each distinct Sign can also be upgraded along the course of your adventure to your liking. There isn’t an endless amount of spells and weapons, but the game benefits from keeping a tighter control over the things you can use. I never quite cared for having 800 versions of the same weapon or potion with slight variations when one or two would suffice. What is really fun about all these spells and weapons is in how you use them during combat. Geralt isn’t some beefy brawler that hacks and slashes his way to victory, instead combat needs to be treated like an art-form if you want to get the most out of it. The combat is quite simple to pick up, but you are going to have to understand Geralt to win battles, especially when multiple enemies abound.
You’ll really need to approach every encounter with a defensive mindset. Unlike hack-and-slash games, The Witcher 3 more closely resembles the Dark Souls series with respects to combat. Yes, Geralt is a powerful Witcher, but he isn’t some godlike being. His animations need to be taken into account as you can’t break them at will. This means that understanding how he moves depending on your action is very important. This isn’t the kind of game that asks you to kill random ROUS’s to quickly gain levels, instead expecting you to learn the combat mechanics to better succeed at the challenges the game throws at you. Case in point: when I was slightly under the recommended level for a quest –the game gives you recommendation in the quest menu so you don’t get in over your head– I had a nightmare of a time beating two groups of witches. It was early in the game, so I was still more along the hack-and-slash style of play, but when I took a step back and spent some time learning
Geralt’s mechanics, I found that the fight
was now much easier.
Being on the PC, and if you have a
capable rig, you’ll really be able to get a
gorgeous looking game. Okay, so it’s not
as pretty as the E3 footage we saw some years back, but doing this long enough I’ve learned to take everything I see at E3 with a huge bag of salt. Still, the first time I was wandering along the games vast world and saw my first sunset, I actually stopped playing to just take in its grandeur. It’s hard to find the words to describe just how great The Witch 3 can look, but know that you will be floored by what CD Projekt Red has put together if you have a rig good enough. The Witcher 3 really does put almost every western developed next generation game to shame with how great it looks and plays. This visual majesty really helps draw you into the game’s world like few other games have been able to do before. Skyrim –I’m going to mention that game a fair bit– was a fantastic game for the world it set, but it was never the best looking game on any platform. With the Witcher 3, we finally have a game that is equal parts solid game-play and great visuals.
Being on the PC, and if you have a capable rig, you’ll really be able to get a gorgeous looking game. Okay, so it’s not as pretty as the E3 footage we saw some years back, but doing this long enough I’ve learned to take everything I see at E3 with a huge bag of salt. Still, the first time I was wandering along the games vast world and saw my first sunset, I actually stopped playing to just take in its grandeur. It’s hard to find the words to describe just how great The Witch 3 can look, but know that you will be floored by what CD Projekt Red has put together if you have a rig good enough. The Witcher 3 puts really does put almost every western developed next generation game to shame with how great it looks and plays. This visual majesty really helps draw you into the game’s world like few other games have been able to do before. Skyrim –I’m going to mention that game a fair bit– was a fantastic game for the world it set, but it was never the best looking game on any platform. With the Witcher 3, we finally have a game that is equal parts solid game-play and great visuals.
Save my child from so and so, cleanse an abandoned town from a ghost witch, find a special forge to unlock new armor, and so on. I started a simple play session at 9pm with the intention of completing a main mission or two within the hour, but after I finally got to the main task for the story, I looked at my clock and it was 3:30am. I had spent some six hours of just doing tasks and exploring my surrounding. I did lose my life a few times during my play session, but death never felt cheap or unwarranted. I’d either bite of more than I can chew, or just wasn’t leveled up enough to take out the games baddies. The Witcher 3 allows you to select a difficulty level –something that’s becoming more uncommon– that is suited to the kind of play experience you want. If you’re a sadist, then you can set the games difficulty to high, but if you just want to focus more of the games epic story, the easy difficulty will be right up your alley.
I mostly skipped The Witcher 2, but I did spend countless hours on the first one. This isn’t because part two was bad by any means, it’s just that I really disliked Geralt as a character. He always came off like a dick and gave off a vibe that was difficult to like/support. This time around his writing has been
noticeably improved, and while it isn’t
spectacular, — the game still falls back on
many standard video game tropes– he is
a much more likable character. In a world
with such a heavy story there are lots of
small moments that break up the tension and show bits of comedy that help deflate the situation, even if only for a brief moment. The story this time around sees Geralt on the hunt for the missing daughter of the emperor of Nilfgaard. Nilfgaard have taken control of most of the world that the Witcher 3 takes place in, but Geralt –and the player– are left not knowing their true intention. Things are pretty bad across the land, but you will be hearing from both sides of the fight, so everything is a bit muddy when it comes to good vs evil. If you played the previous games you’ll know have an idea of what’s going on, but if you are new, this grey story is really fun to experience. There are two sides in the fight with the weak vs the strong, and little room for a grey area between the two, but taking a side is where things get interested from a player standpoint as both sides make strong arguments.
Upon accepting this rescue mission, Geralt quickly learns that the missing daughter is none other than Ciri, a person that is very close to Geralt’s heart. She is a major portion of the opening scenes that the game uses as a sort of tutorial, and this helps build the connection between the two, for those that are new to The Witcher series in general. The mission quickly turns from a normal payday to something much more personal, as Ciri was raised and trained under Geralt and he sees her like his own daughter in many respects. While the mission to locate Ciri is the bulk of the first chuck of the outing, the game will become for epic in scope. Being and RPG, this means that The Witcher 3 falls back into a save the world shtick like so many others. Odds are that you won’t really care about saving the world unless you have played the first two games, but saving/protecting Ciri will really be your focus here, among other personal elements.
J. Luis
@_ShadowGallery
"The Witcher 3 really does put almost every western developed game to shame... "