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http://gryphonosiris.blogspot.com/2010/01/witcher-enhanced-edition-good-bad-and.htmlThe Witcher: Enhanced Edition – The Good, the Bad, and the Neutrality
For those of you who know me in real life you probably know I’ve had this particular game for a while. I should have written a review up for it sooner; however my professional pride requires me to finish a game before I can say I know enough about it to do a complete review. Besides being distracted by several other games, jobs and generally life itself I finally did sit done and play the game to the very end. How does it stack up? Well, you’ll see,
SYNOPSIS
Unless you grew up in Poland or speak fluent Polish you probably never heard of Andrzej Sapkowski and his book series about the Witcher, Geralt of Rivia. Geralt is a professional monster hunter, a Witcher. Renowned for their neutrality, their abilities with the sword, their skills in magic, and ways with the ladies the Witchers are warriors who undergo harsh training and are finally subjected to mutations that make them an unstoppable force in battle. In the game you play Geralt of Rivia, probably one of the most famous Witchers of all; partially for his exploits, but also because he died trying to stop a massacre. Seemingly revived by magic you have no knowledge or yourself, your past, or why you now live. All Geralt knows is how to fight and how to be a Witcher. When the Witcher fortress is attacked and precious secrets of mutation are stolen it is up to Geralt to find those who have done this and bring them to justice at the tip of his sword.
THE GOOD
Visually, the game is beautiful. Towns, cities, forests and swamps are rendered with an excellent sense of realism and natural design. In the towns and cities people go along on their daily business, guards make patrols, children play in the street and in some areas even musicians will play. Weather effects also change the behavior of the NPC’s. For example if it starts raining the regular civilians will duck under roofs, run home, and generally try to stay dry, while characters like Guards will complain about the weather while they continue to run their patrols. Character models are also wonderfully rendered to give a life like sense to the varied people you meet. Having seen the pictures from the ‘original’ edition I can tell you that CDProjekt did an excellent job polishing the character art for the Enhanced Edition.
Combat consists of an over-head view where you click on your target to attack. You have two types of swords that can be used. One is the Witcher’s silver blade for use against monsters and other nasties, and the steel swords to be used against humans, wolves, ect. Both swords have three combat styles for use against heavily armored foes, fast foes, or a group of enemies. Along with those two weapons you can also carry a single handed blade like a knife or small axe, and a heavy weapon, however neither of these allow you to use the before mentioned three combat style. Geralt also has magic at his disposal which ranges from a blast that can knock down enemies and some obstacles, to a burst of fire, and even magical traps. To enhance your abilities in combat you have bombs, oils for your blades for certain effects, and potions that can be ingested to augment your Witcher skills. The potions do have a price, however; since they are made from varied wild and poisonous plants and animals they build up toxicity in Geralt’s system. Ingest too much and you can very well kill yourself.
The plotline of the game involves you searching for those who stole the Witcher secrets; however, along the way you do many a side job for the locals for coin, new potions, experience, and occasionally the companionship of a lady. The characters you meet range for the Zealot members of the Order of the Flaming Rose, the non-human freedom fighters, a rakish bard named Dandelion, even the Lady of the Lake from Arthurian myth. When you interact with the different characters and groups there really are no good/bad scenarios as no side is truly better or worse than the other. For example, the Order of the Flaming Rose is protecting humans from the non-human freedom fighters; however the Order uses fear tactics and executes innocents if they get in their way. On the flip side of the coin the non-human resistance are trying to win back the land that humans stole from them so long ago; except they fervently hate all humans and will kill any that get in their way, armed or not. Choices are less about choosing a morally right or wrong point of view as nothing is so black and white in the game. Actions that you make early in the game can have long running consequences later on and effect the standings you have with the different factions.
THE BAD
First off, if you didn’t like Dragon Age: Origins, or any top down RPG, you’ll probably hate this game. At its core, The Witcher is a classic RPG with everything that people like, or hate, of that style of game. Characters send you on fetch quest for a certain number of monsters ‘whatever’ in order to pay you for your services. In order to collect these certain parts you need to purchase books to allow you to research that creature in order to properly find that particular part. Along with this you also spend quite a bit of time collecting wild plants in order to make your potions, so if you aren’t big on the idea of having to collect flowers this probably isn’t the game for you.
The big problem I’d sometimes notice during the game is when you try to loot a body, monster, ect that sometime you need to rotate the camera to a certain angle in order for the interface to know that you wanted to go through that particular corpse’s pockets. Along that same line, in order to rotate the camera you had to move your mouse to the very edges of the screen. Unfortunately the edges were also where your inventory interface, weapon interface, and even your clock were, making in semi-frustrating if you wanted to just eat an apple but instead flipped the world 180 degrees.
THE BAD
Well, considering the game does have swords there is a lot of blood and dismemberment. There is also drinking a game you can play which result in Geralt getting thoroughly sauced and making your screen becomes sickeningly blurry. As mentioned before Geralt LOVES the ladies, considering that he is sterile and immune to all diseases can you blame him? You can have encounters with a variety of women from lowly peasants, prostitutes, a sorceress, even a spoiled princess. While you don’t see anything with these encounters and only hear something in another you will get a card showing a picture of your conquest. These can range from the cheeky to the obscene, and in the normal American versions they are all censored. However if you download the Directors cut patch from the website it unlocks the European version of the game for you. Besides making these pictures rather naughty it also makes it so the Dryads no longer have their hair falling over their ‘attributes’.
Lastly for this section, there is also quite the cornucopia of swearing in the game. It ranges from the lowly seller of stolen goods who swears with every other word, to the spoiled princess and her bawdy jokes, to random characters in pubs and taverns who make statements about people’s mothers and what they do with dwarves.
CONCLUSION
An unexpected jewel of a game from a developer I had never heard of before out of Poland. Voice acting was good, game play was solid with an engaging storyline, and most importantly it was fun to play. Some minor complaints about the interface and language was a little excessive in places where it didn’t need to be. The whole thing about Geralt and the ladies is actually canon in the books, but just be warned about it if you are sensitive to that that sort of thing.
All in all it is a very good game, but not for everyone. If you don’t like this type of RPG you are better off skipping it. However if you are a fan of games like Dragon Age: or even World of Warcraft you might very well like The Witcher.
