Open-world RPG adventures don't come much bigger than The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This is a mammoth quest which looks, feels and sounds exactly like a game with a three-year development cycle should; the amount of effort which has been poured into this grim and foreboding fantasy world puts to shame pretty much any rival you could mention, yet it never feels like it's overburdened by its scope. In fact, The Witcher 3 could well be the best game of the current console generation, and on PC.

You assume the role of Geralt of Rivia, the titular Witcher who is blessed - or cursed, depending on your perspective - with mutant-like abilities. He's a mercenary for hire who stalks the land taking on fights for the highest bidder, and this time around he's trying to stop the ghostly Wild Hunt from laying waste to the land. This objective remains the focal point of the entire game but you'll spend the next 50 or more hours doing plenty of other tasks - fighting monsters, dealing with personal domestic disputes, ranging around the barren countryside and collecting precious loot and other valuable items. You certainly won't be stuck for things to do in The Witcher 3.

Interacting with the various characters which populate this sprawling world reveals some amazing writing and excellent voice acting, and the choices you make in certain situations are rarely black or white. This is a morally ambiguous game which often forces the player to make decisions which offer wide-spread ramifications - some of which aren't felt until hours down the line. In this respect, it's a triumph of scripting and design - there are so many potential outcomes to the various encounters that you have that it's amazing the developers were able to cram them all in.

Geralt is handy in a scrap and the ability to use spells and mix potions which amplify his prowess adds another level of complexity to an already deep game. There's a strong emphasis on tracking down and killing various monsters too, a facet which calls to mind the gameplay of Capcom's critically-acclaimed Monster Hunter series. If you want to fully explore the game's mechanics - as well as its massive, detailed world - then 50 hours might not be enough. Expect to spend well over 100.

Although The Witcher 3 can be enjoyed even if you've never played the previous two games, there are moments when past characters enter the story and newcomers might find themselves asking Google exactly what their relevance is to Geralt's story. These moments are few and far between, but it's certainly true that an understanding of his previous adventures is a benefit here. The only other genuine complaint one can level is that the Xbox One version of the game - which we tested for this review - suffers from some irksome frame-rate issues. A day one patch has been issued which solves this to a certain degree, but the game is still anything but smooth on Microsoft's console.

Ultimately though, even if The Witcher 3 were cursed with more serious problems than these, it would still be worthy of the highest recommendation. This is an RPG which has the utmost respect for its audience; it offers a world which mixes the pomp of Lord of the Rings with the gritty human realism of Game of Thrones. The result is a title which will grip and entertain for weeks upon weeks, and offers up a staggering amount of replay value. Three years might sound like a long time, but after you've experienced the epic scale of this truly next-gen quest, you'll wonder how the developers managed to pull it off in that amount of time. Essential.
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