Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Nintendo Switch

So far I have purchased Witcher 3 six times. Half were gifts for friends. Still got my moneys worth. It is a steller fantasy game with a vast world with a wonderful story with amazing characters. You play as Geralt who is one of the least interesting characters in the game. In all honesty it is the side characters that really pulled me in. The Crookback Bog section with the Baron and Jonny are some highlights. Gameplay is more bland. Dodge, slash, magic, eat, and repeat. Block can be added with humans but is useless against monters. Its not bad but lacking compared to BotW in terms of gameplay. This is when I would talk about graphics and sound. The Witcher 3 is one of the best looking games when modding on PC today. The xb1x looks great, the PS4 looks good but suffers from fps drops like the og xbone. Then theres Switch. The Switch features dynamic resolution of 720 docked, but dips well below. On PC you can't even replicate it. The textures are muddy, the vegetation are poor, load times are long, and pop in is glaring, but this is all understandable seeing how this system only uses 18 watts. Less than a TV. But for me its the fps drops that bother me. The Switch is brought to its knees here. For those of us on PC we could tell you this game is less reliant on ram or vram and more on raw CPU and GPU performance. The Switch just can not stream data fast enough and the cpu is getting hammered in sections. There is little chance CDPR can get anymore blood from this stone with a patch. Update 2/20: there are a bunch of new graphics options. Most are interesting to play with, but two are really useful. Depth of Field can be turned off as it does give you a few extra frames and the resolution is sub hd to 720p max you may want to mess with. But a major game changer is Sharpening. It should be an option on everything. Typically on PC we use post effects to enable this on games under 4k. It boost clarity to an amazing degree with little hit to performance. Turn this ON HIGH. With this option it may be the prettiest game on the Switch. Thank you CDPR for these extras. So if you are playing docked only please come to your senses. 32gig cart is great and all, but this is by far the most expensive and weakest version. If you play portable or hybrid than the competition does not really exist. So by all means buy it. All my criticisms are still there and blurrier but... Its Witcher on the GO! It is one of the best looking Switch games and by far the most ambitious. Not to mention it is one of the best games ever. So go out to jury duty, weddings, trips, see family, hop on a unicorn with Yen, save some orphans, and kill some griffins.

I’m amazed they were able to port this to the Switch. True, it’s not the best + smoothest way to play this game (graphic wise and some game crashes at times in major cities). But nonetheless - it’s still Witcher 3 - one of the best RPG games ever made (+ also included are the two DLC expansions which are both amazing stories themselves). The world in this game is mind-boggling large - and the atmosphere (esp. major cities like Novigrad and Toussant) feel so lively and realistic (Novigrad reminds me of King’s Landing from GoT & Toussant like medieval Spain). Deep quest/story lines, epic gear to find, an in-depth skill system to mix-and-match, a massive world to explore , and huge monsters to hunt - what more can you ask for? I bought this port the day it came out for my Switch (I haven’t played this game since 2016 on my PC) and just now finally beat everything; 85+ hours of gameplay already and still so much more to do. If you‘ve never played this game before and don’t have access to a PC/XBOX/PS4 ~ then it’s a must buy IMO - even if it’s not as ‘beautiful’ as it could be. And even if you HAVE beaten it before on a higher-end gaming system, replaying it on the go via the Switch is still amazing and worth the price. *With the Witcher show airing on Netflix next month - this is a great time for many to be introduced (or like me, re-acquainted) with Geralt and his intense world.

Story: 10/10. Characters: 10/10. Action: 9/10. Geralt of Rivia: 10/10.

First of all, the game is amazing. I won't be going into this because there are OODLES of reviews and critiques on the game itself. I will be talking about the technical issues that are a lot less than I expected from such a game on the switch. The first are the graphics. They have taken a hit but most of the really noticeable stuff is environment stuff which I've never taken to inspecting them closely so it didn't really bother me. It's mostly noticeable as you travel on your horse which admittedly is a common occurrence but never so bad that it worsened my experience. The characters and the cutscenes are absolutely GORGEOUS for a switch game that is this large. Bugs are an issue and I can't speak to whether or not this is a switch specific thing or not so I'll just describe my experiences here. Trees sometimes have an odd black box surrounding their entirety that flickers in and out (probably the invisible edges of the 3d model but I'm no expert), the stamina bar doesnt visually drain as you run on foot out of combat but you will still run out of stamina and have to restart running and such (it's supposed to drain on running and jumping, just doesn't show visually for some reason), some inventory/menu management hiccups that make things a little more annoying and cumbersome but nothing really too bad, and some pretty regular movement bugs while on the horse (not the pathfinding which has issues sometimes but occasionally when I go to turn on the joystick the controls are inverted for a second ish, mostly happens when turning at a standstill) Framerate is surprisingly stable from what I can tell but I've never been too picky. It does stutter a bit on each autosave which is a bummer since they are necessary evils due to the crashes. The biggest issue that I can stomach but some might not be able to are the crashes/freezes. They are regular and will interrupt you frequently. Doesn't seem to be anything in particular causing them, probably just the strain of running this behemoth of a game on the switch, which is fine to me since they have an autosave that is set to save every 10 minutes by default but you can tweak that and manually save too. SOME of the crashes/freezes I've had: Passing in the in-game card game Gwent Getting knocked back by a heavy weapon/attack One particular area near the edge of a landmass in velen freezed multiple times forcing a restart (the one with a Quen Place of Power and a tower you had to scale to kill a wyvern) Overall this game is amazing and if you dont have another platform or you want to play it portably then this does the job and it does it surprisingly well. Everything in this game is a joy even down to the little scripted encounters and camps scattered around that you can stumble upon or read from a notice board/etc that will get it marked on your map. Play this game!!!