The Witcher 3 is the most immaculate gaming experience I’ve ever had and it continues to be, even to this day, an insurmountable milestone in my entire gaming life. Nothing even comes close to beating this game in every sense. This game is so well realized every time I play it, I can see the landscapes, I can feel the surroundings this game puts me in and hell, I can practically smell the air in this game. CD Projekt RED are in top form. I’ll break it up into sections to help you, the prospective player, get a better understanding of exactly how I feel about this game. This game changed my life, it changed my outlook on games and gaming forever and here’s why:

STORY

The Witcher 3 is based on the prose of Andrzej Sapkowski but the story of this game borrows very little from his books. This game is a direct sequel to The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and if you’re thinking about playing that first, don’t. As a player who entered The Witcher lore through Wild Hunt, I can say that Wild Hunt is a good starting point as any to enter this world and might actually even be the best, due to its better combat, more in depth world– basically CD Projekt RED by this point got frighteningly good at making these games and The Witcher 3 does not disappoint. The story this game tells is just….breathtaking (you’re breathtaking!). It starts off in the warm and welcoming plains of White Orchard and what follows is a tale of adventure, romance, intrigue and family, one which tugs at your heartstrings at some moments and makes you experience gut-busting laughter at others. This is an emotionally captivating story, one which never lost me from day one all the way till the end. The characters are immaculately brought to life and you instantly know that every single character you encounter is going to be a fully realized, living, breathing person who inhabits this world. The lore of this game is what made me fall in love with it. While you’re pursuing the main story, you will have access to side missions and I implore you, please, do all of them. A side mission in this game is worth the full amount of time and even more that you put into it. It deepens the lore in a way which makes this world feel like your home, in many ways. After a point, you just know how this world functions and what makes it tick. As a witcher, a large part of this game is going to be spent monster hunting and killing. Every single village or town you encounter will have a notice board, upon which will be one or more witcher contracts. As you go on doing these contracts, you develop an encyclopedic knowledge of these monsters, and to make Vesemir proud, I do know the difference between ghouls and alghouls. Every single part of this game is secondary to its story and serves to deepen the lore of this world, beyond just the particular adventure you’re playing out. All of this is without even mentioning the political battle that’s taking place in the backdrop, with the states of Nilfgaard and Redania in an active conflict, a conflict which you play a key part in and the resolution of which affects the end of the game. The ending of the main story itself will vary for players, as this game has 3 primary endings, and including the variations which are affected by your choices throughout the game, this game has 36 distinct endings. However, whichever ending you get, the story still doesn’t lose any impact whatsoever and each ending has something that will appeal to everyone. It’s also important to know that certain parts of the ending of this game also do affect the ending of the Blood and Wine DLC.

10/10

VISUALS

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was released in 2015. Get that though your head. Even 4 years later, on the doorstep of Cyberpunk 2077, The Witcher 3 is one of the best looking games on the platform, any platform. However, the graphics of this game compose only half the visuals of this game. The animations and textures and lighting and models are all the best, bar none. But that’s not it. What makes The Witcher 3 truly unique is the story that the visuals tell. Every single area of this game is leaking, dripping with scars and effects of its past. You start the game in the beautiful yellow sands and crystal blue waters of White Orchard, with beautiful white trees and a bright, welcoming landscape. Monsters are scarce here and the landscape is populated by little wood-and-straw huts dotted around the place, with the populace going about their daily lives, maybe going down by the river to relax or to the pub to have a drink. White Orchard feels beautiful, charming and welcoming, which makes it the perfect starting point for new players. Players are then introduced to the barren, bloody lands of Velen, which has been the site of major battles in the war between Redania, Nilfgaard and Temeria. Velen is deceivingly beautiful, with its warm hues of reds, yellows and oranges. The forests aren’t lush, instead replaced with dried trees and grass soaked in the blood of the battle which took place on it. Everywhere you go, there are little grimy villages who are scraping by, barely making a living as misery, disease and rot threaten to end their existence. Velen is a place thickly infested by monsters and the supernatural. You will often hear voices in the wind and come upon places of incredible magic and power. Necrophages prowl the landscape, devouring the corpses of soldiers who lost their lives in battle. Velen is a drab, depressing, yet beautiful landscape which is thick with woe and misery. As we move north of Velen, the land transforms and we find ourselves on the bright, colorful path to Novigrad. Novigrad hosts a sea of life, with rampant poverty, crime and gang activity. The crowds in the city give it a feeling of a constant hustle and bustle, as well as dark alleys filled to the brim with bandits and looters and a constant sense of dirt and grime. It feels political and commercial, with steady medieval architecture populating the city walls. There are monsters to be found here, though they are more human than non-human. To the west of Novigrad, across the sea, lies the most distinctive and stunning environments, the Isles of Skellige. Here, we not only come across a different visual style than anything we’ve seen, with warm plains being replaced by cool, blue-green hues of a land covered in cold, snow and mountains, we also encounter a completely different civilisation of folk, with different traditions, values and indeed, accents than the folk we’ve seen anywhere else. While the people of Velen scrounge for a living and the citizens of Novigrad engage in thievery, cheating and confounding, the folk of the Skellige Isles live happy, abundant lives. They care about honor and valor just as much as they despise materialism and disloyalty. However, under this thin veil of honor, they don’t repent from dirty politics every so often. The Isles themselves are a group of islands separated by a vast, explorable ocean. The islands themselves are quaint and all have their own little stories connected to them. The Skellige Isles are dominated by pine forests and massive mountains, with blues, greens and whites covering most of the landscape. These Isles exude a sense of calm, with monsters only occurring occasionally and much like Velen, have a sense of supernatural seething just under the calm surface. From Skellige, we move finally, to the home of our protagonist, the Witcher Keep at Kaer Morhen. Kaer Morhen has a sense of history, a history which has a lot to do with the witcher kind. The Witcher Keep itself is in its last days, with walls collapsing and the scaffolding littering the interiors. The landscapes of Kaer Morhen are not unlike Skellige, with a sense of calm and freshness in the air, with tall mountains surrounding the valley. Kaer Morhen feels like a safe place, quite like White Orchard, with its crystal blue waters and lush, green forests. Monsters here are scarce too, which encourages exploration greatly, along with the broken down castles and towers with the remnants of their last occupants still in place. The Witcher 3 doesn’t only look amazing, but the visuals tell a story, a story of what each area has gone through, there’s a sense of history that makes it feel like this world existed long before you ever stepped into it.

10/10

MUSIC

I just…I can’t. I can’t…I just can’t. The music in this game isn’t a separate part of it. It’s a fucking feeling. I just can’t even…I can’t even type it out! The music is all pervasive in this game. The music is part of the visuals, the story, the combat, just everything! The best way to describe it is this: All the components in this game are separate. The music is what joins them, what makes them come to life. The music of each different area in the game tells you exactly what to feel. The music of White Orchard is hopeful and serene, with a passion for adventure right below the surface. The music of Velen is melancholy, with beautiful string instruments playing long, drawn out notes infected with misery and deceit. Novigrad brings with it a feeling of city life, a lively drone which reflects the culture of the city. The more wondrous parts of the city are accentuated by beautiful, sung notes which bring a feeling of mysticism and charm. The Skellige Isles are made up of a beautiful, slow, calm melody, with string instruments and vocals as the stars of the show. The music of Skellige feels like it could have been picked right out of one of the villages it has among its landscapes. It’s calm, serene and just feels relaxing, I’ve used this track to go to sleep more than once. Kaer Morhen follows the same steps, with an open, relaxing feeling, the only difference being it incorporates themes from Geralt’s soundtrack, giving it that witcher touch. The music in this game does more than music in any game has any right to do. This is one of the best soundtracks I’ve ever heard in entertainment history and it taught me what music can really do for any experience.

10/10

GAMEPLAY

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s combat isn’t really like any other combat system in any other RPG I’ve ever seen and there’s one main reason for this: the combat is directly connected to the lore. In Andrzej Sapkowski’s work, witchers are mutant humans who have magical powers and use potions to augment their bodies. This makes it directly into the game. While going around the world, you can collect ingredients to brew specific potions and those potions augment your abilities slightly when consumed for example, health regeneration. This feature is present in many RPGs, however, there’s a catch in the Witcher 3. Your potions are unfortunately quite toxic and consuming too much of them can actually lead to more damage than harm. This is a genius mechanic, as it introduces a level of strategy and skill to using your potions. You also have magical powers in the form of signs, which are short term boosts to certain abilities for example, using the Quen sign casts a shield around your body, which can be vital as it allows you to take an extra hit without getting damaged. However, these systems just serve to enhance the primary combat experience: sword fighting. Geralt carries with him two swords at all time, one made of steel, meant to be used with human foes and another coated in silver, meant to be used on monsters. These are not interchangeable, as steel will not do damage to monsters and silver won’t affect humans as much. The sword fighting in the game feels dynamic and mobile, you can move Geralt pretty much however you want. There’s a pretty good skill ceiling in the combat here, you will be a lot better at dispatching foes by the end of the game. Of course, throughout the game, you come across different types of armor which differ in stats such protection and damage. This goes like it does in any RPG, except for one feature. In the world, there exist special sets of gear made specifically for witchers called Witcher Gear. These gear sets have attributes which are particular to the witcher trade, such as increased protection against or damage toward monsters. Once equipped, these sets also grant some extra attributes on top of the individual gear attributes. Players also have the ability to enhance Geralt’s powers using Ability Points. One Ability Point is added after every XP level up and they can be used to assign certain abilities to Geralt to customize gameplay. For example, to make Geralt more combat heavy, players can develop his fighting abilities such as light attack damage and heavy attack damage but if you want his Signs to have more of an effect, you can develop his Sign trees. Now, in addition to all of this…the game actually gives you an in-game Bestiary which tells you about the origins of all the monsters Geralt has encountered in the game and the respective potions and signs which can harm them specifically. All throughout the world, there are question marks which litter the landscape. These are Points of Interest and these could be anything, it could be a piece of gear, hidden treasure, bandit camps, entire side quests, hidden ruins, boss battles, etc. Along with every single other thing in this game, these points serve to deepen the lore of the game and to make this world feel like it really exists. In terms of traversal, you also have your horse, Roach, whom you can ride if you wanna explore the landscape although fast travel is available at certain locations. Unlike a lot of other games of the kind, the game’s underwater areas are also free to explore, with caverns and shipwrecks and special herbs to pick on the sea bed. The gameplay of the Witcher 3 is just like everything else: it’s in depth, it feels real and it’s like nothing else out there.

10/10

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is one of the best games ever made. It’s my personal favorite of all time and that’s not exclusively because of the lore either. I probably love Marvel more than the world of the Witcher (although I will say it’s probably neck and neck), but I don’t love Marvel’s Spider-Man more than the Witcher 3. And that’s just expert game making.