And I don’t just mean the no posting this past weekend.

There is a reason for that, of course, and that reason is The Witcher. Yup, that action-RPG that came out sometime last year or so. I never got around to getting it until this past Friday. And… what to say… it’s quite good?

I won’t do a full overview or review of it — there’s plenty of those out there and it’s enough to say it’s worth playing. What I will cover is some of the game play bits that I’ve particularly enjoyed so far.

Starting off is the most noticeably part of an action-RPG — the combat. Fighting is done a bit differently here, while you still click to attack that only starts the first sequence in a combo string. After the first move is down your cursor will change to a flaming sword — click when this happens and you’ll continue on in the combo, up till the final moves which will see you restarting it. Now, this is still very simple combat — the actual ‘strategy’ or challenge comes from what stances or weapons you use. Different opponents will be weaker to certain things and different weapons can include different debuffs. It’s all in how you handle those choices. 

Knowledge of the game world is also handled slightly differently. The journal stores all the information about things like characters or monsters or locations — not new. You can learn things from visting places or talking to certain people — not really new. You can learn things through reading books, and books play an important part in gaining information and succeeding — fairly new. There’s also bribing and out drinking people for more information, which is always helpful. The focus on books for learning is something I really liked and something I don’t often see in games like these.

Your character, Geralt, can literally be armed to the teeth. We’re looking at two large swords, a heavy weapon and a light weapon. All strapped to him and quite noticible. One thing that has always bothered me with RPGs is the lack of other weapons on your person — and I don’t mean sitting in your inventory. Somehow characters could only carry whatever weapons would fit in their hands at that time. I’m quite sure any basic research into military traditions of the medieval time periods would uncover that most soldiers had several weapons attached to their bodies. Much like The Witcher does — only perhaps not so many large weapons. I’d like to see more realistic and historically accurate equipment being used in these kinds of games in the future.

Lastly, your choices do have an impact on the game world. Having choices actually mean something and do something to you and the world is quite nice. It actually gives weight to your decisions. It makes you think. Not something that happens very often in gaming.

So that’s a few thing I enjoyed… now, what does it mean for the future? I’d hope other developers would look at this game and get some ideas — and not just for future RPGs. This along with Bethesdas’ Oblivion would be the start of quite an awesome MMORPG. Mmm…