to be the real source of joy as you
uncover everything The Witcher 3
has to offer. Along the way, you’ll
make many choices. Sometimes
these choices are openly harsh, with
immediately awful consequences. But
sometimes even the most seemingly
insignificant of decisions will only
show their true magnitude many
hours down the line, when it’s much
too late to cowardly reverse your
choice by loading from a previous
save. The Witcher has always
presented a very cruel, very mature
fantasy universe, one that’s rife with
prejudice, suffering and intensely foul
happenings, and the third game is no
different.
Wild Hunt’s combat system is the
most forgiving and accessible in the
series. The Witcher 2 was notorious at
launch for making combat incredibly
punishing and volatile, and even the
tutorial was hellishly difficult. In
contrast, The Witcher 3 introduces
its combat in a far calmer, more
manageable fashion. That said, it’s
anything but easy. On the higher
difficulties, charging into skirmishes
36 The OverClocker Issue 35 | 2015
without first having made the proper
preparations is a guaranteed way to
suddenly find your entrails splattered
on the ground beside you. Brewing
potions, crafting bombs and coating
your blades with the oils suggested
in Geralt’s bestiary is pretty much
mandatory if you hope to survive
brawls, particularly against rarer,
more dangerous enemies. The
general flow of combat is as satisfying
as ever, and there’s an excellent sense
of momentum underlining Geralt’s
attacks. It’s not all roses though; Wild
Hunt’s finicky, oversensitive controls
have an annoying habit of tripping
you up during (and even outside of)
combat. And while the vast majority of
my in-game deaths can be attributed
to my own ineptitude, there were more
than a few times when the controls
were to blame.
Character progression is handled
via a new skill system, wherein
you can only have a handful of your
unlocked skills and attributes active
at any given time, which encourages
you to customise your skill loadout to match your present needs. I
“There’s potential
hours of exploring
giddy adventuring