So Metros fanboy tag is for Kingdoms of Banalur? How is it to live with that stigma? Do old ladies spit at you in the street?
Back on topic.
A friend of mine bought this so I got treated to BRO-op hotseat yesterday and a big chunk of the early game. (Up until you fight the griffinstuffie from the intro and a little beyond that).
AI IS LOLTARDED
There are a couple of peasants in the first town. One of them changed his name to a Milfgaard one after they got conquered. The other is shocked and outraged to learn this. Except they have this conversation every time you walk by. The fifth time it stopped being a nice little detail and became downright embarrassing. Hasn't cdpr heard of marking unique dialogues as player so they won't repeat as nauseam?
Other instances of clueless "background" AI: If someone is warming their hands at a campfire and Geralt uses EVIL MUTANT WITCHER MAGICKS to put out the fire, the NPC doesn't even blink. He just continues to play his "warming mah hands" animation. Some peasants are crying by a burned-out shack. Wolves appear and peasants scream. Geralt steps in and saves their lives. Peasant spits at Geralt, then immediately resumes crying at the tree he had run over to.
We also fought a giant bear that got stuck on a tree when charging us. It just kept running into the tree rater than around. And we just plinked at it with crossbow bolts until it died.
It seems like CDPR really dropped the ball on making the world feel alive. It's missing a lot of the little touches that make you feel like the player actually exists in the world.
GRAPHIXWHORING
Graphics aren't as bad as feared. They're nowhere near the level of the eary screenshots and the downgrade is still pants-on-head retarded. Especially in cases like the grass/foilage, where CDPR went from a really nice texture to a really awful one. That said, when everything is in motion it looks servicable enough. It won't blow you away, but there are some nice touches. I especially liked when the wind picked up and all the trees started swaying.
A high res texture pack and some proper ENB/SweetFX packages could salvage this yet. We tried messing around in the renderer.ini file, but half the options didn't seem to actually do anything. (Setting UBERSAMPLING to true didn't give any FPS hit or create any noticable difference in the visuals).
Animations are dumb and probably part of the reason fighting with Geralt feels like a cow trying to play the banjo. There's a lot of unnecessary pirouettes (and rollin', rollin', rollin'. It doesn't cost stamina after all) and attacks with long windups. Every time you press a button or move the analog stick in a new direction, you lose control of Geralt for 0.5-1 seconds.
There's a WITCHERVISION™ that highlights interactable objects (think DXHR pissfilter with yellow outlines, only worse). It's mandatory for many of the quests when you're looking for clues. And it is accompanied by a really, REALLY annoying "fish eye lens" effect that made me slightly nauseous when I had to follow glowing red footprints with it on.
COMBAT WOMBAT
Playing on hard we pretty much made do with mashing fast attack and rolling away. Animations are as mentioned bad. But the AI is also pretty dumb. And you can roll anywhere. The only time you're in trouble is if you get stuck on a pebble or shrubbery and 3-4 mobs dogpile on you.
You no longer need to prepare for combat ahead of time. Potions can be drunk on the fly at the push of a button (even mid-roll) and you can swap inventory around as you fight. So if you get hurt, just roll around for 30 seconds while eating 10 loaves of bread to regenerate all your life. On the flipside, potions don't last nearly as long and toxicity does build for non-food consumables.
AN RPG IS A GAME WHERE YOU PLAY A ROLE
Actual RPG elements are almost non-existent. There's some biowarian C&C (fight peasants, use sign, then fight slightly less peasants, insult, then fight peasants one at a time) in the dialogues, but nothing groundbreaking. Characterbuilding is pretty bleh. Nearly all the skills you can learn are to the tune of "+2% damage when performing a heavy attack" or "potions last 5% longer". (Which turns out to be ~1-2 seconds). Mutagens can be slotted, but their effect is neglible. (+50 vitality will absorb about half a hit).
XP is handed out pretty stupidly. Killing a monster way higher level than you? 0-5xp. Doing a long sidequest? 20-30xp. Talking to an innkeeper on the main story arc? 400xp.
There's crafting, but it mostly consists on pressing A next to all the flowers and looting all the chests. Crafting components dont' seem to weigh much. Then sometimes you find a recipe and go to a smith to build it. The stuff we found so far was mostly +2 dps or +1 armor stuff.
OTHER STUFF
Gwent is a card game that replaces dice poker. Speaking as a board/cardgamer there is very, very little depth to it and it is very banal. Too much effort spent on something you're likely to play 2-3 times and then never touch again.
The amount of undiscovered locations on the map becomes slightly less impressive when you realise 75% of them is 5 wolves and a crate next to the road.
Voice acting is pretty decent in the english version. Nothing amazing, but appropriate most of the time.
Only tits&ass we've seen so far was in the intro.
Loading times were a little obnoxious.
IN CLOSING
It has some grimdarkiness. It has some finishing moves. It has a token crafting system. It has an "RPG SYSTEM" where you watch a bar go up and get +2% damage. It has a token stealth system. It has a fast travel system. It has some talkie sections with face closeups and you get to pick between 2 options that have the same outcome. It ticks all the boxes and takes no chances.
CDPR have successfully managed to make an inoffensive, mediocre carbon-copy of just about every other console open world game. It is Batman without interesting stealth and good combat. It is Assassins Creed without parkour. It's Grand Theft Auto without wanton destruction and racing around. It's not a bad game per se, but it is fairly unremarkable.
It will probably sell like hotcakes.