The Witcher

"The Witcher" is a Polish-made Action Role-playing Game which is utilizing BioWare's Aurora 2007 game engine. The game is based off of a medieval fantasy Tolkien-esque Polish novel called "The Witcher". Superb gameplay, mechanics, interfacing, character customization, and other great features are all attributes that make "The Witcher" a fun and riveting adventure to undertake.

The simple score breakdown of "The Witcher" is like so…

Graphics/Character Performance and Animation – 8.5/10

Fun Factor – 8/10

Story – 8.5/10

Controls- 8/10

User Interfacing – 9.5/10

Learning Curve - Fine

Sound – 10/10

Value - 10/10 (now)

Total – 8.9/10 (Jump down to my "All in all" if you only want a brief summary.)

Cliché story beginnings are not a telltale sign of what a great narrative the game has lying in wait for you. You begin your journey as the recent victim of amnesia. You soon find out that you are a Witcher named Geralt. What is a Witcher? I am glad you asked. A Witcher is a special type of human who is no longer human. After undergoing an alchemical ritualistic process, in which only two out of five survive, the human body is forever mutated into what is known as a Witcher. The mutation varies from subject to subject but several attributes are always obtained; superhuman speed, agility, dexterity, metabolism, and the ability to use magic. During your specific Witcher's mutation his hair turned white and his pupils construed to a vertical fixing making Geralt's eyes appear as those of a cat's. The mutation is a means to the end of gaining these superhuman enhanced attributes with the hopes of procuring an upper-hand in their deadly profession of professional Monster-Slayer. As the story goes on, suddenly, while Geralt is briefly touching base on who he is with some friends who found him, enemies attack the fortress of the Witcher's training and living facilities. The intruders aim to steal the mysteries of the alchemical knowledge that the Witchers possess in the powerful ways of mutagens. Led by a powerful sorcerer the intruders succeed in their mission to steal the knowledge of the mutagens. Your small group of Witchers part ways to blindly pursue the thieves and Geralt is tasked with heading south to investigate at the city of Vizima. That is the gist of the prologue in Geralt's tale. The narrative has the clichéd beginning of a protagonist recently stricken with amnesia, but as the game's chapters go on the tale exponentially gets more involving and goes from the mundane day-to-day-life of a Witcher to undertaking events that affect the entire kingdom. This is a truly epic introduction into this specific fantasy world's nuances and a look into the life of a vagabond monster killing mercenary known as a Witcher.

As you adventure you are given incentive to buy tomes with monster knowledge and grow your wisdom on your discipline. Over time Geralt gains a VAST knowledge on monsters and is an overall brilliant detective and interrogator. Well…he is as brilliant and thorough as you are. For example, there are multiple, multiple ways a quest or group of quests can play-out depending on how you choose to make decisions and or explore environments for clues and follow-up on "leads". I don't want to give away any specific example, in hopes to not spoil the story any, but there are intricacies and nuances here that can completely change the way events unfold or (if certain clues are missed) not reveal characters "playing you for the fool". In the Witcher, choices feel like they're making an impact, but the game just blatantly tells you so. Like, during the prologue you have the choice to go to the basement to try and stop the intruders from getting the mutagen recipes or stay and help some friends fight a giant Mantis-thing. Later on the game blatantly states "if I would have stayed and helped with the mantis earlier, current events here would have probably unfolded differently". The variety of choice and decision-making in the game are vast and interesting, though I wish they would let me figure out that I would see something different unfold on my own during an additional play through. The Witcher is good enough for multiple play-throughs too, so it is not out of the realm of possibilities.

One of the only downsides to the story is slow pacing. The Witcher is a really long game with a prologue, five chapters, and an epilogue. Each chapter, of which on average, can take roughly 7-8 hours to complete if you find and do many of the quests. If you were able to find every quest in the game and complete it on your first play-through I would say you could easily clock-in around 50+ hours. At first, the main story tends to get a bit perplexing because of non-story-driven side quests and lack of a means to "fast travel" places. You can really feel the lack of a "fast travel" system during the fourth chapter because of all of the back-and-forth and running around the quests demand in combination with the enormity of the maps you have to navigate by foot. Furthermore, talk about LOADs of side quests, but most are like kill and fetch quests. Some side quests are very interesting and all are enjoyable, but let's face it…his profession is a monster-slayer and a lot of the quests are just simple "go kill "X" amount of this guy's face and come back". Geralt quite literally has what appears to be a large fishing hook on his pant leg which when you kill an "elite" wanted creature you can then cut off their head and put it on the hook to be delivered to the local city guard for some big cash. The creature's body part can literally be seen on Geralt's hip until it is redeemed for extra coin. So the combination of non-story driven, cash oriented side quests and traveling on foot for the entire game can hinder the pacing and fluidity of the overall story. If you decided not to do most of the side quests and just focused on the primary quests you could fly through this game in about 25 hours and most likely avoid the feel of slow pacing all together. On the other hand, you would have to play on a low difficulty because to not do the side quests means you wouldn't make nearly as much money and wouldn't have the "Orens" to buy all of the items necessary to complete the game on the hard difficulty.

The story takes you to the game's main setting which are Vizima and its surrounding areas. Environments and cities are aesthetically beautiful and lively. Children skip around; people fill the streets and alley ways and range from peddling merchants to beggars and chickens squawk, dogs roam, and flocks of birds scurry to create a very realistic and vibrant environment. There are exquisitely detailed, crafted, and lit caves, catacombs, sewers, cellars, ruins, and crypts that feed to the great hunger if anyone is starving for a wonderful dungeon crawling feel. The sewers are particularly eye-catching with seemingly pitch-black corridors complimented by the silhouette of monsters to fill the tunnels and beautiful water reflections cascade across the grime and moss covered brick walls. Locations like an enormous swamp littered with a variety of different creatures and a ghoul infested graveyard are some of the aboveground environments that Geralt must traverse. All of the aboveground settings are affected by the sun and moon lighting which changes depending on the time of the day you are adventuring there. Time-of-the-day-effects affect environments to certain degrees like changing whether-or-not it is safe to travel streets at night because of monsters or thugs roaming and could change certain NPC's activity (or lack of activity by sleeping). Environmental effects like rain also cause NPCs to seek cover and comment about the weather. The settings mostly feel free roaming while they are not. You are limited to where you can go in each chapter and cannot backtrack to locations of previous chapters (if the chapter takes you away from that current environment). You will not see the random environmental scripted events like in Red Dead Redemption or the environmental freedom, but this does not necessitate the feelings of constriction. The Witcher doesn't have the freedom of sandbox games like TES: Oblivion or even Red Dead Redemption, but is by no means linear feeling. Granted, in a game without a jump or a hurdle mechanic it always tends to feel a bit awkward spending all this time to create this irrepressible skilled hero and of course he is subdued by the ever treacherous "wooden fence". At early sections of the game fences limit your adventure and help keep a rookie explorer on the beaten path. When will the perils of the fence be overcome? No one knows for certain. Sure, Geralt slew a giant mantis creature, but jumping a fence…don't be ridiculous. As a final deduction on environments, they are really well designed, beautifully lit, and you don't feel too cheated by being too "cookie cutted", but with the lack of a jump or hurdle they tend to feel mostly "level" or flattened. No spiral towers to ascend or mountainsides to traverse, but overall the environments are fabulous.

Speaking of flattened locations, Geralt would have a hard time getting around without his 2-D friend, the map. The map system in The Witcher is great and easy to use. The user interface labels relevant locations with big black dome shapes to indicate places of interest, green domes for merchants, and red domes for enemy locations. The map is easy to navigate as it displays Geralt's current position as a big green translucent arrow pointing in the direction he is facing. When you go to your quest tab in your journal you can choose to track a quest. When a specific quest is tracked the map displays a glowing halo around one of these green, red, or black domes to indicate where you need to go to proceed with your currently tracked quest. When you run your cursor over a dome it says things like "blacksmith" or "So-and-so's house". So, it is very easy to navigate, plot-out quest locations, and find any desired NPC's house.

I played the game on the hard difficulty setting which states that the use of alchemy is necessary to overcome encounters and this is a good thing because Alchemy happens to be one of the game's strongest suits. Like Geralt states "A Witcher without potions is only half a Witcher". There are potions for everything from; "Black Blood" that taints your own blood so that any enemy who would try to steal or drink it would die instantly, to "Cat" which allows Geralt sight in otherwise pitch-black environments, to more powerful and offensive potions. Other powerful or offensive related potions would be like "Blizzard" which enhances dodge and parry chances by 50% and slows down time to a crawl around you and "Wolverine" which increases Geralt's attack efficiency and damage inflicted by 50% when his health is at or below half of its maximum. Later on, Alchemy also has weapon coatings with the use of fatty, greasy oils to apply on weapon's surfaces to greatly enhance damage to certain enemy archetypes such as; "Necrophage Oil" to strengthen against undead enemies and "Specter Oil" to further damage against ghost-like entities. Even farther in the progression of Alchemy is the unlockable use of bomb formulae. Ranging from bombs like "King and Queen" which is quite literally a "fear bomb" that makes enemies that are hit by its gasses run away from you to grant some breathing room or the "Zerrikanian Sun" which is basically a blinding light bomb (a flash-bang). So, through the use of alchemy Geralt can create weapon enhancements, bombs, and body augmentations to create a very unique and strategic way to go about tackling battle situations. You might think…"well, why not just drink all of the potions at once and put the oils on your weapons to hurt everything so you don't have to choose?" The following is why.

The toxicity system allows Geralt to only be able to consume a certain amount of potions. Every potion is "cut" with alcohol and the use of alcohol as a "base" can get you drunk and most potions are harmfully toxic to boot after the alchemical process of their creation. In turn, each potion's poisonous effects vary in their potency from potion to potion. Rule of thumb is that the more powerful potions put bigger chunks of toxicity into your meter. So, only a certain amount of potions can be consumed by Geralt before he falls to his death from overconsumption. The player must be mindful of what they could potentially encounter and try to only ingest what is necessary to conquer the adversary that lay before them. To craft any of these consumables with the use of alchemy you also have to gather extra ingredients. To go along with the base (which is alcohol for potions, fat or grease for weapon coatings, and powders for bombs) you need to pick herbs and "flay" dead creatures for their unique parts like; a Cockatrice for their toxic venom gland or killing a Wraith and gathering their ectoplasm. Geralt does not know how to properly cultivate herbs or surgically flay a fallen enemy's anatomy off-hand, he must learn from found or store-bought literature. Buying a book about herbalism and or about enemies can unlock multiple technics for collecting a variety of different ingredients and encourage the purchase of tomes and scrolls.

When Geralt reads these tomes of knowledge regarding certain enemies he will unlock codex entries in your journal. These entries may describe several different aspects about a monster such as; an "Occurrence" which discusses what time of day or night and where the creature could possibly show its face, "Immunities", "Susceptibilities", "Tactics", and "Alchemy" which is how to remove useful resources from their carcasses. The knowledge in these readings holds the utmost importance in your career as a Witcher. In turn, the literature's paramount importance makes gathering money important because these tomes are not cheap and therefore encourage the pursuit of quests to make ends meet to be able to gather more tomes to figure how to tactically vanquish more foes.

Speaking of tactics, combat requires you to learn about enemies and apply different mechanics to kill them. Combat consists of all of the elements of Alchemy, a steel sword, a silver sword, different fighting stances for the swords, and magic. The steel sword, for animals and normal humanoids, and the silver sword, for supernatural creatures, has the same three fighting stances for each sword; Wolf for strong, Cat for fast, and Eagle for group. Melee requires you to click on the desired enemy and Geralt will then go about his swordplay like a whirling dervish. Geralt's sword fighting character animations are just marvelous. As you advance in melee skills you must learn how to chain attacks together. These chain technics require you to re-click on your next desired target during an important part of your sword combo. At times this can feel a bit like the fighting system in "Batman: Arkham Asylum" because of the way you can fluidly finish off one opponent while spinning your camera to begin attacking an enemy that is behind you and continuously merge your sword combinations from one target to the next. This chain fighting feature is also fairly amazing in how it still gives the sense of a turn based role-playing game while simultaneously feeling like an action game. This is because, with the timed fighting moves each interval between clicks sends Geralt through a plethora of attacking animations, but your clicks span several seconds lending you time to look around and each successful click guarantees you will make it through that attack's full animation. If you click on something during a timed interval and they parry or dodge it interrupts your chain and you have to back off and start again. It is very interesting how greatly the game embodies both action and RPG elements. Other mechanics of combat include double-tapping directions for fast movements. A breath of fresh air in the double-tap department is the fact that if you are backed into a corner you can double tap forward to make Geralt do a front flip over the enemy that is boxing you in (depending on the size of the foe). Close range combat also has a "Coups de Grade" feature which is a way of saying finishing moves. When an enemy is stunned or knocked down you can click on them to kill them in a fairly cool way. This feature is counterproductive though because the duration it takes to execute some finishers is overly long and other enemies can beat the crap out of you while the animation is going through its process. Lastly, signs…magic, are a fairly large part of combat and have five different spells each with a "spec-able" charge-up ability to accompany their normal function. Signs are fueled by endurance which is a byproduct of stamina and recharges over time after casting a spell. Spells range from area of effect fire waves, fire balls, protective barriers, to ground planting traps that magical spikes lunge up from if an enemy walks on it. All of these different fighting elements combine for a very interesting and malleable player customizable combat experience.

Enemies in The Witcher are very greatly detailed and have been shown a lot of love. Bosses (big curve, seem WAY harder than trash). Enemies generally fall into a main group then a subgroup of the main. Enemies tend to fall into "weak, medium, and strong" version archetypes of the same sub-category. For example, there can be a Ghoul which is a fairly large muscular undead orc-like creature. Then there is the "medium" version of the Ghoul called an Alghouls which is a bit bigger and tougher. Finally there is the "strong" version which is called a Graveir which is three times the size of Geralt and considerably more formidable than either of its predecessors. Some of the bosses can feel a bit daunting because of how easily you can rip through the ranks of ordinarily frequent enemies, and then when encountering a boss the gears of the learning curve shift quite sharply and the single boss can be a far greater challenge than that of a large mob of normal enemies. As I mentioned before, the different tome unlocks can list susceptibilities and immunities along with tactics for dispatching various different categories of monsters, bosses too. Sometimes there is no insight on your foe and you must do trial and error. The trial and error is a fun thing though as all the different elements of combat come into play here and allow you to customize your Witcher to your play style and preferences.

The leveling system in The Witcher is pretty unique. The sections of the leveling system have four separated major categories; attribute (Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, and Intellect), Magic (enhancements for each of the five different magical signs), and melee (which is one section for each steel and silver swords). When you first level you get a "bronze attribute point" which can then be used to increase any skill that requires a bronze point. The way it works is that each major category is broken-up further into three different sections; bronze, silver, and gold. From levels 2-14 you will receive bronze talent points, then from 15-29 you begin to get silver as well, and then gold from 30+. This system allows for some flexibility, but overall it kind of forces you to make Geralt a well-rounded battlemage type of class because you have nowhere else to put your extra "bronze points" when you're waiting to start to begin to get "silver points". In turn, you are spreading your talents out amongst melee, magic, and attributes because you plainly have maxed-out what you're really interested in. So, really the only thing that defines you as a class is what you begin with to start your points into when you first reach silver and gold. By the time you reach the end of the game you are very rounded-out and effective in both forms of swordplay and spell casting. Geralt's "class" could be described as that of a battlemage, but actually more of a sword master mage with an emphasis on the melee battle aspects. In reality though, you are not trying to be a "mage" or a "sword master". You are discovering what it means to be a Witcher.

After leveling-up or learning new alchemical formulae Geralt must meditate to distribute talent points and do any alchemical processes. You can't just meditate anywhere you want. You have to fine a camp site then use a flint to start a fire or go to an inn and pay for a room. This is also how you make time pass very quickly when you desire a specific time-of-day to be adventuring. Meditation is also how you interact with Geralt's Witcher medallion. The medallion is always displayed in the top left of the screen and can be set to detect either when monsters are near or shifted during meditation to detect whenever something magic is near.

The Witcher's medallion is not the only accessory Geralt wears. Geralt's total gear ensemble has four weapon slots. Two of the weapons slots are for full sized steel weapons and one full sized silver sword. The last weapon socket can be filled by something small like; a hatchet, a dagger, or a torch. These secondary weapons are quite useless though. These little weapons almost never increase in damage as you progress through the game and they do not level in damage as any steel or silver sword will when you level-up your melee fighting styles in your skill trees. They are little more than something to vendor for extra orens and or if you happen to not have a "cat" potion and use a torch in its stead to light your path. Geralt also has two ring slots. Rings in the game do little more than things like make a specific monster stay away from you (garlic for vampires) or are like a signet in which you flash at someone to gain access somewhere or show your affiliation. Lastly, there is a one socket opening which comprises all of the gear Geralt wears on his body, your armor socket. There are very few armor up-grades in the game…three I think. So, if you find one don't question it, just buy it, it will last awhile. As far as gear customizability goes options are very limited. On the other hand, a fairly nice amount of swords can be crafted with the help of a blacksmith and some meteorite rock or a rune stone. You need meteorite rock for steel weapons and rune stones to make silver swords. These rocks and stones have different effects like; +knockdown %, +damage %, +bleeding %, +pain % chance to happen. You can mix and match the rocks but there is always one rule, you need to combine three stones and pay a chunk of change to the blacksmith for crafting it. As a fair warning though it is FAR superior to get three matching stones to create a weapon with.

The inventories in the game and user interface for it are superb. There are lovely vibrant icons for every little thing you fine like; watermelon, fish, raspberries, vodka, bread, wine, bear fat, cheese, basilisk hide, you name it and there is its own little icon for it. This is a great feat considering there must be hundreds of different items in the game. Your personal backpack holds everything you find and potions that is not an alchemy material. You have a special separate ingredients pouch for all of your brewing concoctions. When your bags fill you can go to any innkeeper for storage. They hold what appears to be an endless amount of your goods. Your personal bags have a wonderful little button next to them that, when pressed, organizes everything in the bag very nicely. My only gripe with the system is that it does not have the same function for the innkeeper storage chest. You also cannot move around items in the innkeeper storage by hand so it gets all over the place and can become very difficult to find desired items in the later chapters when it starts to accumulate a ton of items.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------ALL IN ALL----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All in all, The Witcher does a great job of trying to turn you into a Witcher and getting the player to enter their mindset. You need to meditate, investigate, interrogate, brew potions, caldron-up some sword grease, cook bombs, cast spells, utilize both your steel and silver swords, and quickly think on your toes by cycling through different sword stances to survive. A Witcher is a professional monster-slayer and you, the player, need to hone your discipline by memorizing which fighting stances, technics, immunities, susceptibilities, and alchemical processes to utilize while fighting-off a multitude of different monsters. Combination of these different elements can result in some really tactical and fun combat situations, which can really leave the player up to the task of creating their own combat style. This game doesn't offer up a huge variety in range of different character customizations that some games might or have the completely free roaming feel of sandbox games, but in no way is The Witcher hindered, at all, by these things. The Witcher still has excellent qualities of a non-linear feeling world in the way you go about exploration and good varieties in character customization, only not to the degree of a game with a wide range of different class archetypes like; rogue, warrior, barbarian, archer, mage, etc. This game is a superb adventure action RPG in which there is only one class to discover, admire, and master…The Witcher.

If you're wondering if you should buy "The Witcher" the answer is situational. Do you like action RPGs? Do you like adventure games? Do you like dark, high fantasy? The value of this game is a 10/10. It is something like 5$ on Steam now. Even, if you were to blow through the game and beat it in 25 hours that is still 5 hours of entertainment per dollar. I have to say that if you answered yes to any of the question I just asked then…yes…go buy it.

---Notes---

When not adventuring or in need of some extra orens you can always play the awesomely fun mini game of Dice Poker or hit the nearest pub for some bare knuckle boxing.

Music in the game is fantastically amazing while simultaneously cliché at times.

A surprising "M", for mature, rating in a game that has basically zero blood and no nudity, but some characters do have a foul mouths from time-to-time.