The Witcher III: Wild Hunt

The Witcher 3 is easily one of the most impressive games I've played on many levels. The game's development and launch alone is a textbook example of how to make a full priced game in the next generation. Everything from the 160 hour base game, to the free dlc, to the letter in every game case thanking the players for purchasing their game. It all just shows that CD Projekt Red really cares about their consumers and that they dare to take risks even if it may threaten their bottom-line. The graphics and world designs are heavily detailed and bursting with life, weather systems add an extra layer of complexity to the environments. The story is adequate by today's standards and the voice acting/dialog is mature and well thought out! The game sports a dialog tree system that can drastically impact how the story turns out, even if it always feels like you're making the wrongs decisions, the game urges you to come back and try different paths on multiple play-throughs (especially considering that there are like 36 different endings...).

I think what I admire about this game the most is it's mature approach to storytelling. The game really doesn't shy away from edgy themes and situations. The main story centres on the witty and sarcastic Geralt; a Witcher who's in search of his sorta adopted child Ciri as she's being pursued by the very mysterious Wild Hunt. The game has a few sections where you play as Ciri from flash backs and I liked Ciri a lot because she's a bad a** and don't take c*** from any man! There are a good few love interests in this game like Yennefer, Triss, and Keira, and the game handles sex very maturely without being offensive or objectifying. Maturity also seeps through in many other quests, take for instance the massive quest to mend the damage done on the Bloody Barron's family after years of his alcoholism and domestic violence, only to find his wife being held hostage by child eating witches! I also had a beautiful witch (Keira) sexually seduce me into allowing her to steal the formula for a deadly plague, only for me to have to execute her the very next day!

Every quest is a rabbit hole in this game. It's not like in a Ubisoft or Bethesda game where they'll take a few different premises for side quests and just recycle them a million times over. Here, these many many side stories each have their own set of dialog trees, different outcomes, and loads of depth that make it as though you're playing many hundreds of different games all in one world. The world maps are loaded with icons for objectives, quests, and points of interest to explore that give this game literally hundreds of hours of game-play, and like I said the multiple paths for many of these quests demand for more than one playthrough. THIS IS A HUGE GAME PEOPLE!!! The worlds themselves are also huge and detailed; with tons of villages, towns, and secret areas to explore (Skellige is a particularly gorgeous region!). The game also sports an epic and well composed soundtrack. And holy crow, I didn't even get to talk about Gwent!!! This game has it's own original built-in card game that you can play with other NPCs and it's surprisingly fun! :P

All of that said, I do have some issues with the game. Most Witcher 3 naysayers will cite awkward controls for hampering their experience, and unfortunately I have to agree here. Geralt is kinda clunky to control, and his momentum constantly had me running past items I'm trying to collect or bumping into things. The combat isn't incredibly intuitive, depending on how far you are spaced from an enemy you may overshoot or just completely miss enemies entirely. This isn't a broken system by any means, in fact it's fine once you get use to them and space yourself more appropriately. The sign arts added a dynamic twist to the combat, even if they don't always feel very useful a lot of the time. I think the weapon degradation system is criminal, especially considering how much of a pain in the a** it is to find a blacksmith and pay him ridiculous amounts just to fix it. Now add in the fact that I was always at odds with Geralt's low carrying capacity, so I didn't have much to sell to make money either. It's all a bit counter-intuitive considering that the weapon upgrade system requires you to have plenty of various random items in your inventory at any given time.

But all of my complaints aside, I can't deny that this is one of the biggest and most well made games I've ever played. If I were you, I wouldn't take my complaints too seriously because I'm really just not very good at most RPJs. If you're the type to get lost in these kinds of fantasy worlds then the Withcer 3 is a MUST PLAY for you, truly one of the best next-gen titles around! ;D