The Witcher Review

The Witcher [Wikipedia Entry] [Official Site] is an action RPG for PC developed by CD Projekt RED STUDIO (based in Poland) and published by Atari. This fantasy game takes place in medieval times, (you can expect swords, monsters and magic) and includes the usual races of humans, dwarves, elves, orcs, demons, etc. You are Geralt, one of the few remaining Witchers. Witchers are professional monster slayers, humans who have gone through vigorous training and have gone through the painful experiance of being mutated by a secret formula known only by the Witchers. They are hated my many common folk, called "mutants" and "omens for desaster". Geralt apparently has died in the past, and he has lost almost all of his memory. The player begins the game when Geralt is taken to a hidden castle among some people who know him.

The Witcher, first and foremost, is a very beautiful game. The artists did a very good job putting together the landscapes and lighting of the world. When you first start up the game, you can watch a very nicely done CGI intro, although all it really tells you is what a witcher is, and that this particular one is famous. When the game is loading, you can examine the concept art, which is also very beautiful.

The gameplay itself reminds me very much of Diablo with the types of dungeons, the equipping system and the npc stores. Although you cannot play online, it has a few elements of World of Warcraft (talent system) and Oblivion (sleeping/meditating to gain levels and health) as well. The combat system is kind of a tossup. At first I was disappointed that I couldn't actively initiate all of the fancy moves that Geralt can do, but once I get both swords, some magic abilities, and all three styles of combat I started to enjoy just sitting back and watching the animations. Fighting is actually quite easy. You just choose the correct style depending on what enemy you are facing or if there are more than one of them, click once, wait for the cursor icon to appear yellow, and click again. You repeat this until the enemies are dead. You can spice it up by flipping over your opponent or blasting him with magic, but that is the basic idea of it. The storyline is continued through a series of quests that make you talk to specific NPCs, kill specific monsters, or deliver items somewhere. There are of course many side quests that you can get by talking to villagers and reading bulletin boards.

Of course this game, like all others, is not without its flaws. Some of the NPC's conversations and speech is poorly translated from polish and may seem corny or odd. Although the concept art you see on the loading screens is nice, you will unfortunately be seeing them a lot. One of the biggest problems with game is the long loading times. I consider my computer to be on the medium-high end, but the loading times still are long enough to be bothersome. Sometimes the game randomly crashes on me, exiting out to windows. This must doesnt happen on all computers, otherwise it would have gotten worse reviews from other sources; these crashes do happen on both of my computers. If you get this game, I would reccomend immediately going to the main site linked above and downloading patch 1.2. This, I am told, cuts the loading times 10% and fixes a load of bugs, including the game not starting up at all. It also (according to Wikipedia) allows you to run the game even if your computer doesn't meet the system requirements.

Overall, I think that this game deserves the millions of copies that were sold around the world. The characters seem rich and the animations are superb. Out of 10 I would probably give this game a 9. I reccomend reading the Wikipedia article or downloading the demo for more information.

Note: Some of the information provided above was taken from Wikipedia, so just give them credit. All of the screenshots were taken and uploaded my myself. Any other legal stuff is however it is supposed to be I guess. =P