Thursday, February 7th, 2008
Review: The Witcher
So I recently finished playing The Witcher by Polish developer CD Projekt. It’s a RPG in the same style as Neverwinter Nights, it even uses the same engine that was used in Neverwinter Nights 2. Luckily I played this game using the 1.2 patch and didn’t have to deal with the retail release version of the game. Because the game was released a bit premature, the reviews suffered and I’m sure the sales did as a result. Having never seen sales numbers released or never seeing it in a weekly top 10 sales chart I believe it hasn’t down all that well which is really too bad because with the 1.2 patch this game was very enjoyable and deserves more recognition. Early reviews harped on long load times and game crashing bugs. 1.2 addresses the crashing and the load times, but every time you enter and exit an area you are presented with a loading screen which slows down the game play a lot.
In 2007 this was the only notable single player RPG that was released for the PC and the only RPG I played except a brief return (and exit) to WoW. I was a huge fan of older Bioware games like Baldur’s gate and this is very reminiscent of those games. Besides using the same engine it follows the same game play principals, with the exception of the combat which is real-time and by clicking at the right time you can string together combos. The combat was a nice innovation and kept most battles entertaining switching between stances and trying to string combos with finishing moves and spells. A trade mark of Bioware’s games is the engaging storyline and well written dialogue. This is another area where The Witcher went right. The driving force of the story is racism between humans and non-humans and your main character is stuck in the middle throughout the game having to pick a side. During my play through I sided with the non-humans after being burnt by trying to turn a vampire whore nice. The human knight I was trying to help didn’t pay me and other human NPCs would always make snide remarks about me being a Wticher and not like them. Sick of their intolerance I turned against the Order of the Flaming Rose and slaughtered them all. Helping my elven and dwarven friends find their place in the world.
One of the large controversies over the game is the abilities to have sex with pretty much every woman in the game. It seems the women are only in the game in order for the main character to find a way to conquer them, which makes it the best mini-game inside the game (which there is a few). Every time you have a new conquest you get a tarot card with a picture of the woman minus some clothing. Unlike Team Fortress that tracks your achievements there is no way too see how many times your character has ‘scored’ which is too bad. As this kept the game entertaining and through the slower parts in the story and kept me playing the game.
If you are a fan of any of Bioware’s RPG’s I highly suggest picking up the Witcher. It’s the best RPG I have played in a long time on the PC, probably since World of Warcraft. If you can get past the load times you will be presented with a engaging story, interesting combat and a solid game play experience.
