Overall, it's a story well worth playing through, and the final ending can differ in various ways depending on Geralt's actions. I'd love to elaborate, but it's all quite firmly planted in spoiler territory. She's a badass, interesting, entirely likeable character, and her few sections feel more tense than the majority of Geralt's ventures. The moments when players take control of Geralt's adopted daughter Ciri are what really shined for me, though. For instance, the Bloody Baron excels as a self-appointed warlord with a spotty past, and even the less-nuanced, smaller characters like lowlife gang leader Whoreson Junior add welcome spice. Old friends like Zoltan, Dandelion and various other Witchers help make his path in life more than an all-out slaughterfest, and there's a good supporting cast from all walks of life for him to butt heads with. There are plenty of well-written characters encountered during his travels, and there are even a few that don't want to stick a knife in his guts. That said, Geralt's journey remains interesting in a multitude of ways. The spells provided (known as signs) do little to help liven up the generally samey combat. The skill trees aren't varied enough, the AI is too predictable, and Geralt's brand of flashy swordsmanship removes the immediacy between pressing a button and watching him stab something in the face. The combat, whilst undeniably better than previous Witcher titles, still isn't good enough to remain interesting throughout a game of this size. One contributing factor to this fatigue is that even though there are usually story snippets attributed to them, many quests require only a perfunctory investigation before killing monsters or putting bad guys in their place. I'm glad I did because the payoff was worth it, but bloody hell… The Witcher 3 came much closer to being permanently shelved than I'd like to admit. I thought I'd be back to it in a few days, but those days became weeks before I mustered up enough enthusiasm to return. In fact, quest burnout had set in so strongly that I ended up taking a break from the game, and hopping back on the wagon took significantly more effort than expected. By the time I arrived at the game's fourth area (Skellige) I had to start ignoring all the secondary quests and points of interest on the map or I'd have lost my damn mind. The problem is that there's so damn many of these jobs that their pursuit eventually becomes immensely boring. Now everything takes place in a huge-and by huge I mean bloody massive-open map, with many opportunities to stray from the beaten path and engage in a near-countless number of sidequests, minigames and impromptu expeditions.Īt first this expanded scope is great, providing players with dozens of reasons to gallop across the land, righting wrongs (or possibly wronging rights), getting into scraps with fearsome beasts, clearing bandit camps, rescuing captives, and more.
One of the most obvious changes over the previous installment (aside from the realtime beard growth) is that the world is no longer tightly constrained to small areas with limited opportunities for exploration. It is admittedly quite weird that Geralt (the most feared and infamous Witcher in all the land) is constantly antagonized by idiot peasants who couldn't fight their way out of a paper bag, but hey. The voice acting is of a generally high standard, and little things like how characters react during dialogue does a lot to lend the interactions an air of realism. It's a rough-and-tumble dark fantasy with plenty of blood, guts, occasional torture and plenty of casual racism being flung around by the inhabitants. Unsurprisingly, given CD Projekt Red's track record, the level of detail lavished on The Witcher 3 is exceptional. If nothing else, Geralt's life is never simple or boring. Yen's not his real goal, though-he needs her help to find his adopted daughter who's being chased by a murderous group of ne'er-do-wells known as the Wild Hunt. The White Wolf's been traveling here and there since the close of Witcher 2, and now he's on a quest to track down his old flame, Yennefer of Vengerberg. WTF Thinking Geralt had named his horse after Vernon Roche for the first ten hours or so. LOW The combat remains lamentably dull, and there's a ton of it. HIGH Going on one hell of a bender in the company of some old friends.