This is not a review. I am not making a recommendation or judging whether anyone else should like the Witcher books or games. This is simply my meandering journey through the series of games and books and my thoughts along the way.

For a long time I didn’t like the Witcher and it was such a shame because I really wanted to like it. Friends, whose opinions on games I trusted, told me it was great. Reviewers told me it was great. I even liked the concept. Yet still I didn’t get on with and to explain this I have to go back to the beginning of my journey.

As previously stated, friends had told me the Witcher was great, specifically that the Witcher 2 was a great game. Long time fans of Andrzej Sapkowski’s writing might well be horrified at coming into the series from this angle but that’s how it was for me. So what was wrong with the Witcher 2? The answer is nothing, initially, as I didn’t start there. I hate coming in late on any series so I started with The Witcher.

There were things to like about the first game. I was keen on the setting and the mythology. The procedural nature of Witcher work seemed like a good tool for telling self-contained quests within a larger story. Ropey graphics (at least by the time I started playing it) notwithstanding the Grimdark aesthetic was one I could buy into.

My stumbling blocks were threefold. Firstly, by the time I got into the Vizima investigation there seemed to be a lot of going back and forth and waiting for things to happen and it all became a bit aimless. Secondly, the combat gameplay was not particularly enjoyable and this exacerbated the first problem. If you’re going to have to do some trudging it needs to be fun. Thridly, and this is the major one, I didn’t like Geralt.

That’s not to say I thought he was a bad character I just didn’t like him because of how he was presented.  This may enrage fans but I hated the voice acting. I’m not going to call it bad acting as I feel that is an accusation made far too liberally. Time and again I’ve heard people label a performance in a film or TV ‘bad acting’ when in fact it was a terrible script. The actor gets the blame for the bad line as if they were the one who wrote it. Another way in which actors get blamed unfairly is that it is sometimes the director’s fault. The actor gave the performance that was asked of them; they were merely asked for something that was bad.

As a consequence, I’m not sure the VA performance in the Witcher isn’t what the creators wanted. It seems as if there was a line about Witchers being purged of emotion and the whole performance stemmed from that. The trouble with this is that one, there is little evidence that aspect of Witchers is anything more than one of the many slanders aimed at them and two, no other Witcher in the game speaks that way. This leaves Geralt as being the sole deadened performer in the piece and comes across more as a poor-man’s Wolverine who’s been given an overdose of sedatives.

A further problem arises from this performance when it comes to the ‘Geralt as a horndog’ parts of the first game. Amorous lines delivered like that come across as skincrawlingly creepy and all the more immersion-breaking when the female characters respond favourable to it.

And so I left Geralt just as he entered the trade quarter thinking I might come back at some point but with no real enthusiasm. I could have left my journey into the world of the Witcher here but, after all, it was The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings that people were raving about not the first game. Perhaps the faults with the first game would be fixed?

The Witcher 2 is widely reckoned to be a pretty good game. There’s a story that when President Obama visited Poland he was given a copy of it as a gift. I can’t help but try to imagine him trying to play it. It’s not easy. I assume he stayed away from the brothel.

On to the second game. Some things were indeed fixed. The combat was much improved, as were the graphics. Unfortunately, the voice acting was the same and the sense of aimlessness had not been eliminated. It was not an amazing place to hang out like Skyrim and the world and relationships were not as engaging as in the Dragon Age series, a fact I found curious as by this time I was aware there were years of book lore behind it.

Once again I left Geralt, this time in the drizzle of Flotsam thinking that one day I might go back. Here my journey seemed to end and had the Witcher series only been games it may have ended indeed. During my time away, however, another Witcher game came out, Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Once again, people raved but I was cautious. However good it was I still didn’t like Geralt. In the other ear, so to speak, came tales of how the books were actually really good and the kind of thing I would enjoy. Here the seeds were sown for I really thought that I ought to like the Witcher.

Time passed and I had a period where I was minded to start gaming again. The nagging thoughts about giving the Witcher series another chance bore fruit and I determined that this time I would play Witcher 2 through to the end (gameplay of Witcher 1 was still a bit offputting).

I started again rather than trying to pick up where I left off. I do this often when coming back to an RPG, I don’t like coming in late. This time the Kayran was defeated and I followed the story (beware spoilers ahead). I took Roche’s path as he seemed the more natural ally and it took me to the bleak surroundings of the Kaedweni camp. After the damp drabness of Flotsam I had hoped for a bit of light and shade but at least the story was moving now. I found out the reasons behind the curse and probably at some point around here I had become immersed. The VA was grating less, I had deliberately hung out with Zoltan and Dandelion more and Geralt had started to seem less one-note than before.

Without going into the ins and outs of every quest, I arrived in Loc Muine. This was something of a disappointment. After two cesspits I had hoped for somewhere more like some of the crags I had visited on the way to Vergen. Instead, I was in an infested ruins. Oh well, I’m invested now. Clearly I had missed a number of things along the way and this would not be my best ever play-through. Might as well see this thing out. A dragon appears controlled by Phillipa Eilhart (who is this person? I mean a sorceress, obviously, but I feel like I meant to know who she is.) Everything is a mess. Sorcerers are butchered and now Nilfgaard is coming. Bloody hell.

I’ve got a bit of time on my hands, obviously the next logical step is to immediately download The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt…