The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings (2011) by CD Projekt Red

Witcher 2 is a mix of positives and negatives whose positives ultimately far outweigh the minor complaints I have with the game.

It shares some of this roughness with its predecessor, The Witcher, which I find to be so rough as to be almost unplayable nowadays. The Witcher 2 had similarly convoluted, poorly designed levels which make it a chore to navigate to and fro while completing quests and exploring. The forest outside Flotsam is guilty of this. It's exceptionally difficult to get where you need to go without circling around hedges and trees and carving through numerous cannon-fodder caliber enemies. Additionally, looting and interacting with the environment is a huge chore given the cooldown on your amulet scanning ability, and the way the game locks out looting for what feels like an eternity once combat starts. Crafting and inventory management is a gigantic chore due to the obtuse user interface, which I felt like I had to fight with constantly. I also experienced a few lock-ups in which Geralt would get stuck in an animation, and a few crashes here and there. Transitions into different areas of the map are bothersome as well. There are numerous small complaints like this that show some of the roughness the previous game also exhibited, albeit far less of them overall.

But there are significant improvements, too. This game looks beautiful, especially when compared to the previous game. I was surprised by how high a quality some of the textures were, and the art design in general is noticeably improved from the first game. The character and monster designs are fantastic, with some of the sorceresses and Geralt's outfits being particularly stunning. Even just the background of the dice poker board, or the deranged drawings on the wall of the burnt out asylum are artistically impressive. Due to this mix of artistic prowess and a powerful new engine, a lot of the visuals on display in Witcher 2 still hold up today, nearly a decade after its original release in 2011. This is made more impressive by the use of developer CD Projekt Red's in-house REDengine, which they developed and used for the first time with this game, to glorious effect. Although I dealt with a few crashes, the game otherwise runs superbly (I'm near 150 fps at all times with max settings) and it still looks great despite being nine years old. It's a pretty impressive achievement for what was a small studio at the time to develop such a solid engine, and the game is made much stronger than the first Witcher, which used the ancient Aurora Engine, licensed from BioWare.

The combat is also substantially improved, ditching the previous game's ridiculous and shallow faux-rhythm system for classic third person combat which is far more satisfying to execute. It feels a bit loose to me, especially when compared to The Witcher 3, but it's still miles better than the first game's combat and far more intuitive. Enough depth has been added to make things more interesting throughout.

Where The Witcher 2 really shines, though, is in terms of narrative, quest design, and providing the player agency. The strongest thing The Witcher 1 did was weaving its quests together, so you feel especially detective-like once you begin uncovering all the pieces. This is also true of Witcher 2. For example, in Chapter 1 you very quickly obtain a series of side quests very early, simply by talking to people. Almost all of these quests turn out to be intertwined in some way: An incense-maker turned fisstech dealer and a drunken troll turn out to be related. Sounds far-fetched, but the common ground not only turns out to be reasonable and compelling, but also teaches you more about the political situation in the game's setting of the Pontar Valley. And if you're looking for a game in which you have the power to impact the story with your choices, then look no further—The Witcher 2 features perhaps the best example of "your choices matter" that I've ever seen in a game.

CD Projekt Red took a massive chance in the way they designed this game, because there's a significant choice to be made at the end of Chapter 1 that leads to two nearly exclusive routes through the plot. Meaning that no matter your choice, you will end up missing out on about a third of the story content in this game because the two paths moving forward from this choice are so different from one another.

It's a ballsy choice by the developer, because these people had to be designing these entire areas and questlines knowing that half of their players would likely never experience them (unless you're a nerd like me and replay the game to take the other route). The consequences of this choice further reinforces the fact that you are actually impacting what is occurring in the narrative. Few games take player choice to this extreme, and the fact that CD Projekt Red did makes The Witcher 2 something special for that reason alone. Furthermore, the choice is packaged appropriately—you likely won't even realize that you just made a game-altering choice, even though you still realize the gravity of the choice when you made it. The game won't pause and give you any hint that a massive choice is about to occur, which I love. It's an exceptional, ambitious move that is perfectly executed and it makes this game far more memorable and impactful than it'd be without it. Bravo to the developers for making the difficult decision to include two branching paths like this.

If for nothing else, this game is worth playing due to the quality of its narrative. It's a politically-driven game with strong social commentary and genuinely interesting characters, and it gives you the opportunity to pass judgment and act within this world as you see fit. It's constantly satisfying in this manner and it left me thinking about my own moral code regularly. Although Witcher 2 does not feature the classic, epic story that is featured in Witcher 3, I appreciated the narrower scale and the stronger focus on the political machinations of this world's elites. It might take some concentration, but once you grasp what's going on in the narrative, it's quite compelling.

The Witcher 2 is not without its warts, but it shows a staggering improvement over its predecessor and it remains more than enjoyable today. If you're in the mood for a good story, check it out. You'll probably be well-satisfied.

⭐⭐⭐

The Witcher (2007) by CD Projekt Red

I feel really bad doing this because I absolutely love CD Projekt Red and I enjoy later games in the series such as The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings and The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, but I just can't recommend this game. It's not a terrible game, but its age and some of the mistakes made by the developers working on their first game do a lot to make it a terrible experience to play.

Most notably is that the combat is awful. It's incredibly easy for the most part, but also very bland. Potions are all but useless, leaving you to whack with your sword repeatedly in its faux-rhythm game. I was completely exhausted of it by the beginning of the second chapter and was beginning to choose just to run past enemies.

There are a number of side quests that are worthwhile as far as story and character development, but too many are simple fetch quests and just not worth your time despite the experience and money they reward you with. Too many "fetch 10 wolf pelts", and "find the 10 sephirahs" here—the latter of which broke me for good and had me uninstalling the game.

Probably most tiresome is the fact that the maps are some of the worst designed playing areas I've ever seen in an RPG. I am not exaggerating when I say that 90% of my gametime here was spent running around the map. They are not cyclical at all, but require you to run end-to-end, which is incredibly boring and frustrating. The maps that are open, such as the swamp, often have shrubbery and fences blocking paths that you might use to get somewhere more quickly. I don't mind padding out some gametime, but you've got to be smart about it; give me some good dialogue with NPCs, or entertaining combat. Here even the skill trees—one of my favorite parts of an RPG—feel ineffective, and like a waste of time.

There are minor annoyances as well, such as the awful character models, or poor dialogue writing. The game also starts off about as terribly as possible, with awful, generic, clichéd fantasy dialogue, and bad animations and storytelling.

I used to think of this game like the first Mass Effect—a good game, but very rough around the edges. But while it does do some good things, it's nothing like Mass Effect, which has competent levels, character building, and far better writing and dialogue.

Pretty much all The Witcher has going for it is some interestingly complex quest design and a great setting. Aside from that, this game is nearly completely skippable. Witcher 2 is a far better game, and probably even a better starting place for the series. But if you're dead set on playing the entire trilogy, you can give this one a shot—It's going to be all but impossible to play once you've experienced the later, better games and CD Projekt Red's maturity as one of the best game developers on the planet.

⭐

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015) by CD Projekt Red

I try only to write reviews if I've got something to add about a game that I haven't seen many other reviewers already noting. I'll make an exception with Witcher 3.

This game is just as good as every media outlet and amateur reviewer says it is. It might actually be, all things considered, the best game I've ever played.

This game creates an experience that's far more than the sum of its parts. The excellent visuals and music, the lovely sound design, and the painstakingly well-crafted environments, NPCs, and quest and dialogue writing all combine to give this game a lived-in, realistic feel that very few games have been able to exhibit. Every corner of the world feels real. There's so much to experience across the several maps that you can simply wander from place to place for hours upon end, taking in all that there to experience. None of this is procedurally generated, either. It's all hand-crafted, and for those willing to look, there are some incredible things to find.

Early in the game, the player character Geralt meets a gung-ho historian off to chronicle the war. Geralt tells him not to go, that the warzone is a chaotic, anarchic wasteland and he'll be killed simply for the quality of his boots. The historian laughs it off, and offers to play a Gwent card game with Geralt. If Geralt wins, he can win a unique card from this NPC. Later in the game Geralt and Vesimir find themselves underneath a tree full of hanged civilians. Upon searching the foot of the tree, Geralt can find a half-finished history book, and the Gwent card the historian was carrying if it wasn't won from him earlier. The entire game is littered with moments like these; very subtle, missable details that only a minority of players will experience, yet CDPR has worked hard to place in the game anyway because they truly care about the depth of their world. I've played it through to completion several times and each time I find something new.

The quality of writing is so good that it will propel you to finish the game regardless of whether or not you like the combat. The characters are so likeable that you'll grow attached to them before too long, and the quality dialogue and voice acting makes the plot points hit that much harder. The unique thing about this game is not so much the quality of its writing, as there are quite a few games with solid writing, but the depth to which this quality of writing goes. From the main questline to the most minor sidequest, you can always expect to be pleasantly surprised. I was hooked by the very first monster hunting sidequest in White Orchard when you discover just why this Noonwraith is roaming around the well in this small village. Each NPC seems to have a lovingly crafted backstory of their own, and even the most minor fetch quest has its own wrinkle to make it interesting. The high quality of these quests is even more impactful in a world of Mass Effect Andromedas with their disposable, MMO inspired, procedurally generated fetch-quests. They don't make them like this anymore. This is a game in which the most minor sidequest you take on will take you nearly an hour, and it will make you stop and think about a dilemma, or a question it poses, through its quest writing. It's amazing just how much quality content the writing team put into this game. Nothing is disposable, everything in the game serves to garner an emotional reaction or ask an important question. It's packed to the brim with quality content to experience.

The most criticized aspect of this game is the combat, which I actually find to be quite enjoyable. I recently finished my first Death March playthrough and I found the challenge to be quite satisfying. I very rarely felt cheated, never had to cheese the game to get past a particularly difficult section. The difficulty was very well balanced and I felt a strong sense of accomplishment upon completion. The abilities scale very well, going from utility in the beginning to being overpowered within the game world if you focus solely on improving one aspect. Aard, my favorite ability, becomes an absolute world-wrecker if you continue to improve it, allowing you to force blast a small city of enemies at its highest levels. All other abilities are equally useful, and they allow you to build Geralt in whichever way you choose without feeling like you're missing out on anything. Very few RPGs are as balanced as this one is. The combat itself is enjoyable as well, requiring quick dodges and counters the way you would expect a witcher to fight. Each monster type is unique and requires its own strategies, allowing you to fall back into similar patterns whenever you face one type, but there are enough different types of monsters that you'll never face one type for long enough to get bored. To me, the humans were always the most challenging.

When it first released there was some talk of graphics downgrades, bugs, and obtuse UI. However CDPR have completely eliminated all of these issues with the most extensive round of post-release patching I've ever seen for a game. Every major bug I remember encountering has been eliminated from the game, it looks phenomenal and runs very well, and the UI flows like a dream whether you're using mouse and keyboard or a controller. In addition to this they added a ton of free DLC, so make sure you've got all that stuff set to download after you purchase the game.

To top all of this off, this game has the best DLC offerings I've ever seen in a video game, period. Better than Minerva's Den, better than Lair of the Shadow Broker. The writing in Hearts of Stone is the best I've ever seen in a DLC, and is the high point of the entire Witcher series in my opinion. And the sheer amount of content added in Blood and Wine is mind-boggling. If you buy Witcher 3, buy the Game of the Year edition without any second thoughts.

This is a game you'll put hundreds of hours into without regret. You'll be missing the characters long after you've finished it. Any time you hear a music track from the game on YouTube you'll immediately become nostalgic for the game. Witcher 3 is truly a towering achievement in every sense of the term, it's one of the very few games in which I can't find anything to criticize. It's an absolute masterpiece, and no matter what types of games you enjoy, you should buy it and give it a shot.

It might actually be better than everyone says.

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Downloadable Content: Hearts of Stone (2015)

The most compelling aspect of this expansion is the characters it includes, the story it tells, and some of the art direction—the last of which is something far different from what you find in the main game.

The character of Gaunter O'Dimm introduces something that all Witcher games have lacked, in my opinion: A compelling antagonist! O'Dimm is a well-nuanced villain and extremely compelling for that fact. In addition to him, the character of Olgierd von Everec and his brother Vlodimir may be some of my favorites in the entire Witcher series. It's tough to say too much more without spoiling it, but the presence of these characters in addition to Shani from Witcher 1 made this content a joy to play through. Learning about their backstories kept me interested the whole way through—especially Olgierd's—and I think they're worth the price of admission alone.

AHHHH! Spooky.

In addition to this, the sheer artistic muscle of the design of some of these characters and locales—Iris von Everec, the Caretaker, and the von Everec estate—are all superb. They're so dark and horrifying in the way the main game was not, that I can only assume the artists were either let completely off their leashes, or some fresh blood was brought into the team specifically to help design some of this stuff. I never really found myself spooked during the main game (save for maybe the Rats in the Tower quest on Fyke Isle), simply because in most cases Geralt is so powerful and in-control of what's happening that I ended up sharing his confidence. Hearing his bewildered reaction to the horrifyingly creepy content of the von Everec Estate led me to having a similar reaction. I loved the experience of that.

It's not all rosy, though. The new enemies added by Hearts of Stone are often way too spongey. I'm not sure the answer to complaints about the main game being too easy was necessarily, "make them take more hits to kill". Some of the Fallen Knight enemies are a complete chore to whack through—even on lower difficulty levels—taking a dozen or more hits to kill and not offering any difference tactically from human enemies in the main game.

In addition to this, the new gear and runecrafting abilities are nearly completely ignorable and don't offer significant change to the way you build Geralt's gear loadout or abilities. This was later fixed in Blood and Wine with some really inspirational additions, but don't come into Hearts of Stone expecting a huge revamp.

Olgierd and Geralt finna drop the hottest hip-hop album of 2015

In the end, this is well worth playing just on the strength of its characters, its antagonist, the darkly compelling new locales it adds in the northern Novigrad area. Although it can be played after the conclusion of the main game, I feel it fits best when played during the main campaign, somewhere within the Novigrad storyline, before completing Triss's quests and before leaving for Skellige. The end of the game provides significant changes to the world depending on your choices during the endgame quests, and it can feel jarring to go directly from the world of the epilogue into Hearts of Stone, where things are set back to how they were before the conclusion of the game.

Hearts of Stone rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Downloadable Content: Blood and Wine (2016)

Blood and Wine provides an historic, beautiful send-off for one of the greatest games ever made

This is the best piece of downloadable content I've ever played, and it's not close.

Blood and Wine hearkens back to a time when developers released on-disc expansions rather than simply pieces of DLC—which are often disposable nowadays. There's an unfathomable amount of new content present here; a brand new map that's the equivalent in size and content of Velen/Novigrad and Skellige of the main game, making equal to around a third the size of the main game. There are also dozens of additional quests, an entirely new storyline filled with new characters, new ways to upgrade your skills, new gear, new monster types, a completely different setting, an all-new soundtrack. Blood and Wine probably could have been called Witcher 3.5 and that wouldn't have been an exaggeration.

Players who have experienced the main game can be confident that the level of storytelling in Blood and Wine's main quest is equal to that which you've come to expect from CD Projekt Red. It provides an exceptionally satisfying conclusion to Geralt's story, and introduces some new characters who are as interesting as you'd expect. That said, one of the most disappointing things about Blood and Wine is the drop in quality present in most side quests here when compared to the main game. By far the strongest aspect of Witcher 3 is the universally high quality of its side content. Nearly all of the side quests in the main game are extremely compelling and feature a high level of writing quality. Sadly, Blood and Wine falls a bit short of this standard. The Vintner Contracts are all disappointingly similar; speak with the vintner, take the contract, go kill a monster in a cave. There are disappointingly few narrative wrinkles added. Additionally, some of the side quests fall victim of the "Help 5 Stonecutters", or the "Complete 15 Camerlengo tasks" type of open world bloat that always serves to bore. While this drop in quality from the main game was disappointing, they're often still at least as satisfying as other open world games, and in most cases, more satisfying. Compared to other open world games, they're pretty good—but compared to Witcher 3's main game, they fall a bit short.

The lower quality of side quests aside, what I find most compelling about this expansion is the way in which it fixes some of the mechanical, gameplay side of things that I thought fell short in the main game. One of the things I love most about RPGs is how addictive it can be to continue exploring and unlocking higher, more devastating skills. In the main Witcher 3 game, this is more subtle; often the new skills you're unlocking progress Geralt in small ways, and you have such limited ability slots that you're forced to specialize. The most impactful change in Blood and Wine, for me personally, is how it blows up this subtlety and grants Geralt some extremely powerful changes in the form of Mutations via one of its side quests. These mutations unlock new, powerful modifications to Geralt's abilities, such as adding a freezing effect to the Aard spell, which is capable of devastating crowds with ice akin to a Northern Wind bomb in absurdly satisfying fashion. It also unlocks new ability slots, allowing you more diverse powers. These new abilities are very expensive, and require a large investment of Ability points and Greater mutagens, but they're worth it, and they gave me that strong addicted feeling that I get from RPGs with great skill progression systems that I felt was missing in the main Witcher game. It's by far the best skill system ever in a Witcher game, and it's on par with what I consider some of the best skill trees in gaming—something like Mass Effect 3, for example.

CD Projekt Red has also fixed a common complaint I have regarding Witcher gear. I never want to wear anything aside from Witcher swords and armor sets, because they seem appropriate narratively, look really cool, and have great ability buffs. However, in the main game, it's very easy to level to the point where they become obsolete. They've changed this with the Aerondight sword, which levels alongside you—a welcome change—and Grandmaster level Witcher gear, which provides significant bonuses when all items of the same set are equipped, for example; being able to add 3 different blade oils at once (Grandmaster Wolven gear), or strongly buffing the Quen spell (Grandmaster Ursine gear).

In addition to this kind of addictive stuff, you also acquire a villa, which you can pour money into to improve. Another thing I've loved in games ever since Monteriggioni in Assassin's Creed 2.

Tying this all together, of course, is the superb world and narrative design, giving you a stunning locale and populating it with vast, incredible stories to experience. The new enemy types are very fun to fight against, and seem to have more involved twists in fighting them than those of the main game—which were very simple—and those of the prior expansions, Hearts of Stone—which were too spongey to really be enjoyable to fight against. The Shaelmars are fun to bait and dodge, the new vampire units in the Alps and Bruxae provide ample challenge and force you to approach the fights tactically and prepare with oils and potions (at least on Blood and Broken Bones, my preferred difficulty level). And the main plot of the expansion takes some very unique twists and turns that I didn't expect, including one setting that was so superb and unexpected it literally knocked my socks off. They flew off my feet, at force. That happened. I swear.

It's really, really hard to find fault with this expansion. If you liked Witcher 3, it's an absolute must-play. I'd gladly pay $40 for it and not second-guess my decision—it's that good. At $20, it's an absolute steal, and if you can find it cheaper than that, then go for it. If Witcher 3 wasn't your thing, this isn't going to change your mind, as it's just more of what the main game did well along with a further refinement of the RPG elements that were already present.

Unlike Hearts of Stone, I'd wait until after the conclusion of the main game to play this one. It's essentially the final chapter in Geralt's story, and it'd feel weird playing some of this stuff before completing the events of the main game.

Blood and Wine rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐