The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Peak RPG, true to the Witcher's world! I still play it every year.

The game starts out with a pretty cool, if janky, cinematic. The opening cutscene is also nice, if not weird and cliche. Suddenly, you're asked to draw a sword. Geralt holds it over his head, behind his back, and swings toward the target at about a 45 degree angle. So, basically, he hurts people by doing something that looks like the chicken dance. Not only are the animations ugly (I guess they spent all the money on instanced cut scenes), but the combat is just clicking people who have massive health bars. Click, click, click, click, click, right click (to parry or whatever), rense and repeat. You can also just run past all the enemies, in a way strikingly similar to Aliens Colonial Marines. There's no way I can get into this, even if the story is cool.

If you're looking for harmony and love, go away. The female characters are just as charismatic as the main proprietor, Gerald. While you're being "rewarded" with sex just doesn't feels like "love", you'll be driven at the edge of what you can bear. At least if you're as attached to the story and sensible as I am. Don't get too attached - it's realy luring you out of your mind. Don't trust nobody, never ever. Not even those you can trust, because they'll be egoistic as hell, no matter your choices. Don't expect sympathy with your feelings, so don't give any either. So much for the social part of the game. And don't you get me wrong here: The characters are great! Strong, believable, exzentric. Story and gameplay goes deep, evolves, turns. Another hard one to swallow is, that there are so very many decisions that will get back to you way, way later. You won't be able to tell the results of what you do the first, second and third time you play this game. Sometimes it feels like you just don't have enough information to decide - sometimes you just don't like the given choices. If you're a weak hearted, this game is not for you - but you will enjoy it nonetheless. This game is not for me either, but I do love it anyways. There's so much charm in it, so much magic.. it has got me compelled completely and I just can't get off it. Maybe to "play" this game, or not to, is the most serious choice you'll ever make regarding computer games. This deed is just pregnant with consequence. In normal case, you can just go back 10 minutes and chose differently. Here you'd have to start a new game - and because The Witcher is jam-packed with this, it loses one star. This is not for the relaxing evening, this is a second life in all it's complexity, and you'll be unable to get back, once you've chosen your path. You will chose a path - you will have to deal with the consequences - there is no other option. Just as there is no ideal way, no right or wrong, no well done, no happy trees and no fairies. Erare humanum est. In fact life isn't black or white, The Witcher isn't black or white, and neither your given options will be. This can drive you crazy sometimes and that's the reason for one missing star. It's not 4 of 5 stars - it's 5 stars, but one of it is deadly black with unfullfilled desires, sadness, arrogance, hate and delusions. Yes, you will lose illusions here. For the better or worse is for you to decide. I don't need to say much about the graphics, the sound, or anything - it's just something you don't need to worry about here, because it'll satisfy you whatever it is you're expecting. You will emerge into a new world. A dark world and, while almost any game claims this, with Gerald it is true indeed. More than you'll sometimes want it to. The intoxicative atmosphere gets you drunk, disoriented, befuddled and surely will change something inside of you. In the end you'll lose real hard currency in your real life, because you'll buy the sequel that's coming soon. This is your choice - take it or leave it - there won't not be no (ha!) turning back and what has been seen can't be unseen. Massive, all-out, most uncompromising.

You can hop on any site and find out what makes this game good, so I'll just lay out the four problems that broke the camel's back. 1) Boring quests, boring combat. Almost all the quests are the fetch type which is definitely not okay for such a story based game. Throw in the LONG travel times... The combat just amplifies this problem. It's kind of neat at first, but soon enough you realize that it's less exciting than Diablo and more cumbersome than D&D style RPG's. On top of that, I don't care what people say, you don't need to specialize in alchemy on "any level above easy." I made it through chapter one, two, and three with just Swallows (healing potions). This makes the much touted pre-combat strategy element of the game negligable. (Oh, and before you say "play it on hard, then!" I tried, and it was a grindfest. Not my cup of tea, but it might be for you.) 2) The "grey" decisions that everyone talks about. They're not grey. Sure, the way they wrote what you say might be a little grey sometimes, but you WILL be forced to make a bright-line choice involving obvious morality. I never experienced a situation even approaching the muddled complexity of the Krogan or the Geth scenarios in ME2. Sure, there is no system telling you which of your choices is "right" by the developers, but it is pretty plain who is the bad guy(s) and who is the badder guy(s). 3) The storyTELLING. If you sat me down with my dad and we told you the same campfire story, I promise that he will come out on top. This is the Witcher compared to [insert your favorite long-standing developer here]. If you wiki the plot for the game, it is deep, complex, and intriguing. If you experience the plot while playing the game, it is mundane, distorted and boring. It's so disjointed that you need to force yourself to care about it. The worst of the worst is the quest ordering; far too often, the game let's you complete quests that need an explanation from another quest. When I don't know who X is, Geralt shouldn't know who X is, yet he does. This completely destroys any immersion. The broader problem is the writing. I'm no literature major, so I can't throw technical terms at you; suffice it to say that the writing is unemotional and out of place at times. For instance, you find out that X is doing Y, a serious breakthrough in your hunt for justice. Your (spoiler-free) response: "Yay." Really? Geralt is not getting paid for the main quest and he isn't passionate about it (per the writing), so why should I care about it? 4) Character development. None. At least not for me. This is always hit and miss in any media presentation, since people connect to characters in different ways. But it seemed that the developers didn't even attempt to get you to connect to Geralt and his Witcher brothers. I cared more about the brothel madame than I did the protagonist and his archenemy! I hate to be the naysayer. I love a good RPG, and I love a good story. The Witcher appeard to have both. But this game is like a rough gem; some people will be able to see through the imperfections, others won't. I fall into the latter category. The flaws outweigh the potential, and I can't justify putting more time into the game than I have. If I could redo things in my quest to prepare to play TW2, I'd save my ten bucks and just wiki the plot and characters. This game isn't worth the backplot.

To really appreciate this game, one has to overcome certain barriers. Yes, this game isn't very recent and might not have the graphcis and animations you'd expect to see today. The combat system might leave you struggling for quite some time. HOWEVER! Once you get pas ''technical stuff' and your eyes get used to it, you will discover the witcher universe in all its splendor. The atmosphere - created by use of dark colors and piercing OSTs (maybe the thing I appreciate the most about this game). The story - featuring moral choices you will actually take your time to reflect upon. The world - even though it is not an open-one as we understand it today, it is still pretty big and most importantly well designed. At last... Well, you will actually understand a little bit more about the witcher's univers if you already played the third (and perhaps the second) game:)