One concern that I had going into The Witcher 3 was the combat, which has seen a massive improvement this time around. While the Witcher 2’s combat system was far from broken, the overall lack of player feedback and responsiveness made it far from ideal. Things fare much better this time around; at any point you can lock on to nearby enemies and swap focus from one to another, allowing you to choose who you want to deal with at any given moment. Geralt’s combat style is mostly a mix of swordplay (with your standard blocks, rolls and dodges) and his ability to use spells, called Signs. These range from protective shields and traps to fire and telekinetic blasts, with the option to upgrade both your magical and physical abilities as you gain experience. Each enemy and creature has different weaknesses, which thankfully can be looked up using the in-game bestiary.
While I wouldn’t go as far as to compare it to the likes of something like Dark Souls or Bloodborne, The Witcher 3‘s combat has a very deliberate feel and weight to how you move and strike. Geralt’s animations include a wind up and wind down, meaning you’ll have to commit yourself to a swing of your sword, rather than being able to quickly cancel out of an attack. This lends a slower and more methodical pace to the combat, as you suss out your foe’s attack patterns and behaviors, and wait for the critical moment to strike. Dodging and rolling out of the way are key, and while a block can hold its own against human soldiers and weak creatures, stronger enemies will easily break through and stun you should you attempt to simply block. Instead, you’ll have to time a counterattack, or simply dodge out of the way of any oncoming blows.
Playing mostly on the PlayStation 4 (while having the opportunity to briefly test out the Xbox One and PC versions), it’s clear that CD Projekt Red was able to take advantage of each system to their fullest potential. While the PC version offers the most fluid and visually impressive version of the three (as expected), both console versions manage to hold their own, with the PlayStation 4 touting a full 1080p resolution at a (mostly) stable 30 frames per second and the Xbox One running at a slightly less clear 900p.
In motion, all three look excellent, with all taking advantage of a physically-based rendering process. The sheer vastness and density of the Continent looks amazing at any time of day or place, and on-the-fly visual effects (such as Geralt’s fire blast) look impressive in combat. As you might expect with such a large game, performance and stability issues do rear their ugly head from time to time, though CD Projekt RED has done an admirable job of keeping up with patches and fixes.
At launch, I did run into a few in-game crashes, which sent me back to the PlayStation menu screen, and framerate dips are noticeable during particular cutscenes and in certain environments. Getting used to the controls also took some time, as Geralt essentially accelerates and decelerates very quickly, with no sense of weight or momentum, and the in-game UI and menus are noticeably small, making it hard to make out in-game descriptions of items. Thankfully, many of these issues have been solved with patches, and while there are still some quirks to be ironed out, the developers are continually working on fixes and being quite upfront about what they are working on; a rarity for most developers.
Still, even with these niggling issues, it’s not hard to recommend The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. In fact, I find myself in a position to say that it may just be one of the best games I’ve had the chance of playing in recent memory, and this is coming from someone who isn’t a big fan of RPGs in general. I’ve simply never had the chance to find myself in a world that is this engrossing, this alive and this memorable. I didn’t think it was possible, but CD Projekt RED has managed to astound me, yet again.
This review is based on the PlayStation 4 version of the game (with some testing also done on both PC and Xbox One), which was provided to us.
