OMG DAT DOWNGRADE!
Who cares?
You're missing out on the best open RPG of all time because of a graphical downgrade that doesn't matter because you still have a 760? What is
wrong with you? Besides, consoles are weak and games are cross-platform, get used to it.
Ahem...
So, The Witcher 3 (TW3)...you might remember my huge review of Dragon Age : Inquisition in which I was very mean to the game. If you have not had the pleasure or if you wish to have a second go at reading that wall of text,
feel free to do so here.
I wasn't mean to it without reason. The graphics were pretty, the combat could be pretty fun and the crafting system was almost good, if it weren't for the fact that armor and weapon models were too few in number. Those were all the saving graces it had. The game was huge, but ultimately empty and meaningless. The Inquisition was basically Thedas' version of FedEx. The meaningless collectibles were large in number, as were the fetch quests, while the meaningful choices and quests were few. The soundtrack was entirely forgettable and the companions blew. Let's not even mention the fucking story.
I am pleased to announce that Witcher 3 is open world done right. Well, somewhat. It's not
entirely perfect, but it's the closest damn thing to it currently and it is a game that everyone should play through once.
The world is fucking gigantic
Fig. 1 : just a portion of one of the two main areas (not counting Kaer Morhen, White Orchard, or the Palace at Vizima) you can explore (Velen/Novigrad)
There's really nothing else to say. The world is fucking gigantic. The maps are huge and filled to the brim with points of interest. While DA:I attempted to fill its piddly maps in comparison with collectibles, TW3 fills it with side quests to find, bandit camps to murder, smugglers' caches to steal, monster dens to blow up, caves to explore, points of power to give you ability points. Nearly every ? you will explore will have some tangible goodies for your character in the form of crafting mats, recipes or gear. Sometimes it's even not shit.
Not every town is on the map from the get go, and most of them are entirely optional. However, more often than not, in these villages you will find a notice board where people threaten to kill you if you touch their daughter and most importantly, offer you lucrative contracts to kill some foul beast. You will want to do as many as possible, especially early on, because money is hard to come in TW3 and gear, mats and alchemy/crafting recipes are expensive. What you find while exploring the map will sell for a pittance (the Continent's merchant have mastered the capitalist art of the grossly unreasonable markup), so contracts will be the source of most of your money (unless you sell your rare mats like dimeritium, which you shouldn't do).
While exploring, you will also stumble on random side quests. For example, you might find a Nilfgaardian deserter just itching to go back to his family being harassed by northern soldiers who will undoubtedly hang him out of spite, if you let them...this kind of thing happens more often in the "hub" areas than in the wilderness but even off the beaten path, it happens enough that it's worthwhile to explore the game as much as possible. I'll talk about the questing system later in more depth.
"But Seroim", you might ask, "if you explore all this shit and kill all the monsters, won't you be grossly overleveled like in DA:I?" My answer, young padawan, is no : killing stuff earns you very little XP. Discovering locations doesn't even give you any (which is what made DA:I's leveling pace so quick). Turning in quests, however, especially of the main persuasion, nets you tons. This makes it possible to explore vast swaths of land and do every fucking shit in them and stay at a very reasonable level. In fact, chances are that if you don't go off and explore sometimes, you'll be underleveled for the important quests and get massacred. Also of note is that the game will give you quests that are (much) too high for your current level as a matter of routine, forcing you to go back there once you are the proper level.
And if that wasn't enough incentive to explore, you can buy maps from certain merchants to go on treasure hunts and get the schematics of some of the best pieces of gear in the game, which are hidden all over the place.
I'm a witcher, not a postman. Give your FedEx shit to the Inquisitor.And what beauts those quests are! Even the lowliest side quest will rarely be simply "go get me that". At the very least, you don't really have to return what has been asked or you can ask for payment. Most often though, even simple kill quests will have two "phases" : the "Phoenix Wright" phase and the "Killing Machine" phase.
Fig. 2 : my Witcher Senses are tingling
In the first, you use your Witcher Senses to sleuth information about the object of the quest. Sometimes this will lead you to a motive, or a piece of evidence that the quest giver is being dishonest, for example. Other times, it will allow you to piece the events leading to your taking the quests on the hapless being you are hunting. I've seen a lot of backlash against this "Phoenix Wright" phase, and it is true that it's a bit clunky. Mostly, it's just "go to the red object and press E or follow the red tracks". However, it is that system that gives rise to the variety of ways you can complete the quest, for it is ultimately up to you to decide what to do with the information you gather.
Early in the game, you are tasked with finding a hunter's wife. You track her to where she was killed, where you learn that a werewolf did it. More tracking and sleuthing allow you to find his hiding spot, along with his diary and a letter addressed to the victim. Turns out the hunter killed his own wife. His sister, in love with him, comes find you and ask you not to divulge this to him. It sounds like a sensible enough request - guy killed the woman he loves after all - except that if you tell her tough luck, you later find out that it was she who led her sister to be killed by the werewolf so that she could be with him. You can then let the werewolf kill her and exact revenge or leave. This is just a side quest. The main quests will have you decide who is on the throne of not one, not two, but three countries, with wildly different outcomes, as well as decide how a certain character will live her life.
This makes every side quest interesting and worthy of doing. They are true mini-adventures in and out of themselves. Maybe they won't have a great impact on the world, but the narrative alone is completely worth it. No more "please find my ring, saviour of the world ;_;".
The story matters mostThe main story arc is average, though. I often found that the side quests were more interesting. I thought that TW2's main story was better. Its grand scope definitely hurt it a bit, but mostly, the problem is Ciri.
Ciri is the most unoriginal excuse of a character that I have had the displeasure of setting my eyes upon. She's the traditional Mary Sue-ish "everyone wants my ass because I'm a unique snowflake capable of blowing up planets with my little finger", complete with impossible physical features like glowy green eyes and ashen hair. The game's eponymous Wild Hunt is hunting her, so's Emhyr var Emreis, the emperor of Nilfgaard who's in the process of fucking the North's shit up, and by extension, Geralt and Yennifer, who are in his employ (or is Geralt? That's up to you to decide). She even has a Mary Sue full name : Cirilla Fiona Elen Riannon. Doesn't that scream "speshul"?
You can control Ciri in some points in the story and each time, she gets more ridiculous than the last. The very first time you play her, she has a teleport-ish dash instead of Geralt's dodge and get wrecked by wolves like a complete newbie. Every subsequent Ciri "stage", she gets more WTF abilities, like a Fiona-style "teleport everywhere and slash everyone" with a really low cooldown and a huge range dash charge. Eventually, Ciri's fast attacks incorporate a weaker version of that dash charge and you can just spam left click and win against the game's toughest foes. Also, you can dash everywhere and never get hit. It's just ridiculous. Why bother fleeing? Just spam that teleport multislash and rid the planet of sentient beings and be done with it already.
Not only is Ciri basically every 14 year old cyberbullied emo teenage chick's wet dream and a walking
deus ex machina (all the worlds will fall to entropy! WAIT! CIRI IS THERE TO SAVE US MERE HUMANS THANKS TO HER NEW-FOUND POWERS SHE HAD TROUBLE TO EVEN CONTROL A FEW HOURS AGO WHICH NEARLY KILLED US ALL!), but she is completely unreasonable, much like the aforementioned teenage girls. She is utterly unlikable. One would have thought that years of training on the run with an Elven sage would have reared a thoughtful, rational, cold young woman. After all, she has the power to ruin everyone's day if she fucks up in the least or gets caught. But no - she's a spoiled little child. For example, to get the good endings concerning her, you have to engage in a snowball fight to cheer her up, as well as encourage her to autistically thrash Avallac'h's lab because a snotty Aen Alle in there was a bitch to her. In other words, Ciri is a fucking spoiled brat and she is the worst thing that ever happened to the series. Any attempt to make her a human being worthy of the name will lead to her death. Not even kidding. Fuck Ciri.
Not that Yennefer, the series' other crazy bitch, is much better. The game offers you two romance choices, Triss and Yennefer, and if you don't choose Triss (or no romance), I don't know what's wrong with you. Yen constantly hides shit from you, never answers any question straight, and acts like some kind of cold Jewish-American princess who's so used to get her way that she treats everyone else like her personal slave. And of course, like every spoiled waste of data, she has an impossible trait (purple eyes! So speshul!)
Mechanically though, the main quests are alright. The choices are interesting and meaningful, the missions are varied, and you get to meet everyone who's still alive, like my old pals Vernon Roche and Thaler. That's the second half of it, anyway. For the first you're just running after a snot-nosed bitch. Eh.
One reason the Witcher games are such good RPGs IMO is that the main playable character already has an identity, which makes it easier to base him in the world he's inhabiting. Geralt really feels in tune with the world around him, and his pre-written character allows both a reasonable amount of RP and believable reactions. You're not some procedurally generated random dude.
Slash wham bam FIRE!Combat is very good, if let down by finicky KB&M controls. Geralt generally handles okay, but sometimes he can be a bit spastic. Sometimes he gets stuck in bits of floor of random rocks. Combat is much like TW2, except there are no traps.
Geralt can do two sword attacks : fast or strong. Both have their own combos and uses. Fast is well, fast, but weak. Strong is slower but, well, stronger, and also pierces armour, which is supposed to make it the main attack for heavily armoured monsters. You can dodge and roll now (thank God), as well as parry and counter humans if you time it well (it's easy to). You wouldn't be a Witcher without your Signs and bombs. The same old 5 signs are there, and the bombs. Combat is difficult at first but becomes progressively easier as you gear up and spec Gerhalt. You can feel that you progress in power with each level and it is a very satisfying feel.
Fig. 3 : fucking skill trees, how do they work?
You can spec in Melee, Potions, Signs and "general", which is a catch-all for various 1-pointers with huge effects. The catch is that they don't link to mutagens, and linking your abilities to the mutagens is pretty damn primordial. In additions to the hard cap (the number of points you have), there's also a hard cap of 12 abilities which you can have active at any time. Even if you spend points in it, you have to activate it, else it just doesn't work. It's pretty easy to fill it out and you'll have leftover points, but they can be used for more situational abilities you can switch when the need arises. I don't really like this system. It reminds me of DA:I's derp 8 ability slots because fuck you. There was already a hard cap on abilities : the points. I understand they wanted to change mutas because they were niche in TW2 but there had to be a better way to do it. Passive attribute boosts are less interesting than abilities which radically change how your character play.
Groups of 3 abilities are linked to a mutagen slot. Group a mutagen with its appropriate skills (red for melee, blue for signs, green for alchemy) and you'll receive huge boni to stats, which makes it quite worthwhile to group them by colour whenever possible.
The best part of the combat IMO are the alternate signs. We all know Igni as a wave of fire : get the talent, hold Q and suddenly it's a medieval fuckin' flamethrower that ignites everything and does huge damage. We all know Quen is a passive shield : hold Q and you'll get an active shield, and enemies that attack it will
heal you for as long as you hold it (and it holds). Axii now just stuns : the puppet effect is the alternate. This makes a sign-based Witcher much more interesting to play, and indeed, that's how I built mine.
Fig. 4 : SUPER SHIELD ACTIVATE!
You can use potions in combat again, and their effect is more subdued now : they are short but meaningful buffs, and carry no disadvantage aside from raising your toxicity (in TW3, get close enough to 100 and you'll start to lose some health). Thus, you don't need to pre-buff like TW2 (thank God). Decoctions are much more like the old potions in that they are huge, fight-changing buffs that last a long time, but will bring your toxicity near maximum instantly, so you can use much fewer potions in combat. Prepare in advance or go with the flow - the choice is yours.
Crafting this shit
Fig. 5 : :/
Wouldn't be a Witcher game without crafting. Again, you have to collect tons of recipes, brew your potions, make your bombs, and pay dwarves to make your gear, you pleb.
Let's talk about alchemy first. Alchemy is a bit different this time around, and quite a bit worse IMO. Instead of brewing stocks of potions or crafting arsenals of bombs, you make one potion or bomb with multiple charges. That's it. You never need to make more ever again, as ALL your depleted stock will replenish every time you meditate, provided you have hard alcohol in your inventory. This shit's so plentiful all around that you basically have infinite potions. This makes collecting all the plentiful ingredients like white myrtle petals or celandine useless, while you'll probably need to buy rarer herbs from an herbalist if you've never found a source. There are 3 levels of potions and bombs so you can craft better versions, but it's still the same thing : you just craft them once. This makes sense for gear, but not consumables.
As for crafting gear, you visit armourers and weaponsmiths and ask them to follow the recipe while providing your mats. Thing is, while there are lots of pieces and recipes and a lot of them look bitchin', you'll only really want the "Witcher Gear" from the different schools that you find while exploring or going on treasure hunts, because it has the best stats and lots of rune slots. I spent almost the entire game wearing different upgrades of Griffin school gear as a signs Witcher. At least, unlike DA:I, it all looks pretty different, and I never had the impression I was wearing a single armour set for the whole game like I did in DA:I.
GWENT!And now for the single best addition : gwent.
Remember dice poker? Gwent replaces it. What is gwent? It's this shit :
Fig. 6 : GWENT!!!!
Yep, it's a fuckin' card game.
Gwent is really addictive. It's basically Hearthstone on steroids. It's a battlefield. You put cards in the three rows (melee, ranged, and siege), and whoever has the most points at the end of the round or when both players pass win. Like blackjack, you can't play cards if you pass, so you have to pass strategically. The game is made better by weather cards which drops the attack of all cards in one row to 1, spy cards, hero cards, cards that bring back other cards from the discard pile, cards which summon reinforcements, cards which become stronger the more of them there are on the field, cards that destroy shit, double attack, etc. You get the idea.
What makes it so addictive is that it's just like a real TGC : there are 4 factions (like Magic colours) of cards, the cards are all over the world, sometimes as quest rewards, sometimes bought from vendors, often earned from NPCs. You'll quickly find you're playing everyone just to rack up cards to build your deck. It scratches an itch that dice poker never could. Unfortunately the AI is kind of garbage at it and it's pretty easy to win. If they make a multiplayer gwent DLC, however...
The technical shit that doesn't matterGraphics are good, period. Instead of writing shit, I'll let pictures write 1000 word apiece for me :
Fig. 7 : that's 3000 words
As for the soundtrack, I love it a lot. It's very folk influenced, with lots of violins and other stringed instruments, along with female choruses. It sounds just like a medieval backwater is supposed to and I find that it matches the mood of the game very well.
BottomlineI love TW3. I spent 100 hours on it and I will spend more. It's not perfect, and in some areas it did take a few steps back, but I'll be damned if this is not the best open world RPG yet. Forget Skyrim, forget DA:I - TW3 is where you'll find most of your wishes came true.
