The Witcher series has always had its roots in careful deliberation, whether it's Geralt of Rivia's methodical nature as the titular monster-tracking Witcher - he's slow to trust and harder to fool - or the way he goes about preparing for each of the centerpiece creature hunts. I've yet to read any of the Witcher novels by Andrzej Sapkowski, but meticulousness seems to be core to the monster-hunter profession given the games' amount of focus on oils, bombs, Signs, potions and the various complex rules of how monsters came into being and how they can be sent along their way, based on what I understand to be a mix of Slavic folklore and Sapkowski's own imagination.
What results is a combat engine that has, in the past, been as riveting as often as it is needlessly complex, though it appears last year's The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has finally perfected the system - third time being the charm, and all. In any decent RPG, whenever the player crashes and burn against a powerful foe they have back-up options to consider when they reload. If they're not used to parrying or evasion for defense, they can also fall back on the Quen sign for additional protection. If they're not doing enough damage to a specific undead creature, there's oils to put on your weapon to enhance damage against that enemy type, or it might have a severe weakness to fire to exploit - in which case, a bomb or the Igni sign is your answer. When playing on higher difficulties where it's not always feasible (let alone sensible) to jump right in with your steel or silver sword, these back-up strategies are ever more vital. While the added amount of consideration won't be for everyone, I find it's the best way to bridge an action-RPG like The Witcher with something of a more tactical bent, like the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale series. I would often reload a battle after watching one or more of my characters fall (which can be expensive to recover from, though Pillars of Eternity found an ingenious way to keep party members in the fight for longer with their HP system) and consider a new strategy with the spells and items I had squirreled away for an emergency.
For now, let's put aside the accoutrements of the Witcher profession and focus on the swords. Even here, the player has a multitude of options. There's two types of evasion, first and foremost: a quick dodge that narrowly misses an incoming blow, allowing you to quickly counter, or a roll that gets some distance between you and the enemy. Both are required for different fights in different measures: a larger foe is more likely to send out AoE shockwave attacks, which necessitates the roll to stay out of their range. A drowner zombie leaping straight at you, conversely, just requires a quick side-step to avoid, and you're right at its flank for some quick attacks. Getting around to the back of an enemy with the dodge allows you to score some free critical hits. When they're flanking you, it's going to take a couple of rolls to get back on the outside perimeter of the enemy group. Just having these two ways to evade enemies alone adds a lot to one's approach (or, I suppose, temporary departure). Then there's the parry, which works best against human foes who telegraph their swings, and the combination of light and heavy attacks: the light ones are faster and more likely to land before the enemy can start blocking, though the heavy ones do more damage.
Oils are the standard combat buffs, either adding a flat bonus damage rate against a specific enemy type or adding a status effect such as burning, freezing, poison or stunning. Each oil recipe has to be found in the wild (or bought at a herbalist vendor) and then created via alchemy, at which point it'll have a permanent slot in the alchemy tab of your inventory - the game's system for replacing lost potions simply consists of meditating with at least one bottle of alcohol, rather than finding all the ingredients again. Witcher potions are a little more diverse and usually provide benefits that are equally useful in and out of combat. They might enhance the player's stamina recovery, health recovery, attack speed or overall damage output, but also exploratory benefits like breathing underwater or seeing in total darkness (torches do the latter too, but they give your position away to creatures in the vicinity). Like the oils, you need to find new recipes by exploring, so I haven't quite got the full breadth of what they offer as of yet. Most of the potions and oils have generous time limits before they wear off, so the player can use a few - but only a few, as there's a (justified in-game) toxicity to Witcher potions that dissuades players from drinking their entire collection at the same time - before triggering whatever imminent encounter requires them.
Next are the Signs. Signs are ingenious just in terms of a form of magic usage that is complementary to a melee attacker build alone. In D&D-based games, as well as the occasional RPG that offers "spellsword" or "mage knight" (or Final Fantasy's Red Mage, even) hybrid classes, it can be fairly challenging to make an effective build that seamlessly blends magic use and close-quarters combat. Often, you're left with a character that uses a finite array of magic at range and can then rely on a smattering of melee skills whenever enemies get too close, making them less specialized than a mage or a fighter but far more versatile. Clerics often fall into this combat role too, bolstered with the often crucial ability to heal others. Since the Witcher only has the one character, it's down to the player how much they want to make Geralt a pure damage-dealing fighter with skills that boost his defense and offense, or to consider a stronger investment in his Signs, which become more powerful spell-like options with enough points. Even on their base level, though, Signs offer a lot in terms of battle strategy. As well as the aforementioned Quen, which provides a temporary shield that can save Geralt from a single but potentially critical blow, there's the short-range fire spell Igni, the mind-twisting Axii, the non-elemental telekinetic blast Aard and the magical snare Yrden. Yrden's best employed against spectral foes who can otherwise create a problem by going non-corporeal though it can also be used to slow down any enemy that walks into its range, Axii's stunning effect can create an opening for Geralt's blades, Igni's best against foes with fire vulnerability or those standing next to explosive barrels - funnily enough, most enemies are weak to explosions if not much else - while Aard works best against crowds, as it's able to send people sprawling on their asses at higher levels.
Still, these are rudimentary examples of how the five Signs can be used, and doesn't cover the fact that each has an "alternate" mode that offers a more powerful version of the Sign but also tends to be riskier for the sake of balance. Presently, I'm rocking a form of Quen that ceases to be a passive shield that sticks around for a few seconds to one that you have to actively use to see any benefit; the upside being that each hit taken while the shield is active not only blocks the attack but recovers Geralt's health by the amount of damage he would've otherwise accrued. When every hit normally takes off a third of the health bar (on the highest difficulty! The game can be made far more reasonable!) and healing supplies are limited, costly and take some time to work, this variant of Quen is exceptionally useful. Igni is transformed into a focused flamethrower stream rather than an arc which lowers its effective range but does more damage, making it best suited for one-on-one fights. Axii will charm enemies instead of simply stunning them, though takes longer to cast and becomes far less effective when there's only one foe left to slay. Yrden turns into a turret rather than a ring of glyphs on the ground and attack anything that gets in range including projectiles, which simply get disintegrated. Aard is a big shockwave with an area of effect that surrounds Geralt rather than simply covering an arc in front of him, though the percentage chance to knock-down foes is significantly smaller. These alternate modes all become available at the same time thanks to the way that the game covers skill progression - you only need so many points in one "tree", such as Signs, combat or alchemy, to make all the skills on the next tier available for upgrading - and essentially doubles the amount of tactical options they provide. If anything, Signs might actually be too powerful in The Witcher 3, but you won't hear me complaining. Use 'em if you got 'em.
It's easy to write off The Witcher 3's combat if you're unfamiliar with the series, because it looks like every other Action-RPG or Batman-style brawler with its use of evasion and striking when an opportunity presents itself. The swordplay itself is rarely more sophisticated than hammering the fast attack button when the enemy drops its guard. Yet there's a hint of the old games' complexity with the number of options the player can fall back on when the rubber hits the road, and if nothing else there's always more than one way to take on a group of monsters if you're just looking for a bit of variety in an open-world game that might potentially take over a hundred hours to beat.
I don't see myself ever tiring of it, though I suppose my tune might change by this time next week. I just wanted to give it its due though; short of a Souls game, it's the most fun I've had with an action-RPG combat engine in a long while, and it's largely because there's a constant drip of new tactics and new monster strategies to work around. That's definitely a rare and coveted thing in this day and age of simplified mechanics.
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