The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (PC)

The conclusion to CD Projekt RED’s wunderkind RPG epic, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, is far from perfect: the game’s AI suffers from occasional seizures, sending NPC villagers and enemies alike into disarray; its inventory system is more complicated than is strictly necessary; the game suffers from odd, often times unpredictable, performance dips; and combat actually isn’t as exciting as was initially promised.

It’s safe to say then that CD Projekt RED have made a right mess of The Witcher 3. In fact, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

My review is, admittedly, late as all heck. But it’s afforded me the option of reviewing a more polished product, The Witcher 3 patched and updated, and what a game it is.

The story builds on the narrative of The Witcher 1 and 2: Assassins of Kings, following directly on after the events of The Witcher 2.

Geralt, the famous white haired protagonist of The Witcher series and all round badass, is in pursuit of Yennefer, the love of his life, and has been for some time.

After meeting up with Yennefer, who rather frustratingly seemed strangely unappreciative of Geralt’s long-winded search, Geralt is told that his and Yennefer’s adopted daughter, Ciri, has been kidnapped – her biological father, Emhyr var Emeris, the Emperor of Nilfgaard has tasked Geralt with locating and returning Ciri.

What follows is a tale of intrigue, betrayal, romance, mystery and a lot more. The game’s plot has all the makings of a great story, and CD Projekt RED execute it so brilliantly that it’s difficult to do anything but fall in love with The Witcher 3.

Rather unfortunately, as a result of its reliance on the narrative of prior games, there’s a lot of reference to characters and events lodged deep within the recesses of your memory that you won’t quite recall; that is to say: you’re going to struggle keeping track of just what is going on.

That said, The Witcher 3’s rich lore, intelligent construction, brilliant voice acting (minus the odd character or two) and fantastically told world will draw you in, in no time. Just keep a Wiki page open should you need to do a little research into just who a particular character is.

For those who can’t be bothered, or would rather rely on in-game resources, there are a number of carefully seeded books, notes and characters that will unfold the grand tale CD Projekt RED is trying to tell.

It means more time invested in the world of The Witcher 3, but worry not, every minute spent will be richly rewarded.

The game is chock-full of side-quests, points of interest, interesting characters and so much more that you’ll struggle to see it all on your first time through.

Invest more than 100 hours into The Witcher 3, and you’ll be lucky to see more than 70% of what the game has to offer.

Granted, side-quests vary in strength, and you’ll often feel like CD Projekt RED has just thrown in a number of additional activities for the sake of it, milking the size of the game so to speak.

But knowing full well that quality is far more preferable to quantity, a good majority of the game is narratively sublime. The world is just so big that there just happens to be an absurd number of things to do.

You need look no further than the card game Gwent as an example of that. Personally, I found the mini-game, a small portion of what the The Witcher 3 has to offer, more satisfying and gratifying than the likes of Hearthstone. And it’s just a silly little distraction by comparison.

Other aspects of the game aren’t quite as thought out, like an obnoxious alchemical/potion concocting mechanic, or the absurd number of herbs you need to collect to make the best use of potions (a serious time sink), but they never detract from The Witcher 3 to a point where you no longer want to use them, or they hurt the game.

Perhaps the only real detraction from the game is that combat isn’t quite where I wanted it to be. It’s a nice improvement over The Witcher 2, but it’s not enough to convince me that it’s anything more than a roll-click-simulator in many cases.

With the right signs (or spells), like Quen (a single-hit shield) and Axii (a hypnotic charm), you’ll have little to no problem avoiding a good majority of what The Witcher 3 has to throw at you.

Then all you need do is roll and stab until you’ve subdued practically anything and everything you might encounter.

That’s not to say that the game can’t be challenging, it most certainly will be.

But a lot of why the game can be so difficult, particularly on the harder difficulties, is the large number of enemies you’ll face at once, the high damage you sustain after single blow and how much health each enemy has.

For as well as you avoid taking damage, fights go on for so long sometimes that you’re bound to make a mistake, and that’s all it really takes for you to lose a fight.

The Witcher 3, however, has a neat trick to detract you away from some of its weaker spots; it looks, well, amazing.

In spite of the debacle over a graphical downgrade since first being demonstrated in years prior, The Witcher 3 looks unreal.

Vegetation is dense, textures incredibly detailed and each and every character or creature model you encounter will blow you away with the number of polygons and moving parts invested in them.

The weather comes and goes and the atmosphere practically oozes through your monitor. Throw in superb sound effects and a musical score you’d take on vacation, and you’ve got a presentation you have to see and hear to believe.

Consider this review the reason you buy The Witcher 3 the next time it’s being sold at a discount, simply because you can’t afford the full selling price.

Everyone who could afford it, has it.

It’s worth every rand and if it’s discounted, you simply have to have this game.