With the conclusion of Geralt of Rivia’s story being released in just over a week, it seems necessary to look back at the roots of The Witcher series. The first game, The Witcher, was a completely unique experience. CD Projekt Red had created a world, plot and characters that really set the game apart from other western RPGs. There was no black and white, good and evil decisions to be made, and the whole game world seemed to carry on without you, leaving you behind if you aren’t careful.
The technical aspect of the combat is based around working out what the best technique is to use against each type of enemy. You have two main weapons; your silver witcher sword, which is most effective against supernatural creatures, and your steel sword, which works best when fighting humans, wolves, and other things with actual flesh. Once you know which sword to use, you have to choose a fighting style – fast, strong, or group. The fast fighting style lets you get hits on faster moving enemies, such as knife-wielding assassins, but doesn’t do so much damage. The strong style is much slower but deals considerably more damage, making it good against slower moving enemies. The group style uses wide, sweeping attacks that hit groups of enemies at once, which is helpful when Geralt gets surrounded by enemies. Having to think carefully about each encounter makes the game feel much more honest, in a way. If you get killed, it’s almost always your own fault. Usually, it comes down to badly planning an encounter – forgetting to take out the less threatening enemies before tackling the more difficult one in an area, for example. It never feels like the game has cheated you and you didn’t deserve to die.
The general questing aspects can get a little tedious at times. You’ll find yourself running from one side of the town to the other constantly on some quests, with little of interest besides plot and character development in between.
I found that when I had chance, I would do quests in the town areas at night, as that is when Geralt is likely to run into monsters or assassins. Running into enemies spices up the more boring quests, as well as gaining you more experience. On the subject of plot, I found the end-goal to be a fairly weak drive to progress. A large portion of the plot, particularly in the first half of the game, consists of Geralt asking various people what they know about the group of bandits called “Salamandra”. Luckily, the progression is rewarding in itself, so even if the plot goes over your head you’ll still have the drive to continue.
Overall, The Witcher Is a fantastic game, worthy of any RPG player’s time. It’s quite self-contained, too, and the mechanics and various other aspects differ quite dramatically to that of its sequel. It’s brilliantly optimised, too, meaning that even on a lower-to-mid-end PC or Laptop, it can run pretty smoothly. Though it comes across a little dated compared to other games of its time, it’s still a must-have for any PC gamer
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Did you play the original? Do you have fond memories of it? Are you looking forward to purchasing The Witcher III: Wild Hunt next week?