-Quick Review-
Blimey, Geralt, didn't you ever wonder where your mum and dad learned it all? Yer a Witcher Geralt, thump’in good one I’d wager.
But it doesn’t really mater because if there’s one thing I’ve learned from playing the Witcher games it doesn’t mater what choice you make bad stuff always happens.
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition is an RPG developed by CD Projekt Red and released in 2008. A year after the original Witcher game’s release date in 2007. You play as Geralt of Rivia a “Witcher” which is a type of genetically and magically modified monster hunter who goes around slaying all kinds of monsters for bounties. After all, Toss A Coin to Your Witcher.

Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/1Gd3cFzf7g4

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: You play as Geralt, Witcher by profession. Gambler by trade (I’m only slightly joking, there’s Dice Poker and Fist fighting mini games in the Witcher: Enhanced). Although Geralt has already been on many adventures, suddenly Geralt wakes up in the mountain fortress Kaer Morhen, with amnesia, and instead of raising his special defense, it gives the player an opportunity to shape Geralt with their own decisions regardless of that one time Geralt teamed up with a Vampire (Dandelion, Geralt’s Bard friend spilled the beans on that one in this game, but that was one of the books I actually knew!).
Anyway, everyone is like “oh no! you lost your memory, don’t worry we’ll help you!” But then Kae Morhen is attacked by a group called “Salamandra”, and you’re already hit by your first choice to shape the story, go help the sorceress Triss Merigold, or aid your fellow Witcher’s in battling the monster in the courtyard? Throughout your play through you’ll make choices like this one, so get used to it now.
Geralt pursues the Salamandra leaders, along the way stopping to help villagers with their various quests, or not. I’m not your dad. You can play The Witcher however you want. The main story is pretty straightforward: Geralt is tracking down the sorcerer Azar Javed, and the mercenary known as “the Professor”. But getting to the conclusion will have a number of different twists and turns.
Will Geralt be sympathetic to the plight of the Scoia'tael (An elven terrorist faction), or throw in with the Order of the Flaming Rose (a group of religious fanatics), or stick to that classic “Witcher Neutrality?”

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3617648309

Gameplay: All the way back to the first Witcher game, they’ve been consistent with this thru line: Witcher’s have two swords. A silver sword for Monsters. A steel sword for humans. Geralt also has three fighting styles: fast, strong, and group. Alchemy to craft potions which provide a plethora of beneficial effects and lastly Geralt can use Force Powers… I mean… “Witcher signs” aka “magic spells”. Throw in leveling talent trees, inventory management, and you’ve got yourself a video game!
Fighting styles are another way you adapt to the combat in the game, if you’re surrounded sometimes, it’s best to focus on the biggest boy and beat him bloody with Strong style… other times it’s more efficient to switch to Group Style combat and take down the adds before focusing on the main baddy. Still other times you’ll fight someone too nimble to be hit by Strong style, and vice versa.
The nuance you need with combat and especially with Alchemy is more or less needed depending on the difficulty you play on. On regular/normal difficulty you can get away with just basic Alchemy, make sure you stock up on Swallow potions which are your basic healing potion – Swallow doesn’t heal right away either, so on the really hard fights pop the potion before you start combat. Alchemy has a ton of other benefits, even giving Geralt more skill points to use!
I didn’t use the Witcher Signs very much… mostly Aard and that was to stun enemies late in the game for quick insta kills, and then to open up hidden passageways by blowing away rocks and rubble.
The Witcher Signs are: Aard (Force Push - blue), Igni (Fire - red), Quen (magical shield – yellow ), Axii (mind control – green), and Yrden (sets a trap – purple). Each sign has it’s own skill tree… which is kinda weird, because I put my points into combat styles and ignored Signs until I had extra points with no where else to go. In Silver and Steel I trust… and it worked for my playthrough.
The Witcher Enhanced being an RPG there is of course experience and leveling systems in place. You get experience primarily from quests and slaying monsters. When Geralt levels up he gets Skill points which come in three flavors: Bronze, Silver, and Gold. Earlier levels give Bronze skill points, the higher level Geralt gets the better the skill points quality. Naturally Silver and Gold Skill points unlock better upgrades in the upgrade tree.
There’s a number of different Skill tree’s Geralt can choose between: There are four main attributes trees:
Strength (generally improving melee damage and health), Dexterity (providing perks to dodge, speed, fast combat style, etc), Stamina (survivability, health regeneration, how fast Geralt gets drunk etc) and Intelligence (for alchemy, general Witcher signs improvement, getting better stuff from kills, regents, etc).
There are separate Skill point trees in for Silver and Steel Fast, Strong, and Group Styles, so 6 total sword style trees. And lastly there’s a skill tree for each of the Witcher Sign’s too, so that’s another 5 trees. Don’t get lost in the forest for the trees; put skills where you want and it’ll probably be fine unless you’re playing on a hard difficulty, or you can look up suggested builds online.
Lastly, a bit more about Inventory Management, I expected a typical inventory system where you have empty space and can fill it up with swords, armor, herbs, crafting materials, etc. That’s not how it works in the Witcher Enhanced. Geralt has spare slots to equip weapons, more slots if you have better armor… however you’re only bringing back an extra sword or two to sell to the black smith.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3633484270

Conclusion: I enjoyed returning to the Witcher universe! My playthrough took roughly 40 hours. If you wanted to play The Witcher 1 Enhanced all the way to The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt you’re looking at roughly 200+ hours. So, if you’re looking for a long marathon game, look no further. For the rest of us with more limited free time, 40–50-hour RPG’s is pretty reasonable.
I went into The Witcher Enhanced with lower expectations because it is an older game, and you can tell it was released in 2008. My game crashed several times, and I lost several hours of progress but that’s all kind of with the territory I guess (The lesson learned was to just save after 30 minutes, thanks for nothing autosave).
However, if you can get hooked, you’re looking at a fantastic RPG! The problem is there’s so much competition within this genre there’s a fair chance another RPG might be more aligned with your interests (In all fairness I personally preferred The Witcher 3).
I think the people who will like The Witcher Enhanced the most would be people who are very interested in the Witcher Universe, motivated to dig into extra stuff in these games and passionate about the various characters throughout the series.
Not to say casual gamers wouldn’t enjoy the game either, I feel more like I’m in the casual gamer boat here. I just know I went backwards in the games because I wanted to keep learning more about Geralt because I was interested and invested in The Witcher 3’s story.

-Quick Review-
Hades is a lesson in patience and persistence. It’s lining up the “Skill”, “Luck”, and “Experience” circles in a Venn diagram. If you’ve got more skill and luck, you’ll make progress faster. If you’ve got more luck and experience, you can compensate for skills or natural aptitude. And if you’ve got no luck, you can still grind your way to success with developing skills and getting experience playing the game (Best of all as you grind you’ll level up skills which literally improve you luck, so even an poor unlucky soul like me can get some of that luck-o-matic-magic).
Hades is a Roguelite Action RPG developed by Super Giant Games and released in 2020; I’ve loved everything about Hades, from its music to its gameplay, to its voice acting, to its theming and art style, and I can easily recommend the game to pretty much anyone!
I had been busy working on other games, and suddenly I noticed a good Sale for Hades, and I told my wife “Hey, this is a must buy game”. Then I promptly started streaming it on Twitch. While everyone is over there having fun playing Hades 2, I’m back here playing Hades 1 …and living my best life!

Review Video:
If you don't like reading, or are curious about watching gameplay check out my video here:
https://youtu.be/s3fZnFaEHvw

-Detailed breakdown review-
Story: The story just tosses you right in. You’re playing as Zagreus the son of Hades, as he attempts to escape the various layers of the underworld and make it to the surface. Zagreus will fight his way through Tartarus, Asphodel, Elysium, and the Temple of Styx.
In all likelihood your first run will be unsuccessful… correction; it would be incredible and unbelievable to successfully escape on your first run with zero experience in the game. Expect to fail, expect to fail a lot. But after every run you’ll return to the Hall of Hades to get dialogue and exposition from the narrator and various colorful characters to fill in the background of who Zagreus is, and why he’s hellbent on getting to the surface.
I intentionally want to avoid talking about specific story details because uncovering the story bit by bit is another extremely rewarding experience from your subsequent playthroughs. The important story detail to remember is this: even when I failed an attempt, I went back to the beginning and had new character interactions, new stuff to unlock, and a fresh run with a fresh change to try mixing different boons and upgrades together to see what kind of smorgasbord-soup I could cook up.
Hades’ story kept my attention the whole time, sure it’s disappointing when I lose on a run that I was so certain I was going to succeed! But after a loss I’d just dust myself off and give it another try, again, and again.
And the pay off after you successfully fight your way through the game to get to the end… was one of the most dopamine-rewarding experiences I’ve had in a long time. And then you restart from the beginning again! I needed to take a break after that first one because I wasn’t emotionally ready to do it all over again to get more story. But as a word of encouragement: remember Zagreus gets more and more upgrades to help make the successful escape attempts more and more likely.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3582640942

Gameplay: Hades is played from an isometric view and has some hack and slash inspired combat elements to it. You have a Primary attack which is your basic damage dealing move, A Secondary Attack called a “Cast” which is unique and changes with different god’s boons and is limited in how many “cast” points you have, each weapon also has a Special Attack which will change drastically based on the weapon, and lastly there’s also a Dash move to quickly side step attacks, jump through barriers, and you can also attack while dashing!

My first experience playing Hades was clearing the first set of levels until promptly being destroyed by the first boss. Then went back to the Hall of Hades and spent my darkness to get permanent upgrades, unlocked new weapons with my keys, and then dived right back into it with another escape attempt… I continued to fight to get to back to that boss and dying to it several times until I got a good run where I beat the boss, then rinse and repeat on the next zone fighting my way out of the underworld until after 24 hours total gametime and roughly 35 attempts, I got my first successful escape!

The underworld is said to be in constant flux, and chambers will move around so each time you play you’ll encounter different chambers from the last time you visited. You’ll find chambers which reward you darkness, coins, keys, god boons, skill levels, the Hammer Artifact which improves your weapon somehow, and more.
You walk into a chamber, clear it of hostile NPC’s, pick up the reward, and move on to the next chamber (sometimes you also get a choice of which chamber you want to go to next, that’s how you make your “build”).
As usual for this game, just when you get used to running from chamber to chamber, you’ll get a new upgrade and now you gotta look for the shiny gold vases. Just when I got comfortable with a boss the boss changes slightly and gets new attacks… Hades just keeps incrementally adding new stuff. It's truly amazing how well paced everything is!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3620098581

Conclusion: As I said at the start of this review: I can easily recommend Hades to pretty much anyone! Hades is one of the best games I’ve ever played. I’d absolutely put it on my top 10 list if I made top 10 lists.
There hasn’t been any game Supergiant has put out that I haven’t loved, but Hades has blown me away, the story was engaging, the gameplay was compelling and enjoyable, I will be playing the music from the game for the rest of my life, and as bonus points Hades has extremely good replay value and lots of ways to add extra challenge to the game! If you haven’t played Hades yet, you should absolutely give it a shot. I'm confident you’ll agree with me on how great this game is.