CD Projekt Red has released a free update to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and it is the biggest overhaul the game has received since its release in 2015. The Wild Hunt Remastered patch touches combat, movement, skill progression, and graphics, and the reviewer’s verdict is clear: this is the best the game has ever been.
After about ten hours exploring White Orchard and beyond, the reviewer found the improvements immediately obvious. Combat is less floaty, enemies are quicker to match your pace, and the camera finally behaves. The result is a game that still carries the weight of its age but feels sharper in nearly every way.
Combat That Finally Cuts
Combat was one of the weakest parts of The Witcher 3 in its original form. Enemies tended to stand still and let you hack at them, and the camera lost its mind whenever you tried to manage a group fight. The remaster addresses both issues.
Geralt attacks faster now, and enemies react more quickly to his strikes. The camera has been tuned so you can toggle between large groups of enemies without losing focus. The reviewer didn’t even use the lock-on system in the original because it was so unreliable, but the new setup has taken some getting used to.
New enemy behaviors add to the engagement. Enemies now retreat instead of standing still, launch less telegraphed counterattacks, and disappear and reappear behind you, especially in the case of ghost monsters. These changes make swordplay feel more intelligent, even if the behavior still shows its age compared to modern action games.
Movement That Actually Flies
Movement in The Witcher 3 was a constant irritant. Geralt was often slow and had trouble getting over things, and his rigid animations made simple tasks frustrating. The reviewer recalls losing over an hour of progress in the 1.0 version when Geralt fell off a ledge no taller than a barstool and broke every bone in his body.
In the remaster, Geralt absolutely flies over fences and navigates vertical obstacles with relative ease. The improvements combine with the next-gen update from 2022 to make the game feel like a completely different experience. The reviewer has begun to wonder if the map will feel smaller as they get deeper in, because the character moves so much faster.
Roach, the horse, is no longer the annoying idiot she once was. She now passes through trees if she brushes against them while galloping, and she no longer ends up on top of a barn. The best improvement: you can now loot herbs and whatnot without getting off your horse. The reviewer describes dismounting every ten seconds to pick a flower as driving them to the brink of madness in 2015.
“This was reduced already in the next-gen update from 2022, but combined with the other speed and mobility improvements here, it almost feels like a completely different game.”
Skill Trees That Open Sooner
RPGs often lock you out of builds until deep into the progression, and The Witcher 3 suffered from that problem in its early hours. Impactful abilities were locked behind walls you couldn’t remove until late in the journey. The remaster takes a page out of Cyberpunk 2077’s book by making perks more readily available earlier on.
The revised skill trees allow you to progress down a certain skill path with fewer obstructions, so long as you’ve purchased a skill along the route you’re focusing on. The reviewer is still early in their journey on this run but is already happy to see that they won’t have to wait until they’ve invested a whole twelve points in a branch before unlocking anything good.
Graphics That Finally Shine
The remaster is a pretty massive graphical upgrade, even over the one The Witcher 3 got for the current generation of consoles just four years ago. The lighting is more dramatic, environmental textures are more detailed, shadows and reflections are more consistent across the board, especially on PC. Geralt’s hair looks way less like a blurry mess than it once did.
There’s even a new photo mode for those who want to take glamor shots of Geralt in all his new, high-definition glory. The reviewer notes that performance is still not perfect, and they ran into a dropped frame or two on both platforms.
The Map Might Shrink
The reviewer raises one concern about the remaster: the faster movement might make the map feel smaller. With Geralt flying over obstacles and Roach passing through trees, the world that once took hours to traverse might start to feel compressed.
That’s a minor worry in a game this large, but it’s worth noting. The remaster doesn’t change the size of the map, but it does change how fast you move through it.
A Free Update Worth Taking
The Wild Hunt Remastered patch is free for anyone who owns the original. That means the improvements are accessible to everyone who already has the game.
The reviewer’s verdict is that this is the best The Witcher 3 has ever been. The combat is less floaty, the movement is less rigid, the skill trees are less restrictive, and the graphics are dramatically improved. It’s a free update that delivers on nearly every front.
The only real complaint is that performance isn’t perfect, and the reviewer still ran into dropped frames. That’s a small price to pay for a game that feels so much more alive.
If you own The Witcher 3, this update is worth installing. The improvements are substantial, and the game remains a masterpiece of open-world design. The remaster doesn’t fix everything, but it fixes enough to make the whole experience better.
The reviewer’s final assessment is that this is the best The Witcher 3 has ever been.
Source material: “The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered Review Update,” IGN.
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