Based on a popular Polish novel series, The Witcher puts players into the role of a powerful monster hunter named Geralt. Unlike teenage Slayers from Sunnydale, Witchers are an unlikable bunch. Townspeople welcome them to help solve their supernatural problems, but they're just as relieved to watch them leave. By specializing in sword fighting, alchemy, dabbling in the mystic arts and consuming mutagenic elixirs to empower themselves, Witchers rent themselves out as swords for hire.
The game opens with a lengthy video sequence to show how badass Geralt is, but he somehow loses all his skill and memory by the time players control him. He must regain all his Witcher skills while solving the mystery of his memory loss on top of figuring out who launched an attack on the Witcher training grounds. Like many things that come from another country, much of The Witcher gets lost in translation. Non-player characters spout random bits of dialogue that make no sense, come out unintentionally funny or said with the wrong tone of voice. When speaking with characters, players will feel like they missed something from previous conversations or a cut scene, since they'll make obscure references to people and events the player should know about. It doesn't help that the voice acting ranges from OK to downright awful. Geralt himself comes off as monotonously glum.
Gameplay only marginally surpasses that of a hack'n-slash role-playing game. Players must click on hostile enemies to draw their swords and then continuously hold the cursor over the target throughout the fight, clicking at certain intervals. When done correctly, each click starts a new link in the combo chain. With an easy or medium difficulty setting, the cursor turns into a flaming sword whenever it comes time to click.
The more stages the player unlocks, the more impressive Geralt's moves become, ultimately leading up to a finishing maneuver. Unfortunately, all this clicking quickly becomes tiresome, especially when confronted with multiple enemies or ones that move out of sword range before the lumbering Geralt can swing at them.
Atari broke down the sword fighting styles into three categories: Strong attacks for heavily armored enemies, fast attacks for more agile foes and a group attack that does light to moderate damage to multiple targets. Players switch between the three modes throughout a fight, and unless they read through the monster encyclopedia, they'll have to guess which style fits what foe. Drinking potions, using items and casting spells help to further enhance combat. Dodging and parrying happen automatically, determined by the character's skills, but double-clicking around will activate Geralt's acrobatic side as he jump flips over enemies. However, we couldn't help feeling that a plain old jump button would have sufficed.
Reader Comments (2)
The developers of "The Witcher" deserve critical acclaim for this title, whoever wrote this review should be fired. This game does not deserve a 60%. Whoever wrote this review deserves an F because they fail at life. These kinds of negative reviews are made by people who clearly don't understand the game but feel entitled to criticize it by using statements like "It bored me" or "The characters just stare into space when speaking" as the basis for their contrived opinions, ultimately hurt new developers and new games. I hope the author at least feels better about himself by publicly panning something great. The author of this review is incompitent and shouldn't be allowed to review a game ever again. Either that, or they simply weren't endowed with the skills necessary to play this kind of game, and I recommend they stick to reviews of games like Bejeweled, and Peggle, which clearly seems to be closer to their level of comprehension.
A remarkably incompetent and irrelevant review. The author even didn't bother to find out who the actual developer was, mixing it up with the publisher. In general this writing makes an impression of glancing and generally inadequate, especially concerning the characters and dialog part, which makes the majority of the game essence. Tough and mature decision making content, free of black and white cliches typical for modern RPG games, as well as the results of your past judgments haunting you later in game weren't mentioned by the author either. However, as i haven't played an English-localized version of the game (its polish in origin) i'm not at the liberty of making any statements on the quality and diversity of dialog there. Thus, search for a more qualified assessment of this title on the more prominent review boards over the internet.