The Witcher (2007)

 

Genre: RPG | Players: 1 | Developer: CD Projekt Red

        In a crapsack medieval world where peasants are terrorized by monsters, bandits and an encroaching empire coming north to conquer the kingdoms, the peasants only recourse are Witchers; Humans enhanced with alchemy and a lifetime of training that give them a longer life, heightened senses and greater strength to hunt monsters. Witchers roam the land killing monsters or solving problems for a price, but they are a dying breed of warrior as the process to make witchers is both deadly and requires obscure arcane knowledge as well as regular humans fearing and shunning them despite the service they provide.

     A veteran witcher Geralt awakens in the forest close to his home fortress of Kaer Morhen, dazed and close to death. He is found by fellow witchers and taken home where a sorceress named Triss helps heal him. They are glad to see Geralt as he was thought to be dead for some time. Geralt has lost his memories, but before they can try to help him recollect bandits led by a rogue mage with a pet monster attack the fortress. Geralt and the witchers repel them with the help of Triss at the cost of the newest witcher recruits life and realize the mage managed to steal the knowledge and ingredients to the witcher process. Geralt sets off to hunt them down for revenge, to return the witcher secrets and to find out more about his past that he can't remember with the only clue being the insignia some of the bandits wore.

      The game looks like an early PS2 game and controls like a 90s point and click rpg despite being released a decade after. Aged as well as the sidequests where you collect sexual conquests as trading cards. Thankfully there is a 3rd control scheme you can select that uses mouse and keyboard with a fixed over the shoulder camera that makes it closer to a decent action game. The one click swordplay is very unengaging especially at first, but gets mildly better as you learn to switch sword-styles for different enemies. You can enhance your abilities with alchemy and books, but both require expensive materials. Some enemy parts needed for quests can't even be harvested unless the player has read the matching book first. You would think just rooting around in the corpses would be enough. Exploration is fairly open ended as Geralt travels around talking to NPCs looking for any paying work while investigating the main quest. The game is also plagued by a few bugs like character hair models that can't stay still and fly around like a flag in a storm, animations that don't load and random crashes. The characters and story are still quite good and may be enough to tough out the slog of the gameplay, but non hardcore fans may want to just watch a recap video or wait for the announced remake.

Buyer's Guide: An enhanced edition is available in most online storefronts that fixes bugs and removes the censorship that was in the original North American release. Can also wait for the announced remake by a new studio overseen by CD Projekt Red.

2 Bangin a witch near the mob tryin to kill her out of 5