For those of us who have never played any of them, is it suggested you go through 1 and 2 first? Is there a recommended play order? Or just “Jump into 3 and forget about it”?
Skip 1, play 2. The second game opens with the main character having amnesia, so basically everything important from the first game is explained to you. The first game is rough by modern standards, and will almost certainly put you off of playing the rest of the series.
2 is starting to show its age, for what it’s worth. It’s still a great game, but go into it with tempered expectations; It’s missing a lot of the quality of life things you have probably come to expect. Though you can also mod the game, so that may be worth looking into if you enjoy modding.
3 is a great game, but get through the intro area before you actually judge it. The tutorial is a massive slog. The game picks up around the time you reach the Bloody Baron, so at least get to that point before you write it off as boring. The DLC is 100% worth playing. Play the Hearts of Stone DLC before finishing the main story, then the Blood and Wine story after beating the game. And again, there are a few mods that I would install, like an auto-loot mod. The “apply oils when you draw your sword” mod used to be necessary too, but the devs actually ended up adding that into the base game.
I would actually recommend to also skip the 2nd one. They made some, ahm, unusual decisions, like having to meditate to drink potions meaning alchemy is basically useless unless you know when a fight is coming, which would be alright but the game also has a tendency to throw you into random fights right after a cutscene.
Witcher 1 was weird, but I finished it just a few years ago. The combat is half automatic. Like, if you get a dodge skill it just means that when an enemy attacks, “Dodge” might appear above your head more often as enemies attack you. You dont actually dodge anything.
Geralt just swings his sword like crazy (automatically) and numbers appear above the enemies to indicate damage. It’s a constant stream of numbers. And you press buttons once in a while to cast spells, change combat style, or do special moves. At least I think you manually trigger special moves. It’s been a while.
If you watch this video on YouTube, you’ll see what I mean. None of the sword slashes involve pressing a button. They just happen.
For those of us who have never played any of them, is it suggested you go through 1 and 2 first? Is there a recommended play order? Or just “Jump into 3 and forget about it”?
Skip 1, play 2. The second game opens with the main character having amnesia, so basically everything important from the first game is explained to you. The first game is rough by modern standards, and will almost certainly put you off of playing the rest of the series.
2 is starting to show its age, for what it’s worth. It’s still a great game, but go into it with tempered expectations; It’s missing a lot of the quality of life things you have probably come to expect. Though you can also mod the game, so that may be worth looking into if you enjoy modding.
3 is a great game, but get through the intro area before you actually judge it. The tutorial is a massive slog. The game picks up around the time you reach the Bloody Baron, so at least get to that point before you write it off as boring. The DLC is 100% worth playing. Play the Hearts of Stone DLC before finishing the main story, then the Blood and Wine story after beating the game. And again, there are a few mods that I would install, like an auto-loot mod. The “apply oils when you draw your sword” mod used to be necessary too, but the devs actually ended up adding that into the base game.
I would actually recommend to also skip the 2nd one. They made some, ahm, unusual decisions, like having to meditate to drink potions meaning alchemy is basically useless unless you know when a fight is coming, which would be alright but the game also has a tendency to throw you into random fights right after a cutscene.
Witcher 1 was weird, but I finished it just a few years ago. The combat is half automatic. Like, if you get a dodge skill it just means that when an enemy attacks, “Dodge” might appear above your head more often as enemies attack you. You dont actually dodge anything.
Geralt just swings his sword like crazy (automatically) and numbers appear above the enemies to indicate damage. It’s a constant stream of numbers. And you press buttons once in a while to cast spells, change combat style, or do special moves. At least I think you manually trigger special moves. It’s been a while.
If you watch this video on YouTube, you’ll see what I mean. None of the sword slashes involve pressing a button. They just happen.
https://youtu.be/A8mluMOfBWg
I thought it was worth playing. Janky, yes, but worth playing. I played 1 and 2 before playing 3.