Review of The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf (2021) by Risax — 23 Aug 2021

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf is a fine movie, it would've been better if they didn't specify this as being a prequel movie about Vesemir's past and just used an original Witcher of their own creation as there are some inconsistencies between this Vesemir and the ones from the books. (For example, the name of his mentor figure).

Art & animation 9/10.

What I'm here for. The style, animation and character and monster designs all look fantastic and are definitely the high point of the movie. My one complaint would be that some of the fights are a bit *too* over the top, making the Witchers look more like demi-Gods than simply mutants whereas the books and games to a lesser extent definitely made it believable that they were still at least somewhat human and somewhat vulnerable.

Audio 7/10.

Music is good and gives off some of the same vibes as certain scores heard in the game, though the song at the start was god-awful (though I assume that was the intent). Voice acting was...good to decent for important characters, less so for everyone else. The voices of any child characters was especially awful, though. At least in my book.

Story 6/10.

The story feels fairly fractured, trying to focus on both Vesemir's backstory and the eventual attack on Kaer Morhen that would eventually lead to the downfall to the School of the Wolf. I would have preferred if they focused on one or the other as both stories are certainly interesting but neither seem to get quite the attention it deserves to truly shine.

Overall verdict 7/10.

The Witcher: Nightmare of the Wolf looks very impressive, but otherwise isn't terribly memorable and doesn't quite *feel* like a Witcher property. Focusing too much on the big action and fight scenes and too little on the characters and the atmosphere. What scenes that do certainly stand out, however, and as mentioned before the artists and animators deserve a lot of the credit for making this movie what it is.

Hopefully any future animated Witcher content will also try to go the extra mile when it comes to writing and voice acting.