The Witcher 3 "at home", PG version.
It is clear that Witcher series and other similar games were an inspiration here. Witcher probably was the main one. Concept is somewhat similar, but here we only have one type of "monsters" - ghosts (although they do have subtypes). We still are "monster hunters", and we use our skills to find those monsters and "banish" them. Similar to Witcher 3 we also have an open world here, although maybe it is also somewhat closer to Witcher 2 in ways the areas open up. If not that, it's surely has some metroidvania like approach, with you opening up abilities through the main story, and then being forced to circle back to previous areas and unlock new routes, either for the story itself or side quests or for further exploration.
That exploration is definitely a significant part of gameplay. The level design is amazing, looks beautiful, "natural", has lots of nooks and crannies, stimulating you to look around. Areas do not have much diversity, but still look distinct enough. It has 2 problems though:
- Scale. The map is huge. Even considering that technically all areas are split into smaller zones, that are connected by corridors (which still feels quite natural, fitting the settings of the game), it is enormous. And it is enormous in real-life scale. Considering the traversal is just using our own two feet, it becomes very tedious very fast. There is fast travel, but to use it you need to get to a safe zone (resting spot), and then you can travel from it to other unlocked safe zones. You can't travel to previously discovered or even completed points of interests either (you can't even mark the completed ones). Lack of minimap does not simplify things either: compass is usually good, but sometimes does start behaving inconsistently, and corridors do look quite similar even when the overall zones are different. While this sounds like multiple problems, it actually is one: unlike games like Assassin's Creed, the world was not scaled down. Did you know that Ubisoft was doing that? I think it was only Rogue, that did not do that, at least vertically, but generally the cities in those games are smaller than in real life. GTA and Mafia games also scaled the cities to some extent, although lesser one, since those had cars. Banishers do not have cars. You do not even get a horse (that does make sense considering overall terrain, though). But in the end it makes the traversal and backtracking be very slow. Especially climbing up some ropes. Like long ropes. Doubly so with a certain lifts. Scaling things down or, at least, allowing to fast travel to points of interest could have helped with this.
- Rewards. They are not satisfying, considering the amount of time you may spend following some obscure path, whether it is towards a point of interest or not. In majority of cases it's just some money and crafting resources. Some chests do reward gear, but... To be honest, I did not feel gear to matter that much even when enhanced to legendary status. In fact I did not feel much difference from attributes being leveled-up either. At least part of it is that (most) ghosts seemed to level up with me, so even when my theoretical stats should have allowed me to soak more damage, in reality I still had around the same level of challenge. And I was playing on Easy Mode. Perks from the gear could be useful in some situations, at least, but generally, you find one that suits you and stick with it. Skills, that you unlock - those can make a significant difference, but you either get them from quests (those for Antea) or through grinding XP (for Red), and grinding is not that fun, because again at some point you will figure out your own style and just repeat same patterns most of the time. Anyway, I am not saying that we may need more unique or powerful gear and need more of it necessarily: we need more unique experiences. The game does have 4 haunting grounds and those - they felt unique and were quite interesting puzzles, even though rewards in the chests were still kind of "meh". At the same time Void portals were just a waste of potential, because they were same as ghosts nests, but with more walking. Side quests also were not as exciting, as they could have been, but I will return to those and Void a bit later. Cursed chests were also not particularly interesting (unless you count spreading of the figurines for one of those chests across the whole map as "interesting"). I think having more unique experiences through the exploration would increase satisfaction from it. Even if it would be mostly from characters' banter, as they discuss the world around them.
So exploration left some conflicting feelings for me: level design encourages it, but it feels tedious and rewards are not exactly worth it. On the other hand it's not like all Witcher 3 points of interests were that unique (the gear did feel unique, at least). What about the story, though? As I've alluded in the very beginning - it's PG. They played it safe. Seeing the disclaimer in the beginning of the game about sensitive topics due to the time the game is set in (which is a bit unclear to me, to be honest, but I guess late 16th century?), you would think there will be something... "Strong" about it. Something that will heavily rely on certain "norms" of the era, and make us question things. There is not much here.
Yes, there are a few quests which touch upon topics of slavery and women discrimination, but they all feel lackluster. In fact all the side quests feel lackluster. There is rarely any ambiguity, and at the same time there is rarely a real "victim". I banished only 3 ghosts, I think, and 1 of them I just had to because of limitation of the quest. The rest I ascended, because even if they were not particularly good, they were not that bad to deserve banishment. Although, even after completing the game I still don't get what's the difference. It was mentioned that ascent has some risks, but it turns out, that banishment does not really "destroy" either. I think this feeds to the main problem: the choices do not bear much weight. They do not make me agonize as I did in Witcher games or in Cyberpunk. That is not necessarily bad, but the consequences of the choices are minimal at best, too, with very little affect on the world or relationships. I do not think they even block anything special, if you choose a different dialogue option. You can get locked out of one achievement, but that's it.
So the stakes are minimal, or at least I perceived them as such. That's true not only for the side-quests, where most involved characters are under-developed, but even for the main story. For starters, I can't say I believe that Antea and Red "love" each other. They are definitely teacher and student, definitely companions, but I did not feel "love" from them. I did not feel much of grief from Red, too. There definitely were moments, which were tried to show some tenderness, and deliberation on what's to come next, but... They felt shallow to me. There was not that much of emotions. Geralt for all his stoicism and mutations was a more expressive guy.
This is true through-out the whole story. Which on paper sounds quite good. And the way it is "spread out" is quite good, too, but no emotions. I think the reason for that is that we are often "told" that something bad has happened, but not "shown" (and I will actually return to the "shown" part later). Which is weird, because DONTNOD knows how to "show" things, they did that in Life Is Strange series. Yes, maybe those moments were not as dramatic as they could be in movies, but still. As I've said, they played it safe.
Which is too bad, especially when they introduce the Void, which ends up just looking somewhat stylish, and that's it, while it should be something huge and, more importantly, unknown. Heck, the whole situation should be filled with unknown and that could have been leveraged heavily. Void is supposed to transforming constantly, but it was not (except for 1 special case), and it could have been used to "switch" the rules (and I do not mean those "perks" that apply when you go through the void). Weird stuff could have been shown near cursed chests as well. Something like hauntings in Ghostwire or maybe even some episodes from In Sound Mind. But we don't really get it outside of the Puppeteer boss fight, which was amazing (and the general chains concept before it was also good). Other that... The "court" boos fight was not that different from anything else, really, Nazuku? That one is a real wasted potential: it should have been used from the moment the Void was introduced, presented as a constant tormenting threat, with build-up till the final fight, but what we got was a very sudden introduction of this thing before the very end of the game, relatively simple fight (in terms of mechanics, at least), and a dialogue during traversal that should have been a heartfelt cinematic at some resting point, instead.
That's not all, since I have some other "inconsistences" that annoyed me to some extent:
- Some books/notes/scrolls are read. Some are picked up. Some are read and then picked up. Why not pick them all up? Or not pick them all up (unless quest items)?
- Some enemies have a name above their head (not talking about bosses), some (possessed ones) have something like an icon, some have neither. None have both. Choose one, please.
- Void was introduced as a way to fast travel, but it's not really fast travel, since you need to go through it with your feet, it takes time, and you always end up in one place. At least they could have added branched paths, that would make players to go through those multiple times, in order to complete them fully.
- Echoes sometimes require a ritual. Sometimes they require some special resource. But sometimes they do not require a ritual. In those cases they sometimes are just voices, but sometimes visuals as well. Let alone, that I do not see much of difference between summoning spirits and scourge, they are practically the same (and in general the interfaces for the rituals is not useful). And words of power also differ somehow.
- Antea is often times practically solid, and only sometimes translucent (in cinematics). No clear pattern.
Yes, some of the above probably can be explained by lore, but... I did not see any explanations. Maybe I missed some note somewhere, but if that's the case, then it just looks like a bad way to introduce the world's rules. Which is also a consistent problem: besides no clear difference between banishment and ascent, what are those banisher-rings? How is witchcraft different from demonology? Why banishers seem to not communicate with witches that much? How come Antea was the only one tied to her body, while other ghosts were tied to some object?
But in the end - is this a good game or not? I think it's ok. At like 50% discount - definitely worth it, considering that I spent 45 hours in it. Half of that felt a bit tedious, but still. At full price... I mean, considering the amount of details of the environment - yes, but considering the overall level of enjoyment - not sure. What I am sure about is that it could use a sequel set in the same world, for the sake of establishing the rules better and leaning on the ghost aspects more. With a mature ratings, big and heavy choices. It has potential of being a solid alternative to Witcher series, just needs more polish.
