The Witcher 3 Review

The Wild Hunt doesn't exactly come screaming off the starting line. Compared to The Witcher 2, where you're immediately plunged headlong into a sexy story of intrigue and betrayal, this main quest can seem mundane, even perfunctory at times. But each time I stepped off the well-beaten path to blaze my own trail, it turned into a wild, open, exhilarating fantasy roleplaying experience, rife with opportunities to make use of its excellent combat. Even after over 100 hours with The Witcher 3, it still tempts me to press on – there’s so much more I want to learn, and hunt.

The Witcher 3 is as dense and deep as the other two games in the series in terms of RPG mechanics, and the overwhelmingly massive open-world environment has at once made that depth more intimidating, and in the long run, more rewarding. It’s difficult to express just how huge and open this world is: verdant, rolling fields liberally dotted with swaying foliage of every shape and size fill the space between loosely connected, ramshackle townships where people struggle to scrape by. A full day/night cycle and dynamic weather pull it all together, cementing The Witcher 3’s landscape as one of the most authentic-feeling open worlds I’ve ever seen. A handy minimap points you where you want to go, which might seem like a crutch, but honestly, without it, I’d have been hopelessly lost. That a world this size still feels so purposeful, and full of things to do is quite an achievement.

The one caveat on all that though, is the technical performance on the PS4 version I played for review. 30 frames per second was sometimes too much to ask, transitions between The Witcher 3’s two main maps are just a bit too long, and minor glitches do pop up from time to time. None of it ever impacted gameplay in any meaningful way, thought it did compromise the beauty of the experience ever so slightly.

This new open-world map obviously has ramifications for the structure of the story, and though there are flashes of greatness, the main story is ultimately the least fulfilling part of The Witcher 3. You might call it another case of The Elder Scrolls Syndrome. Our tale begins as a multi-continent search for Geralt’s long-lost lover Yennifer, and Ciri, his surrogate daughter. My single biggest issue though, is that it never becomes much more: the overly long main story is essentially just Geralt running errands for people in exchange for information on Ciri’s whereabouts. It effectively maintains focus and momentum, but it feels more like a wild goose chase than an intriguing mystery to unravel, like the one we got in Assassins of Kings.

Thanks to lots of excellent dialogue and voice acting there is some emotional payoff along the way, but it’s mixed in with too much padding in the form of meaningless fetch quests and collectathons. Every time I felt like I was on the verge of an interesting revelation, I’d have to suddenly stop to escort a goat, or search for a lost, narcoleptic dwarf. Heck, even Geralt can barely hide his frustration with the constant parade of menial tasks at times.

It’s also worth noting that though you will get along fine without playing the first two games in the series, without the context provided by the Witcher novels, Ciri is more or less a complete stranger until the last quarter of the journey, which made it difficult to care about finding her as much as The Witcher 3 expected me to – especially given the slew of intriguing characters who are relegated to supportive background roles.

Speaking of Signs, they’ve been improved across the board with alternate casting modes, and a wider variety of upgrades, making them impactful in every fight. It’s actually entirely viable to build a sign-focused Geralt. I played him a lot like a Jedi actually, able to influence people’s minds in conversation, a powerful long range “force” push, and the ability to reflect crossbow bolts back to the sender (a returning ability that’s been made far more usable). The new skill system provides a good deal of flexibility while still rewarding players who want min/max for the best builds, and weapon and armor crafting is as deep and nuanced as ever, if not more so.

All of this shines through in The Witcher 3’s responsive, brutal real-time combat. Where combat in this series has up until this point felt vague and even a bit clunky, here it’s so fluid and satisfying that I walk around hoping for bandits to jump me just so I can repel their attacks with magical barriers, parry their blows with uncanny precision, and relieve them of life and/or limb with the occasional gory flourish. The Witcher has always done a great job of making me feel that I’ve outsmarted my foes, but for the first time here, controlling Geralt feels tangibly badass with every successful fight.

THE VERDICT

Though the straightforward and fetch-quest-heavy main story overstays its welcome, the option of joyfully adventuring through a rich, expansive open world was always there for me when I’d start to burn out. Even if the plot isn’t terribly interesting, the many characters who play a part in it are, and along with the excellent combat and RPG gameplay, they elevate The Witcher 3 to a plane few other RPGs inhabit.