The Witcher 3's new update has made game 'best it's ever been'

The Witcher 3 is, quite simply, one of the greatest action-RPGs of all time, and when its new-gen update finally released at the end of 2022, most were thrilled to re-experience the game with souped-up graphics, frame rate, and other general improvements.

However, it wasn’t totally smooth sailing for everyone. PC players ran into some significant issues after the update was rolled out - some reported that the game looked “much worse” than it had done before the update, while others branded it as “unplayable”. Thankfully, CD Projekt Red quickly released fixes for the very worst problems, even if some issues lingered for a while longer on all platforms. Now though, it’s thought that Patch 4.02 has made the title “the best it's ever been”.

Take a look at The Witcher 3’s new-gen update in action below.

In a video by Digital Foundry (via Push Square) which analyses the changes made in the latest update on the PS5 and Xbox Series X versions, it’s been revealed just how much of a difference March’s update made. Frame rate issues which were actually added to the game in Patch 4.01 have been ironed out. Not only that, but ray tracing has been improved on all platforms - refraction has been added to water reflections, making bodies of water like lakes and rivers look even better.

Fans in the comments have been spotting huge changes since the update, too: “The difference on Series X was immediately noticeable. After the last patch it felt so bad I stopped playing but with this one I didn’t need [Digital Foundry’s] analysis to know it was a big improvement. It just feels so much better,” Andy Ward commented. “It does run better on PC especially in densely populated areas now too and uses a lot more of my 5900x cores. It had some crashing issues initially but I think they must've hot fixed it since as it's been very stable over the last few days,” wrote recordatron. “I noticed a solid improvement this time around,” agreed diligaf1000.

Patch 4.02 released a few weeks ago, so if you’ve not already installed it, be sure to do so and feel the difference.