The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is the third entry in CD Projekt’s adaptation of Andrzej Sapkowski’s books. You play Geralt, a professional monster hunter, searching for Ciri — his adopted daughter and walking disaster magnet — while the Wild Hunt and half the continent close in. The setting is dark fantasy grounded in politics, superstition, and bad decisions rather than pure hero worship.

Combat blends swords, signs (combat magic), alchemy, and positioning. You swap between fast and strong attacks, roll or sidestep, and layer in signs like Quen (shield), Igni (fire), and Aard (telekinetic blast). On top of that sits oils, bombs, and potions that turn preparation into a real advantage — going into a fight with the right knowledge and loadout matters more than just being overleveled. It’s not as precision-heavy as a Soulslike, but it demands attention instead of button-mashing.

The open world is split into large regions: White Orchard as a tutorial slice, then places like Velen, Novigrad, Skellige, and more. Each area runs dense with side quests, contracts, and small stories that link back into larger arcs. A nothing-looking side job might spiral into a multi-part chain tied to a war, a family, or a cursed village. That’s the core strength: the game treats most side content as actual writing, not filler.

Choices are rarely labelled as “good” or “evil.” You make calls with incomplete information, and the results might land hours later — a character vanishes, a town prospers, a group is wiped out off-screen because of something you did three quests back. That delayed consequence is what gives the world weight and why multiple playthroughs still turn up new outcomes.

Add in the Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine expansions — each basically a smaller Witcher game on their own — and you get an absurd amount of high-quality content in one package. In the Vault, Witcher 3 is the reference when you want to judge whether an “open-world story RPG” is serious or just pretending.