My main concern when I decide to pick up an RPG is making sure it's made by a trustworthy developer. RPGs are a tempestuous kind, they often have bugs and problems shipped with it, even the ones made by the so called top developrs of the genre. Sure, The Wither's developer is unknown and the game is not free of mishaps, though h I guess we can account CD Projekt Red as a developer to look forward when it comes to RPGs, and the problems can be overcome. Overall The Witcher is amazing and stands as one of the best RPGs launched in recent years.
Crashing, freezing, save problems, those are not new to the RPG world, and The Witcher might come packed with some of them. After many several bad experience--some worse--I learned to stand them as hardly a complex game like this will play smoothly for everyone. The version I have to play is the Enhanced Director's Cut Edition, which features an overall overhaul as well as no censorship, it's definitely the version to be played if you're interested.
You don't create your own character here, you play as the witcher known as Gerald. A witcher is a professional monster slayer, a monster mercenary who roams the land seeking work and making a buck while he's at it. Gerald is known for having lifted the curse from a princess, earning the gratitude of the King, King Foltest. At the beginning of the game Gerald is brought back to Kaer Morhen, a witchers' stronghold, completely worn-out carried by a wooden cart. He was once dead but brought back to life. He's also a sort of a mutant, he has a clear strength disparity over regular humans, is immune to infectious diseases and infertile. Gerald is a bold-looking individual. His actions--or the player's, depending how you see it--will effect the role you play with friends, the world, and quests. One day, in Kaer Morhen, a guy named Avar Javed and his assistant known simply as 'The Professor' steal secrets kept in the base's laboratory. It's then that the remaining witchers decided to hunt them down and retrieve the lost scrolls.
The Witcher has a darker edge as its native primary prospect. It depicts a state full of inequalities, corruption, diseases, prostitutes, thieves, and such. The choices are said to inherit consequences beyond the usual bad/evil dichotomy, though not evidently apparent at all times, it does give you that feeling. With games tending to appear more and more realistic each day it's not essentially hard to succeed. The main character might pose as the best example of what the game strives for, it strays much away from the perfect hero so easily found in RPGs. He's always in for some gold, you constantly get the feeling he cares more about how much he's going to profit with all the chaos than with the results seen as a bigger picture.
The main story is certainly well-presented, even though you have several side-objectives, most quests relate in a way to the witchers primary goal, which evolves within time but mostly has to do with Javed's criminal organization called Salamandra. That's the thing with this kind of game, the quests might not tell at first, but most are related to the main goal, maybe by finding something by mere chance or some useful information after one or other favor. The players decisions play important role, one can simply ignore seeking an old lady's lost grandson lost in the swamp, though the experience or information retrieved in case of success could be useful. The themes are often more mature than most RPGs, rapes cases to be avoided, whores getting beat up by local trouble-seeking rowdies, mind-controlling vampires whoring women at a brothel, girl committing suicide with poison. The good old dungeon crawling is available as well, the dungeons aren't big and will be done is less than 15 minutes but at least there are a whole lot of them.
There's two types of controls, an overview control where you click where you want to go, and a WASD keys for movement along with the mouse to aim. The left mouse click is used to attack, chaining attacks wields greater damage each time and requires proper timing. The right mouse click uses the special attacks. There are 5 different special attacks and you go finding them along the adventure, the two most effective are the fire blast and the wind blast, the first with a chance of burning the foe while the later having a chance to knock the enemy down. It also includes a trap spell, a shield--which could be useful at the right moments--and a mind-controlling spell for weaker, more susceptible for control enemies. Gerald has two types of swords as well, one made of steel and one made of silver, steel is more effective fighting humans while steel is better used against monsters.
To improve your character, experience points gathered turn into gold, silver and bronze medals after each level up and can be used to earn talents. These talents can upgrade Gerald's sword mastery, spells, status change percentage and overall strength. At the first levels only bronze talents are achievable, as you evolve silver and gold talents become available. Alchemy plays an important role as well, especially at higher difficulties, scrolls will tell the player what's needed for each potion or bomb to be made. Information gathering is taken seriously in The Witcher. To understand monsters books are needed and often give hints of how to battle them, about weak spots or which potion will give Gerald the advantage; some skinnable items--like tendons, bones, skin, membranes or any of the such--are only available when you have the knowledge about certain monster. The skinnable items are used in alchemy. Plants also need books for research, and no unknown specimen can be picked up without Gerald knowing exactly what he's placing his hands on.
Fortunately the menu browsing offers no trouble for the player, everything in hand for consulting, indicating which ones have new never-read information. It might not appear so but it's incredibly important to have features like that. Each subject having its own page, full of information, quests stores and shown in a pleasing manner, with some sorting options. The inventory has three compartments, one for quest related items, one for regular and one for alchemical items. I'm quite satisfied with how the developers has managed the important aspects for an RPG, the level of polish is high, especially if you take in consideration such an unknown team was responsible for such a great feat.
It's interesting to start noticing how some aspects play in real life. The Witcher treats about subjects like racism, racial superiority and ends justifying means, religion fundamentalism. The story is certain something to look forward to in this game. It's not perfect, has some holes, can't manage to stay strong during the whole experience, but still amazes if seen overall. The fighting system, which always haunts some RPGs, is basic, is action-ridden, and just needs time to get used to and start being enjoyable. Graphics, sound and atmosphere, all come together to create a nice experience, Certainly The Witcher ranks up there as one of the best RPGs in recent times.
