When The Witcher came out last year, it was largely heralded as a sleeper hit with a myriad of problems. Several bugs, incomplete dialogue, horrendous load times, and buggy sound effects. In short, the problems in the game served to detract from what was otherwise one of the best single player RPGs to be released in years.
Not one to sit by and watch, CD Projekt decided to rectify the situation by releasing The Witcher: Enhanced Edition, a new version of the game which fixes most of the issues, adds some new stuff, and if you already purchased The Witcher is absolutely free via a large patch.
For those who slept on The Witcher the first time around, the game tells the story of a Witcher by the name of Geralt. Adapted from the best-selling Polish series written by Andrzej Sapkowski, the story starts off rather cliché like with the time tested “Oh this guy has amnesia!” routine, but quickly picks up and becomes a tale filled with intrigue, moral dilemmas, and backstabbing galore. If you ever played games like Baldur’s Gate or NWN for the story and characters, then The Witcher is for you.
The story is the same in the new EE (thankfully). Outside of fixes to most of the bugs, there are several new additions which put The Witcher at an even higher plateu than it stood upon last year.
The biggest and best change is easily the inclusion of native and multiple audio tracks to chose from. Much like foreign films and television shows, sometimes the original voice actors just do a better job of conveying the emotion and mood of the character; The Witcher is no exception. With the inclusion of the original audio track (and multiple other languages) along with English subtitles, finally we can play the game without the awful English dubbing the original release forced us to endure. If only all foreign releases gave audiences the choice between English dub or sub…
On top of the much, much improved audio, The Witcher: EE adds several new adventures, some new animations, and better colors. All of them are nice little touches, but they really don’t change the core game too drastically, and the visual stylings of The Witcher are largely the same.
Unfortunately, the sporadic pacing of the game is also the same. My biggest problem with The Witcher (other than the bugs) happened to be the pacing. At times it would slow to a snail’s crawl, and it really made the game frustrating to play through when you know you want to keep going to see what happens. Nothing better demonstrates this than the beginning of the game, where you’ll have some fastpaced action-filled sequences followed by a lot of boring, “walk around and learn stuff” events.
If you already purchased and beat The Witcher, kudos to you for sticking with it despite all of its issues. If you grew frustrated and gave up, or never completed it, now’s the time to revisit the game and experience it as it should have been the first time. If you were curious about The Witcher before but decided it wasn’t for you, you may want to change your mind – especially if you enjoy engrossing narratives in your RPGs.
