A lot of fans of the fantasy genre may have heard of The Witcher, the brainchild of CDProjket, and published under the Atari label. Since its release back in 2007, The Witcher has received over 90 awards for the sheer unbridled quality of the game. What you might not know is that the CDProjekt teams has not been content to sit on it’s laurels and has been since that time to tweak the gameplay experience. This was done by adding new and smoother character animations, 2 new quests to play through, and improvements to the inventory and alchemical system that were one of the falling points of the initial release. As excellent as the first version was, however, it did have some flaws and it’s the purpose of this review to show to what extent those flaws have been corrected.

The Witcher is a quality gaming experience. The visuals which have been retooled to create a graphical experience that is simply beautiful. To be able to see glittering sunlight or shimmering moonlight or to see the light of a flickering fire illuminated in the eyes of character or across the troughs, planes, and curves of their face is an inspiring sight to be sure. The CDProjket team has also reworked the character animations in how they act and react to their environment. The people at CDProjket have worked in over 100 different character modeling techniques to promise a more lifelike appearance but in the course of the game these animations tend to look repetitive and often confusing in execution. It doesn’t seem natural, for instance, for a character to look upward and left to right briefly before looking at the person being spoken to. The characters themselves, however, are very well designed: it’s only their body motions that seem confusing and often out of place.

In other areas apart from bodily language, however, the game can be quite realistic as NPCs often react to weather changes in both action and dialogue. If it begins to rain, for instance, any nearby NPCs will run for the nearest shelter and often decry the rain with phrases like “a new blouse, soaked!” or “there’s talk of a flood!”. NPCs also react realistically in a battle situation: archers won’t continue to fire bows at you as you rush at them, instead backing away and gtting shots off whenever possible before drawing a knife and going close-combat. This makes the all-around interaction in the game fresh and vibrant.

As is suitable for an epic of this kind, The Witcher offers two distinct gameplay styles to appeal to both experienced and casual players. The first mode is the more traditional way where the both the mouse and the keyboard is used in interacting and moving through the world, allowing for a firmer grasp of the world, and the second primarily uses the mouse which allows for a more strategic appraoch suited for more casual players. In a combat situation, however, the combat is always fast paced. Geralt, the main character, can wield up to three different weapons but the sword is by far the most useful as it allows for Witcher-specific combat styles.