Grab your mortar and pestle, strap on your favorite hand-and-a-half sword, turn down the lights and turn up your speakers. CD Projekt's The Witcher tosses you into a unique world of combat and alchemy in an intensely creepy and satisfyingly deep roleplaying game.

As the game's main character, Geralt, you start out in a state of partial amnesia, uncertain of the events that have just taken place and only vaguely familiar with your closest friends and allies. The introduction of the game is spent learning the combat system and, briefly, Witcher's very complex and (as you'll discover soon after) very necessary alchemy system. You, as Geralt, are reunited with your cadre of fellow witchers who, you learn, are rather an endangered species. You will also find yourself wrapped in the bedsheets with an attractive sorceress … a sort of mini-game that can be repeated throughout your adventures with an impressive variety of alluring (or perhaps not so) femme fatales.

This bit of gameplay is undoubtedly what earns The Witcher its "M" rating. It appears at first hand as if this game is aimed squarely at the "boys' club". However, it is a sideline feature and fortunately not critical to completing your adventure, so the offended need not dismiss the title out of hand.

The sweet-spot of The Witcher's gameplay is in its unique combat styles and the intricate alchemy system. The player, depending on their chosen difficulty, will be required to rely upon both in order to survive against the vast assortment of enemies and monsters he will face in his excursions throughout Vizima, the city and surrounding area in which the game is set. Physical combat is mainly utilized through a choice of swordplay styles, using either steel or silver swords depending on the enemy that is about to kill and/or eat you. Steel is most effective against humans, while silver is the precious metal of choice against monsters. Geralt can actually carry up to four weapons: a steel sword, a silver sword, a short sword (really a dagger, I guess), and a large sword or axe in the fourth slot.

To be honest, I have yet to use anything but the main steel and silver swords in my adventures, and that's primarily because the combat styles revolve around those two weapons. Both steel and silver swords can be wielded in either a "strong", "fast", or "group" style, each working to best effect against specific enemies. In the simplest sense, the "strong" style works best against large, armored opponents, while the "fast" style is more effective against lighter-armored, more agile foes. The "group" style is somewhat self-explanatory … I hope. These styles can be changed on the fly, and the player should be warned that they are not an afterthought - use the wrong style against the enemy and you will lose … and be eaten.

The alchemy system is far more involved than the combat styles and was, for me, at times a source of frustration. The process for creating potions and blade coatings (nice, that) will be familiar to anyone who has played the likes of Ultima Online, and quite simply involves gathering of ingredients and combining them into potions, oils (for your blades), and bombs. Ingredients are gathered from plants in the wild or harvested from defeated monsters, and mixed with a "base" (for potion, oil, or bomb) to produce the finished recipe. There is a veritable encyclopedia of alchemical recipes at the witcher's disposal. Thank goodness the game interface includes just such a dictionary (more on that later).

At the easiest difficulty setting, alchemy is completely unnecessary - Geralt will be able to survive on his mad swordplay skills alone. The more advanced difficulty levels demand or even require the complementary use of combat and alchemy in order to survive. Potions range from health boosters to time-dilation effects and other enhancements as well. There will be times where Geralt must combine just the right potions to gain the benefits that will put the balance of the fight in his favor.

Alchemy is rather involved in The Witcher, but fortunately CD Projekt built an excellent interface which includes perhaps the most useful journal feature I've seen in any RPG that I've played. You'll find what you'd expect here: quest info, character stats, a map, and inventory. But CD Projekt's journal is on performance-enhancers and includes so much more: a bestiary, detailing important facts about monsters, especially the best weapon and combat-style to use against them; a recipe book listing all the alchemical ingredients and how they combine into the various potions/oils/bombs; a quest-tracker which reminds you what steps to take next and allows you to mark on your map which direction to head. Other RPG developers should take note; CD Projekt has discovered the right way to handle this sort of "character management".

That interface wraps nicely around the view of the game world, which is an example of top-notch art direction powered by Bioware's "Aurora 2007" engine (in which the original Neverwinter Nights was built). The environments are very well designed, with a fluid, stylistic feel to the medieval city and villages, and wilderness areas with an organic feel. The artificial boundaries are there in outdoor areas, but CD Projekt has done an excellent job of blending them into the scene. The game engine may be somewhat aging, but The Witcher's developers have added their own tweaks that result in an immersive setting that conveys just the right mood for the story.

For all the praises I could sing about The Witcher (and there are many more), this gem is not flawless. The most glaring problem is the game's pace, which flips from intense nail-biter to park bench pigeon-feeder and back again before you're even aware. This is, in part, somewhat the nature of RPGs, but it happens so early on in this game that the player could easily give up if he decides not to go just that one extra inch to realize that there is a good game in there - and that's on CD Projekt, not the player. This happens again later in The Witcher, though by that point I was already sold on the game and therefore able to look past it. It is, however, a formidable hump to get over in the early game.

There are other issues as well: I found some quests to be a bit inconsistent in the way they handled multiple moving parts. For example (and I'll try to avoid spoilers), one ongoing mission involves multiple characters whom Geralt is investigating. The game allows the player to make up his own mind as to a particular character's guilt or innocence. But, a problem arises when the next step in the quest requires the player to contradict that choice. For instance, I had determined a character's innocence; however the mission-giver then required me to kill that character in the following step of the quest. As Geralt is unquestionably an intelligent being, it makes little sense for him to betray what he knows to be true in such a way. Yet in order to proceed with the remainder of the quest, the player must kill that innocent character. It just feels broken. [Editors Note - A number of readers have commented that there is an alternate solution to this quest which challenges my assertion here.]

Such flaws are not insignificant and did diminish my gameplay experience noticeably. They were not enough, however, to sour my overall opinion of The Witcher as a refreshingly complex RPG that is immersive and provides the singular features that make it an engaging adventure. Take the best parts of Oblivion, Sacred, and Ultima Online, throw in some unique combat styles, pour in a wide variety of quests, and what you've got is a tasty RPG entrйe known as The Witcher.