maybe playing it at 60fps has something to do with some people different experience?

I also played Dark Souls and Dragons Dogma and I can't argue that those have better combat tho.

 

[Jakoo]

For how much of it you do, and how long the game is, the combat just gets predictable and formulaic. Even on Death March difficulty, I am only 50% through the main campaign and am not at all intimidated by just about any fight I enter now.

 

[Auron]

It just is too complicated for me. I fought the first boss without figuring out how to use the crossbow. Would prefer the battles controlled more like a Zelda title.

 

[Arthr2ShdsJcksn]

I just started my third (and furthest so far) attempt at playing W3. I decided in the beginning that I would focus on light armor and fast attacks (instead of my old standby of generally playing tanky characters with slow, but huge attacks in RPGs).

The thing I've noticed in the first 15 hours now is how sucky the health system is. I find it hard to not take at least some damage in each fight, and my resources are still scarce enough that I find myself constantly low on healing items. I put a point into that 'heal over time during the day', which has mitigated it a bit, but I certainly don't feel like a bad-ass yet. BTW, I am pretty good at dodging attacks one-on-one, but it still feels like the easiest strategy is to just roll in, and mash fast attack until enemy dies, which isn't that satisfying.

 

[Maiar_m]

I finished the main campaign last night and really took my time with the game (200+ hours easy), and although I don't dislike the combat I can understand how it can ruffle feathers. I didn't die against the final boss despite not being a very skilled player, but I can't say the battle was easy either simply because Gerlat handles like a rock when he shouldn't.

Despite that, planning your fights with the appropriate oils, decoctions and bombs has been a joy all game long. I really felt accomplished cutting down foes with higher levels than I out of pure careful planning and through long fights of mutual attrition. It felt very witcher-y. I will however look forward to playing something where the character doesn't feel like he's got a the weight of a full blown train in each of those boots in the next CDPR game.

I just started my third (and furthest so far) attempt at playing W3. I decided in the beginning that I would focus on light armor and fast attacks (instead of my old standby of generally playing tanky characters with slow, but huge attacks in RPGs).

The thing I've noticed in the first 15 hours now is how sucky the health system is. I find it hard to not take at least some damage in each fight, and my resources are still scarce enough that I find myself constantly low on healing items. I put a point into that 'heal over time during the day', which has mitigated it a bit, but I certainly don't feel like a bad-ass yet. BTW, I am pretty good at dodging attacks one-on-one, but it still feels like the easiest strategy is to just roll in, and mash fast attack until enemy dies, which isn't that satisfying.

Dodge and parry are nearly all you need in one-on-one fights. The hitbox is rather forgiving and it's fairly easy to fight even golems at close range without needing more than well-timed dodges. Keep in mind too that the game as an inverted difficulty curve and that when you hit 60-100h (depending on how fast you play), you'll be fairly OP. The biggest issues come when foes are much much more quick-footer than you are or when you're surrounded and not prepared to bomb / Aard your way through.

edit: Also, Whirl. Whirl will make most fights look like someone is chopping parsley.

 

[GSG Flash]

I love the combat in TW3, I don't really understand what's not "fun" about it.

 

[humansarehorses]

Lack of tight controls. Geralt also goes into different stances without the player's input.

Weapon durability is low and money isn't frequently dropped by fodder enemies.

Geralt twirls like an idiot when he swings his swords.

 

[DigSCCP]

Floaty.
Rinse and repeat.
And everything else everyone already told here.
Anyway this is not only a Witcher 3 problem its a wRPG problem.
I hope Horizon become a mega hit and can finally put a new level of gameplay on the genre.

 

[Jamiaro]

Combat in Witcher 3 is boring and unrewarding. So I made it irrelevant by playing on easiest difficulty. The story and the world is too good to make combat screw it up.

 

[Baron_Calamity]

TW2/3s combat bored me to absolute fucking death. Animations were clunky af, everything lacked impact, imprecise controls and it feels like the game generally just doesnt want to follow what i want to do

Pretty much. I keep wondering if I'm doing it right or if the game is broken. The combat for all three Witcher games are a chore but at least the first game the combat at least made sense.I felt like I was fighting armored foes with a wet cardboard tube.

I gave up the Watcher 3 at the 10 hour mark. It never told me what my motivation is. I thought I was following Ciri but I'm following Yennifer as well or instead? And they haven't said why I'm following either. I paid close attention and not to skip any dialog. The game just didn't seem to go anywhere. I'll arrive at some place, some times i am looking for a woman that matches Yennifer's description, other times I'm looking for a woman that fits Ciri's description. Also I'm saving someone one or some thing, then they tell me they haven't a clue but go ask someone else. I ask that person, they don't know either but they know someone who does, but first I need to do something or they heard of a contract. Then I do it and they say "oh I heard the Witchers are terrible but you are so nice oh I really don't having anything that will help you, go talk to this person." I read killing the gryphon. but every time i tried to do that, it said My character isn't interested in doing that without a contract.

 

[Gbraga]

Agreed.

The pain of being a console player.

;____;

I don't even like mods that much, actually, I'm one of the "I want the intended experience!" folks, but when I tried to have the intended experience for like 50 hours and just couldn't get as into it as I wanted to, I said screw it and went looking for mods.

Is there a Full Combat Rebalance mod for this like there was for the second game?

Multiple mods, even. You have to read some of them to see which one suits your tastes better. Some of them are highly customizable too.

I'm currently using this one:

http://www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/1814/

But I've also used Better Combat Enhanced for a while, and it was really good too, but it focuses only on combat encounters, and lack some other features from Enhanced Edition that I really enjoy, like the static world.

The lack of focus on preparation ala Witcher 2 and memorable encounter design is what killed it for me.

Assassins of Kings was so good. I loved the level layout too, I find it more interesting than straight up open world.

 

[Budi]

I thought it was really fun ¯\_(&#12484_/¯

I second this, I have my criticisms of Witcher 3 combat and leveling. But I still find the combat very enjoyable, many of my concerns were fixed in the expansions. I don't quite understand the unresponsive comments, it could be that on consoles because of the framerate? But it felt responsive on PC with 60 fps atleast. Also the alternative movement option is something everyone should check if they have problems with the movement.

But to what I didn't like was the enemy encounters and enemy abilities. I think Geralt is well equipped with different tools, but I rarely NEED to use them. Whirl seems like a broken skill to me, it trivializes many of the fights. Rend in the other hand is quite satisfying to use. In expansions I think they did great job with the boss encounter design, while in the main game every boss was really lackluster.

Overall, one of the greatest games of all time. Especially in the RPG genre. And it certainly isn't just because of pretty visuals. It' silly how insecure Witcher 3's success makes some people.

Edit: Oh and I'm shocked to see so many praises for Witcher 2 combat, personally I thought it was weakest in the series. Need to give it another chance though, now that I can run it better than 22 fps.

 

[KiefbladeMaster]

Overly long animations, same attacks for every weapon class, doesn't have any weight to it whatsoever, etc. I love The Witcher 3 but it does not have good combat, the narrative and quest design are what kept me playing to the end.

All of the people talking about the plethora of options, you literally need to spec into Quen and melee skills and you'll win basically every fight without getting hit -- which is another problem. I did the same thing in Witcher 2 and it makes fights a breeze.

 

[Radical Edward]

I have no idea. I think it's great. It's not Dark Souls, but it's not trying to be.

I can't think of a single other open world game that does combat as well as The Witcher 3.

Does soulsborne, sleepy dogs, yakuza, dragon's dogma or mgsv count?

 

[Sword Of Doom]

my main issue Is controlling Geralt with a controller just isn't fun. Gameplay is also just not fun either. It's basically use witcher sense, follow the tracks, rinse and repeat

I have no idea. I think it's great. It's not Dark Souls, but it's not trying to be.

I can't think of a single other open world game that does combat as well as The Witcher 3.

"They're all crap so it's ok" is not a good argument

 

[Haluko]

Ive tried to play this game at least 4 times now, but I hate it. The combat feels terrible and floaty. I feel like I'm controlling someone that feels drunk. The magic and skill trees were boring and I disliked the items, equipment and inventory. The game never clicked with me, which is crazy cause I love RPGs. Ive played all the Souls games and Bloodborne all the way through. Love all the bethesda game (I know these are very different). I remember I first started to play the witcher coming right off bloodborne. Coming off bloodborne made the witchers combat feel boring and unresponsive.

The Witcher seemed to have a great story, quests, and graphics. Everything else (gameplay/combat) sucked for me. Im sure I will try it again sometime, I wish it would click for me.

 

[Jangowuzhere]

Compare the animation and smoothness to the Batman games and you'll see why Witcher 3 fails to be a fun action game.

The combat in Witcher 3 feels like your swinging at air 90% of the time. It's similar to the problems in Skyrim actually.

 

[Conkerkid11]

Audio bugged out frequently and didn't always trigger. Iframes are borked. Controlling Geralt is difficult. Archers are a pain.

Playing on a high difficulty, most fights play out with me needing to do everything perfect, and then some, otherwise I get one-shot by the enemy and have to start from my previous save.

Also, replenishing health by eating food is dumb. Only replenishing health while meditating in low difficulty levels is dumb.

To put it blunt though, it's not Dark Souls. It's also not Dragon Age Inquisition or Elder Scrolls, so at least it could be significantly worse.

 

[Belakor]

Well,personally i find it good,not great. It's mostly the hit hit dodge repetition that gets stale after a while.Signs bring an interesting twist,but it doesn't last that long(and it's a BIG game)

Still better combat than most RPGs out there,so it's totally fine by me

 

[nycgamer4ever]

Watch Dogs?

Edit: Meant Sleeping Dogs

Sleeping Dogs definitely!

And Batman?

 

[Rodney McKay]

I just thought it felt terrible. I thought Witcher 2's was bad originally too, but at least with that game I got accustomed to it and eventually throught it was alright. That never happened with the Witcher 3 even though I played it for a lot longer.

I can see that there's depth to it if you want there to be when playing on higher difficulties, but the way it felt was just so unsatisfying and mushy that I didn't want to bother with being frustrated by the combat and just bumped it down to easy difficulty and never looked back.

And for examples of other open world games with good combat, most people have given the obvious examples like Dragon's Dogma and Sleeping Dogs, but I'll also throw in Batman Arkham City/Knight. Granted that series started out as less of an open world series, but the combat stayed great even once they started making the games more open world.

Even with Skyrim's lack of satisfying feedback in the combat, I have a lot more fun playing that game than Witcher 3. The normal melee weapon slashes are just meh in Elder Scrolls games, but shield bashing someone always felt good to me, plus if you don't love the melee you can always play stealthy, or have a magic focus, or a range weapon focus. Witcher 3's magic is mainly there as a little boost to the melee combat, same with the ranged weapons.

 

[Wolfe]

It feels too basic and button mashy to me.

I mean there are plenty of abilities and different combat skills to acquire, yet at the same time I just feel like I'm endlessly mashing light attack and dodge with the occasional sign thrown in.

It's kind of funny to me because you can look at the combat from say AC:Unity or Mad Max (MM I played recently and AC:U being the only AC I've played since 2) and you could likely level the same if not similar complaints at them yet in both games I found the combat to be far more satisfying.

In the end, while I didn't think it was bad or "un-fun", I also didn't find it "fun" either. It was just kinda there.

 

[Gbraga]

Then I do it and they say "oh I heard the Witchers are terrible but you are so nice oh I really don't having anything that will help you, go talk to this person."

LMAO.

This is so true. I know this is the main reason a lot of people love this game, but the sheer amount of quests with developed storylines actually made me not care about any of them. I just don't give a shit about the 500th sad story, or people hiring me to only after the thing is done they tell me oooooohhh wiitcher have mercy I don't have money oh booooo. And I'm like, whatever, who cares, I have a ton of money anyway, this is just a binary choice, I'm not giving up on anything really.

Quests like The Oxenfurt Drunk were really refreshing because of that. I have a blast with exploring the world, doing quests that appear in my way, fighting monsters, stumbling on contracts and stuff, but I just don't really care about the main story or most sidestories at all. There's just so much random shit. Most main quests feel like sidequests so far, which is really frustrating when you're coming off of doing a ton of sidequests, and think "let's advance the main plot a little now", and turns out your next main quest is a fetch quest for someone who will tell you to go somewhere to talk to someone else.

 

[Snacks the sober sea lion]

Wow almost every sentence here is wrong. I mean do you "mash away" with a sorcerer? lol good luck.

ever come across Death? "barely even acknowledge your existence" uhhh more like run for your motherfn life.

Haven't played Sorcerer, and I was referring specifically to bandits. They sometimes seem utterly unaware of your position, especially if you have at least 2 pawns. I just play dual dagger or greatsword and chop everybody up.

 

[Carlius]

so its not good cause its not fun..butotn mashing in batman or assassins creed wasnt fun either, but people praise the batman system. combat was not great but it wasnt bad. fun and bad are different things that fall on under diffrent banners.

also, its much more fun than the press A and awesome happens combat of DAI.

 

[DeadlyParasite]

I tolerated it but it certainly wasn't good or game defining. It pretty much boiled down to me spamming the shield sign, slashing, and dodging/rolling which wasn't particularly interesting after about 150 hours.

 

[Raptor]

No impact, and while it it has some gore it didnt feel satisfying to chop enemies up, Geralt moves erratically all over, random attack patters, sword goes through enemies like air, to name a few.

All that is what I experienced with it.

 

[Orthogonal]

The combat animations feel stiff and unfocused. It does improve when you unlock more advanced moves and spells, but it always seems to fall short. Personally, I would prefer it to be slightly more arcadey.

Honestly, Souls combat has spoiled pretty much all other rpgs for me. I have a hard time getting into them.

 

[pablito]

I enjoyed the combat, but it isn't perfect. Here's the problems I had.

Changing the controls when in and out of combat. Geralt loses jumping and climbing for a roll and a sidestep. You can get caught in some annoying situations when you need to jump somewhere but you're stuck.

Game has you sidestepping a bit too much. I didn't do a signs build, but it felt like if you relied on signs, you'd cast one then you'd be sidestepping a million times until your stamina came back.

Not knowing what physical attack animation you're going to get. The attacks are proximity based when they shouldn't be. Should be based on the button presses you're doing.

Flowery regular attacks. I know it's lore friendly but I think they should have kept it out of the gameplay aside from Whirl.

And how Geralt moves. It's just awkward.

Overall it didn't affect my opinion of the game, it just made me adapt to how it is. That said I am glad CDPR hired others to help out with Cyberpunk's gameplay lol.

 

[Kazuhira]

I can only speak for the base game but enemies were boring and dumb,i think Leshens are the only monsters that were fun to fight imo.

 

[Black_Red]

It feels the same during the whole game (40 hours in at the moment, maybe it changes)
The game does have a big variety of enemies, but you dont have to change your combat style (you can basically separate them by standard monsters/humans, wraiths and humans with axes.
The game is great, but I cant remember an actual memorable battle in all those 40 hours.

 

[Hoo-doo]

Imprecise and overly animated. Your button press barely corresponds to a single action. You just dash magnetically to the thing you have selected and twirl. There's no finesse involved and it feels more like my button presses are merely encouraging Geralt to do some twirly shit than actually me being in control of his actions.

Skill tree was the worst part for me. Probably the only game Ive ever played where 'level up' gave me zero excitement.

This too. How do you mess that up?

I felt bored even going into the menu to allocate my points. So much missed potential, the skill-tree is utterly uninspired.

 

[Robaperas]

Until you learn Whirl or Rend, the combat is just there, it's not terrible but also not engaging. After learning those moves, you can do some combos and it feels better to fight mobs or slice some bandits in half.

 

[laxu]

• Weightless, random attack animations
• Often lack of reaction to hits from enemies
• Poor use of stamina (basically just spells and a few special attacks)
• Fast and heavy attack don't have enough speed difference so it's easy to infinitely smash fast attack for most battles.
• Nearly all weapons available are just swords with different stats and buffs.

On the surface W3 combat should be fine. You don't run into camera issues that often, it works for taking on multiple enemies, it has enough moves to execute. It's just that it lacks both variety and feel. The fist fighting works a bit better. Punching someone has the right amount of impact even though it could require more tactics. I tried a mod that makes everything consume stamina and attacks do more damage to both you and enemies and actually had more fun with the combat as I had to think more about stamina use and spacing.

I don't want it to be exactly like Souls games but plenty of cues could be taken from there. For example the game should have more unique weapons with unique attacks to choose from rather than just trying to find the one with the best specs. At least the Witcher gear should have different moves as it would have allowed great light/medium/heavy types.

 

[Newtype-001]

Controlling geralt felt like controlling a spinning top.

Maybe i can one day play without hitting the side of a door before going in

Weird attack animations.

Magnetism felt so of putting in combat as well.

It was just mundane.

 

[AXE]

The gameyness of it. For such a serious game the combat felt a bit like inserting stuff from Tropic Thunder to Full Metal Jacket. I do understand that the designers are stuck with it and they've managed to pull it all with a set of rules it seems to adhere to. That doesn't mean that I like the first second of the whole mess. Just uninstalled the game actually. The fighting is either tumbling like a fracking clown or nuking everything in sight. Unless you up the difficulty and everything becomes a idiotic sponge-fest.

Why can't every game like this ditch the comical arcadey crap and go for a bit more toned down version? Hitting someone with a big piece of metal (sharp or not) fracking HURTS. Stuff should feel like something. There isn't any feeling to it as things are either ON or OFF. You don't get a feeling of any type of momentum or tempo in the fights.

Urgh. Such a waste.

 

[BeauRoger]

I really enjoyed the combat. It offers variation if you decide not to go with the cheap tactic of maxing Quen out and rolling out of danger to refresh it as soon as it expires, which i would agree is a bit too powerful and makes the game too simple. On death march if you use all the tools availible to you with signs and bombs, it becomes really rewarding however, especially considering the enemy variety. I think the criticism it gets here on neogaf is often a bit undeserved, and most of the time people are unable to actually substantiate their criticisms beyond the standard "clunky/unresponsive" drive-by posts one usually sees when people want to tout their "high" standards. That is why it appears more like a case of a hyperbolic opinion reaching critical mass around here. It becomes especially clear when you actually play the game and its super clear that you can block or parry on extreme short notice, as well as reliably get attacks in and interrupt an enemy between their start-up animation and the attack. Thats not exactly what i would call "unresponsive". Dodging is equally effective and there is actually very little lag.

Besides, it really depends what you compare it with. As many here have pointed out, when it comes to open world rpg games such as Skyrim, Inquisition, Fallout etc, the Witcher 3 quite clearly comes out on top.

 

[jacksepticeye]

It was clunky and unresponsive with terrible feedback for me. Stamina and health were also fiddly to deal with and didn't compliment the battle systems well.
All the right parts were there but horribly implemented.

 

[n0razi]

Needs more Shadow of Mordor

 

[StrategyFan]

it didn't feel very responsive. it's like some animations couldn't be interrupted or something

also i played through the entire game with quen + the swords, so it was a bit dull (probably my fault)

 

[CaviarMeths]

It's very cumbersome. There's a few causes for this I think.

Just looking at the D-Pad and face buttons, there are 5 buttons on this layout that do things that Zelda accomplishes with 1 button. It's called the Action button, and it performs context-appropriate actions depending on where you are, what you're doing, and what direction you've tilted the move stick. It's brilliant and allows for incredibly intuitive gameplay. Not everything needs to be as streamlined as Zelda mechanics obviously, but I think this important because the more buttons you pointlessly assign to basic functions, the less buttons you'll have to cast spells or use different weapons. This is very apparent in Witcher 3 because you can only set and use one spell at a time (which takes 2 button presses...). You have to access your quick menu to select a different spell. Gamecube Zelda games, with 4 fewer buttons than the DS4 has, were able to let players have 3x as many alternate weapons or spells actively mapped at once. Even PS2 action RPGs had a better solution to combat than this.

It's also important because the more buttons assigned to basic functions, the more burdensome movement and control is going to be outside of combat as well. Traversing the world is a bloody chore in Witcher 3, and not just because of buttons. Geralt is never as agile as you need him to be. His animations and movements feel sluggish, heavy, and imprecise. It affects combat, but more importantly it affects travel. Even basic ass stuff like walking through a door can take a couple tries, and then the camera zooms way in so you can't see what the hell you're doing. And holy shit, is that damn horse hard to get around with unless you're in a wide open field.

And then the encounter design never really gets interesting. It boils down to dodging/guarding until there's an opening, fast attack, rinse and repeat. On flat ground. For 100 hours. With a terribly shitty durability/repair system. Not even bosses encounters are interesting. This is the main thing that helps other mechanically complex games like Souls or Dragon's Dogma. There's no respite in Witcher 3. All of that, coupled with having to have a conversation with an NPC just to open up the store window, a huge "go talk to this guy in the next town, kill 10 enemies, then come back" quest system, had me quit the game before I finished it. Shame, because I loved the world and characters.

 

[Big Green Anus]

I enjoyed the combat in this game. It reminds me of Batman combat with more depth with his magic abilities.

 

[psyfi]

I swear to god, the Witcher 3 is the must unfun sounding "best game ever". I still haven't touched it up because of how bad the combat looks, but everyone (or almost everyone) insists the game is amazing. I just don't know if I can look past the combat though, stuff like that usually ruins games for me.

 

[UberLevi]

They didn't invest in Signs.