The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

This game provides the background story of Geralt and serving as an entry point to the beloved franchise. Despite its age, the game's graphics possess a unique charm, and its immersive atmosphere, complemented by exceptional music, sound effects, and intricate details, transports you into a captivating world. One of the game's strengths lies in its extensive gameplay and how the development of the story can vary depending on the decisions you make, offering over 50 hours of content through an array of side quests, contracts, and additional stories. The meticulously designed interface adds to the experience, showcasing detailed aesthetics that stand out amidst the minimalist trends of modern games. This game has some camera modes, whether it be the isometric view, which allows seamless map navigation, or the third-person perspective with traditional controls. These camera modes enhances the gameplay experience, accommodating different play styles. But not all is perfect... The controls, including the combat mechanics, can be uncomfortable, lacking the desired level of action. However, the variety introduced by Geralt's abilities mitigates the monotony to some extent. Another drawback is the occasional instability of the game, with unexpected crashes occurring despite efforts to mitigate the issue. The translations of the game are not perfect, at least in Spanish. In conclusion: This game provides an immersive and nostalgic experience, serving as the foundation of the beloved franchise. Its charming graphics, setting and extensive gameplay offer hours of fun. Despite minor flaws, such as clunky controls, occasional glitches and imperfect localisation, the game remains a must-have for fans of the series and those looking for a deep and engaging RPG experience where decision making influences how the story will unfold.

The Witcher isn't quite a masterpiece but it gets close. The Enhanced Edition was a big improvement on the game that was originally released, but there are still a few irritations. Thankfully, these are few and far between, and the positives vastly outweigh the negatives. First off, the story is strong and gets better as it progresses. There is political intrigue, mystery and the choice is up to you which side you pick. Each chapter has a mostly self-contained storyline, but the decisions you make all culminate at the end of the game. Also, you don't often see the results of what you did until later on. The visuals are amazing, prepare to be blown away when you see Kaer Morhen or the Lakeside. The bad things about the game would be conversations which didn't translate too well. This makes the dialogue a bit awkward and forced. You could be speaking to someone, and then suddenly Geralt or the other person says 'Bye' and it ends. There isn't always a natural flow in conversations, which is a shame because it tears you out of the narrative. Also, some of the voice acting is bad, but this is to be expected since CDProjekt can't really afford to hire tons of professional voice actors. It would be unfair of me to penalise the rating of this game for these two points, because the rest of the game is so good. CDProjekt are proudly flying the flag of the true role-playing game, where choices have consequences and you shape the path of the character.

This is the beginning of the brilliance that CDPR had and it shows that they understood exactly what they were going for and what their ultimate goal is and there's so many things that can be noticed here. So first off, the story is unmatched with the amazing chains of events and choices that are presented to the player that will play off in totally unexpected ways with many many beloved characters, some of them might be familiar and some new but all are equally fleshed out and have a ton of personality that they feel like real people. The RPG aspect of the game is passable, not gonna lie, it's not the best in the series or even ever but it gets the job done, the traversing of the game is kind of bad but you get used to it. The music is top notch as with all Witcher games and the combat is simple but there's tons of customization to add more flavor to it. Overall I would recommed this game for Witcher fans who want to go through the whole story after the books.

So, in this review I would like to address people like myself who may be wondering whether they should bother with the old Witcher games or just jump straight to the 3rd instalment of the series. I'm not too keen on fantasy, I haven't read the Witcher books, and I didn't find the Netflix show appealing. However, The Witcher 3 is meant to be a masterpiece by CDPR. Whilst I was told there's no need to play the first games to enjoy the 3rd, I thought I'd be best to learn some lore. The story starts where the books end. A criminal organisation raids the Witchers' base and steal their secrets. Your mission: chase them and recover the secrets. The plot thickens as you go along and it's really good. I wasn't too fond of the gameplay at first, but as you learn all the features you start to realise the depth of it. You can customise combat style, weapons, craft items; very complete and fun to experiment with. Moreover, you get to make your choices during the game and they come with consequences. There are a number of optional side quests that will give you extra hours of gameplay too. I've already finished the game and this is a solid 9/10. Now, while it does show its age, it was never a deterrent for me. The reason why I'm not giving it full marks is because of a few things I found annoying. Firstly, there were moments in the game where you wanted to make a choice, but it wasn't obvious. I had made up my mind about who was guilty in a certain case, but couldn't find the way to exonerate a suspect. Turns out I had to go to a party first, and the connection between the 2 just wasn't obvious. Secondly, there were a few crashes here and there, especially on chapters 4 & 5, so make sure you save regularly. Lastly, some dialogs are a bit clumsy and having to access your big inventory via character dialog is something I hope will be parted with in the second game, which I intend to play soon. All in all, a brilliant game with a few flaws.

All the things people applaud Witcher 3 for, the great character writing, quest design, world design, music, is just as good and in some cases even better in this game, it's just held back by CDPR's monetary and creative limitations. Given this was the first game they ever made, this has to be forgiven. The world and atmosphere here is incredible. You just have to push through the clumsy prologue and mediocre combat to truly get to appreciate this delight. Great care went into even the low-level-details of this world and the passion from CDPR is evident in every chapter. This world truly feels lived in, with different characters all acting in accordance to their limited perspectives, with fleshed out lives that make you appreciate them more on second playthroughs. Speaking of replayability, the player-choice enriches your second play-through, seeing different outcomes that you would not expect. It's worth every penny, and it's a shame to see so many people discarded due to that awkward presentation, and I'm sad to say I was almost one of those people.