Hey everybody, I’m Martin Endara, the newest member of the reviewing team at AppAddict.net. Since this is my first review I wanted to take a moment to introduce myself. I’m the CEO and Co-Founder of a small indie development studio for both iOS and Android applications. I feel my background allows me to offer a slightly different perspective and insight in my reviews as I’m not only an end user, but an actual developer. I hope you enjoy my work….now onto the review.
The Witcher: Versus is another attempt to bring a successful franchise into the iOS world.The Witcher is an RPG for the PC platform developed in Poland by CD Projekt using BioWare´s proprietary Aurora engine and published by Atari. Now in the hands of Chillingo for the iOS publishing task, and developer one2tribe they have come up with the idea of a browser-based MMO dueling game. Good idea? Yes. Original? Not really, but they did the right thing, as far as my experience tells, it was the only way to port such a complex PC game into the iOS arena.
To start things off, if you do not have a Crystal account, you must create one to login into the game server, and a tutorial explains everything you need to know about the game. First you will have to choose your class: Witcher, Sorceress or Frightener, and then customize your abilities, as you move forward into the game with a very basic skill tree. In the “arena”, you can select who you want to challenge for a duel from amongst the players with your same skill level. Once you pick an adversary you decide both the order and skills (which are divided into attack and defense) you will be using during the fight. Done, challenge sent! In the “new challenges” section you can see your active matches and who had the courage to challenge you, and there is also the “fight history” section allowing you see the results of every duel in which you have been involved. The thing here is that fights are not in real time, and when viewing a fight, you are basically just seeing an animation of a plain rock paper scissors game.
Every time you level up, you have one skill point to use at the “skills” section to improve your defense or attack by learning a new skill or level up an existing one. There is also a very basic shop for you to buy swords, amulets and magical items regarding your level and the skills you have to improve your character. Of course, there is also a premium shop for in app purchases which honestly, I don´t find appealing! Finally, if at some point you are tired of your class you can re-skill for a price in “Orens” (in game currency).
The Witcher: Versus’ graphics and animations are superb, and in concordance with the franchise, although they do not currently support retina display. Regarding the gameplay, I’ve seen far superior browser-based game titles out there, and found The Witcher: Versus to be fairly repetitive and lacking the addictive factor. Unfortunately I did experience several crashes while in the shop and skill sections of the game and I was also disconnected from the server every now and then. Hopefully these issues can be resolved in a future update.
In Conclusion
Overall, The Witcher: Versus is a nice game, targeted to a very specific audience with great graphics, a good screen flow and is easy to play. Ultimately the game lacks any real innovation. The time you spend waiting for challenges to be established and the fact that the strategical elements seem to be overshadowed by a predominant reliance on luck, kept me from really getting drawn into the game.
