The Witcher has no need for Tinder when journeying across the Northern Kingdoms, when he’s caught in a love triangle between Yenn and Triss. Here, though, he is now trapped in the Tinder-like left and right swiping of Reigns: The Witcher. It’s the second crossover spin-off between Reigns’ kingdom management and a popular fantasy series, but there’s a distinctly different set up to this game than before.
Now, obviously, Reigns: The Witcher stars Geralt of Rivia, but where you’d play as the ruler of a kingdom in the earlier games of this series and have to appease and balance the whims and desires of various factions, now you’re playing as an adventuring hero. It’s quite a shift, though Nerial has stuck with a familiar format. Kind of.
Geralt of Rivia isn’t really the most personable of characters. No, he’s not as monstrous and inhuman as the legends that precede him would have the general people believe, but he still needs a strong PR campaign to be seen as more than just a necessary evil. Enter Dandelion to sprinkle a little musical sparkle across his adventures, turning Geralt into a folk hero over time.
At least that’s the plan. with Reigns: The Witcher wrapping up the adventures within the context of Dandelion performing to a packed house. But telling stories of Geralt’s adventures is pretty tricky. You can find yourself down some unusual rabbit holes, lose the consistent narrative threads, and bend the truth a little too far.
The game opens with his first effort, with talking dragons, captured lovers and Geralt being burnt to a crisp, but it’s just an opening gambit, as each successive adventure leads to Dandelion finding new sources of inspiration.
There’s less of a single narrative thread through each play, as you’re still met by individuals that each present you with a binary choice and an instant resolution to their problem or request. A farmer might ask you to lure in a beast to spook his overly milky goats, a noble could want a particular monster’s head to adorn their mantelpiece, some townsfolk might request your help in warding off a siren living in the woods nearby, or some other mythical beast will need defeating. It seems quite rare that a situation will have a direct narrative follow up or counterpoint, and they’re almost always swiped away and resolved without issue.
That’s generally true when dealing with monsters and creatures too – you can choose to tell the siren to leave or lop off their head – but some will rope you into a new combat minigame that completely shifts the pacing of the game. Instead of letting you take your time, now there’s a beat to match and move to in a block-dropping puzzler.
Geralt roams the bottom edge of a 5×5 grid, moving left or right each beat, and all you can do is guide his direction as enemy attacks, offensive strikes and healing potions descend from the top. It’s tricky to get the hang of and need a good bit of foresight to evade some of the trickier formations that emerge. Take too many hits and it’s game over, with Dandelion having to come up with a better story next time.
Most decisions will have an impact to the performance, pleasing or displeasing humans, non-humans, sorcerers and monsters. The goal, as with previous games, is to keep all four of these in balance. Fall too low and Geralt meets a gristly end. Max one of them out and he’s lured into some hedonistic equivalent. You can find yourself backed into a corner,
You also have some added overarching goals with the inspiration points that Dandelion can draw upon. Three cards are drawn at the start, providing buffs and modifiers to make certain groups easier to please, harder to displease, add a bit of romance, or add a murderous lilt as companions can meet an untimely demise at the hands of monsters. Meeting their requirements, whether it’s flirting with people, finding a serial killer, or something else, then adds to the experience Dandelion gets at the end of a tale and his inspiration.
Reigns: The Witcher is an interesting twist and reframing of the simplified kingdom management series. There’s a lot that will remain familiar, a lightness to how quickly you flit between situations with a simple swipe, and plenty of amusing deaths to find. After a fleeting introductory hour and a bunch of early deaths, I’m curious to see how deep Dandelion’s imagination goes.
