The Witcher. A review of the game

The Witcher. A video game brought to life by CD Projekt and Atari that is based off of the novels of the Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski. A game that I had never picked up until recently. This is very strange for me as I enjoy action packed role playing games, hack and slash adventure titles and the occasional hunting of monsters and anything that goes bump in the night. So one would have thought this title would be right up my ally when it came out in late 2007. For reasons beyond my control, recently graduating high school and working to pay my way through college (not as a man of ill repute so get that thought out of your head) etc, I failed to pick this gem up from a local game store. Had I truly known what tale of monsters, sword swinging and sexual encounters was in store for me, I would have picked it up sooner.


Now a little while ago I had seen the trailer and the preorder for The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt (c) and what got me interested at first was the Wild Hunt itself. If you do not know what the Wild Hunt really is, here is the TLDR version of it. The Wild Hunt is basically an ancient folk my of North, West and Central Europe and it is a giant gathering of spectral dead or fairies or other types of ethereal huntsmen rushing across the land or skies depending on whose point you look at. There can also be just one huntsmen which could be either male or female or some other person of legend. I have found more information that talks about Woden (Odin) being the leader of the Wild Hunt but like I said, it is up for debate on who runs the show.


After watching the trailer for the third installment of The Witcher, I was immediately hooked on the thought of "Wait...is this a ton of monster/mythos killing along with what appears to be good swordplay and magic? Hmmm..." Now at the same time that pre-orders were going on, this was on Steam by the way, they also had the first and second Witcher games on sale as a two and three boxed set basically. Having never played any of the Witchers but now interested, I decided to pick up the two game bundle for roughly fifteen dollars. Pretty damn good deal if you ask me for two full games. So I hopped on the first game and tried it out to make sure I would like the series. Needless to say, after the first intro stages and getting used to the combat of the game, I got very interested in the story and swordplay. I won't ruin anything for the people who have not played this series or for someone who was interested in it but I personally think it is worth it and if you want a rating system, here is what I've got for you.


Graphics - 3.75/5 At the time of this release I would say that the graphics were pretty good but they are not on par with some of the other games that were being released around the same time. This being said, graphics will not break a game for me as I still find myself going back to the old NES cartridges that are eight to sixteen bit and playing through the old games that brought joy to me when I was younger.


Sound - 4.85/5 This one actually surprised me a little bit. Every area that you go to really feels like you are their. From rushing rivers, frogs in a swap and the clatter of dinner plates at a tavern. The actual score of the areas are very looming or foreboding in a sense as this is a very dark game. One of the stages I was on actually got me a little spooked as I was playing this game one night, alone in my house while I was in a certain area and the music turned extraordinarily haunting and then a sharp violin came on, usually the kind in slasher films, that caught me by surprised and made jump a bit. Nothing happened though. I'm kind of a fraidy-cat.


Voice Acting - 4.85/5 I think that CD Projekt found the right people for this game and I hope that they stuck around for the sequels because I would be sad if they didn't. The only reason I didn't give it a 5/5 was due to a couple of issues with the text not being what was said or vice versa but definitely not a deal breaker for me.


User Interface and Controls – 3/5 Now even though I think that this game was very good, the control scheme and user interface for the game could have been a little more fluid/accessible. Now I was playing the PC version of this so this is probably a lot easier for the console version due to controllers instead but after some time I was able to get the hang of it.


Story 5/5 Not going to ruin for you but there are a lot of things going on in this story that took some time to figure out and then seemingly have to refigure out again. It took me a little bit of time to finish it with all of the side quests but it was all worth it.


Replay ability- 3.85/5 I think that this game stands a pretty good chance at me replaying it as there are things that do require multiple playthroughs if you want to get all of the other rewards.


Overall score – 4.22/5 All in all I would think that this is a very fair score to give The Witcher coming into the game with a blind eye in a sense. I wanted to see what this game would have to offer me as a video game enthusiast and it did not disappoint me in the least. I sank roughly a full day into the game as my total time invested was almost at the twenty four hour mark. Some might think that this is actually a very short game and I can attest to the stigma that it might be. The story itself only has five chapters and if you do nothing but the main missions, then yes the game is very short. The side quests are not mundane to me and they blend very well with the story arcs while some other quests are optional. I am kind of a completionist when it comes to games so this is why it took me so long to finish the game. So if you think that this may have tempted you to come hunt monsters in the dark and sweep women off of their feet and join in a pretty epic quest for revenge then I would definitely suggest picking up The Witcher.