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Comment by AdmiralAsshat | Hacker News Reader

Sometimes remakes can actually improve accessibility to an older game with a dated engine/mechanics and make it more enjoyable for newcomers to experience the earlier entries. See: Yakuza Kiwami and Yakuza Kiwami 2 (remade using the excellent Yakuza 0 engine/mechanics).

I do own Witcher 1/Witcher 2 (bought no-doubt during some Steam sale for like $5-$15, tops), and I vaguely recall playing W1 for like a half hour, then put it down and never touched it again. But somehow I then put 90+ hours into Witcher 3.

So yes, the idea of Witcher 1's story remade into a modern engine sounds great. Heck, I would've settled for just Witcher 3's engine. I don't think I'd plop $60 for it--especially considering I waited until I could grab W3 GOTY Edition for like $20 before buying--but it's definitely something I'd eventually want to check out.

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I think yours is a pretty common experience considering that Witcher 3 was a huge mass-market success and Witcher 1 was a niche product made both by and for insane people. I say this as a shameless Witcher 1 apologist.

I really wanted to play the games in order, but I found the gameplay in 1 un-fun and quit.

I almost regret how long it put me off 3

Witcher 1 has a decent story and world (in no small part due to the source material). But the gameplay itself is some of the worst that you experience.

They could have redone it as a Carmen San Diego style dialog game and it would have been better than the turd they shipped. It's really quite bad.

This is true.

The story carried Witcher 1. Gameplay was vastly improved in 2 and I have mixed feelings about 3, the game was definitely more successful and I think you can partially attribute that to changes that made it easier to play and thus much more console friendly.

I for one welcome a UE5 remake of Witcher 1 and will purchase it for sure, if only for nostalgia sake.

It's been too long since I played Witcher 1 to really remember the feel but I never had the complaints other people constantly bring up. In fact I put off Witcher 2 for some time because unlike Witcher 1 it seemed to require using a controller to have a decent experience, but Witcher 1 was great (in my vague memory) with keyboard and mouse. (I also had a slow start-and-restart phase with Witcher 2 because it takes a while to really open up more, but when it does, it's a fantastic game too. Witcher 3 improved on that and you get into things immediately.)

Some elements were better. For example potion mechanics was the best in W1. You could only make them near fire which means there was risk/reward and safe places mattered, and the system had some depth with matching secondary ingredients and managing positive and negative side effects.

W2 made alchemy useless cause potions lasted like 3 minutes and cut-scenes were included in that time (so you take a 3 minute potion, enter a 2 minute cut-scene and your potion stops working 1 minute into the boss fight). And W3 made potions less of a hassle by auto-refill but streamlined this too much - you could refill anywhere so you always had potions so resource management wasn't required. And the secondary ingredients and side effects were gone so the system is much simpler.

Also the tactical aspect of combat was ok in W1 - adjusting the fighting style and sword combination to the enemies. It just wasn't an action-RPG despite the action-RPG interface. It would be better served by turn-based combat.

>Witcher 1 has a decent story and world (in no small part due to the source material). But the gameplay itself is some of the worst that you experience.

The Witcher 1 combat is secretly not bad. It looks like an action game though and the game does a terrible job explaining why this is wrong. So it feels absolutely horrible. You have to understand it's more of a rhythm game. It's closer to Assassin's creed or Batman combat systems. There's a lot happening on screen but you are mostly waiting for the right moment and choosing tactics.

I played W1 when it came out and it was great. But couldn't imagine playing it after Witcher 3 because W3 is in a different universe of quality and polish. A remake is fantastic news.

I started to play, but never finished, both the first and second Witcher games after also purchasing them on sale at massive discounts. I gained an appreciation for advances made in character movement and player input, including UI elements like menus and pop-ups for quick actions. Old games play very clunky.

I'd hesitate to even call Witcher 1 the same genre as the later 2. The original's combat is just a blend of old school crpg and oddly rhythm games (with the sword styles all requiring clicking in a different rhythm pattern)

You're right and I agree remakes can be great to (re)discover old classics, but just a nitpick: Yakuza Kiwami 2 was based on the Yakuza 6 engine, not the Yakuza 0 one.

My mistake. They were both spurred by the surprise success of Yakuza 0 overseas, so I assumed they were both on the same engine. But based on the release order, it made sense that they would've switched to Y6.

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