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OFFICIAL The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (Review)

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Introduction

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is an Open World RPG, third in a series about Witchers, monsters, bedroom shenanigans and an awful lot of stupid royal people. The game was developed by CDProjekt RED in the REDengine 3, the third iteration of the engine since the original Witcher game. Like the others, the game focuses largely on Geralt, a Witcher for hire, only in this instance features a massive open world where you can freely roam just about everywhere. As such, the game also features a horse, and incorporates more game mechanics and aspects than you can shake a stick at. You never truly realise just how much sheer content there is in this game until you stumble upon every little piece of it. Quite bluntly, it's probably the most content rich game I have ever played. The key focus however, is that it's not just cookie-cutter bland empty content similar to Skyrim's side quests, but largely interesting and focused. That's what sets the Witcher 3 apart from pretty much every other game ever made. But is it the second coming of Christ?

To read the full review, go to: http://www.nextpowerup.com/articles/the-witcher-3-review/
To read the performance analysis, go to: http://www.nextpowerup.com/articles/the-witcher-3-performance-analysis/
 
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Great review!

What bothers me the most is Geralt's movement, I wish he would be a little more agile... sometimes I feel he is bulky and slow like a truck when turning, especially when swimming.

Also, I dislike the way the auto target works when there are multiple enemies... :(

Finally I personally disliked the city Novigrad and its main quest lines there, I found them boring.

Everything else in this game I find is amazing!
 

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Going to read right now! It's eerie in the synopsis above that you refer to the amount of content, because I was just remarking on that elsewhere here. It is utterly staggering, because nearly everything seems to have been worked in, instead of just being thrown out there rehashing other content. It's quite possibly the most content I have ever seen.

EDIT: Splendid review! You hit the nail on the head. Yes, I too have had some trouble leaving my menu screens on occasion...very annoying. And combat could be a little smoother. It's tough to remember Shift plus left click to do power attack instead of fast attack. As a reult, I find it easier to just click the hell out of the mouse with fast attacks, and keep investing points into that combat skill.

I was surprised to see you pronounce this game of the year, and best game in several years. I feel that it deserves all the overall praise it gets. Sure it's not perfect, but it is one of the most polished and rich games ever on release! It's also one of the prettiest, despite any "downgrade". All developers should be taking notes. Scratch that, publishers. All developers would do this if they could.

The one are I had a disagreement on was your performance review. I don't feel I am losing anything on my 780 by not running it Ultra. I get 60fps running it on all High, except for Detail setting, which is set to ultra. Because shadows are so well done in this game, I have "settled" for medium shadows, which are better than any shadows I have seen in other games. With these settings, it's extremely beautiful and detailed, and runs stutter free at or very near 60fps!

Thanks for the thotroughly enjoyable review of this game!
 
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I remapped most of the keys. The standard key mappings don't seem terribly well laid out. I changed heavy attack to right mouse.
 
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Nice review, you sold it quite well to me.

Im a little leary of the "Clunky combat" you mention, however Im a huge fan of these open world games, so I think i must give it a shot.


Thank you
 

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Nice review, you sold it quite well to me.

Im a little weary of the "Clunky combat" you mention, however Im a huge fan of these open world games, so I think i must give it a shot.


Thank you

Don't worry, it's just tough to find a word to describe it. It's still entirely playable in combat, just could use some finesse.

But it really is as good a game as RCoon says. I don't think I've ever read him gush over a game like he has here!

I said here on TPU beforehand I think this has the potential to be CDPR's HL2. Having played it for a week now, I'm convinced my prediction was right. It's THAT level of greatness.
 
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Just read the review. Here are some of the controls I changed and, to me, they make much more sense and are closer to how Witcher 2's controls were. 'E' is block, 'R' is use, T and Y are the item slots for potions and food. Z is Witcher sense, right mouse is heavy attack. Can't remember what I changed 'F' to...
 

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Just read the review. Here are some of the controls I changed and, to me, they make much more sense and are closer to how Witcher 2's controls were. 'E' is block, 'R' is use, T and Y are the item slots for potions and food. Z is Witcher sense, right mouse is heavy attack. Can't remember what I changed 'F' to...

Thanks! Those are really helpful! Especially the heavy attack.
 
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I don't change controls often, but the default ones make no sense to me in W3.
 

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I don't change controls often, but the default ones make no sense to me in W3.

"I don't often change controls, but when I do, I change Witcher 3." :laugh: -The Most INTERESTING Gamer in the World
(loosely adapted from Dos Equis commercial)
 
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"I don't often change controls, but when I do, I change Witcher 3." :laugh: -The Most INTERESTING Gamer in the World
(loosely adapted from Dos Equis commercial)

Might even be somewhat true. I've gamed in Japan, Finland, Korea, Iraq, Afghanistan and various places in the US. =P
 

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Very nice review @RCoon, thank you. I'm am very happy to see it being reviewed well and praised despite little quirks, as I really want CDPR to success and receive the respect.

In honestly though, I'm scared of the game because of the insane amount of content. I don't have time like I used to, and when I game, it's sporadic in short bursts, so I fear I'd never be able to get into this game and enjoy it the way it's meant to be enjoyed.

"I don't often change controls, but when I do, I change Witcher 3." :laugh: -The Most INTERESTING Gamer in the World
(loosely adapted from Dos Equis commercial)

 

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@manofthem Awesome meme! Thanks!

Go ahead and try the game. All my gameplay has been in 2 hour bursts. You can save virtually anytime you want.
 

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I'd have thought there would be a whole lot more comments than this on the review considering how big the game is.
 
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I'd have thought there would be a whole lot more comments than this on the review considering how big the game is.
All of them are in the Discussion thread :)
 

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All of them are in the Discussion thread :)

True, and that's where I've been all this time. I just figured since it was such a good review there would be more comments here too.
 
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For anyone out there scared of the Witcher 3 super high demanding system specs. I will say have no fear. If you do wanna pick up this amazing game, do so!
With my incredible old cpu and this budget high end AMD card i managed to ultra the performance at 1080. Hair works off, shadows to High, no Blur, no Bloom - VSync with Freesync activated - the result is a super smooth 50-60 Fps (i caped the fps to 60).
Ram never goes more up than avarage 4gb, and vram does not go above 2,1 gb




Very curious to know if it can handle higher resolutions. Don't know how to do this . The game recognizes my monitor resolution, can't set a higher one
 
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