I finally got to play The Witcher for a few hours, and so far it seems quite good. Reminded me of Gothic (the first game especially) and I didn't find the combat too problematic yet (the "styles" are interesting). Fiddled with the camera modes, but only the OTS one feels right to me. Good atmosphere. Just another game to compete for my recreation time!

Its great. The first chapter begins the game a little slowly but a quarter of the way through chapter two things get interesting. I felt really involved in the story line.

Yeah i only liked the OTS camera despite my general love of Isometric view.

I just dont like timed clicking to hit enemies. I prefer to actually just click once to tell the protagonist where to attack and then concentrate on skills or what not but i think the flaw is minor compared to so many stengths.

Interesting, because I'm generally also a fan of isometric views, but in The Witcher it doesn't work for me. Hard to put in words, it just felt awkward, so the OTS camera mode it is. I saw that a sequel has been announced for 2011. I hope the console versions won't dumb down the whole game (might mean that I won't need a new video card just to play it, though).

The books are brilliant, by the way. I learned, though, that only two books have been translated into English, which is also a surprise, The four books I picked up are in German, with the fifth (and last) coming out next year. There are also three short story collections with Geralt as the main character, though only two of those have been translated to German.

Definitely glad I finally bought the game.

I may well pick up the books (that are translated into English) in that case.

The story from the game blew me away considering the many games lacking stories these days.

I am shocked none of the folks recommending the BG/ID/Fallout games mention Planescape: Torment . That game has a story of a caliber that probably will never grace gamers again, if only because of the Wizards' decision to scratch the Planescape setting altogether. It's an amazing game, though might be difficult to get a hold of now.

I'm not a big fan of BG and those types of rpgs (most of the D&D games), but I have to agree that Planescape: Torment was an excellent exception.

I played and loved all of the TES games, as well as Fallout 1-3.  Fallout's precursor, "Wasteland", was also really good, but that's so long ago that I only have the vaguest of memories of it.  I also liked a couple of the Ultima games (Ultima 3 and 4 I think, and Ultima Underworld).

Torment has been mentioned several times on this thread, including by me on the last page.

The story to Torment was excellent i agree. I loved that game.

Infact i might dig it out and play it again.

Torment was definitely an A+ in terms of storyline and giving you a lot of options in game play. I'd give it more of a C- for combat though, very few of the fights were fun or challenging and combat heavy areas were just like filler to the much more fun roleplaying/exploration parts.

It's funny that a lot of the classic RPGs really had poorly designed or poorly balanced combat. Fallout, Arcanum, Plansescape none of these games really had good battles at all but they made up for it by being cool when you were not fighting. The BG series was a little better and had some memorable fights, but many more boring/pointless ones too.

I don't know what it is but I've tried the Witcher demo three times now and still haven't felt that gaming magic, I usually end up getting bored with it...a bad sign for a game. I usually love European styled games, maybe I should read the books that might draw me in a little more.

The books introduce you to some of the characters, their backgrounds and relationships, as well as to the prologue location, and explain the "political landscape" of The Witcher's setting and world. The story is different (so far anyway), no overlapping. Either the author is really excellent or the German translator did a fantastic job -- it's really good writing. With our without the game, the books are superb fantasy with interesting characters and believable dialog. Good pacing, too, none of the G.R.R. Martin'ish passages of utter boredom. (Probably a heretic thing to say, but while I greatly enjoy Martin's world building, the books are filled with long stretches of nothing happening.)

ADOM was great as was Fallout.  Gonna have to try those others.  Pretty sure most people will see adom and die of graphics deprivation though.

Now that Roguelikes are on the table, I'm going with Nethack, ADOM, DoomRL, and Elona to a lesser extent, just because of how fucked up it is.

Actually the best roguelike is Incursion imo. [Note: Dwarf Fortress isn't a roguelike in my book, at least fortress mode isn't...]

Thanks Mivo, I just ordered the book online(The Last Wish), I hope the English version as good as the German one.

The prologue and first chapter of The Witcher were absolutely horrible.  It gets much better later on, but I have little doubt many players shelved it after playing a few hours into it and I can't really blame them.  There were huge parts of the town full of absolutely nothing, quests that made you backtrack through these areas over and over, the plot at that stage was mundane, and you didn't have access to many abilities yet.  I'm genuinely surprised they didn't overhaul that chapter along with the other improvements made in the big patch.  They could have deleted half the town and lost nothing of value.  Chapter 4 does the same thing again unfortunately, which is a shame because the final chapter is great.

Hopefully the devs realized that having large areas for the sake of having large areas is a bad idea for the sequel.  Oh, and the ability to teleport to areas by clicking on map waypoints would be great, thanks.  There is no good reason why the player should have to walk for 20 minutes to get between quest areas and quest turn-in points.