The Witcher Demo

When it comes to role-playing games, the most important part is to make the players feel like they are driving the story forward and their decisions matter in the overall picture. Obviously, smooth gameplay mechanics and an engaging combat system is welcomed as well, but the entire experience rests on the main character and the story that unfolds around him over the course of the game.

The Witcher is a story-driven RPG developed by CD Projekt and it is based on a series of books written by a famous Polish author by the name of Andrzej Sapkowski. Unlike most fantasy role-playing games, The Witcher is far more mature and oriented toward violence, which means that gruesome deaths, foul language, and all sorts of bad things are a regular occurrence inside the game.

Speaking of which, the story puts you in the shoes of Geralt, a warrior that happens to be one of the last remaining witchers. The witchers are a breed of special humans, who dedicate their lives to hunting monsters and getting paid for it. They are excellent sword fighters and they usually carry two of them around: one made of steel to fight humans and wild animals, as well as one made of silver, which comes in handy when powerful supernatural monsters are on the menu.

The developers managed to make the gameplay a tad more fun, by including an interesting combat gimmick for you to take advantage of all the time. Hence, there are three fighting modes available, depending on the foe you are facing: fast, strong, and group. You can also strike combos by performing mouse clicks at the right time, which in turn makes Geralt become more savage and deal a lot more damage. Obviously, the combos and the moves differ depending on whether you are using the steel or the silver sword.

Visually, the game excels when it comes to graphics quality, thanks to the state-of-the-art engine used to render the environments and the characters. Post-processing effects like depth-of-field and bloom contribute greatly to the overall quality, but the spot-on character modeling and the hand-made level design are definitely the most important aspects in this regard.

When it’s all said and done, The Witcher got almost everything right, although the combat feels a bit repetitive from time to time. The story is strong though, as is the dialogue and the multitude of plot-changing choices you can make as you go along. The game world is fantastic and full of interesting creatures to see, which is all you can ask from a fantasy-themed role-playing game.