The Witcher - Reviews & News @ Various Sites

 In the latest batch of Witcher news,  Jolt.co.uk  has posted their review of CDProjekt's cRPG, scoring it high on all elements(8.2/10) and calling it an "rpg of rare quality":

Fans of the old Baldur's Gate games will feel right at home straight away. As with Neverwinter Nights 2, you can play the game from an old-school top down perspective, giving you a wide view of the environments that you are travelling through. A quick mouse click will have you travelling where you need to go in a pretty precise fashion. But for us, it's far more impressive to play with the third-person up close and personal viewpoint. It gets you in the thick of the action and uses a set up instantly familiar to anyone who has played any kind of 3D action game. WSAD does the job of moving you around, while the mouse takes care of the interaction and combat. And believe me, there's no shortage of the latter.

...The world in which all this action takes place is an interesting one. It's a sort of a dark, perverted version of the real world, only pushed back through time. There's disease rampant everywhere, and corrupt politicians abuse the populace for their own means while religion is causing wars and hatred everywhere, which admittedly doesn't sound too far fetched to us. It's almost like the writers are trying to make you aware of the real world's problems through a game. The actions you take, decisions you make and the morals you display will all affect the gameplay, but nothing is black and white. Whatever you choose to do, the results will be a voyage of discovery.

Next, Vault Dweller at  rpg codex  posts a link and some comments on this review at GameDaily, which is an exception to most of the reviews we've been seeing, scoring it 6/10 and making some rather harsh criticisms:

Like many things that come from another country, much of The Witcher gets lost in translation. Non-player characters spout random bits of dialogue that make no sense, come out unintentionally funny or said with the wrong tone of voice. When speaking with characters, players will feel like they missed something from previous conversations or a cut scene, since they'll make obscure references to people and events the player should know about. It doesn't help that the voice acting ranges from OK to downright awful. Geralt himself comes off as monotonously glum.

Gameplay only marginally surpasses that of a hack'n-slash role-playing game....

...The Witcher also has a day and night cycle, with the worst monsters coming out in the evening. Although there's nothing wrong with this, areas to rest and further the clock are spread out, and nothing is quite as annoying as waiting for some NPC to wake up, or for the sun to set so that some monsters can finally rise out of the water, but all of these issues build up to a larger one. It's hard to care about the story or any of the characters....

Finally, on a happier and saner note Gamebanshee winds up their Witcher week with a final article but promises more content to come:

The fourth and final day of our festivities for The Witcher includes the formulae for all of the game's bombs, oils, and potions, artwork for all seventy-two loading screens and sixty "flashback" images, and dozens of new art renders from the European Collector's Edition artbook. A spoiler warning is probably in order again today, since the "flashback" images are used exclusively to tell the game's story.

While our week-long feature has come to a close, you should be able to check back next week for some more Witcher content. There are a few other features I'm currently working on that just need some more time to finish up. Stay tuned.