The Witcher: Enhanced Edition Director's Cut review

Recommended

by darkbouda

I have read about the Witcher many times, and heard that it is a good RPG, etc. Basically, I played very few Role-playing Games of this Kind, because I haven't liked this Kind so far. I'm more of a Fan of JRPGs (the old ones from SNES;-)), turn-based RPGs or action RPGs like Titan Quest. I only got This Part of the Witcher because it was mercilessly reduced, and I thought to myself, what was to take with me. Then I thought to myself, I'll just start, and play it. And I have to say it was good from the Start and got me carried away. For me, the Game is a Mixture of action RPG and normal RPG (ala Elder Scrolls or the like). The Fights are in Real time, but can be stopped to think carefully about the next Steps. What is unique, and I've never seen like this, is the alchemy system. You can use a variety of Ingredients that you can find All over the World to make Potions, Bombs and Blade Coatings (the German Word doesn't occur to me). This is interesting, and can lead to The Search and Collection of ingredients. So you can get yourself pretty strong Fight bonuses, which can ultimately make all the Difference in a heavy Fight. I didn't feel so much Like looking now, just taking what I found. This allowed me to produce one or the other Potion that helped me in the various Battles. The Story was a bit too stretched and convoluted for my Liking, and I couldn't quite follow. All in All, though, she was okay. There are Role-playing-typically many different Quests that you can solve, a lot of which are optional. Here I liked that you could activate the Quests on the Map, so one usually found the Way quite good. So you gain Experience, and can level up your Witcher. Again, this is slightly different from other Games, you can't directly increase values like Strength, Skill, etc., but increases different Aspects that belong to one of those Values. This will make you faster, deal more Damage, be able to plug in more, etc. I thought that was good, was something else. The Sound is Super and leaves nothing to be desired. The Graphics are, of course, not quite as fresh after 9 Years, but still look chic and fulfil the Purpose. Funny were some Conversations with NPCs, sometimes there were some People in the Background with their Arms around or fidgeting around. What else is to be mentioned? Oh yes, the Game is definitely meant for Adults, because you can spend a nice Time in Togetherness with one or the other Lady, and if the Blood splashes in fountains while Slaughtering a Human being, that may not be for Children either. All in All a good Game, you are busy with a few Hours, you want to see everything, and play the Game on hard, then you have to do safely at least 50h. Achso, one Thing has struck me as a negative. The Storage Levels take away so much Space, because a single storage Level has a time at a time 30MB. And you have half 100 Pieces or more of them. When I'd played for a few Hours, I wondered that Syncing into the Steam cloud took so long. Yes, that happens WHENEVER you have to upload 990MB to the Cloud. Luckily, Steam has limited the Storage Space to 1GB, otherwise the Game would have juiced up 3GB every time. :-D Last but not least, I have to say that I am looking forward to zocking "The Witcher 2," which should be better again by Corners. Here is my Conclusion: Story: 7 Sound: 9 Graphics: 7 Presentation: 8 Atmosphere: 8 Total: 8

It's interesting to recall the first installment of The Witcher saga after playing the second and the last part with all the expansions. I remeber how excited I was when the game came out. To be honest, I was a long-time fan of the witcher and had read all the books twice by the time, watched the shitty Polish movie and was craving for a new story in the universe. 

So if you are a fan of the source-material, then you will be delighted by the game, because it picks up where the books left. It throws a bunch of recognizable characters together. Sure it is kind of a fan-service but well when you ARE a fan, you just don't care about it.

The storyline, the choices, the charaters are extremely well-made. As for the levels/maps/areas, I think their design could be improved a bit, since there are some places where there's no content, it's just a place for grinding by killing monsters. But the overall quality is still very good. I loved the combat system a lot: there are three basic styles: (1) to fight a group of enemies, (2) slow but strong, (3) fast but weak. You have to keep the rhythm of the fight in order to commit effective combos. It goes well with descriptions of fights you usually read in books, so to me it felt very natural and at the same time quite innovative as I had never seen something like this in an RPG before. The signs (i.e. spells) are also here but, to be honest, I am not into magic much and it wasn't until The Witcher 3 where I started to use the signs heavily and loved them.

Overall, it is a great RPG of that time. It perhaps can't be compared with the third installment but it laid a sound foundation for the following parts. If you enjoy RPGs, this is definitely a must play. If you are a lover of the witcher books or other dark fantasy stories, you'll love this one as the most solid fan-fiction in any form you can get.