The Witcher 3 Review by IGN
In The Witcher 3, players will follow Witcher Geralt in his last journey as he searches for his lost lover Yennifer and his ward Ciri only to learn that they are being hunted down by the spiritual Wild Hunt.
With the memories of its predecessors and infamous book series behind it, The Witcher 3:Wild Hunt was bought with the gamers expectations on differing scales between expectations.
When the first announced in 2013 along with trailers, fans where thrilled at the sharp fluid graphics of the game but literally angry in later trailers when the graphics visually degrade. Most fans blamed the new console versions taking away from the graphics the PC version had but developers CD Projekt Red insisted that the graphics naturally deteriorated as they added on more content to their 200+ hour game and that is was a mistake to release those images so early in production. I was also disappointed to hear that the developers decided against adding Ciri’s famous fight scene while on ice-skating.
Despite this setback, The Witcher 3 became by far one of the best RPG games on the market. With an open world stretching about 52 miles, almost the size of Liechtenstein, and a main story plot about 25 hours longs, The Witcher 3 was able to calm the fires started by the graphics downgrade and win the Overall Game Of The Year 2015 award. The day and night settings and overall constant moving around such a large environment have you appreciate with very detail in the game. Though the main storyline is a little more of a long errand then an adventure, the game makes up for this in the side quest content. Every side mission in the game, whether retrieving a frying pan to slaying monsters, every character has a back story and emotion that flows with the war torn setting of the game. Every character mean the non-humans as well. Another feature I find most valuable is that the side quests do make a difference in the main story itself. It would probably take months to find out all the outcomes of every decision you make in this game. To my own pleasure, players get to also play as Ciri, learn her different fighting style and powers and follower her side of this grand story.
For those who haven’t played any other Witcher games, it can be intimidating. However, unlike The Witcher 2 where you are immediately thrown into combat, the developers give a smooth and easy tutorial along with background story to the game. Combat action is far more glossy then Witcher 2 and new systems for the alchemy, equipment and level progression allow Geralt, the main character, to become an even better individual. (Cause I can’t say bad@$$ on this review). Though being an award winning game, it does come with the usual glitches of high performance games, mostly being lag. Another feature that CD Red added was riding on horseback, although fun at first, the horse controls are a little sensitive and the horse tends to stop when you want it to gallop or jump.
This game is an absolute good buy and makes a wonderful edition to your game collection. Even the expansion packs are worth their money with more hours of gameplay added to the already massive gameplay time you have already put into The Witcher 3.