The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt, no, don’t exchange the H for a C.

I’m so happy I gave this game a try. I mean, it looked amazing from the trailers and stuff, plus with the overwhelming reviews, it was hard to pass it up. But like I said, I’m glad I didn’t pass it up, because the characters were amazing. The voice acting is great. It’s a game with its humor as well as more serious and somber tones depending on the questline you’re on.

There’s so much to explore and so much to find in the environment.

Who is this game for?

Game length

50+ hours

Where can you buy?

Pros:

  • Amazing characters
  • Beautiful open world environments
  • Soundtrack is on point

Cons:

  • Some bugs
  • Combat is difficult to master
  • Roach is a disappointing horse

Explanation to Negative Feedback

Some bugs

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I mean, I had to look for something negative to say about this game, as no game is absolutely perfect.

Geralt might be, but he’s not the game. He’s the main character.

That’s not to say the bugs I’ve come across are game-breaking. Though I ran into some obnoxious ones–with one being super long load times that I’d have to quit the game and go back into it. Another bug was Geralt being in a horse-riding position without being on his horse. So he’s this scrunched up man levitating around the place.

It was more funny than not and corrected itself after a cutscene.

Combat is difficult to master

I’ll admit I struggled with the combat a lot during my time playing this game, but that’s not to say it’s hard to do, it’s just hard to master.

You’ve got different signs to use that are better used against specific enemies. You’ve got two swords–one for humans and another for monsters. Not only that but there’s a crossbow if you want to use it, bombs to be made, potions to give you extra boosts in some areas, and then the talents that you can choose with each new level gained.

It’s all about choosing the right way to defeat what’s in front of you, and not be a kamikaze witcher in the process.

Unfortunately I’m more kamikaze and tend to die more often.

Roach is a disappointing horse

It’s hard to say anything nice about Roach.

He’s a good horse that can get you places a lot quicker than just you running on your own two feet, but that’s about all he’s good for.

He can’t jump down from ledges or hop over gaps; he’ll just immediately stop and pull back. He won’t go through water, which okay, I’ll give him that one. When you call for him, he can get stuck behind a fenced area and be overly confused on how to get to you, so you have to go to him instead. If you call for him and continue running, you’ll leave him behind.

You can’t grab anything while you’re on horseback, which is actually why I prefer running from place to place to collect herbs.

Basically what I’m trying to say is Roach is no Phobos.

Explanation to Positive Feedback

Amazing characters

And amazing voice actors that gave them all a voice of their own, (not just Geralt, fanboys and girls).

No two “main” NPCs are alike, though you can’t really say the same for the soldiers that wander around or guard camps. It’s hard to make every single one of them different and unique when they’re just there for filler content and to beat your ass if you steal something.

Beautiful open world environments

Not everything is made the same, with environmental replicas being copy and pasted everywhere. The different areas you visit in the game really feel like they’re different from one another and have beautiful scenery to go with them…sometimes. I mean if you’re in a swampy location then it’s probably not going to be beautiful, but you get what I mean.

I’m not a huge fan of open worlds because I get so lost when I run off the beaten path, but in The Witcher 3, we’re urged to explore the areas around us.

Guarantee you’re not going to find nothing if you veer off the main questline’s pathway. You’ll run into interesting monsters, find treasures, meet up with another quest-giver, or whatever.

Soundtrack is on point

I won’t spoil it for you, but so many people have added The Witcher soundtracks to their Spotify albums for that great feeling of a great game.

Links Worth Checking Out

100% The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Review (with spoilers)

After an epic cutscene involving a battlefield and two witchers tracking a single person, we transition into an adorably sleeping Geralt and the dream he’s having, which starts out with him soaking naked in a bathtub.

I’ve never had a bathtub scene. I don’t particularly care for baths, but I don’t think I’ve ever had a shower dream either? I have, however, had dreams where I either couldn’t find a bathroom and I really needed to go, or the toilets in question were completely out in the open with no barriers. Just…a toilet sitting in the middle of a busy area.

Those dreams suck.

It’s like your mind is telling you “Don’t use the bathroom, you’re not awake you idiot,” while your body is pulling a Shia LaBeouf and yelling, “Just do it!”

Anyway, Geralt gets a rude pinch that he’s honestly pretty calm about, given what was probably pinched as he was trying to relax, in order for him to get a move on. We then see Yennefer sitting naked in a chair reading a book.

Ah, to be so flippant about one’s nudity.

Once you’re able to move around, you’ll get the tutorial side of things, and I have something to say about these tutorials.

First off, you can turn the tutorials off at any point in the menu, which is nice as they might become a little insistent. The second thing I like is when a tutorial is talking about a specific thing on the interface, it will be surrounded by brackets, so you know exactly what’s being talked about and don’t have to look around for it.

One of the things I absolutely hate about the tutorials is that sometimes they just don’t disappear from the screen until you do exactly as they want you to do.

Such as using the key you find to unlock the door. It tells you that in order to unlock doors, walk up to them and press the corresponding keybind. And while some games will have that tutorial bit disappear from the screen after being there for a moment, this game does not.

That statement for the tutorial will remain on the screen, until you actually unlock the door, and it’s like…okay, I get it. I know what to do. You can leave out the door I haven’t unlocked yet.

This kind of thing might happen several times with new things that occur.

Within the room, aside from learning about unlocking doors with keys, we also understand how to use Witcher Senses, which will highlight different objects either red or yellow, depending, and keep them highlighted while the keybind remains active or for a few seconds after you release the keybind.

And another little tidbit is extinguishing and lighting candles with your witcher’s Igni powers.

You can also get into another conversation, but even if you’re trying to elicit some extra naughty time with her, she’ll basically call you a hound dog and brush you off.

Disappointing, I know.

What’s not disappointing is the outside view when you step out onto the balcony. What a gorgeous game, right?

Our main objective gets us to unlock the door and go downstairs, which shows off a cutscene regarding Vesemir having fallen asleep while teaching a witcher-in-training named Ciri how to be…well, a witcher. So now we get to meet her doing terrible footwork techniques while blindfolded and battling a dummy.

Honestly, it looked pretty damn impressive to me, but that just goes to show how bad of a witcher I’d be.

We have the option of another tutorial which will explain running the walls. Basically, you’ll be racing Ciri to get to the training grounds. During this little race, you’ll learn how to climb ladders, climb up ledges, generally jump off a ledge instead of climbing a ladder down it or whatever would be appropriate, as fall damage is a thing, and run by the end of the course.

Pretty simplistic stuff and she doesn’t really pout all the much when she loses the race, nor do we rub it in her face, proving Geralt is nicer than me.

In the training grounds, we learn the combat tutorial.

First off, we have two swords–a steel sword for humans and nonhumans and a silver sword for monsters. While I really like the concept of having two swords for two classifications of enemies, I also don’t like it because it becomes confusing to me as far as which one is which–steel sword is always on the left and the silver sword will always be on the right. There’s no real distinction between the two weapons aside from the fact that if you pull the wrong one and attack the wrong enemy, their health won’t go down much, meaning you’ve drawn the wrong sword.

Since you’re fighting Vesemir here, you’ll draw your steel sword.

At this point, you’ll learn the basics of sword combat, including locking on, fast attack, strong attack, dodging, rolling, parries, and counterattacks.

Locking onto a target is sometimes more of a hassle than free range combat if you’re going up against multiple enemies. For instance, if you’ve locked onto a target that’s decided to back off a bit and you’ve got two other enemies in range when you attack, you’re going to try to attack the enemy that you can no longer reach and ignore the closer threats.

The parrying is basically just you blocking an incoming attack with your sword raised, to reduce damage done to you.

The counterattack is mislabeled to me, because you don’t exactly counter them with an attack of your own. If you time the parry correctly, you’ll kick the enemy back so they stumble away from you, but it doesn’t seem like they sustain any damage from it.

After the sword combat, you’ll learn of your witcher’s Signs: Yrden, Quen, Igni, Axii, and Aard.

  • Yrden is a magical trap that slows enemies that enter the circular area.
  • Quen is a shield you can give yourself to stave off one attack before disappearing.
  • Igni shoots an arc of flame in front of yourself.
  • Axii messes with your enemy’s mind, disorienting them.
  • Aard telekinetically blasts a foe backwards, sometimes stunning or making them fall.

Next up are bombs that you can throw.

They are thrown in an arc, but I don’t know if you need to adjust your trajectory or if they’ll actually go directly to the source you’re aiming for. I mean, there is an icon for where you’re throwing it at, but it’s a little obscure on whether it’s showing you’re aiming at an object or just aiming in a general direction of an object.

If everything becomes a bit too confusing at first, you can continue to freely combat with Vesemir until you feel you’ve got the hang of it.

Another cutscene begins shortly after, and Geralt wakes up.

You can decide to share information with Vesemir during a conversation with him or not. I chose to since there’s no harm in maybe learning a bit more on the characters we saw, or hearing feedback from our companion.

A letter Geralt had received was mentioned and they talk about a unicorn being mentioned in the postscript. Turns out Geralt and Yen had a bit of freaky fun with a stuffed unicorn. Makes me wonder if the unicorn was used for practice or something else.

Here’s the full script for Yennefer’s Letter:

Dear friend,

Forgive me for not asking about your health or how you have been these last years. Time is very short.

I have important news. We must meet, and soon. Ride to Willoughby, near Vizima, and don’t spare the horses – while I do eagerly await our reunion, I won’t be able to wait, eagerly or otherwise, very long.

Your dear friend,

Yennefer.

P.S. I still have the unicorn.

After the scene, you initiate the quest Lilacs and Gooseberries while being confronted by Ghouls.

Interestingly enough, the tutorial message for monsters states that monsters are shown with a silver health bar, so you know to draw your silver sword. I never noticed this tidbit, honestly, or if I did I immediately forgot about it and ended up focusing on the red of the enemy’s name.

I guess the silver as the bar just never clicked with me as it’s so skinny compared to the monster you might be fighting.

Maybe it would’ve been more obvious with the outline of the enemy level being wrapped in silver? But probably not, as it’s an easy oversight and something that’s also easy to forget while in a battle.

Still now that I know…it’s nice to know.

At the end of the battle there’s a tutorial on Adrenaline Points, which you generate by attacking enemies. When you’re no longer attacking enemies, the gauge decreases until empty once again.

There are abilities you can spec yourself into within the skill tree that can use the adrenaline points you gain, but it’s kind of odd that it states this here, because the skills you need the adrenaline points for won’t be able to be obtained for a good while.

And since this pops up at the start of the game, it’s going to be easy to forget it even exists unless there’s another reminder when you do put in for a skill that uses this feature.

Another tutorial you obtain is for Vitality Regeneration.

The first way to gain vitality back is by eating or drinking, and let me tell you, the food f*cking sucks if your health is already really low and you’re still engaged in battle. It just takes too long, especially if you keep taking hits. Eating more food won’t help either in this case.

Basically, you’ll want to eat to top yourself off when you’re not in battle. Like coming out of one.

Another way is meditating for at least an hour (as long as you’re not on a more extreme difficulty, which won’t work).

I totally forgot about meditating to regain health until several hours into the game. I’m talking like…4 hours into the game I was inhaling food in order to gain my vitality back when it was really low and I know for a fact Geralt is happy he has a high metabolism. He’d be going from white wolf to Porky Pig in no time at the rate of binge-eating I was doing.

So yeah…don’t forget to meditate.

You’re not going to be able to go into an inn and request to sleep in a bed for a night like a lot of other RPGs allow for to regain health.

Also, don’t meditate where there are going to be monsters. I feel like that shouldn’t be said, but…at least I learned by my mistakes and was at full health when I snapped out of it.

You can walk around and loot bodies after you’ve killed them, and if you’ve got the minimap active, it’ll show you where the loot is, because it can be really hard to see, and sometimes the loot is a little ways away from a dead body. It’s also worth it to note not every body will have loot, so the minimap does make it a lot easier to judge where it all is.

Though you can also use your Senses to find loot if you prefer not to have the minimap.

In the meantime, while you’re scavenging the bodies, if you happen to be like me and have the tutorials still on because there’s still a lot more crap you know you’ll need to learn, you’ll notice that the game really wants you to mount your horse so much that the tutorial block won’t disappear until you do just that.

But considering you can’t f*cking loot anything while on your horse, Roach, you’ll have to deal with it.

Even after looting the ghouls, you can find the Crystal skull that was dropped from the raven within the cutscene featuring Yennefer at the battleground. It’s a quest item, and not something you need to pick up but…it’s worth it to have, I think.

When you’re done with everything, you can mount Roach and follow Vesemir.

The game reminds you that you can call Roach to you whenever you feel the need to ride, as well as gallop and canter, and even follow the road you’re currently on. If the road splits, however, you’ll need to steer Roach in the appropriate direction.

There’s a Ransacked Village you’ll enter, greeted at the entrance by a few hanged people, in fact, which is nice.

At the road’s end of this village, I hopped off Roach and dropped down to the shoreline to battle some Drowners.

Now, I didn’t realize it at the time, but the Drowners in question were level 4, and I’m only level 1 with not much combat training despite ironically being a badass witcher. I came very close to dying due to this, but I managed to survive by creating enough distance that they reset to their original positions.

The good part of this is that their health didn’t go back up when they fled back to where they initially were.

And it gave me time to take the first step into gluttony.

This is probably where you’re going to find your first treasure chests, if you’re as daring as me, and while I won’t list everything that I find in an area, I’ll give you the names of some of the more important items.

Just know…if you see places to search, whether they be chests or otherwise, search them.

Loot is good.

Just don’t overburden yourself, because going over max carrying capacity is bad–you won’t be able to run, only walk.

The chests in this area gave me:

  • Diagram: Dorian sword
  • Torn-out page: Ekimmara decoction
  • Diagram: Cidarian gambeson
  • Manuscript page: Tawny Owl

Obviously, you’re not going to be able to use a lot of these at the start of the game, but if you do ever want to use a diagram, you just need to go to a craftsman in order for them to craft you whatever the diagram is of.

Both the decoction and Tawny Owl are alchemy formulas, meaning if you have the ingredients, you can craft them.

When I got back to following Vesemir, there were more Drowners on the left side, so I decided to drop down again in case there was more goodies to be had.

Again, they’re level 4, and I was below half health at this time because who looks at a health bar before going into combat, amirite?

I died in two hits.

I came back and whooped their asses the second time though, and when there wasn’t any treasure, I was even more happy to have killed them.

Keep in mind that even though I say there wasn’t any chests to loot anything major, it doesn’t mean there wasn’t any loot. Obviously when you kill enemies you have a high chance of obtaining loot from their bodies, specific to the creature they are, but there’s also still other loot you can grab in the area, be this from bags, crates, dead bodies, etc.

It’s always good to go where enemies area, because there’s always something. And that something will prove to be useful later, whether it’s for components or to sell for coin or equipment or food.

Now, when I fought the first Drowner enemies, there was a climbable ledge nearby so I could get back to Vesemir and Roach quickly. Here though, at this second pack, there was no climbable ledge, so I was running along the shore looking up at the ledge I couldn’t reach, trying to figure out how to get back up there.

I had to run around the long way and make a big loop to get back up to where I needed to be, so let’s just say…it’s not always wise to jump off a ledge to fight enemies when there’s no easy way to get back up, because Geralt can’t always jump out of a ravine. He actually needs something he can grab onto to hoist himself up.

Luckily it didn’t take too long of being on Roach for another cutscene to happen.

This time it’s in regards to a griffin eating a horse while a man cowers under his cart. We chase the griffin off and save the man and he asks us if we’d like a reward.

You have two choices to make:

  • You don’t owe us a thing.
  • We could use a few crowns.

Technically, we didn’t really do anything, except land a cut on the beast that had it flying off. So it’s not like we killed it and got rid of a threat. And also, sometimes gaining crowns from people in return for doing something doesn’t really help in the long run, given how many items you can come across in the world and the amount of selling you can do.

With that being said, I went with You don’t owe us a thing, which gave me a future discount when browsing his shop.

After all this, I traveled the rest of the way to the inn in White Orchard, where you learn about Populated Areas.

Basically, don’t start a fight, don’t kill anyone, and don’t steal while you’re in sight of any guards because they will attack you and, for the most part, you won’t stand a chance against them. You can however look into the contents of crates and such. Just don’t take anything unless you really need it.

Another thing to take notice of are notice boards that typically have a couple side quests for you to do.

A lot of times they’re contracts, which means you get to kill a big bad monster of a specific type that I guess you won’t often see in the wilderness, unlike Drowners and Wolves and such. Other times the board just has random notes from people that don’t really do anything for you as far as the game goes, but they’re kinda fun to read.

The quests obtained from White Orchard’s notice board are:

  • Contract: Devil by the Well
  • Missing in Action

To continue with the Lilac and Gooseberries quest, I went inside the inn for a cutscene.

Since we were nice to Bram and didn’t outright ask for coins when we saved him from the griffin, the barkeep is grateful and gives us food as thanks.

You can browse her goods and notice something:

Every shopkeeper has a set amount of coin and you cannot sell anything that goes beyond the amount of coin that they have, meaning this game is a give and take when it comes to purchasing and selling. Different vendors also buy certain things for more than others.

A barkeep for instance might be willing to pay more for food, while an armorer will pay more for armor and a weaponsmith will pay more for weapons.

You might still be able to sell certain things to certain vendors, it’s just the price they give you for it might not be as good.

I’m personally not a fan of this kind of exchange, though I understand it. I think my main gripe is when you hover over an item in your inventory it gives a sell price, but when you try to sell it somewhere, the sell price is nowhere near what you’d seen it as. It becomes a bit of a disappointment to someone who has a thing for having too much money.

Your main mission in the inn is to ask around for Yennefer, and in doing so, you learn about using the Axii sign in dialogue, and I don’t know about you, but I love being able to manipulate a person’s reaction to what I say or push them in the direction of a certain conversation by making them flinch away from their own begrudging outtake on me, whether it’s by spell or just being overly charismatic.

Choices matter games are fun and all with the prompting of different choices, but when a certain choice is only available because you have the required assets for it is even more rewarding.

You can also learn about the card game Gwent here, which…I’m not very good at.

It’s simplistic in nature. Have more attack power by the end of the round and you win that round. After someone gets two wins, the game is over. You only have so many cards to play, so really it’s a matter of trying to get your opponent to use their better cards while also keeping some of your own better cards, and in the case that they run out of cards and you don’t, you’ll win.

As long as yours is the higher score, of course.

Or if you have a specific leader card that allows you to win on a draw.

In saying this I just realized something. I don’t really like playing games with other people. I stay away from board games and card games and coop games, because I don’t like the idea of losing to someone else. And video games are actually no different than real life to me.

I’m not a particular fan of Gwent, because I’m able to lose to someone, and I don’t like that.

Even if it’s really rewarding when I win.

After I spoke with everyone, I got lost on finding the door because they look just like the wall apparently, but when I finally managed to exit the inn I was confronted by some guards that wanted a fight.

Unfortunately, you can’t draw your weapons in this fight; it’s with your fists only.

Still, I muddled one man’s mind with Axii and pummeled the other guys.

I even tried to punch Roach, and I can only justify that by saying I really wish he was Phobos from Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, and I get a little mad at him from time to time.

I took a quest called Twisted Firestarter within the area that ended up in a hanging, so there’s that.

Listen, I don’t want to hear your opinions on the matter. Anybody that walks that slow when it’s an escort quest deserves that outcome, I don’t care how drunk they are. And that’s on top of burning the blacksmith building down.

While roaming to a nearby Point of Interest, I came across a lone house with a locked door and learned that you can’t just use Aard on a locked door whenever you want to get inside a house. Nor can you burn it away with Igni, which I admit is a little silly, but when you’re a looter of anything and everything, you’ll try everything to get into a locked house when you don’t own the key.

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