The Witcher

In The Witcher you play as Geralt, a human mutant who slays monsters, set out to recover the secrets of the Witchers. The Witcher is a great Role playing game and it doesn't have hundreds of weapons and armor, it doesn't have a insane amounts of random loot to collect. What it does do is let you play a role, that role is to choose a path that the story should follow. Choose who to kill, who to accuse and who to trust. These aspects are carefully played out through a series of quests and at various points you are called to decide on two or three mini branches of the story. These branches may result in a battle further in consists of different enemies, or characters changing their opinions of you. The resulting flashback images at key story moments will be presented in a very rich and detailed way of the events you previously completed.

The Witcher does contain a lot of action, there are two main ways of fighting, one with axes or clubs and other weapons, the other with Witcher fighting styles that use swords. These styles can be improved in the character screen, they give you access to extra hits, more damage when you get the correct timing for your attacks and other critical effects like bleeding, stun that can provide you with better attacks. There are three main stances: strong, fast and group. Strong is for larger creatures / armoured units, Fast for quick nimble guys and group for those who like to attack 10 monsters at once, in fact group stance is sometimes overpowered should you get enough enemies around you. You also have two sword types, silver and steel, silver is more useful against monsters. These swords can be forged using meteorites or runes or upgraded using polishing items. The combat can be a bit clumsy at time, but there is some great fighting animation. Unfortunately some combat occurs directly after a long cutscene giving you little time to really prepare. Along with your melee skills are a range of signs, these are basically magic type skills and there are five: fire, air (knock/stun), trap, shield and hex (turn monsters), they are simple yet they are all quite varied and perform different roles. Although I didn't use shield and hex that much, it does depend on how many tokens you place into the various sign skill trees as to how potent they can be, I found great use for the other three.

Aside from these basic combat and magic styles, you have a broad range of alchemy formulas. These formulas create 3 main groups, potions, bombs and oils. Potions range from giving you health, slowing time to increase your reflexes or increasing damage. Bombs are area effect type devices you throw on the ground, that can scare enemies, although I didn't use these much and there aren't many of them. Oils are bonuses that you can apply to your weapons, they provide damage boosts to certain creatures and last for a day in game These are incredibly useful when you go on a side quest to deal with a specific type of enemy. All formulas are made using a range of ingredients with base materials and an alcohol base. Some with unique ingredients from boss monsters. To learn potions you can read books or scrolls most of them can be bought from traders, or you can make up your own and hope that you don't poison yourself. You gather most ingredients from either dead monsters or plants. To gather these items you must have the monster or plant recorded in your detailed journal, letting you extract the required items from plant or creature, again this information is mostly gained from books.

The game world continues to live around you, there is a day night cycle, in general nighttime is unsafe when you are outside and monsters can popup out of nowhere, although some roam, many you face will spawn from the ground or area around you. You can run away from many of them, at which point they give up the chase. Some creatures come out at night, like vampires, so if you require something from them you have to pick the right time of day. NPCs in the game world will go about their tasks, take shelter when it rains and make somewhat rude comments about Witchers. Some characters will have a daily job cycle and you need to be aware of it to find where they are at that time. Alternatively you can find any fireplace and meditate to a set time of day, meditation is used to distribute tokens and also to make potions, and you gain health during this time. It's similar to sleeping in Oblivion where you can skip hours in a few seconds.

Quests range from collecting items from creatures including taking the heads off the more unique ones. Collecting plant materials, saving sisters by releasing their souls, fighting an uprising, interrupting a bank robbery. There is a great range of quests and aside from side quests they don't often feel tiring apart from some treks later in the game. It's worth mentioning how solid and consistent the art style is, it can be a very good looking game in places, character and monster design is very good. Sound wise its relatively good. There are some issues with the sound levels from during dialogue sequences and some translation mistakes but overall its solid. More impressive is the wonderfully orchestral music score that will journey into your ears while playing.

The game draws similarities from a few games, Deus Ex, Vampire: Bloodlines and Diablo. The game presents a similar setting to Diablo, crypts and dungeons along with some good monster design and weapon/art. Geralt like JC Denton is a badass character that can choose rewards from quests and engage in conversation in a few different ways as you progress through a story. Also like Bloodlines where you have main hubs and different factions to ally yourself with during the game. The Witcher story is a linear progression but with a series of choices that alter situations, characters and flashback storyboards, each chapter usually means a new main area is unlocked and possibly more combat areas. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are the longest and the best in terms of content and quest range. Characters will often continue through the story just as you do, or reappear further down the track, and most are fairly well developed and memorable. The game doesn't fizzle away thankfully; it maintains the high quality of story telling, and even increases your decisions during the later chapters. It ends quite concisely, but with many good mysteries remaining, finally giving you another epic cutscene just like the intro to finish with a bang.