The best game ever made? Well, it is certainly one of them. The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is mind-blowing in its scale, its scope and its attention to detail; this game was made with passion and it shows.
Initially, I wasn’t so sure. The mechanics of the combat system felt clunky and the extensive menus were overwhelming. However, it doesn’t take long for it all to make sense. It soon becomes apparent that there is far more to the combat than simply rolling towards the opponent, striking and rolling away again. Oils, potions and ‘signs’ all play their part, helping to lend an advantage in a fight, but it doesn’t take too long for the rolling, striking, dodging and counter-attacking to become intuitive and the whole process begins to feel like fun.
The learning curve is fairly kind to begin with, easing the player into everything, and the multiple menus for levelling up, enhancing weapons and armour, crafting potions, oils and bombs, etc., start to feel relevant and user-friendly. Furthermore, all of the tutorials can be revisited, although I have never felt the need to go back to them.
I hadn’t played either of the prequel games or read any of the books prior to starting The Witcher 3 and I have to admit that whilst the game is perfectly playable without having done so, the experience would have been enriched with more background knowledge. There are some references to situations and characters that are clearly based on prior events and I found myself having to guess at dialogue choices a couple of times. The on-screen characters evidently knew what was being spoken about, but I had no clue at all. I must emphasise that this is really a minor point, although I felt it worth mentioning.
Another slight irritation is the occasional bug. There was nothing ‘game-breaking’, although I have noticed that the failure to complete one quest in good time (before another certain quest began) meant that I had failed the quest in question. Other glitches are mostly to do with graphics, but they are few and far between and I would be surprised if they didn’t exist at all, given the colossal scale of the game.
The Witcher 3 is a very grown-up game. Expect violence, of course, as well as some horror, but also expect sex, nudity and copious amounts of bad language. Whilst I can understand that some people would find these elements to be off-putting or inappropriate, I feel that – overall – they are in-keeping with the world and the narrative of the game, greatly enhancing the whole experience. It feels like a mature, grown-up game for adults and I love it all the more for that. It doesn’t patronise and it doesn’t pull its punches. Instead, it takes the player on an incredible journey that is full of both light and dark moments, not to mention moral and personal choices that can at times be truly difficult and challenging.
The vast and intricately detailed world is made all the more believable thanks to the luscious graphics (I’m playing the game on an Xbox One X via a 4k TV) and the characters that are encountered are made more believable, increasing the player’s sense of empathy with them, due to the clever use of dialog and mostly excellent voice-acting.
I’ve been playing The Witcher 3: The wild Hunt for what feels like ages now and I am only approaching about two-thirds of the way through. Throughout my considerable years of gaming, few titles have gripped me this strongly for this long and there are still the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansion packs to play through!
I have truly grown to love it. Its flaws are miniscule in the scheme of things, dwarfed by the grand scale of everything else and it is absolutely one of my favourite games of all time.
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