The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

Moral ambiguity is something which many RPGs over the years have struggled to get a proper grasp on. Treading the thin lines of the so-called "grey area" hasn't been an easy task for many RPGs so it was no wonder that in order to expand their accessibility many RPGs like Fable and Mass Effect began embracing a simplistic good/evil morality system in the recent years. The Witcher thus comes across as a rare creature due to a number of reasons. Firstly it features absolutely no morality system –you are left to judge your own actions on the basis of their consequence. Secondly it is made by a little known Polish developer who developed it on a highly modified 6-year old Aurora engine of BioWare. Most importantly however the Witcher occasionally exudes the rare sort of confidence and ambition that we've rarely ever seen from a European RPG. Based on a series of novels and short stories from popular Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski, The Witcher tells the tale of a legendary monster hunter-a Witcher named Geralt of Rivia situated in a dark mature fantasy universe. It isn't dark only in the sense of it's atmosphere. It's dark in nearly EVERY sense –right from the major themes the game tackles to the smallest details of the universe. Sexism,corruption,racism,rape and prostitution and nearly every major evil runs deeply ingrained within every character you'll come across in this game. It is highly refreshing to see a fantasy universe that is built purely for adults and doesn't treat you like a kid even for the slightest moments. Developed on BioWare's Aurora engine, the Witcher is naturally going to be a turn-based affair but CD Projekt, the developer modified it cleverly to make Witcher's combat appear like a highly clever twist between turn-based and action. It can be quick and hectic but it also utilizes the basic turn-based elements from the engine as well. Like most European RPGs, the Witcher's combat is not your everyday clickfest. It requires thought, precision and more importantly timing. Clicking on an enemy initiates an attack. Combos can be built on this attack by timing further clicks at proper time as indicated by a flaming cursor. To add the strategic component to the basic combat, Witcher introduces different stances. There are three different stances – Strong, Fast and Group. Strong does major damage but at very slow speed, Fast does medium damage but unleashes a good flurry of attacks and Group is for delivering minimal damage but to everyone around you. All the stances won't work on all enemies. Like faster enemies will easily dodge your Strong attacks, so the combat does require a great deal of planning and thought even when you're right in the middle of the action. To add another twist to the combat, Geralt uses two swords – Steel and Silver Sword. Steel Sword is effective only on humans whereas Silver is effective only on monsters. This means that in addition to the action combat and the stances, there is thought and planning to be done even when it comes to equipping the proper sword. For instance, before going into a cave full of undead I wouldn't bother applying oils that upgrade my Steel sword since that wouldn't be effective. The Witcher rewards planning and strategy-making in advance and I can hardly recall any RPG in recent times that puts so much emphasis on that and rewards players accordingly. Acting as the two support systems to the melee combat are magic and alchemy –both of which are as unique and unconventional as the rest of the game. Geralt's magic is limited to only 5 spells and these aren't your usual "pure offensive" magic either. These Spells (or Signs as they are called in the game) can be switched in between combat by simple pre-defined hotkeys. Instead of mana, they use up endurance. They are spells that generally aid your melee combat more than anything. These spells knock down, slow down enemies and blocks their attacks for a couple of seconds. As you can see, these aren't offensive spells by any stretch of imagination. The only offensive spell is Igni. Spells and parrying/blocking attacks use up Endurance. To prevent the players from spamming spells to defeat foes like in many of BioWare's games, CD Projekt kept the Endurance bar very limited. Even at an advanced level, using 2-3 Igni spells at once is more than enough to deplete your entire Endurance and it regenerates at a very slow rate. This brings me to Alchemy one of the central components of The Witcher. The lore of the Witchers suggest they are expert alchemists and hence this part of the game gains importance. Alchemy is the chief support system to the game. On normal to higher difficulties it is absolutely necessary to have proper knowledge of alchemical ingredients. Thankfully the game does an excellent job of storing information regarding any potions, its formula, the ingredients required in a rather user-friendly format in the Journal. The Enhanced Edition also introduces a separate section of the Inventory for the alchemical components alone. Geralt can learn the formulae of potions by reading various books available across the Witcher's world. He also needs to learn about how to extract ingredients from a herb or a monster before he extracts it. Potions also can only be prepared by meditating. So if you need a certain potion before a fight, you will need to meditate and mix the potion before it's ready. Potions can last for several hours to a day so preparing in advance is once AGAIN rewarded in this game. Since the Witcher uses a dynamic day/night cycle, meditating can often become useful to skip time until a required point. Meditation can only be done at certain designated fireplaces when there's no monsters around. Meditation also serves as a portal for leveling up your stats. Leveling up in Witcher is rather unique. Instead of traditionally increasing stats, Geralt learns new abilities and in doing so he unlocks higher levels of expertise. The same applies for the Sign/Spells upgrades too. The Witcher's character customization is relatively complex enough to please most RPG fans. Questing is another aspect where the Witcher truly shines. There are often two or more ways to finish a general storyline related quest each leading to a potentially different outcome. Even basic bounty-hunting quests have an added layer of uniqueness surrounding it. If you're tasked to kill three vampires and bring their hearts as a proof just killing three vampires won't do the trick. You'll need to look up in books before hand with the town's booksellers to see if they've got any information regarding how to extract vampire's hearts. The game only hints you in this and there's always little to no hand-holding involved in most of the quests. The game respects its gamers' intelligence and doesn't treat them like a low-IQ idiot. As if it weren't enough already to further demonstrate the talent that these newbie Polish developers have within them, the Witcher has some absolutely fantastic storyline quests that with the added role-playing component strike pure gold. There's a detective quest that runs central through the second chapter and with the game's heavy/moody atmosphere it often resembles a fantasy film-noir of sorts. There is another quest that involves an autopsy of a dead body which can lead to wildly different conclusions all depending upon how smart and observant the player is and how much he has researched regarding the biological abnormalities. There are a couple of more brilliant quests that one doesn't generally come across in RPGs and it's refreshing to see them in one. The game rewards you with a rare degree of satisfaction found in RPGs when you complete such smartly designed quests successfully. The Witcher's story is broken across 5 chapters excluding a Prologue and an Epilogue. It tells the tale of Geralt of Rivia as he travels in search of a mysterious mage who has stolen the Witchers' secrets. A relatively simple premise breaks into something more devious and soon Geralt finds himself caught up to the neck in political skullduggery. Corruption, lies, betrayal are the mere beginning of this rich enjoyable tale. The game doesn't hesitate from presenting player with an array of moral dilemmas none of which fall into the good/evil category of the Fables and Mass Effects. In fact, Witchers' moral dilemmas often don't fall into even Dragon Age's "relatively good and relatively bad" system. Rather in the Witcher, everyone is evil and selfish and it's upto you to judge whose evil is apparently greater. It's often hard to judge none so greater than the end of the Chapter 1 which poses one of the most complex moral dilemmas I've come across in a game. The narration also takes a couple of risks half-way through which pays off in rather surprising ways. Witcher's narration can be hectic when it wants to but it can also slow it down to a calming stroll when it wants to.Breath-taking in both scope and execution, the Witcher's story is one of its key strengths. The world is also highly believable and dynamic. Besides a dynamic day/night and weather cycle, the NPC behavior is something that deserves a mention. When it rains, the NPCs take cover under a roofed passageway or run for shelter. They just don't walk around pretending everything's normal. They also go about their daily chores (not to the same level of sophistication as in Elder Scrolls games) and slowly retire to home or to tavern when night falls. Since this is made on a pre-console BioWare era engine, the player has freedom to kill any NPCs that don't directly break a quest. This can be occasionally useful for getting into areas that you usually aren't allowed into. In that sense, the Witcher is certainly quite open-ended compared to the newer BioWare games. All of this may lead one to believe that Witcher is a perfect RPG in nearly every sense. Unfortunately that is not the case. The Witcher is plagued with problems that it inherits from it's own Euro-RPG genre--namely clunky controls, broken quests and glitches galore. The fact that the Witcher is made on an engine that is almost crumbling under Witcher's modifications doesn't help it's case. Crashes, graphical glitches still exist even in the Enhanced Edition. You'll occasionally run into broken quests just because you didn't reach some point at the proper point in the story. Witchers' multi-act narration kinda escalates the questing issues. Some quests get carried forward to other acts but there's almost no way to finish them since you can't access that particular area you were in the previous chapter. This leads to making your journal look a lot messier and crowded than it should be. Add to this the controls. The Witcher was modified to a massive extent to make it seem like an action game. SEEM like one. Unfortunately Witcher's dodging is clunky and animations often don't match the damage you sustain. All of this is quite simply because Witcher is still a turn-based affair given an action-RPG polish over it. The illusion works for most of the time but when it does break one's frustration is justified. One of the major overhauls in Enhanced Edition is the vast improvement in the Polish to English translation. The original's dialogues sometimes made little to no sense and this lead to a decline in the quality of it's rich storyline. It was a disappointing aspect of the original. However CD Projekt decided to do something about that and retranslated and re-recorded over 5000 lines for the Enhanced Edition. Many of these lines are meant for Geralt and one can immediately sense a much clearer sarcasm in the retranslated dialogues. Some of the story and quests also make greater sense than they did in the original. The Witcher is a rare beast in nearly every sense. Exuding a rare degree of confidence and ambition that few of it's fellow Euro-RPGs have shown over the years, it exhibits the developer, CD Projekt's pedigree and understanding of what works in RPGs and what doesn't. Their emphasis on the often-ignored aspects of planning and strategy as well as in introducing a rare form of moral complexity is commendable. Their balancing of magic as a support system rather than a complete destroyer of enemies is another plus point in their favour. They also don't miss the key aspects of RPGs-the storytelling and decision-making and come out with some highly memorable quests. The game stumbles at a lot of places and it does require a bit of patience to overcome it's Euro-RPG inherited rough edges and clunkiness. The Witcher ultimately could have been a lot more if it knew how to iron out it's irregularities and address its shortcomings. It certainly doesn't lack the ambition nor does it lack confidence and for a large part of the game it successfully executes its unique elements into a memorable role-playing game of a high caliber.

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.