Aug 20

Reviewed on: 11/05/2007Released on: 10/30/2007

The Witcher game screenshot

Don’t be afraid of change. Even though The Witcher may scare off some people with inventive combat that replaces comfortable old rapid-fire clicking with rhythmic sword swinging, there is no need to avoid one of the deepest, most adult role-playing games to hit the PC in years. Polish developer CD Projekt has crafted one of those landmark games that moves the goalposts for everybody, a truly grown-up take on swords and sorcery that breaks just about every fantasy tradition in the book. Once you experience a grimy medieval world so realistic that you can practically smell it, quests that reject simplistic good and evil for ambiguous “decisions and consequences,” and, yes, newfangled battle mechanics that add welcome twists to left-click scrapping, you’ll find it awfully hard to go back to the usual D&D rip-off.

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