The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt returns us to the story of Geralt of Rivia, who has gotten over his problems of amnesia and accused kingslaying and is now trying to find his long-lost lover, Yennifer. This simple task is made infinitely more complex by a number of factors. The Nilfgaardian Empire has invaded the Northern Kingdoms, and the land is war-torn. Even worse is that the Wild Hunt, a group of terrifying spiritual beings, is seeking Geralt's adoptive daughter, Ciri, who is the heir to a mind-boggling legacy of power. Geralt must reunite with old friends to find his daughter before the Hunt does.

The main story is steeped heavily in the plot of the Witcher books, which had previously been part of the whole experience. It's less self-contained and seems to expect a player who's more familiar with the books than the first two games did. The side-quests are where things really shine. The many missions that revolve around Geralt helping lesser characters are frequently among the most interesting. His main job is akin to a fantasy police detective, and many of the missions take advantage of that. You have to solve crimes, help people in distress, and deal with danger. There's something undeniably satisfying about wandering into a small town and helping with its monster problem.

Frequently, the game won't make those choices easy. The Witcher 3 doesn't like providing happy endings. Many of the choices you make can haunt you later or simply don't have a happy outcome. Most adventurers would help a deserting soldier escape from a group of undead monsters and tell him to head home. Try that in The Witcher 3, and you might find that he became a bandit and murders civilians on the way. Are invaders wrong for trying to keep stability and order? Are the freedom fighters right if their path is doomed and leads to more deaths? You won't be given a simple answer. Neutrality is frequently an option, but sometimes, that may be the most depressing option of all. It might be a little frustrating when even simple situations can't have simple outcomes, but it's more satisfying than getting +10 Hero Points and moving on.

The Witcher 3 is an open-world action RPG, and you have direct control over Gerald at all times. The movement and controls should be familiar to folks who've played a recent action-RPG. Combat is straightforward. You've got a fast attack, a strong attack, a dodge weave and a dodge-roll, and you can throw bombs, magic, and potions at the touch of a button. Against humanoid enemies, you can block their attacks with your blade or parry them to knock the enemy off balance. Larger and less human foes usually need to be avoided with a dodge. Twitch skills are needed if you intend to go the full swordsman route, but fortunately, that isn't your only choice.

Geralt has effectively infinite magic but needs to let his stamina replenish before he can cast multiple spells. You have a small set of magic spells that boil down to: fire blast, force field, magic push, magic trap, and mind control. Each can be upgraded in different ways, but Geralt's skills are already developed since he is a trained Witcher, not a novice. Potions are limited by your Toxicity meter. Chug too many in a row, and it can be fatal for Geralt. While you can chug lesser potions without trouble, powerful Decoctions start at nearly maxing out your toxicity meter, forcing you to balance their powerful effects with their dangerous drawbacks. One nice touch is that once you've crafted any type of bomb, decoction, oil or potion, you have it permanently. Each item has a limited number of charges. When you meditate for the day, all your charges will be instantly replenished. Some items, like bombs, don't even need the strong alcohol for replenishment.

Combat tends to revolve heavily around preparation. Most major boss fights come with hints about what is coming up, so you can prepare potions and spells to deal with the danger. There's a surprisingly huge enemy variety, and the combat is very flexible. You can invest almost entirely in sword skills and become a whirling dervish of death and destruction. You can invest in magic spells and become a terrifying pseudo-wizard, capable of setting enemies aflame or forcing them to kill each other. You can brew powerful alchemic potions that give such significant boosts that your sword or magic skills barely matter. You can even swap between fighting styles based on your opponent. Geralt begins as a capable fighter, and the skills you earn via leveling up amplify his abilities. It isn't so much a choice between being good at sword fighting or good at magic; it's a choice between being good at magic or being really good at magic.

Combat against smaller foes can vary wildly depending on how you play. The game allows for and encourages "dishonorable" combat, which means Geralt has no problems with cheating. This is interesting from a character perspective but can lead to some boring combat. The Axii sign allows you to stunlock enemies or mind-control them into fighting one another. The latter is absurdly powerful, and I was able to clear entire encampments of stronger foes by sitting back and forcing them to murder each other. Then I'd kill the last mind-controlled enemy while he was helpless to fight back. It even worked against a couple of boss creatures! If you don't value flexibility, combat can get repetitive, especially against humans. The larger and more interesting enemies are more exciting to fight than foolish bandits, since human enemies don't scale very well.

The Witcher 3 is bursting at the seams with content, and every area is filled with things to do. What sets this apart from a lot of open-world games is that the bulk of the content is engaging. The story-based side-quests are fun, and there are a ton of them. Every few miles, you'll find someone with a specific story and needs, whether it's hunting down a monster, aiding a blacksmith against loan sharks, helping a group of orphaned kids, or countless other quests that help develop the world.

The Witcher 3 does open-world gaming right and rewards you for exploring. The world is divided into multiple sub-areas, but each area is staggeringly huge. You can spend hours just wandering the woods.  Hidden elite Witcher gear, new alchemic potions, rare ingredients, and caches of money can be found all over the place. It's rare to do a quest and not come out of it with something worthwhile. A Places of Power relic gives you an additional ability point to spend every time you find one, which really adds up since the leveling pace is quite slow.

If I had one complaint about the open-world system, it's that there are a number of tiny nagging flaws that make it less enjoyable. The game does have a fast-travel system, you often end up far from a marker and need to hoof it a while to warp to where you want to go. You can speed this up as the game progresses, and when using a boat, you can warp to a fast-travel boat marker at any time. Significantly more annoying is that Geralt's knees appear to be made of brittle glass. Geralt can lose half of his health in a two-foot drop. This can make it annoying to get around, since you can't take even minor shortcuts without losing a bunch of health. There are ways to get around it, including a dodge-roll and allowing your horse to take the fall, but it's a weird quirk of the engine. This isn't too bad on lower difficulties where you replenish health when meditating, but it's aggravating on the harder modes.

The Witcher 3 veers between absurdly polished and oddly rough in a lot of places. One of the things that drags down the title is an awkward lack of polish in critical places, such as the inventory system, which is shockingly bloated and not user-friendly. Scrolling through it and taking inventory of your resources is time-consuming, especially once you get a healthy supply of items. There are lots of junk items that have an extremely limited use or are useless, and the dozens of different flower types, alchemic ingredients and crafting items can take up a huge chunk of your inventory. Eventually, you'll start selling everything and buying the ingredients from local shopkeepers instead. Similarly annoying is that selecting a specific box or people in a crowded area is almost impossible, and Geralt often focuses on a random candlestick instead of the item you were trying to pick up. At times, I was standing in front of a person I needed to talk to and had to dance around to get the dialogue prompt to appear.

The list goes on, and it's critical to note that none of these things is more than a mild annoyance. It's just odd compared to the high level of polish in other areas of the game. I've had enemy AI patterns break, enemies get trapped in walls, text boxes remaining in Polish, and so on. On a few occasions, I had bugs that required a hard-reset of my system, including a crash of the game. A huge percentage of the game ran perfectly, but it's difficult to ignore when Geralt decides to ride through the terrain instead over it. If you're able to get past similar bugs in games like Skyrim, then it shouldn't be an issue, but prepare for an occasionally bumpy ride.

It has some minor flaws, but The Witcher 3 is a genuinely good-looking game. Some of the environments are a little repetitive and bland, and some of the character models can look inelegant, but by and large, it's a pleasure to explore the world. There are some annoying technical hiccups, particularly in crowded areas. The game can be slow to load people and places, and there are some noticeable frame rate issues and long loading times. The voice acting is quite good, and while Geralt's Solid Snake impression might sometimes border on ridiculous, he is genuinely capable of emotion when necessary. The soundtrack is enjoyable and has some perfect mood-setting tunes, especially during the eerier moments.

It says a lot for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt that, warts and all, it's absolutely one of the most full-featured, fun and top-notch RPGs I've ever played. For every moment of frustration, there are 10 that make it all worthwhile. The story, characters and world are simply enjoyable, and it's a clear example of what an RPG should be. There's so much to do, and almost all of it is interesting. You could ignore the main plot, just do the monster-hunting side-quests, and still get your money's worth from the game, and that's one of the highest recommendations I can give. If you're an RPG fan, you owe it to yourself to give The Witcher 3 a shot. It rivals the best that Bethesda and Bioware have to offer, and you'll be hard-pressed to find a better RPG this year.

Score: 9.0/10