The Witcher Enhanced Review

Intro
The Witcher is a RPG game from a new Polish studio called CD Projekt RED STUDIO and published by Atari.
The Witcher is based on a book series of an Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski.
The Witcher is only released for PC so far, maybe an Xbox 360 version will follow.

Story
The Witcher takes places in a medieval setting in a land that looks like an eastern European land (ie: Polen, Russia etc.)
The Witcher is about an Witcher called Gerald and because you die at the end of The Witcher's books you have memory loss and you cant remember a lot.
Luckily you get found by some friendly Witchers (who you might know?) but after getting attacked by assaisans you travel alone to the north.
After that you'll meet more Characters you knew (but not anymore) and you ofcourse need to help the citizens from there problems.
The game is separated in 5 Act and Epilogue and a Intro.
But the cool thing about the story is that in the begin/middle/end of every Act you have to make a choice and this will change the story and the quest you need to do, but most of the time you wont even know this is a Story related choice because you are always making choices so it's well blended in.

Gameplay
The Gameplay in The Witcher is something new: you can play the game with only your mouse you attack with an click on a enemy and at the end of your attack you need to click again to begin the next attack if you don't the enemy will attack you.
This is quite an hard combat system in the beginning but once you get the hang of it you'll be killing enemies in no time.
You also have 3 stances: Fast (for fast enemies) Heavy (for strong, slow enemies) Group (for multiple enemies) this is quite a neat addition not only does it make the combat less boring but you can also see when you need to use a stance (ie: if a you see a big slow enemy you know you'll need to use the Heavy stance)
There also 2 sword types: steel (for human) and silver (for beasts).
There also 3 camera views 2 from from above and 1 from after the back this will also change how you play the game.
The game also feature a herbalist system, where you got to gather herbs to brew potions, also enemy body parts can be used for these potions, here is were another cool part comes to speak:
You need to read books to gather these parts else you can't progress in your quests, or you have to pay money for the parts at a vendor.
There also a few ways to make money: the first one is enter a fist fight with drunk bar customers, the second is gambling with dice poker, and the third way to make money are quests.



Quests
The quest in The Wither are very fun you mostly have 2 choices: the more work choice or the less work more money spending choice.
There also quest that will give you the choice to change the story (ie: you or need to kill the witch or help her) and mostly these quest are choosing between 2 bads and you don't know which was is the really bad one, so replaying is recommended.

Graphics
The Graphics in The Witcher are very good looking and are powered by Bioware's Neverwinter Nights 2 engine.
The charchaters are very good looking but the serrounding can be a bit clunky on lower settings.
The game looks very good but it can be quite demanding on your PC, a Xbox 360 version would be awesome.

Replay Value
With already 60+/- gameplay hours and allot of choices to make that really change your environment so you even want to go back and play it again.
And maybe in the future there will be mods and so on for The Witcher.
The replay Value is pure solid

Verdict
I can say with out (hopefully) getting killed: The Witcher is the Best RPG for the PC of 2007

Score: 9/10

Links
Official Site
Forums
Wikipedia