The Witcher (PC) review "Because the angry voice that lives in my head will not let me play newer games until I’ve beaten all the old ones."

By the halfway point of The Witcher, Geralt's seen some shit. Believed long dead by his fraternal sect of monster hunters, he's dragged back into service, amnesia be damned, when their ancestral headquarters is sacked by a rogue gathering of arseholes. Battle scarred and armed to the teeth though he may be, his genre-obligatory memory loss means that he has to be gently steered by his small band of peers while fighting for his very life. Which is convenient for you, the player, as you get taught Geralt's considerable library of murder options right alongside him. He has multiple stances for taking on different enemy types; he has different weapons for taking on different enemy races. It's a lot to take in, even before you factor in all the things you've yet to learn, like multiple stat-buffing potions you can homebrew, or different strains of magic you can rediscover. Later fights will demand you juggle all these things, but at this point, you just focus on stabbing ne'er-do-wells and hired thugs with timed mouse clicks. To the game's credit, by the time the twenty-foot magical praying mantis shows up, you'll have more or less gotten this down.

Monsters slain, invaders stabbed, and resident sultry sorceress seduced (the game's many seductions reward you with semi-pornographic collecting cards to peruse at your leisure) and you're given your primary purpose. The people you've been fighting are part of a cult (The Salamandra!), and, despite the corpse piles, their raid has been a success. While you took part in a reintroduction for henchmen slaughter, the upper echelons of the cult managed to get into the most secure parts of your keep and have stolen all the mutagens used to create a witcher's unique biochemistry. In the wrong hands, the mutagen could be cataclysmic, and, without it, no new witchers could ever be added to their rapidly dwindling ranks. What's left of the brotherhood drops everything and splinters off to hunt the cult down. They've nothing to go on and no idea where to start, so each head toward the nearest kingdoms. Geralt heads towards the Temerian capital, Vizima. He doesn't get far.

Turns out, Vizima's closed. The entire city is crawling with plague, and the capital's been isolated into varying degrees of quarantine, leaving Geralt to take shelter in the outskirts. They're plague free, that's a plus, but they do have a problem with a roving pack of homicidal ghost hounds who appear at night to devour anyone stupid enough to be out in the open. That sounds exciting, but it's not the main danger faced by a witcher trying to find a way into a sealed capital - that would be bureaucracy. Maybe, he's repeatedly told, maybe if he gains the favour of certain important people around the community, they'll vouch for him just enough to get in. So, for the time being, supernatural evil is put on the backburner while Geralt does other people's busywork, like clearing the overgrown garden of local drunkard, Odo. Except it's not just an innocent spot of pruning; taking the task sees you attacked by huge carnivorous plants.



Like many of Witcher's little tales, much of Odo's story is hidden beneath what's presented. It's never spelt out for you, but if you own the correct bestiary book, you can find out that these plants are known as echinops and that they "grow in places where terrible crimes have been committed." Ply enough booze around Odo and he'll talk about how he inherited his brother's house when he died during the war. He's tight lipped about what war this was. Visit the garden during the daytime and there's a dog being really possessive about a particular plot of land -- almost as if something important to it is buried there. Coincidentally, when the echinops sprout during the night, it's from this patch. As well as being a drunk, a gambler and a cheat, Odo's probably a murderer as well -- but you need his favour to advance, so you stab some hungry plants. Another chore sees you clearing crypts of the undead, so the city's guards can ransack it without being eaten. But you're barely a few steps in before you're tripping over the body of a recently deceased girl. Your contact among the guards takes this news very badly, proclaiming the girl someone he loved dearly; the rest of the townsfolk don't agree. They speak of a once cheerful and outgoing young lady who slowly became withdrawn, always afraid that someone was watching or following her. It's weird she'd venture into the crypts at all. It's weirder still that, should you examine her corpse, she's not been mutilated by the various undead that roam underground. She's died through poisoning; a glass vial still grasped in her hand suggests suicide.

Blame is attributed to (shifted to, you might say) any and all convenient boogeymen. That evil cult Geralt keeps asking about probably abducted the girl and had their way with her. Or there's a nearby village witch who probably brewed the poison and tricked the girl into consuming it. There is a witch, but she seems to simply be a clever person making the most of living in a village of naïve idiots. At least, if you keep telling her this, there's a decent chance you'll bed her and collect another softcore trading card. So, you'll keep completing little favours and, in doing so, make numerous little discoveries about the 'respectable' people whose favour you curry. It makes it harder not to see beneath the veneer of respectability the outskirts village works so hard to maintain; it's rife with secret monstrosities born from ill desire. Maybe that's why there's a pack of spectral hellhounds hellbent on killing everyone?



Eventually, you'll find a way to enter Vizima, but even that goes very wrong very fast. Geralt's arrested, thrown in a cell and told he'll be granted limited freedom only if he descends to the sewers to fight a cockatrice. Limited mostly because, even within the capital's walls, various sections of the town remain in quarantine, and Geralt still has work to do before he's able to access the nicer parts of the city. So, he's stuck in the Temple quarter, with the non-humans, the streetwalkers and the peasantry. Unless he wants to take a raft across to the swamp land where labourers like brickmakers and lumberjacks share soggy soil with the reanimated corpses of the drowned and homicidal fish people. But at least out there, the danger's on (sometimes) clear display. You'll die in the swamps if you explore too carelessly and disturb a nest of wyverns, for example. In town, you're viewed as a child-kidnapping albino philanderer - even if you're only most of those things - and nobody likes you. Sometimes, this just means a few unkind comments from the literally unwashed masses; sometimes, people just casually try to murder you in the street.

So, you survive that. You foil a real child kidnapping ring in the swamps. You hire and aid a private detective to pick up Salamandra's trails of broken bodies and forbidden magics. You find a hidden sect of druids and sell the soppy idiots all the crushed flowers you've been stuffing in your pockets. You get stuck in the middle of a socio-political uprising between zealous human knights and non-human guerrilla freedom fighters who often force you to pick a side that depends on which group is acting less like homicidal arseholes at the time. Bat-faced lesser vampires jump on you from the rooftops, and drugged up jailers keep bloody sneezing on you. It's a lot; Geralt goes through a lot.

It would be wrong to say that, once he makes it into Vizima's trade district, his troubles are over. Crab-like creatures burrow into the centre each night to eat the citizens. Monsters make homes in people's basements, placing them in a thrall, so they are believed to be sheltering loved ones instead. A knight's sister is missing, assumed seduced by the allure of dark promises, but maybe trying to escape something more mundane, but somehow much worse. Worst of all, one of Geralt's lady friends wants him to attend a fancy gathering of influential people and be sociable!. But, for the first time in the game, it feels like he's at some level of safety. Heavily armed guardsmen roam the streets while the plague-filled meatsacks are locked out of this more prosperous part of the capital. There's a marketplace rather than a few ratty vendors; there's a brothel, so Geralt no longer needs to stalk the alleys for illicit meetups. There's an inn, an actual inn, rather than the shoddy pubs he's been forced to patronise previously. Here he can sleep safely, get wrecked on lemon vodka or eat a ridiculous amount of bread, then partake in a fistfight or two to get back his funds.



He can also chat to Dandelion, a rapscallion bard who claims to be Geralt's friend from way back. The witcher just rolls with it. Turns out, he's in a tight spot; he's expected to play at the inn, but he left his lute at the house of a former student. He's no longer welcome at the premises and pleads with Geralt to assist. There are a few different ways you can complete this - with one being telling the bard to piss right off with his nonsense requests -- but I’m a fan of the direct approach. After locating the house tucked away in a picturesque corner of the market square, the back door is ‘accessed’. The homeowner is not a big fan of this and needs to be subdued. This can be achieved through multiple blows to the face. Victory achieved, you stomp up some stairs, and the drama all starts to make a little more sense. The bard’s former pupil is an attractive young girl, and the fellow you pummeled downstairs is her protective father who banished her to her room after he discovered her dalliance with her former teacher. She understands your mission but, before that, she’s been ever so bored trapped in this room all on her lonesome for so long. Maybe there’s something you can do to help her alleviate that? Depending on your answer, you might just be the proud new owner of a trading card. Gotta catch ‘em all.

The morning after, the girl’s had her fill and the father, now even more furious than before, armed himself. But, no matter, Geralt has no reason he’ll ever need to return to the little house on the corner of the market. He is almost halfway back to the inn before he stops and swears loudly to himself. He’s forgotten the fucking lute.

Staff review by Gary Hartley (June 08, 2025) Gary Hartley arbitrarily arrives, leaves a review for a game no one has heard of, then retreats to his 17th century castle in rural England to feed whatever lives in the moat and complain about you.