The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

stands for needlessly reinventing the wheel. It's ruining this otherwise nice Game. It's unintuitive, complicated unlogical and completly destroys the flow of the game. Over and over.

Words cannot describe how great this game truly is. When I finally finished the game, I felt a wave of sadness because my journey had come to an end. The game is so detailed and immersive that it becomes part of you. I immediately wanted to go through the whole thing again because I wasn't ready to say "I have finished this game". I never want it to end. Without doubt the best RPG I have ever played, it is truly a work of art.

musics: 5/5 peaceful moments (adam skorupa), river of life (pawel blaszczak), witcher theme (believe) characters, story, choices, dialogues: 5/5 atmosphere, immersion: 5/5 combat, animation, dynamics: 2/5 only lame-core thing in this game. in total: 4.25/5 but i'll give this five. one of my best experience in a not only as computer game but also as a piece of art... i must iterate. really beautiful music, if chopin did see this , he would have been proud of soundtrack composers.

The overwhelming number of 5-star, "best game ever", reviews is suspicious. In reality, 95% of people say it is unstable, boring, trash. Here in forumland it's a 5-star "epic" "gem" "masterpice" that is "one of the most" yadayada buzzwords, buzzwords. Peculiar, no?

"The Witcher" is based on a complex world created by a Polish fantasy author Andrzej Sapkowski and features Geralt of Rivia as its protagonist. Geralt is a witcher - a mutant created for one purpose only: to slay monsters. The game starts with a certain hostile group of combatants, known as Salamandra, attacking the witchers' stronghold of Kaer Morhen, where Geralt is recuperating. While the knowledge of how to create any more witchers has been lost, the means are still available at the fortress and Salamandra are obviously after them. Why, you will have to find out for yourself as in Geralt's shoes you'll go on an epic quest to avenge your fallen friends and unravel hidden conspiracies. Geralt relentlessly pursues Salamandra throughout the game and along the way changes himself and those around him. The greatest strength of "The Witcher" lies in its writing. Both the world and the characters come alive on screen and pull us into the great conspiracies, happening just beyond the veil of ignorance. The game world is very dynamic with every choice we make having smaller or bigger consequences, so choose wisely what to do. The biggest choice of all is of course which faction you side with. There are Scoia'tel (The Squirrels) - non-human freedom fighters fed up with their mistreatment by humans and having taken up arms; the other side is The Order of the Flaming Rose - a faction obviously inspired by Knights Templar. The biggest appeal of "The Witcher" is that this is such a grey world - there is no right or wrong and everyone has more than a few skeletons in their closets. There are few games, where words "dark and gritty" actually feel as properly applied as here. Whatever you choose or don't choose, there will be lots of fighting involved both in the main storyline and the side-quests. The fighting is based of the, so called, witcher combat styles, that is basically Geralt hacking the shit while you are quicktiming to press the mouse at the right times. Many people seem to complain about this quicktiming, but I found the fighting very involving and never repetitive or boring and if you dislike the sword fighting, you can always use signs. "The Witcher" employs some godly tunes and the soundtrack really fits the atmosphere and provides chords to really make you feel in an adventure story. On the other hand graphics haven't aged very well - only a few years have passed since the creation of the game and while the overall backgrounds are not bad, some of the character models look really awkward and undetailed. Also the hordes of clones plague the world as only a few builds and faces are used for common city and village folks. Sometimes it gets ridiculous as you bump into five or six persons that look the same in a row. "The Witcher" is not an overly long game, but it's immensely satisfying. When I knew that we are about to get a sequel I was almost jumping in joy. Now, I usually don't spend my nights playing games anymore as I have to get up early to go to work, but I lost myself in Witcher until the early morning a few times. There are few games this involving and this... alive to actually care about characters. Also, kudos to the game for invoking one badass plot twist at the end that I definitely didn't foresee the first time I played the game. "The Witcher Enhanced Edition" comes with seven bonus adventures that can be played outside of the main game with five of them being fan-made. Full review can be found on my blog (http://beliar-cos.blogspot.com/2011/06/witcher-enhanced-edition-review.html).