The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has been out on the Nintendo Switch for 9 months now but it is never too late to write a review for newcomers to the Nintendo Switch world. The game was first released in 2015 for the PC and the consoles. It received over 250 ”Game of the Year” Awards and is considered to this day as one of the best games ever made. As you can see, this game is no lightweight, and we will share with you our thoughts on what you can expect when playing it on the Nintendo Switch.

If you are not familiar with The Witcher franchise, the games were developed by CD Projekt and are based on the fantasy novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the 3rd game in the open-world adventure series but you won’t miss much if you have never played the game before or heard of it even. Of course, it is better to know the plots of the previous games if possible but if you can’t play them or watch the summary of the story that took place in Witcher 1 & 2 on YouTube then The Witcher 3 does a fantastic job in keeping you up to date about events that occurred in previous games. We will do our best to give you a brief introduction into the world of The Witcher 3.

Just recently, Netflix released a TV Series for The Witcher and it does a great job of introducing you to the world of this franchise although the story in the game is slightly different, you will be familiar with a lot of characters, locations, and events. In The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, you play as the main character, Geralt of Rivia, who happens to be a Witcher, a monster slayer.

Witchers have undergone a great amount of training since a young age, being conditioned physically and mentally through mysterious rituals to become brutal slayers. Witchers came into being to protect mankind when monsters entered the world of man due to an event called The Conjunction of Spheres which opened portals from other dimensions. Recently, monsters do not exist in numbers as they were in the past and witchers are no longer viewed by humans as defenders but are looked down upon and are usually seen as supernatural mercenaries that are paid to kill monsters.

The story of The Witcher takes place on The Continent, that is the name of the world as it is referred to by its inhabitants. There are humans, elves, dwarves, and other races and creatures that you will find in this fantasy world. We won’t delve much more into the story to avoid spoilers but we will share our thoughts on it.

The story in the game is quite complex and remarkable. Almost every conversation in The Witcher 3 that is related to the story or even side quests are presented in cinematics. Throughout the game, you feel like you are in an interactive movie. The voice acting is top notch and builds upon the amazing cinematics to give you the full experience of a fantasy novel. You get the feeling of wanting to continue playing because you want to find out what happens next. What you learn at the start of the game is that you need to track down Ciri, the Child of Prophecy, a living weapon that can alter the shape the world. The story develops into something much bigger as you meet new characters and unexpected events occur.

The decision-making in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt lays a great burden on your shoulders. You will be responsible for making big choices that can lead to life or death for characters that you have come to know throughout the game. The consequences of your decisions can be as big as altering the cities that you venture through and the lives of their inhabitants.

Let’s start by mentioning that while the content of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is similar to the PC and consoles, the quality is not exactly the same. The game comes with all of its 16 DLCs and two expansion packs. The game also offers over 150 hours of non-stop gameplay. Your journey will take you through beautiful forests, through city streets, across snowy mountains, and past marvelous seas. The amount of places that you can explore can only be limited by your imagination. The world of Witcher 3 is extremely vast.

Thanks to Saber Interactive for porting the game onto the Switch, you can play this legendary game in the palm of your hands. However, keep in mind this is a demanding and massive game and there were some downgrades that it underwent for it to be playable on the Switch. For example, you will notice low-quality textures at times and decreased draw distance. Despite all the downgrades, the game looks absolutely beautiful, especially when playing it in handheld mode, you don’t notice the downgrades as much.

Furthermore, the game runs at 30 frames per second. While this is not ideal, your human eye barely notices the difference on the Nintendo Switch screen. There are rare times when the frames per second drop below 30 but you barely notice these moments.

You have a dark fantasy world before you and you are given the freedom to roam this open-world on foot, by horse, or even on a boat. Moreover, the Witcher 3 has a day night cycle and you will see the sun rise or set as you go about your day. There were so many moments where we witnessed a beautiful scenery and just had to take screenshots of them. There is no doubt that the environment around you looks visually breathtaking when the sun is rising or setting. The weather is also ever changing where you will experience a clear, rainy or snowy day. Sometimes it’s windy and at times foggy. It is a dynamic system and you can expect to see in the game what you expect to happen in the real-world.

The combat system on the Nintendo Switch is well done. We have never experienced issues with the combat system and found it to be accurate and ergonomic, especially when utilizing your swords and magic at the same time. The combat system does have its critics but we don’t have any issues to complain about.

You will find those who experienced the game first on PC or the consoles have their own complaints with the Nintendo Switch version and while the Switch version is not as polished and as smooth as the other consoles, it is perfect in its own way. The idea of experiencing the entire world of The Witcher 3 on your handheld device is incredible and is much more convenient than playing it on other consoles, at least this is the case for us and many handheld gamers would agree.

Finally, you can get the game from the Nintendo Switch Shop for $59.99. With over 150 hours of non-stop gameplay, you find yourself in a world full of darkness and beauty. We highly recommend that you get this game on the Nintendo Switch but keep in mind that the file size is 28.1 GB so you will need to have a memory card on your device to have enough space. When we first played The Witcher 3 on the Nintendo Switch, we instantly fell in love with the world, the story, the journey, and everything therein. This might be quite a long review but it barely scratches the surface. You can watch the trailer for the Nintendo Switch version below.