The Witcher (PC)

That's one of the strengths and appeals of this game, the fact that you're not just making black and white choices, every action has consequences and if you don't think carefully you could find a dear friend pays with their life later on just because you thought someone else could be trusted. The conversation system works well in the Witcher and it's through this interface that you can usually make the best decisions or worst of your Witcher career.

The game tracks quests with the very comprehensive Journal, this Journal deserves an award and is constantly updated with information about the characters as well as monsters, in fact there's a talent Geralt can acquire that allows him to learn about the Beasts as he encounters them. You can also read scrolls and books to learn information. There are so many entries in the Journal that it would take a page of this review to list them all, suffice it to say that other RPG's could learn a lot from the way this information is presented.

It's not just boring text either, it's written in a way to make it engaging as well as informative and when you find out that the Drowned Dead who attack in numbers can be defeated by a Group Combat style, you'll thank the Journal for it later on. The Journal also lists the Alchemical Formulae that you'll discover as well as a list of ingredients as you learn about them, the Herbalist talent is very useful and a lot of components can be harvested from plants, animals, beasts and other creatures.

There's also a map of the world as well as a location map, again these are presented in a perfect style and are easy to comprehend and read. The game also gives you a small mini-map in the GUI just to make sure you know where you're going, with the ability to track quests and so on, it's a life saver. Tracking quests is as easy as clicking on a location or the Track Quest button.

The game plays from several camera angles and it gives you the option of using an over the shoulder (where you can switch and flip the camera side) view to bring you closer to the action. I love this camera view and prefer to play the game using the QTS mode. It allows you to experience the detail of the world as well as the fluidity of the combat system.

WASD in QTS mode drives the character, or you can point/click if you prefer a more traditional style of play.

Geralt has two kinds of Witcher weapons he can use, a steel sword (for humans) and a silver sword (for monsters). When he uses the Witcher blades he can select from 3 styles used in the Witcher combat forms. These are, the strong style, the fast style and the final style: group. Some foes are more susceptible to a particular style and a heavily armoured knight or tough bandit, might be defeated by the strong style, whereas a single nimble assassin is easy prey to the fast style.

You can switch styles on the fly, either in real time or pause.

Lastly a group of small thugs might be better tackled in the group style, where Geralt can cut down droves of them with a few timed swings of his steel sword.