The Witcher 3 - Review | The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (Updated v1.1)

Note: This article is an updated version of my previous review from 2016, with extra sections and edits from my recent replay. You can view the original article here, or watch this article in video format on my YouTube channel. 

I've had nothing but tremendous respect for Polish developer CD Projekt RED ever since I played their 2007 debut, The Witcher. That game quickly vaulted its way into my short list of all-time favorite RPGs because of its deeply sophisticated quest design and its uniquely dark-fantasy-folklore atmosphere. Their 2011 followup, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, lost some of the original game's charm and appeal for me, but was still a solid game in most respects, and I especially admired how the middle portion of the game branched in completely separate directions depending on your choices. What they and their parent company have been doing with GOG.com, meanwhile -- picking up licenses for older games, updating them to work on modern platforms, and selling them completely DRM-free at reasonable prices -- combined with their continued support for TW1 and TW2 by putting a ton of effort into the Enhanced Edition of both games and releasing the updates completely free, has made them a shining example of a game company doing good within the industry and treating their customers right -- current controversies with Cyberpunk 2077 notwithstanding.

The 2013 and 2014 E3 previews for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt generated a ton of hype, leading many publications to declare it their most anticipated game of 2015 and cumulatively bestowing it with over 200 awards before it even released. Understandably so -- how could you not be excited over the prospect of CD Projekt's masterful storytelling and quest design applied to a vast open world, with such fantastic-looking preview footage and such high production value? I was skeptical when it was first announced that the game would be open-world, because I already knew from first-hand experience how badly the process can go when trying to adapt a beloved series to a huge open-world format in its third installment, but I held out hope that CD Projekt could pull it off, given their track record of success and how much they seem to understand game design. The Witcher 3 was subsequently released in May of 2015 to universal acclaim, and shattered records for the most "Game of the Year" awards ever bestowed upon one game. I figured, at that point, that CD Projekt had defied my expectations and managed to craft a huge open-world RPG that captured all the best elements of open-world games while still retaining the unique soul and elements that made The Witcher series so great in the previous two installments. And then I actually played it.

It turns out that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is not the perfect masterpiece so many people claim it to be. It's still pretty good, mind you, and I'd say it easily deserves to be in the conversation as one of the best open-world action-adventure-RPGs ever created, especially in terms of games with mainstream appeal. Though not among my personal favorites, I can definitely see the appeal that leads so many people to enjoy it so thoroughly. But that sort of praise and distinction don't shield it from criticism, and the fact remains that there are a lot of critical areas in which TW3 comes up short, outright disappoints, or else simply isn't as good as it could've been. There's a lot of stuff to talk about with a game this size, so I won't even try to craft this review into a paragraph-by-paragraph flowing essay; instead, I'll break it down into more targeted bullet points and categorize them based on three of Clint Eastwood's timeless criteria: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Why Elex is Better than Skyrim and The Witcher 3

Skyrim and The Witcher 3 are two of the biggest, most popular open-world action-RPGs ever created. Both of these games set a new standard for the genre when they were released in 2011 and 2015, with absurdly high metascores clocking in at 94 and 93, respectively. I was not as enamored with either of these games as the general public was, despite having a strong affinity for and appreciation of open-world RPGs; I had a lot of negative criticism to level against Skyrim, and even while praising The Witcher 3 rather extensively, I felt like it, too, had a lot of issues that seriously diluted and detracted from the experience. Both top-notch AAA productions with excellent presentation and smooth, accessible gameplay, that ultimately felt lacking in meaningful depth.

Enter Elex, the latest open-world action-RPG from Piranha Bytes, the small German studio behind the Gothic and Risen series. On a surface level it's actually much worse than either Skyrim or The Witcher 3, largely due to production limitations of being a much smaller studio (about 30 people, as opposed to hundreds) with a much smaller budget (about two million dollars versus 80 million plus). There's a distinct lack of polish across almost every aspect of the game, which on first impression can make it seem like a thoroughly mediocre, undesirable experience, but if you can get past these surface-layer blemishes there's a surprisingly deep, rich, and rewarding gameplay experience. By no means is Elex a perfect game, but I honestly feel like it's better than both Skyrim and The Witcher 3 in some of the areas that matter most when it comes to open-world action-RPGs.

The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine - Review

Blood & Wine is the second expansion for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and the last bit of content that will ever be produced in The Witcher series. With no plans for any future games in the series, developer CD Projekt designed Blood & Wine to serve as a final farewell tour for Geralt, sending him on one last adventure in a new land before he puts up his swords and retires from his life as a monster-hunter-for-hire. For that reason alone, Blood & Wine is a special, magical experience that serves as a fine coda for one of the best open-world games -- and one of the best video games in general -- ever created, but there's a lot more to appreciate about Blood & Wine than its sentimental value.

Whereas Hearts of Stone felt like it was, essentially, just a new story set within the confines of TW3, Blood & Wine is a full-fledged expansion fully deserving of its $20 price tag. Blood & Wine offers upwards of 30 hours of extra content with an all-new main story in a brand new region, Toussaint, complete with dozens of new quests, tons of new weapons and armor, new enemies, a new system for improving Geralt's witcher abilities with skill points and mutagens, and a player home that you can upgrade to give you extra benefits as a base of operations. There's enough original content in Blood & Wine that it could have been sold as its own stand-alone game, and the majesty of its presentation is simply breath-taking.

Unfortunately, nothing in Blood & Wine is much of a game-changer, with the exception of the new mutations and possibly the player home -- otherwise, it's all basically just more of the same from a game that was already a little too long and bloated to begin with, and at least in my opinion, nothing in Blood & Wine really outshines anything that's been done previously in either the base game or Hearts of Stone. That's not much of a criticism, mind you; CD Projekt set the bar so high with its previous efforts that coming up a little short still puts Blood & Wine well beyond other game experiences from other developers. But if you're someone like me who's feeling a little burned out from playing the same game for so long, then Blood & Wine will only give you so much of a spark before it settles back into routine.

The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone - Review

Hearts of Stone -- the first DLC pack for The Witcher 3 -- adds about 15-20 hours of new content to the game, extending the northeastern region of the map, near Oxenfurt, with new points of interest, side-quests, and treasure hunts, in addition to other expansion essentials like all-new enemies, new equipment sets, a new system for crafting and buying unique runes and glyphs, and a main storyline that goes toe-to-toe with and even exceeds the best quests in the base game. Hearts of Stone is, at its heart, a fairly typical DLC expansion that simply takes the familiar formula of the base game and adds more content to it, but it improves upon the experience by directly addressing some of the core issues of the base game, such as combat, economy, and pacing. The mechanical improvements are reason enough to give Hearts of Stone a solid recommendation, but the main quest-line and all of its great characters, stories, and gameplay sequences push it well above the base game and make it one of the best $10 DLC packs I've ever played.

The Witcher 3: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly

I've had nothing but tremendous respect for Polish developer CD Projekt RED ever since I played their 2007 debut, The Witcher. That game quickly vaulted its way into my short list of all-time favorite RPGs. Their 2011 followup, The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings, was really solid as well, and I especially admired how the middle portion of the game branched in completely separate directions depending on your choices. What they and their parent company have been doing with GOG.com, meanwhile -- picking up licenses for older games, updating them to work on modern platforms, and selling them completely DRM-free at reasonable prices -- combined with their continued support for TW1 and TW2 -- putting a ton of effort into the Enhanced Edition of both games and releasing the updates completely free -- has made them a shining example of a game company doing good within the industry and treating their customers right.

The 2013 and 2014 E3 previews for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt generated a ton of hype, leading some publications to declare it their most anticipated game of 2015. Understandably so -- how could you not be excited over the prospect of CD Projekt's masterful storytelling and quest design applied to a vast open world? I was skeptical when it was first announced that the game would be open-world, but I held out hope that CD Projekt could pull it off, given their track record of success and how much they seem to understand game design. The Witcher 3 was subsequently released in May of 2015 to universal acclaim, and shattered records for the most "Game of the Year" awards ever bestowed upon one game. I figured, at that point, that CD Projekt had defied my expectations and managed to craft a huge open-world RPG that captured all the best elements of open-world games while still retaining the unique soul and elements that made The Witcher series so great in the previous two installments. And then I actually played it.

It turns out that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is not the perfect masterpiece everyone claims it to be. It's really, really good, mind you, and I'd say it's easily one of the best open-world RPGs ever created. But that praise and distinction doesn't shield it from criticism, and the fact remains that there are a lot of critical areas in which TW3 comes up short, outright disappoints, or else simply isn't as good as it could've been. There's a lot of stuff to talk about with a game this size, so I won't even try to craft this review into a paragraph-by-paragraph flowing essay; instead, I'll break it down into specific topics and categorize them based on three of Clint Eastwood's timeless criteria: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.

Impressions of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

It's pretty good.

The Witcher vs The Witcher 2

The Witcher is one of my all-time favorite RPGs. When I played it in 2007, I was immediately engrossed by its incredibly complex quest design and was particularly impressed by how it handled moral choices. It felt a lot like an old-school RPG dressed up in a modern skin -- it was sort of the best of both worlds. So I had pretty high hopes and expectations for The Witcher 2, but it didn't wow me as much as the original did. There are some things about The Witcher 2 that are technically superior to the original, but the two are ultimately beasts of a slightly different nature.

Whereas The Witcher is predominantly an RPG designed for enthusiasts of classic, old-school RPGs, The Witcher 2 is more of a cinematic action-RPG designed to interest a more mainstream audience. There are things I like about each game, and they're each very fine games in their own right, but I definitely prefer the greater complexity of the first game. In this article I'll compare and contrast the two games on specific points like quests, story, exploration, combat, atmosphere, and so on, in an attempt to determine which game's execution works better.

The Witcher 2 Screenshots & Wallpapers (Part 2)

The Witcher 2 is easily one of the best-looking games I've ever played. The amount of detail in the graphics is simply astonishing, and there's an awful lot of artistic splendor in many of the landscapes. I took 701 screenshots during a single playthrough -- here are some of my favorites. Continued from part 1.

The Witcher 2 Screenshots & Wallpapers (Part 1)

The Witcher 2 is easily one of the best-looking games I've ever played. The amount of detail in the graphics is simply astonishing, and there's an awful lot of artistic splendor in many of the landscapes. I took 701 screenshots during a single playthrough -- here are some of my favorites. Continued in part 2.

The Witcher 2 is Pretty Good

In 2007, The Witcher earned a strong reputation among RPG enthusiasts because it felt like a traditional, old-school RPG in a modern era of streamlined, dumbed-down pseudo-RPGs. Its sequel from 2011, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, feels less like a true RPG and more like a mainstream action-RPG, as if it's trying to appeal to the crowd of gamers who turn to Bethesda and BioWare for their annual RPG fix. That would ordinarily be a pretty damning criticism coming from me, but compared to the likes of Bethesda and BioWare games, The Witcher 2 is a mighty fine game that still understands what makes a good, satisfying RPG.

Great Games You Never Played: The Witcher

"Fine, obscure gems." Part of a periodical series: Great Games You Never Played. 

In a world where the standards and expectations for RPGs are set by industry powerhouses like Bethesda and BioWare, I always have to turn to the smaller guys whenever I want to play a true RPG. Piranha Bytes and Obsidian get a lot of my respect, but CD Projekt RED added their name to the list in 2007 with The Witcher, a true testament to the glorious PC gaming master race.

You play as Geralt of Rivia, one of the last remaining witchers---a society of monster-hunters who alter their bodies with mutagens to fight supernatural monsters. After an organized group of out-laws infiltrates the witcher stronghold and steals the supply of mutagens, you set out to recover the stolen goods and get to the bottom of the conspiracy, but not without encountering more monsters (both human and beast) and moral conflicts along the way.

What makes The Witcher so remarkable is that it puts a lot of weight on your actions, with many of your decisions having lasting effects on the entire game. Often times you make a seemingly-trivial decision in one chapter, and then it affects a quest in the next chapter. The moral decisions you make are complicated shades of gray with no right or wrong answer. The way you develop your character is important to how you'll play the game. There's a consequence for nearly everything you do. And all of this is done in a rich, mature setting that feels more real than it should.

The Witcher is already well-known among RPG enthusiasts, so there are reasonable odds that some of you may actually have played this one, as contradictory to the article title as that may be. Nevertheless, it's still overlooked by the mainstream and remains more of a cult hit, while getting a lot of criticism from people I would venture to say just don't "get it." So I've got more words on its brilliance (and why you should play it) in the full article.