The Witcher: Enhanced Edition

You are Geralt of Rivia, but you start unconcious and with no memory of anything. Early on you will learn that you are one of a small number of witchers, a not entirely human kind of monsterslayer, immune to most diseases and exceptional in combat. You also notice that even though you don’t remember other people they will still remember you, and many are surprised that you are alive contrary to several eyewitnesses of your demise. However, bandits attack the home base of the witchers and leaves with important alchemical equipment. The remaining witchers split up in search of the bandits, and the trail you follow leads to the city of Vizima where you meet a magically gifted boy. From this point you gradually uncover a large and relatively complex plot ultimately involving the future of all mankind, and you also rediscover yourself of course. The Witcher is a game with some very good aspects: The game world is immersive, the story is surprisingly deep both in that it is not immediately obvious what impacts will follow from the choices the player makes and that nothing is straightforward, and most of the environments are nice visually making the game very atmospheric. Bad sides of the game are the rather clumsy fighting dynamics, a somewhat uneven tempo in the storyline progression, and that some of the romantic parts feel rather lecherous. But yes, clearly there is stronger good than bad sides in my feelings for the game. I particularly enjoyed the way the story in The Witcher is laid out. It’s very open in a way that would not be possible in a game with a more generous character creator. In this game you are Geralt, but what that actually means is determined by the choices you make within the story and not by any initial choices before playing. That is really refreshing compared to other games in the role-playing genre.

The combat is simple rythm based and rock paper scissors styles stances. It's simple and satisfying. I love studying my enemy, making preperations and finally engaging in combat with the advantage. It captures the idea of being a Witcher. The story, writing and atmosphere are the real reasons to play though. Every character you can talk to is interesting in some way. From powerful mages to peasants. The world of The Witcher 3 is here albeit not as pretty. You can really see their vision here it's kind of incredible. I love CDPR. Hope they never change.

I played The Witcher for the first time a couple of years ago and I found it to be highly engaging and enjoyable. Its gritty, low-fantasy setting is a refreshing break from the usual fantasy cliches. The game is really a masterpiece of writing and character development, which where its true strength is. The plot is very well-written and I don't think I have played another RPG that has so many interesting, distinct and memorable characters. As well as the major ones - Geralt, Triss, King Foltest, Azar Javed - which are all amazingly well done, many of the minor characters are also very memorable, such as Jethro, Coleman, Abigail. I see a lot of people ripping on the graphics and combat mechanics. To me, the graphics hold up very well and didn't impair my enjoyment of the game at all. I have thoroughly enjoyed older games that have far worse graphics. Unless you are someone who absolutely has to have cutting-edge graphics to enjoy a game, you will be fine. The combat I also found to be totally fine. It is a bit simple and can get a bit repetitive, but it flows very well and is perfectly adequate to make the game enjoyable. A couple of minor gripes I had were that they re-used some of the character models a bit too much (although all of the major ones are unique). Also, the game is a little long and drags a bit in places. I remember one chapter where there seemed to be a lot of trekking to and fro between the town and the swamp. Also, I found the epilogue to be a bit of an anticlimax. After you beat the real final bosses, you have to go through a fairly long, boring and sloggy level, at the end of which you face a couple of trivial enemies. I guess it represents taking care of 'unfinished business', but it seemed like a bit of a pointless way to drag the game out. However, those are minor points. Overall, the game fully deserves 5 stars. It is an absolute classic that any fan of story-driven action RPGs must play.

the story, alchemy system, and everything in this game is great. except the combat xD

I like this game, but at the same time I find it boring at times. There are also STILL, after 14 years... some translation errors in the game that are a little bit annoying, like the meaningless "Skinnable items available" that pops up relatively often! The worst bug in the game is perhaps the problems people are having getting inside the hospital towards the end of the game. I had the same problem playing the game three-four years ago. And the bug is STILL not fixed 14 years after release! The game contains FAR to much game padding in the form of far to little capacity for items and weapons that leads to having to spend far to much time on managing your inventory. There is also FAR to much walking back and forth to investigate, questioning people, getting quest items and so on. Monsters like Drowners respawns to boredom and beyond in some areas like "The swamp". It gets boring when you have killed the "1000'th" Drowner... Some of the extra missions seems to be "prototypes" (missing voice overs and not much to do for example) and are mainly recycled areas from the game itself. The fighting is basically just simple "Point and click". The game have to load every single time you walk in/out/upstairs/downstairs somewhere. Crashed three times, but I never lost any Save Games. To me the graphics looked OK, at least considering that the game is 14 years old. All in all I rate this game to 3/5. Mainly because of the boring game padding. But if a lot of walking back and forth, tedious inventory managing and fighting a lot of the same monsters over and over and over and... does not bore you, and if you take into consideration the ridiculous low price of the game, you might rate this game to at least 4/5, and perhaps even 5/5 if you do not compare the game 1 to 1 against more recent games.