It’s hard to believe it’s been over a decade since The Witcher 3 first released, and even harder to believe they found a way to make Geralt’s tub transformation even shinier. The seminal open world RPG’s hotly anticipated remaster has finally arrived, and it’s pulling people back into the Continent all these years later (now more than ever on Steam, according to SteamDB).
The new screaming high is a whopping 123,359, which it just reached an hour ago as I write this. It’s settling down now, but still pretty impressive given that its peak in August was just over 30,000. The game might be getting on in years, but it’s still one of the best in its genre.
When PC Gamer’s Shaun Prescott first reviewed it in 2015, he scored the game a mighty 92% and called it “a big, beautiful, sprawling action RPG full of rich stories, and suffused with an oppressive darkness.”
It may not have been a huge stride forward for the style, instead feeling like innumerable tiny steps: a bar-setting journey through Andrzej Sapkowski’s setting with all the graceful execution of an Olympic gold medalist’s platform dive. “The Witcher 3 doesn’t bring much that’s bracingly new to the modern RPG. It’s a series of refinements,” he wrote.
It probably helps that the remaster is free if you already own the base game, which has been a Steam sale mainstay since it released to all that universal acclaim. Even with all the new bells and whistles, it’s half-off as we speak for Steam’s autumn sale. If you want to dive in for the first time or start a new playthrough you’ll definitely finish, check out all the mods which have gotten compatibility upgrades or read our guide on how to improve Geralt’s fashion sense.
The Witcher 4: What we know about Ciri’s story
Witcher 3 mods: Good hunting
The Witcher books: Where to start
Witcher 3 console commands: Cheat death