i'd like to see people comment again in a few weeks

thinking back on games i thought were hard at start, the second or third or ect play through i have to up the difficulty as high as it can go if i didn't start that way to make it even somewaht fun.

hell i recal thinking dragon age 1 was somewhat of a challenge when i first started. the rest of my 20 characters just breezed through like nothing and it was too damn easy. too bad the rest of the game became TOO easy and only beat it once and barely made it past the first outpost with the rest due to boredom

I struggled in the beginning of the Prologue, but then got the hang of the combat and did just fine until the beginning of chapter 1. Now I'm in the middle of it and I'm kind of stuck because I can't kill anything. There is this cave full of 20 (twenty!!!) monsters that attack you ALL AT ONCE - I need to clear the cave for a quest. There's these quest mini-bosses that kill me in 2 hits and so on... I've given up on playing normal, I'll switch to easy next time I play.

EDIT: Killing monsters rewards negligible amounts of XP, and I can't finish any more quests, so I can't even get a few more levels.

I've started running away during fights so my health can regenrate, when my health is back up I run in and start again until it drops once more. It would help if the game didn't keep ignoring input from the player, I shouldn't have to press the cast key 3 times for it to work. Honestly the lack of balance is starting to make the combat feel like a chore.

I got the hang of combat pretty quick. It is still reasonably difficult and there have been a few frustrating instances where I've been stunlocked to death though.

My problem is with the dragon sequence in the prologue. At the start, where you have to run under the burning wooden section, fight some guys off then go through the gate to the burning bridge. You get set on fire for no reason. Nothing you can do about it. Die in 3 seconds. I died that first bit maybe 20 times. Finally get to the bridge and when I regain control of Geralt after the dialogue the bridge immediately collapses under me. I ragequit at that point and won't be playing it again until after work.

I'm thinking I will attempt to locate a god mode trainer/cheat for that section because it really did make me angry and there was no reason that section needed to be that arbitrarily killer.

Options-> Gameplay-> uncheck "difficult QTE"

PEOPLE! Are you kiiding me? This game was supposed to be an ADULT game! Not some consolized twitch fest from the first sequence on!!!! This game was about STORY first, presentation second, mechanics third!!! They f'd this all up big time. I waited over four years for this load of crap. I felt guilty enough to PAY for this crap!?!?!? I should have waited for my son to finish his two day pirate download. 45.00 wasted!!!! And GOG.com sucks too!!!

Djamer

There's a lot of very adult storytelling down the line, not that far from the prologue. Give it a chance. If the combat and QTE's bothering you, turn to "Easy", turn the QTE's off, and enjoy the story.

How did you manage to wait over four year for it when it was only announced less than 2 years ago and the first game is not even four years old yet. And Witcher 1 was already an action RPG it's not like they suddenly changed that.

ignore him

its a typical pirate responce. they wait till release day, then make up some bitchy excuses and say "i'm going to pirate this because of that"

Go to options, gameplay, set difficulty to easy.
At least I hope this works, it looks like it would.
Maybe I'll yet hold off switching to hard, until I get to that cave, heheh. ;)

I have to say I agree with all the negative posts here. I've been a gamer for 20 years and this is the worst design of a tutorial/prologue I have ever seen. I'm OK with difficult games but on normal you shouldn't die 20 times in the prologue! And the fact that you don;t know anymore where you can and can't meditate, and when you can and can't save is ridiculous!
I finally made it past the dragon and have made my way into the courtyard only to be attacked by 10 guys some of which are huge knights! What the hell ever happened to group fight mode? And all this rolling is ridiculous. Forget about parry when your surrounded by 4 guys, how do you know where the next blow is coming from? I'll persevere because I paid $45 for this but right now I give it an F

I died a lot at the dragon part the other was easy... then again I played on easy difficulty, but what helped with the dragon alot is running right instead of left in the beginning of that part :)

In comparison to the first Normal is like Hard and above. Potions, Signs, Mutagens, and Oils required.

On the flip side its easier to craft all items. You do not need to research anything to start gathering herbs, but you do need to have research on the beasts. But if you have the ingredients all you need is a recipe.

Once you get the hang of it, it will become extremely satisfying. However if you are still having trouble switch to easy and enjoy the story and atmosphere.

Yeah, this game is definitely really hard even on Normal. They should have done a bit more play testing while developing this game.

For me the Prologue was easy but I was ripping hairs out of my head in the first real bosses in Chapter 1. I don't think I have ever played RPG with this hard bosses on Normal difficulty before.

People must not confuse

(a) Difficulty of Combat

vs.

(b) Cheap Death Mechanics.

The main issue in the prologue is not the combat. With practice one will get a hang of the combat (despite the prologue doing a poor job at introducing the combat without being surrounded and killed by 3+ enemies multiple times before you "get it" )

The problem is things that kill your character that ends up being an exercise of "Trial and Error" (i.e. being forced to die to figure things out) . It's that instant kill platform/console "fall-to-your-death-from-a-cliff-because-you-pressed-a-button-1-second-too-late" kind of stuff. It's the stuff where you're all full health one moment and bam, you're tumbling down into a pit of lava because you didn't grab the rope in time. They really could have done the dragon thing better with either better pointers/visibility as to what exactly one must do to avoid being incinerated , or it should not have been instant kill damage.

Hell i think Trial by Fire would've been perfect if the dragon was just for show and you could fight the guards properly [without rushing through them confused as to whether you're going to burn to death any moment or not] .