If one could just zoom out a wee bit and rolling wasn't the best defense in every situation it would feel a lot better.

Love the combat. A bit frustrating in the start before you get used to it, but when you do get the hang of it it is realy rewarding. You have a ton of tools at your disposal and a part of the game is to figure out which to use on what enemies.



As a witcher you have to ask yourself: Am i getting paid to kill these things?.

Note: I havent tried the easy difficulty , if the game turns out to be frustrating for people there to it might need some tuning.

This new combat system looks promising, just needs a lot of bug fixing!

-Enemy AI is terrible right now.
-Targeting is broken.
-Why defense consumes stamina if I can roll always? You can kill everything by doing: 1) attack 2) roll 3) repeat.

Developers should take a look at Demons Soul, Blade: The Edge of Darkness and even Assasin Creed.

Combat may improve over time and it's even better if learning it makes it easier but there really shouldn't be a need to die several times in the tutorial/prologue on Normal difficulty.

Without any proper explanation about what sign does what, no time spent on how exactly to use a bomb, no group fighting skills and a only-2-blocks-or-signs-so-better-start-running-little-girl power reserve for the man who cleared Vizima of a nest of Salamandra just a month ago, you're confronted with 5 enemies, some tough as hell due to armor.

And yeah, I did play the first game and I actually did read the manual but some ingame explanations would improve things a lot.

In Foltest's camp, create an optional training area. Have popups talk you through different signs, have players open a container and get "training bombs" and let them spar against an increasing number of Foltest's soldiers in a non-lethal match.

That'll give players some clue as to which buttons to press when, instead of frustrating players who are used to seeing Geralt slice and dice entire armies, but struggle to defeat the first combat around the ballista.

Personally, I absolutely love the fact that you have to meditate to drink potions.

It is highly realistic, and adds an element of strategy to the game. Repeatedly hitting the potion button and spamming click are just so ... diablo-style. I'm very glad that CD Projekt refused to go in that direction.

This game is fantastic in every way apart from the combat. The AI is awful, the targeting is broken and the controls are unresponsive. You win fights by rolling around everywhere and running away. It's nothing that can't be fixed but as it is now it's no fun at all and feels like a chore.

I think people are confusing bad combat with difficult combat. I love it, and its much harder than TW1 which is good, because TW1 was way too friggin easy.

Wow really? I'm playing the game on HARD and so far the game isn't exaclty "hard"

I played Witcher 1 on insane and later on FCR mod (which is basically insane x10)

Use the quen sign. After you get hit 3 times, use it again. It's works beautifully.

I think that calling this wondefull combat system "broken" it's unfair. In my humble opinion, this is the best combat system I ever seen in an Action RPG...

It requires preparation, because you can't drink potions in combat.
It requires to use all the signs and all the signs are equally useful.
It requires to use bombs as crowd control

But, the best part is that you can develop your own combat style...

Against several enemies, some with heavy armor, some with shields, and so on... you can hit and roll, but this won't be very useful with heavy armored enemies, because the fast attack do not damage them enough and strong attack is slow and you will be surrounded in no time. So you can plants a trap, and push with Aard sign an enemy into it... or use the Yrden sign to create an area to damage and knock down enemies. If they are close enough, a bomb with deal damage to all of them... maybe stun some enemies.
You can use the Axii sign to make an enemy fight along you and the Quen sign to take less damage. To finish an enemy without risk to take an hit you can use the Igni sign. And block should be used only against enemies with shield or heavy armor, because so you can counter attack and do damage after you block the attack.

The possibilities are countless and you can develop your own style... this isn't a broken combat system, this is a wonderful, but still hard to master, combat system.

Remember that the preparation is equally important... so, drink some potions before to enter in a new area, you don't know what you may find. The toxicity only affect the number of potions you can drink, it doesn't effect you in any way.

I like the new combat system, killing multiple bad guys at once is pretty fun ...and challenging depending on the types..

I also like how you can control what moves he does by the WASD...E and Q buttons .. dodging while attacking looks cool too ...and you can knock people down with some type of kick while on the ground that looks cool..

Im having fun with it..

Hes also taking limbs and stuff off pretty easily...lol

The combat seems broken.
If Geralt auto targets an enemy far away he won't even hit the one directly in front of him. At least it appeared like this yesterday.
I'm not 100% sure if it really was like this, but I will investigate it. Maybe I'll make a video.

kindly RTFM. I think the combat is pretty engaging.

And ppl this is an rpg, not an action game. If you dont know it already, RPGs have leveling system. Once u level up, it shouldnt be a problem.

I struggled in ME1 at first, but when I leveled, it was fun

i still feel it could use just a few tweaks and changes

I'm glad more people then I have issues with the Ballista fight! It's funny how they call it a tutorial and yet give no clues on how to fight!

Read the manual for a game for the first time ever and I guess that's needed but as others have said I think they should have created more of a (optional) tutorial. Perhaps make it part of that initial dream sequence (i.e. no consequences). Then they should have introduced each area (sword, spells, bombs, potion) one at a time and finshishing with a simple group fight.

This is what I was expecting from the game and a more fun way to learn a system then to read a manual, visit forum pages and try the same fight over and over again.

If the game didn't look so gorgeous and the story telling so compelling I would have stopped playing the game (like I did with BGII).

I will give it a few more tries and have learned some techniques here that I will test. I had assumed that the first few fights you would get away with just sword play. I.e. I was waiting to have signs, potions and bombs introduced to me..