The Witcher: Monster Slayer is both magical and tedious

The Witcher: Monster Slayer is both magical and dull

(Prototype credit: Spokko)

On paper, The Witcher: Monster Slayer (bachelor for free on Android and iOS) seems like a stone-solid idea. The game combines the dark tone, deep lore and vehement activeness of the Witcher games with the "get outside and walk effectually" gameplay of Pokémon Become. From a thematic standpoint, this makes perfect sense. A Witcher's whole raison d'être is to walk from town to boondocks, slaying monsters equally he goes. It sustained a book series and a game trilogy, and is currently working wonders for a Netflix series.

And nevertheless, as I walked from one corner of my neighborhood to the adjacent, periodically stopping to do battle with all manner of vampires, ghouls and ogres, I had an unfortunate realization: I was playing through the well-nigh tedious part of the Witcher games, just in real life.

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A walk to remember

Anyone who's played The Witcher trilogy knows that it'south comprised of three exceptional games. As Geralt of Rivia, you lot slay fearsome monsters, undertake morally complicated quests and advance a sweeping narrative where politics and sorcery collide. And, to exercise all these things, you demand to walk from place to identify. You need to walk a lot, in fact.

I spent about an 60 minutes and a half walking effectually my neighborhood to run into what I could accomplish in the game. The respond was 'not much.'

What I never realized about all the "walking from place to place" in the Witcher is that information technology's adequately boring. It's necessary, to an extent — afterwards all, it helps stride out the big encounters, and gives the world a sense of scope. There's also the possibility of discovering something unexpected along the way. Simply what makes the traversal tolerable is that yous're nigh guaranteed something interesting at the stop of the road.

In The Witcher: Monster Slayer, on the other hand, walking seems to be the main activity. At the very least, it's what y'all'll spend most of your fourth dimension doing. I spent about an 60 minutes and a half walking around my neighborhood to encounter what I could achieve in the game. The answer was "not much."

If you've never played The Witcher: Monster Slayer (or a similar "walk effectually and do things in augmented reality" game, like Pokémon Get), the basic premise is pretty elementary. The game syncs up with a existent-earth map of your surroundings. Yous walk around your neighborhood, and see monsters every few blocks. When you get within proximity of a foe, you tin initiate a battle. Here, you can swipe your finger to swing your sword, hold your finger downwards to parry or draw a symbol to bandage a spell. It'south all very straightforward, although the controls in a game like Infinity Blade are much more precise.

The problem is that these monster battles are brusque and shallow, and they're the well-nigh common "reward" you'll become for all your walking around. Furthermore, you can't even defeat most of the monsters you lot run across early. Whatsoever monster with a skull symbol adjacent to it represents a significant challenge; whatsoever monster with ii skulls, you may as well forget about. You tin arts and crafts oils, potions and bombs to help you against these beasts. But doing so takes a while, and you tin can craft only i particular at time, unless you pony up some real-world coin for microtransactions.

When you get right down to it, The Witcher: Monster Slayer has very little gameplay, even past mobile game standards. Near of the fourth dimension, you'll exist walking around with your face glued to your telephone; occasionally, you'll stop to swipe at the screen a agglomeration of times. Frankly, even without playing the game, I think this is the way most people walk around their neighborhoods lately.

Wandering around

The Witcher: Monster Slayer does have a few bright spots. There is a fundamental story quest, and it'due south fully of fully voiced characters, dialogue options and attractive movement-comic artwork. The immersion at the heart of the game is also admittedly pretty cool. Seeing a familiar map of my neighborhood overlaid with a fantasy veneer and a whole host of monsters made the real world feel but a niggling more magical for an evening.

In fact, at that place were a handful of times when I really did feel like a Witcher on a dangerous quest. The game's first story mission challenges you lot to place and rail down a griffin, with only a general location to proceed. I had to follow a directional pointer on my screen, not knowing exactly where I'd wind up, before the griffin's outset victim — a cart equus caballus — appeared unexpectedly front of a real estate office. In the game'due south 2nd story mission, I had to venture even farther out to find three altars to a unsafe gargoyle king.

(Granted, I could accept just zoomed out on the map to come across exactly where I was going. Merely there was something undeniably charming about setting off in a direction, knowing I'd nada in on the exact location over time.)

But the more than I played The Witcher: Monster Slayer, the more I realized that I was missing out on the best parts of wandering around my neighborhood. First and foremost, I wasn't really free to become wherever I wanted. Instead, I had to follow the trail of monsters, and they were usually on nondescript residential streets, or in forepart of businesses I'd seen a one thousand times before.

I also realized that fifty-fifty if I did notice an interesting place, in that location was no point in stopping there. To The Witcher: Monster Slayer'due south credit, I did discover a late-night coffee shop that I'd never seen before, a picayune off the beaten path. But I realized that if I sabbatum down and got a snack, I'd have to put the game away and do something else until I started walking over again. Afterward all, the monsters never come to you.

Furthermore, even if you put aside potential safety issues (at that place are a lot of streets to cross in my neighborhood; a lot of suburban neighborhoods don't have sidewalks at all), there's something profoundly uninteresting nigh getting outside, merely to spend your entire fourth dimension engrossed in your phone. You can plough on the game's AR mode, where y'all can see the monsters overlaid in real-world environments, only you'll still need to split your attention between your phone and your environment — and your surroundings volition unremarkably lose out.

The Witcher: Monster Slayer has its centre in the right place. It wants players to feel like fantasy adventurers on a quest for parts unknown, and that sounds like a promising way to spend an evening. Just getting from place to place is arguably the least interesting part of whatever Witcher game, and Monster Slayer is no exception. Try it out if you wish Pokémon Go had a better-defined story and setting, but don't be surprised if you lot current of air up opting for a podcast or some music instead on your next neighborhood jaunt.

Marshall Honorof is a senior editor for Tom'south Guide, overseeing the site'south coverage of gaming hardware and software. He comes from a science writing background, having studied paleomammalogy, biological anthropology, and the history of scientific discipline and technology. Afterwards hours, you tin discover him practicing taekwondo or doing deep dives on classic sci-fi.