REVIEW

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review

by Sam Foxall, May 23rd, 2015

After some delays, CD Projekt RED’s magnum opus, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, has finally graced our presence. Is it the grand finale to this high fantasy trilogy or is it a disappointing climax?

Just a disclaimer before we begin, I am coming to this review as a non-seasoned Witcher fan. I played about 3 hours of The Witcher 2 before giving it back to a friend and have no great investment in the series past thinking it is something I needed to give a proper go. I also played on the PS4 version of the game, so I can’t comment on any aspects of the PC version or any technical problems there. Sorry PC chaps, I’m a dirty console gamer.

So, seeing as I have no real knowledge of The Witcher series past vague memories of the second game’s opening, I should in theory be a prime candidate to give you a review which is devoid of any rampant fanboyism and cut to the heart of what I think of the game. The first thing to note is that you do not have to be a long-time fan of The Witcher series to play The Witcher 3. While it follows the continuing adventures of Geralt and other characters from previous Witcher games, you do not have to have an in-depth knowledge of the past games to enjoy it. It will, of course, be more enjoyable if you know the past relationship between Triss and Geralt for example, but it is not essential. As for the actual plot, it has Geralt on the search for Cirilla, his adopted daughter and pupil who was in training to become a Witcher. She is now being hunted down by various parties including the Wild Hunt, a band of nightmarish knights who look like the offspring of the Nazgul and Dementors dressed up in Darkwraith armour, and it is up to Geralt to find her before she falls into the wrong hands. While it may be a fairly basic set up, the plot soon expands outwards, as Geralt is dealing with emperors, hunting down giant beasts and getting wrapped up in all sorts of political intrigue as he looks for Cirilla.

This is where my first (of many) grievances pops up concerning The Witcher 3. The story and characters are all quite well written, with there being a healthy mix between hard hitting, grim goings on and funny or more tender moments throughout the game. The problem is that none of it is very original or profound in any way. From the stuff I’d heard about The Witcher series, its writing was supposed to be absolutely phenomenal but upon playing it, it doesn’t go past being pretty good. The actual universe is like any other ‘mature’ fantasy universe, with there always being racism towards elves or dwarves, there is always an evil analogue to the Catholic Church who is holding some kind of Inquisition and everyone swears a lot because that’s mature. Again, don’t get me wrong, none of it is necessarily bad. Geralt treads the line of making humorous wisecracks whilst being the hardened monster slayer to great effect, while most of the supporting cast is also written well but it just doesn’t set the world on fire. You will feel like if you have devoted any time into reading, watching or playing mature fantasy material, there is a constant feeling that you have been through this world and done these quests so many times before.

That extends to the game’s visual design as well. I mean, the lighting is beautiful and the world is certainly massive and clearly had a lot of effort go into it but you’ve seen this medieval setting done to death. You’ve travelled round that motte and bailey castle, you delved into that crypt or travelled through the massive market town so many times before that the overriding feeling whilst playing The Witcher 3 is déjà vu. Besides a couple of monster designs, the overall aesthetic of The Witcher 3 is pretty standard fantasy fare, lacking any crazy architecture or weapon designs to set it apart from The Elder Scrolls, Dragon Ages and Dragon’s Dogmas of this world. So, rather than being wowed by the vastness of Novigrad, I just felt underwhelmed that I had been round this city before in countless other titles.

Novigrad certainly look pretty, but you’ve seen the same city in so many other fantasy stories.

That’s what really underlines my whole experience with The Witcher 3. Everything about it either never goes further than a ‘pretty good’ while other aspects of it have been done in RPGs so much better. Take the massive world as an example. Yes, it is clear that there is tons of stuff for you to do and a lot of work has been put it to make it look as it does, but is all this content actually worth playing? Most of the side areas are similar events to anything you would see in an open world RPG like killing bandit camps or defeating a tough enemy to gain a special chest that the spectre of repetition hangs over the whole experience. You do also have the diversion of gwent, a collectible card game which allows you to play against traders and special NPCs throughout the world. However, when starting your adventures into the world of medieval Hearthstone, your starter deck is so bad compared to all of the NPCs that you’ll end up losing most of your games. Moreover, the game is based on the player drawing one hand at the start of the match, then only getting to draw more cards depending on card or faction ability, making it that if you get a bad starting hand, that match is pretty much a write off. The Witcher 3 seems to have the opposite effect to Skyrim, where I prefer to do the main story quests, as they are very well crafted and all carefully link back together no matter which path you take, while the side quests usually follow the same exact pattern. Go to an area, talk to someone, use Witcher Sense in another area and then kill something.

Speaking of Witcher Sense, this mechanic is one of the most irritating things about The Witcher 3. You can clearly tell it was copied off Assassin’s Creed’s Eagle Vision and Arkham Asylum’s Detective Mode, yet it replicates none of the fun of using those two modes. You have to use it in practically every quest and the application of it is not only boring, but a pain in the arse to use. You have to scout out an area for small red points of interest, but the blurry filter that the game uses for Witcher Sense is so off-putting that it makes seeing smaller objects difficult to find, making the task of searching for objects in an area a complete chore. Again, it would be fine if Witcher Sense was used maybe every once in 5 missions, but you have to use it in practically every quest in exactly the same way. It is not fun, it isn’t innovative in any way, it is just a lazily copied mechanic.

This leads me onto the combat, which for me, is the weakest part of The Witcher 3 by a country mile. While every other part of the game may feel repetitive, there is at least a feeling that a lot of effort and polish went into making all of that content. This is not the case for the game’s combat, which feels sloppy, robotic and incredibly janky. Attack animations don’t feel smooth in any way, the sound upon hitting a foe gives no feeling to the weight or power of your weapon swing and hit detection, especially against larger monsters, seems all over the place. Your attacks will land and not seem to make any impact on a monster and vice versa, with a griffin’s claw swipe seemingly not landing on Geralt, but doing a large chunk of damage and inflicting bleeding on you. It is clear that The Witcher’s combat system was designed for fighting either one big enemy or maybe a group of 2 to 3 small enemies, as the fighting descends into a complete mess whenever you fight a large group of people. You have problems with the camera randomly selecting and deselecting targeted enemies, while defending against enemies from multiple angles is a lesson in futility, as Geralt turns like a rusting tank. Even when you are fighting a single enemy, fights never feel enjoyable. It is just a constant battle with the wonky camera and Geralt’s languid movement.

Fights do go quicker providing you have prepared before the battle but again, this amounts to oiling your blade with the appropriate oil and making sure you have the right potions equipped to your hotbar. This is not exactly reinventing the wheel, you would prepare appropriately before any battle in any RPG, the only difference in The Witcher 3 is that more focus is put on it. This preparation would usually only take a couple of seconds, but the game’s badly designed inventory system makes applying buffs take much longer than it should. Like the game’s writing, the inventory system seems overdesigned, with there being way too many submenus in the way of getting to the item you want or selecting the potions for the battle ahead.

The best fights happen between you and monstrous humanoids.

For every good decision The Witcher 3 makes, there seems to be an equal and opposite bad decision to weigh it down. The voice acting is fantastic, with there actually being some Brummie accents in the mix which makes me very happy but there are many cases where there is an overabundance of fluff dialogue. The world is graphically stunning but the visual design is incredibly boilerplate. There are loads of convenient touches like potions auto replenishing if you have strong alcohol in your inventory or your horse following paths if you hold down the sprint button, but many of the game’s core systems contain irritating missteps. There are also a fair share of glitches, including NPCs randomly levitating in the air, underwater enemies swimming up through the land at random and enemies wandering into shot and dying right in the middle of cutscenes. More often than not, it will ruin a poignant moment, as a horse walks into shot or soldiers materialise to let out a sudden death scream and collapse in a heap right in the middle of some important dialogue.

It therefore results in a game which clearly has had the effort put in and could theoretically a masterpiece, but there are so many mistakes and bad decisions that it can be nothing more than pretty good. This is a great shame as you can tell that CD Projekt RED have poured their heart and soul into The Witcher 3, yet it still has some glaring issues which mar the overall experience. Moreover, CD Projekt RED are a company who still treat their customers with a great amount of respect in an increasingly cutthroat industry, so they should receive your money but they have ultimately created a game, which maybe without the current fervour around it and the general good feeling towards the developers, would be considered as just a pretty decent open world RPG.

If you are a Witcher fan, you already have this game and love everything about it. If you are not a Witcher fan yet are interested in what all the fuss is about, I would give it a look but to lower your expectations. Many people have hyped this game up to high heaven and while in a perfect world it may deserve it, it is simply not as fantastic as many are claiming it to be.