After a solid week and a half of gameplay I have to report that I spent more than half of it redoing main quests, side quests, activities, endlessly restarting the console and searching for ways to get around an absolutely endless list of issues.
The only proper thing to do considering the state of the game would be to clearly mark it as early access as is the industry norm rather than leave it to the customer to simply give up on the game after tenths of hours already invested on grounds of developer promises that patches fixed the core issues.
Even if we ignore all the engine issues (textures LOD, collisions, patch-finding, AI, animation etc. - none of it works properly mind you) and appalling performance on consoles, most of the gameplay systems are rarely working as intended including combat, reputation, NPC field of view checks, skillchecks, horse riding and the list goes on.
As an example of a well known, easily fixable issue, either at release or in the giant patches already issued, take the Damsel in Distress quest, please note all patches have been applied and the platform is PS4 (hardware and software is non variable):
- Passed speech skill check, promised to rescue girl afterwards, rescued girl, returned with girl, quest stuck in endless conversation tree loop with no map marker.
- On reload avoided skill check, promised to rescue girl, rescue girl, let her return on her own, waited just in case, quest completed successfully, npcs relating to quest still stuck with same conversation options looping around.
- Ignored the loops, unhorsed the guy who was running away, lost village rep and was attacked by guards in doing so right after the dialog ended.
Just the above took about 3 hours in total out of which 20 minutes was watching various load screens and another 20 minutes browsing the web trying to find a solution to the bugs which as of this writing does not actually exist, yet another quest compromised.
I had to do the same for most other quests in one way or the other and even when a solution existed, it made the whole activity bittersweet and pointless since in many of those situations (like the prybislavitz camp mission) to progress as intended you have to abuse the game engine.
I am in my early thirties, I deal with actual serious issues in a calm manner, usually unaffected yet this game, a work intended for leisure made me angry, disappointed and depressed - made me waste my vacation time too.
Is the grand narrative, the artistic vision mr. Vavra did not want to compromise actually about fooling the audience into trying again and again hoping it will actually work as intended and stumbling upon false promises of grand narrative and story every other step of the way all leading to just more bugs and glitches?
This game could’ve put Warhorse and games made in Czechia on the map just like the Witcher series did for CD Projekt and Poland but it will likely be nothing more than a footnote simply because whoever makes key decision at Warhorse put money first and integrity second in the end.
