Holy fuckin’ balls I’m ready to hurt someone.
I’ve been diligently and successfully working my way through The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, and I’m finally at the end of chapter one, where I get to confront the Kingslayer, Letho, for the first time. Up until this point I’ve killed a few giant crab-spiders, a big ass tentacled turtle squid thing, and survived a cave full of Smeagols. Some of it was a decent challenge that took a few tries, with some of them requiring me to go back and plan a bit better. It was all good though, because my trial-and-error learning paid off. I eventually defeated each foe and felt good after doing it.
Then I got here, and I have to say right off the bat that I fucking hate it when game developers do this. They put some shitty ass stupid hard boss fight at the beginning of the game. Because nothing feels better than getting your ass handed to you, repeatedly, before you’ve even gotten out of the first fucking chapter. 80% of the game is still out there to explore, but fuck you if you can’t beat an early boss. Guess you’ll just sit and stare at a game you’ve paid for but only get to experience a small portion of.
And I can understand if it’s just a hard fight, that there’s something there, some strategy just waiting to click in your head. But this fight, this horrible decision, doesn’t seem to have one. I know this because after dying for the, oh, twenty-fifth time in a row, I looked it up on the internet to see just how in the blue hell I’m supposed to beat this guy. The main strategy? Don’t get hit.
Sure, there were a few people here or there that said to focus on this sign, or dodge, or whatever, but the fact that there were so many answers to this question led me to believe one thing: Nobody really knows how they beat him, they just kept trying stuff until it magically happened.
Why is this? Because it’s bad design. Sorry, CD Projekt RED, but it’s a shit design decision. The guy is unfairly buffed, and the fight follows a long fucking conversation and cut scene, so all the potions I drank had worn off before the battle actually started. Thanks for that. But even that would be forgiveable; We all know that boss battles are supposed to be tough. The guy’s an ex-witcher, and he’s powerful. Okay, I get that. But there has to be a system here. The guy has a counter for everything. Geralt does not. Blocking takes off health. Rolling doesn’t guarantee you won’t get hit. He has poison attacks. He has burning attacks. He can use multiple signs back to back. He can switch between different attacks in a heartbeat.
Geralt takes five minutes to swing a sword.
I swear, by the time he’s finally into the actual animation of swinging the damn sword, whatever stun or stagger effect he’s put on Letho has already worn off. You’re lucky to get two hits on him at the most, and you’ll most likely take at least one hit trying to get away from him again. Of course, you won’t know this, because there’s no feeback at all that Geralt got hit, just a chunk of your health bar that magically disappears for some reason. It’s almost like the whiff of air from Letho’s sword just sucks the health out of Geralt.
I’ve tried multiple strategies. The most effective was pinning Letho in the corner and blocking/parrying his attacks. Even that was ultimately unsuccessful, because even blocking an attack takes off almost as much health as actually getting hit. Except for Letho of course. He can block my shit all day long and not break a sweat.
I’m going to try a few more times, before I drop the difficulty from normal to easy, just to get through it so I can move on. Because if I don’t do that soon, I can see myself printing out a Witcher 2 disc sticker, using my 15-year old labeler to attach it to a blank dvd, all so I can crack the motherfucker in half and throw it in the burn barrel out back, because fuck this game and fuck CDPR for feeling the need to ruin people’s great experience with a shitty boss battle a few hours into the game.
“That fight isn’t that hard, I beat him the first time without any problems at all.”
I know there’s at least one of you reading this thinking that same thing right now, and all I have to say is pat yourself on the back, go the kitchen and have a cookie, then think about all the other things in life you absolutely suck at.
Meanwhile I’ll be here, watching Geralt die for the two-hundredth time tonight, and thinking about how I can strap my Xbox controller to my wrist so that when I inevitably throw it at the wall it just kinda yanks back at me like a paddle ball.
/rant
**UPDATE**
I finally survived the fight with Letho. You wanna know how I did it? By casting Quen and running around him in circles like a five year old. Then when he began an attack animation, I’d let him finish it and hit him in the back once or twice. Then I’d take off running again. I didn’t use any of the tools I was given by the game. I didn’t block and parry, I didn’t set traps, or throw bombs. I didn’t use a variety of signs. I even stopped using the lock-on button. The second I starting just running around like a fucking cockroach, I started making progress. It kept me alive long enough to get in enough hits, and avoid his grenades and signs. So I just ran around him in circles, for about ten minutes, like a moron.
Here’s a tip, CDPR. If you’re going to design a fighting system for a game, let it actually be fucking useful in a boss fight. Don’t make me cheese it through a battle, because it feels shitty and kills all sense of accomplishment.
