The Witcher III: Wild Hunt review

12 May 2015

Visually stunning, huge world, plentiful quests, and a rare maturity

Painfully small onscreen text, some truly frustrating battles, horse less useful as you progress


9 / 10

Maturity, in games, is often a codeword for sex and violence. While The Witcher III: Wild Hunt has both of those in abundance, it's also genuinely mature in the dictionary definition sense too, asking difficult questions and challenging its audience with a narrative that uses its fantasy trappings to explore moralistic shades of grey.

As Geralt, the titular Witcher -- a human modified by magical tinctures and arcane practises since childhood in order to stand against the terrifying monsters that plague the land -- players step into a world where good and evil aren't so cleanly defined. Necrotic spawn wanting to consume the flesh of the living may be objectively bad, but are the prejudiced villagers being feasted upon intrinsically good? Do the political and supernatural forces that both promise to change the world have merits, or are they both just power plays of different means? Everything about The Witcher III deals in uncertainty, resulting in a game that, refreshingly, respects the player's intelligence.

Wild Hunt is also a sign that developer CD Projekt Red itself has matured, finally realising the potential glimpsed in the first two Witcher instalments, which were already fairly impressive in their own rights. Evolving from linear RPGs to this open-world epic that rivals Skyrim for size and ambition, the Polish studio has firmly established itself as a triple-A powerhouse.

Some caveats: the version of The Witcher III we played was on a debug PS4 console. There is the possibility that the retail release may have minor differences, though the review code supplied was a final build. It was also not possible to complete every aspect of the game in the week of lead time -- it truly is almost staggeringly large, though we experienced a solid 40+ hours in total.


Despite the scale of the game, Geralt's story begins as a very personal one. Following messages from his beloved Yennefer, a chain of conventional monster-slaying intro missions soon starts to escalate, with the Empire of Nilfgaard invading the Northern Realms and the eponymous Wild Hunt, a spectral horde, threatening to destroy the entire world.

The dire circumstances almost take a back seat to the sheer beauty of the world though, and the freedom to explore it. Every area is little short of breathtaking, and that's on console -- anyone with the PC power to run the game at full spec is surely in for a treat. There are hundreds of locations to discover, along with seemingly endless side quests as a result of the people met in them. Initially, you'll do much of your sightseeing on horseback, with Geralt's horse Roach only a thumbstick double-click away. As you start opening up the vast map and begin having to go between distant locations, fast-travel becomes preferable though -- even at full gallop, poor Roach can't match instantaneous transport. It's worth taking time out just to wander though, as this is a game that packs secrets into almost every corner.

Exploration also enriches the world. Each village and country has its own culture and customs. Religions differ and clash, local superstitions affect the populace, even the fauna and flora differ as you travel. A day/night cycle and a requirement to occasionally rest or eat also helps bring the world to life, while frequent choices in how you respond to people or situations affects Geralt's impact and standing in the world.

Those returning from earlier Witcher games will find Geralt -- and later his ward Ciri, playable for the first time in the series -- far more mobile. Jumping and climbing are added to their repertoire, making you feel more a part of the environment, no longer blocked from vaulting over a knee-high obstacle. Combat, still real time but for smart menus allowing you to select mystic sigils, is similarly enhanced, with athletic rolls, dodges, and parries making even minor encounters a regular thrill. Other abilities, including the extra-sensory "witcher sense", better factor into quests, allowing you to track creatures or spot important items on detective-styled sub-plots, while spells can prove to have inventive uses outside of battle.


Potentially controversial to any Witcher "purists" is that Wild Hunt is far more accessible. The prior games were notoriously tough, but here CD Projekt Red introduce a story-focused lower difficulty. Even in the more challenging modes, there's the option to have frequent tutorials, guiding you through the many systems the game incorporates. The key word is "option" though -- anyone who wants an unforgiving trek through The Witcher's dark fantasy world can still find it here. There are even ways to make it more hardcore, such as turning off enemy health indicators and limiting your abilities for a greater challenge.

Even at the lower end of the difficulty scale, Wild Hunt still proves frustrating in places, particularly with boss battles or missions in areas where you're under-levelled. Thankfully, it has better checkpointing than its predecessors, but re-doing bits of investigations or attempts at slaying the same monsters over and over wear thin at times.

The Witcher III's biggest problem isn't anything that's strictly in the game, but rather its UI. The font for onscreen text -- and there's a lot of it, between the early tutorials, menus, and bits of lore you'll read about -- is incredibly tiny. Sat a little over six feet away from a 46" screen, it was almost unreadable. Prepare to shuffle a lot closer to the screen to make out all of the info you'll need to progress.


Moments of trickiness and too-small text are small prices to pay though for a game that is, even dozens of hours in, an almost wholly immersive, captivating, and narratively challenging experience. For the final game in the Witcher trilogy, the developers have pulled out all the stops, and it shows in the end product. Overall, an outstanding achievement.


PS4, Xbox One, PC
Open World RPG