Game review n4 - The Witcher (Wiedźmin)

I thought, after playing The Witcher 2, I'll make a review of it. (Pro Tip: It's awesome). But I forgot I didn't review the first one!

The Witcher (Wiedźmin), Enhanced Edition

Released - 26 October 2007 (EE: 16 September 2008) by CDProjekt RED, Poland

Genre -Pure blooded RPG

Multiplayer - No

Engine: Aurora

Requirements - PC:  Minimal: Pentium 2,4 GHz, 1 GB RAM, GeForce 6600. Recomended: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.13 GHz, 2 GB RAM, GeForce 7900 GTX

Price - 10$ on gog.com (look what you get for your money)

Official website: thewitcher.com

Description:

Based on the works of the polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski - 5 book saga and 2 books of stories. Mature RPG game, telling the story of Geralt of Rivia, witcher, who slay monsters for money and are mutants, often unacceptable in society. Dark and unforgiving world. There's no black and white, there are diffrent shades of gray only. There's no good or bad choice. This is The Witcher.

Graphics: 8/10 - The game is 4 years old now and is based on Aurora Engine (Neverwinter Nights) which looks like this. CDProjekt squeezed everything from it to look like this:

So yeah it looks really good still. And what's great about it - the graphic style and architecture of the world is AMAZINGLY cool and atmosphering. The lack of epicness - no big castles and big battles - dark fantasy in it's esse
nce.

Music: 10+/10 - Easily one of the most amazing soundtracks I heard. It's diffrent. Without pathos and unnessecery epicness, like many other games (Mass Effect). Flutes, acoustic guitars and many ethnical instruments make an amazing slavic atmosphere. Composed by Adam Skorupa and Paweł Błaszczak.

Voice acting: 9/10 (polish), 6/10 (english) - I suggest playing with polish voices and english subtitles, cause polish voices are amazing, even if you don't understand them. I didn't hear much of the english version, but I think it's rather medicore.

Story: 9.5/10 - Very mature, deep, suprising, with many hard choices, which will affect the story. Addictive, memorable, with complicated characters and philosophical disputations. Near perfections.

Dialogues: 9/10 - intellingent, well writen, funny, mature - just like in the books.

Mechanics: 6.5/10 - Weak point of the game (although improved in many ways in EE). I liked the combat system, but it's a hate or love thing really. It's sort of rythm based and a little bit too static. You can still encounter technical issues from very old Aurora engine, even they covered it pretty well.

Difficulty: 6/10 - Not a very challanging game, if you know some tricks. Playing for the first time on normal, I died maybe 20 times. Even less on hard when I played third time - cause I knew how to play. Some bosses are piece of cake, some are hard. But there is a mod enhancing the difficulty drasticly, so feel free to use it :)


Price to value: 9.5/10 - Huge. It's very cheap in digital dowload and fully loaded (contains lots of goodies) in normal box for sth like 20$. With 40 hours of gameplay and massive replayabilty, it's one of the best offers you can have.

General Feel: 10/10 - I would say this in few words: it's crude, uncutted diamond with warm soul inside.


Overall: 9/10 - if you can see through the stone sheath to it's heart - it's a perfect game.

YAY & NAY 

YAY:

- Based on my favorite novels - (better than Lord of the Rings for me)

- Amazing story

- Great audiovisuals

- Deep and complicated morally

- Atmosphere

- Mature, sex, blood and curse words implemented

- Fantasy world reflecting our world's problems - racism, poverty, crime

- Great characters

- Funny, with great amount of easter eggs and references

- Loooong

- Good price
- Nice combat system...

NAY:

- ...or not so much great

- Should be more difficult

- Technical issues

- Many NPC clones

- Not so many armour and weapon types