I have been long persuaded (pretty much since this game came out in 2007 so for 7 years now) by a close friend of mine to play this game as he touted it as an excellent action RPG and thoroughly enjoyed it so said I should play it. 7 years later, I finally did and it was very enjoyable indeed.
The Witcher starts off with you playing as Geralt of Rivea. You are a Witcher. A highly trained and genetically modified monster hunter. The game is set in a medievil-like era and starts proper with you and your Witcher buddies having their base attack by some jerks who steal the materials used to mutate normal humans into Witchers. You are understandably quite pissed about this and give chase.
And so begins a great trek across many kingdoms where you gather clues as to where said jerks have gone to. Encountering them here and there along the way before tracking them to their HQ. But that is almost as brief a summary as I put on my Facebook page and as usual, there is a lot more to it.
My brief plot summary
Being monster hunters, Witchers do tend to get involved in the affairs of others quite often but their policy is one of strict neutrality. They are not supposed to get involved in conflicts or pick sides. And Geralt in particular (much like myself) has an extreme distain for politics. Despite this policy, you as the player are given the choice to take sides many times in many different situations and it is these decisions that shape how the game will play out for you.
There is an ongoing war between the humans (championed by the knights of The Order of the Flaming Rose) and a race of elves called the Scoi'a'Tel. Many times you are given choices that will align you with one or the other although it is not always apparent when you are making the choice who you are siding with. There is also usually a 3rd course of action and that is one of neutrality or non involvement. The number of times you side with one force or the other will determine how events unfold and in particular your involvement in the final climactic battle between the 2 sides. Because, like I mentioned, it is not always obvious who's side, if any, you are picking, the choices themselves are often quite hard to make as it seems there is no real "right" answer or route a lot of the time and you just have to try to find the least bad or path of least resistance. But quite often, choices you make can come back to aid you making you grateful you picked that path or bite huge chunks out of your ass making you rather regret it.
The core of the game play is traditional western action RPG where you travel through areas asking questions, are given tasks, get into trouble and usually have to kill things to get out of said trouble. You gain experience as is the norm and level up to increase your stats. You can also pour skills into various areas such as magic, swordplay and agility. You are also given 2 swords. A steel one for humans and a silver one for monsters. Each is most effective against it's intended target and both can be used in 3 different combat styles:
- Single target: large slow and powerful swings for big bad enemies
- Fast target: small quick and weaker swings for smaller enemies who will dodge a lot
- Group targets: huge arcing and circular but weaker swings designed to hit everything round you when cornered by a group
These different sword styles as well as the ability to use magic make for some very interesting combat scenarios and except for a few isolated difficulty wall situations, the combat was all in all very enjoyable.
The Witcher proved to be a very enjoyable action RPG all in all. It is quite lengthly taking me over 25 hours to beat even going at a brisk pace and not doing many side quests. Do do more of these would raise the time a lot but there is a lot to this world the more you dig. I could easily recommend this to any fans of RPGs and am looking forward to the even more widely acclaimed sequel.
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