The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt Review

I never was a huge fan of the first two games of the Witcher series. I could only stomach the first game in a story-focused Let’s Play format, and had mixed feelings about The Witcher II: Assassins of Kings. CD Projekt Red, however, visibly improved in their quality of design and their skill as craftsmen of fantasy worlds between these two games, and with their latest work they show a promising continuation of this trend. The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt is a strong, strong contender for my game of the year, and among story-focused RPGs one of the best I have ever played.

The Witcher III has a lot going for it, making it a very consummate Western RPG experience. Unlike other Western RPG’s, however, which often make the main character somewhat of a blank canvas on which the player projects their personality and decision making, in The Witcher III you are playing as Geralt of Rivia, an experienced monster hunter with his own past, friends, enemies, and beliefs. This is where the strength of the writing comes from. The dialogue choices of the game still contain an impressive amount of choices and approaches to handling a given situation; however, because the main character has a distinct personality, it makes the dialogue feel more organic and believable, especially since most of the dialogue choices are something you could imagine Geralt doing if you know about his backstory. Every character also has lifelike body language and facial expressions. It’s easy to tell that a lot of love went into all the dialogue and animation of the game.

Another strong aspect of the writing, given the dark fantasy setting, is the very grey morality of the choices you can make in the game. The game’s writing heavily deconstructs the notions of good and evil - often I would make a choice that seemed to be the “good” thing to do, only to find out it had serious repercussions I hadn’t considered until much later. Other times I found myself doing terrible things, but only to prevent something far more terrible from happening. There are many sidequests which still have fans debating about which outcome is the better one. It’s a very subjective and point-of-view focused portrayal of conflict and consequence in a fantasy world, so if you’ve been waiting for a game that doesn’t pussyfoot around with high stakes choices, this is it.

I found myself using the Igni Sign quite a lot. Kill it with fire!

The gameplay is, in my opinion, the weakest part of the game, and yet it is still no slouch as far as action RPG combat systems go. You have a lot of mechanics at your disposal in order to deal and avoid damage, and skill alone can carry you quite far. Once you get significantly advanced into the skill trees though, combat tends to become boringly easy, though the fact that you actually get really badass with levels can be a good thing to some. The skill tree does a good job of making you feel stronger, but it does it in a slightly boring way. Most of the time, when you level up you take a rank in whatever you’re working towards and it gives you just a percentage increase to damage or something, with the occasional cool new ability. Compared to something like Shadow of Mordor, where every advancement in the skill tree gives you a cool new ability that is pretty strong from the get-go, it’s a Path of Exile feeling kind of advancement system. I think it is just a symptom of how the game starts you out. From the start you have access to every Sign and a lot of the alchemy stuff is obtained through crafting. It still gives you some cool abilities like the ability to block arrows in the sword tree, or the variant spells in the Signs tree. The alchemy tree is completely devoid of cool abilities, and all the skills just make Geralt or his potions stronger somehow, but it still is pretty cool since it turns you into

Witcher potions are not for normal men.

The game does a good job at making large groups of enemies actually intimidating to fight. The enemies will not stand around you in a circle and come at you one-by-one Assassin’s Creed style, they will bum rush you and give you as little breathing room as possible. The fights against large monsters are also pretty rewarding, since an appropriately leveled monster will still probably kill you in a few hits at a decent difficulty level. The game encourages you to use knowledge and preparation to win fights, and very often that was the deciding factor in my victory in a lot of tense battles. It felt really cool and Witcher-y to flex my book smarts on Alghouls, disabling them using the correct Sign and then cutting them to pieces with my silver sword, after applying the correct blade oil to it of course.

My biggest complaint with the game by far is how Geralt controls out of combat. Out of combat, he moves at three speeds: snail walk, slow walk, and brisk run. It’s kind of like controlling a large truck - works great if you’re just going in a straight line, but if you need to navigate close quarters and turn a lot it absolutely sucks. However, I have read news that in the 1.07 patch CDPR is adding an alternate movement style to the game in the options, so that may fix this qualm I have with the game. CDPR has a history of providing a lot of amazing post-release support to their games, so please take every one of my complaints with a grain of salt since odds are they will all be addressed in some way. Other minor complaints were some inventory clutter that occurred as I collected in-game texts and the game’s horse AI when calling Geralt’s trusty steed, Roach, to him. There are a lot of other small touches to the game such as the way you can let go of the control stick and Geralt will follow a dirt road on horseback without input, the way Geralt’s beard grows out as time passes, the way the wolves roll around in the grass like any dog would, and the way sunrise gets earlier the farther north you travel.

The world of The Witcher III is extremely beautiful and expansive. The environment designers make good use of colors such as blues and purples to liven up and diversify a lot of the environments. The graphics of the game are quite marvelous. There are a few issues such as Nvidia HairWorks’ atrocious performance and the visible graphical downgrade the game apparently got during development, but the end product is still something quite beautiful and decently optimized.

Every time I thought I had seen all the game had to offer, it blew me away again by introducing a new area. The game world is absolutely huge - it isn’t one continuous zone, but the combined area of the maps is probably the biggest open world game I’ve ever played in.

The sound design is quite good. The clanging and slicing of swords sound believable, and I especially love the sound design of the Quen Sign - the first time I used it and then was struck by an attack, I was quite startled. The music is not incredibly memorable due to its atmospheric nature, but there is a cutscene song that was quite beautiful and the main theme still sticks out in my mind with orchestrated polish that I’d expect from a game of this caliber.

Overall, The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt’s combination of compelling writing with satisfying gameplay and careful attention to detail just works beautifully. Be you a diehard fan of the Witcher series, or a casual follower like me, The Witcher III delivers a great story that leaves you wanting more, in a good way. With some sixteen confirmed free DLCs to come post-release, this already extremely solid RPG experience looks to only improve with time. I wholeheartedly recommend The Witcher III: The Wild Hunt.

Thanks for reading! If you liked my article, please share it with your friends and follow us for more game reviews!