The Witcher 3 Remastered Scores 94. That Number Is Eight Reviews and Zero Players

By Indie Kings | September 29, 2026

Updated September 29, 2026: The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Remastered holds a 94 on Metacritic, and coverage is already calling it the best-rated game of 2026. Both facts are true and both are misleading without their context, which the coverage left out. The 94 is an average of eight critic reviews, all eight positive, three of them perfect. There is no user score at all yet: Metacritic does not open user reviews until 12:00pm PST on September 30. The original 2007 game scores 92 on the same site, so the remaster outscores the game it replaces by two points. None of that is on our site, and the number is going to be quoted for a month without it.

Image: The Remastered, currently at 94 on Metacritic from eight critic reviews. Credit: Wccftech.

The eight reviews, listed

Every score Metacritic is currently carrying, as displayed on the game's page on the morning of September 29. All eight are PC reviews, all eight are positive, and there is not one mixed or negative score on the board.

The distribution matters more than the average. Three perfect scores out of eight is a stronger signal than a 94 alone, and it is the kind of early pattern that usually settles as the review pool widens. Two of the three 90s are positive about the game and one, Uagna.it, is positive about it while criticising the performance, which is the shape a 90 usually takes.

One bookkeeping note. Metacritic's page states "Based on 8 Critic Reviews" and displays 94, while the rows visible on the page account for seven outlets. The eighth is presumably below the fold or in the full review list, which the page gates behind a "See All 8 Critic Reviews" control. [NEEDS VERIFICATION] I have not identified the eighth outlet or its score, and no score is asserted for it here.

Why eight reviews is the whole story

The "best-rated game of 2026" framing, which Tech4Gamers published on the evening of September 28, is accurate against Metacritic's own leaderboard and misleading in the way a launch-day score always is. The same article concedes the caveat in a subordinate clause: the game "doesn't have nearly as many reviews as those games."

It does not say how many it does have. Eight, all from a single day, all PC, from a mix of regional and enthusiast outlets rather than the large publications that decide these numbers over a longer window. Tech4Gamers names Forza Horizon 6 and Resident Evil Requiem as the titles it is being measured against, and both of those had been in review for weeks by September 28.

So the comparison is not wrong, it is early. A 94 from eight same-day PC reviews will move, and the direction it moves in is the only thing that makes the headline meaningful. The three perfect scores are the most fragile part of the total: they are the scores a follow-up review wave is most likely to pull down, and they carry the average up disproportionately while they last.

The remaster scores higher than the original

The comparison nobody in the coverage made, and the one most worth making, because it is available on the same page.

The remaster scores two points above the game it replaces and two above Blood and Wine, on the same aggregator, and it has been on sale for hours rather than years. That is a real result and a slightly strange one, because the remaster is a re-release of the same content with better visuals and a rebuilt renderer, not new work. What the two extra points are measuring is the presentation, and the outlets in the list above mostly say so in their own words: graphics and lighting are what the reviewers are responding to.

It is also worth noting where the remaster sits relative to the wider 90-plus band on the same page. It is level with Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Diablo, two points behind Hades II, and four behind Elden Ring. "Best-rated game of 2026" is a claim about the current calendar year, not about all time, and the all-time comparison is not one this game is making.

No user score exists yet

This is the fact most likely to be misreported and the easiest to get wrong, because the absence of a number reads as a number.

Metacritic's page currently shows the user score as "tbd" with the instruction "Available after 4 ratings", and states plainly: "User reviews are not available for this game yet." It also gives the opening time, 12:00pm PST on Sep 30, 2026. The user panel currently reads 0 ratings, 0 percent positive, 0 percent mixed, 0 percent negative.

So there is no player reception data for this remaster at all, on any platform, as of the morning of September 29. Any sentence of the form "players rate the Remastered highly" is currently unsupported, and the number that will move fastest once reviews open is the one nobody is reporting yet.

For a free update to a nineteen-year-old game with an existing owner base, that is the number worth watching rather than the critic average. The remaster is a free download for anyone who owns the original, which means its potential review volume is a function of how many people already own a game that has been in every Steam sale ever held, and the two scores will not be measuring the same population.

The critics contradict each other on path tracing

One genuine disagreement sits inside those eight reviews, and it is the same question this site covered on performance grounds yesterday.

Vandal, one of the three 100s, says "the visual leap provided by path tracing is spectacular; it not only allows the game to look as good as any release from this year but actually surpasses many of them." Uagna.it, one of the 90s, praises the new lighting realism delivered by ray tracing and path tracing and then says "the overall result is inconsistent, and performance takes a significant hit when these technologies are enabled," noting that the developers have promised patches.

Those are not reconcilable, and both are about the same feature. Which is worth putting next to our own launch-day benchmark coverage, where TechSpot's review concluded that path tracing frequently looks worse than conventional ray tracing, with characters becoming overexposed and scenes taking on a blue tint, and preferred ray tracing on visual grounds. Three sources, three positions, on the most expensive visual mode in the game.

Nobody is wrong here, because path tracing in this game is genuinely contentious and the hardware situation makes the choice concrete rather than aesthetic. Our benchmark coverage found path tracing is where the RTX 5090 and RTX 5080 become indistinguishable, where four Radeon cards hit the same artificial ceiling, and where the Arc B580 manages 14 FPS at 1080p. A reviewer praising path tracing is describing the image. A reviewer criticising it is describing the image and the frame rate together. Both of those critics are working from a pre-release build, and Uagna.it explicitly says patches are promised, which means this disagreement is likely to be resolved by updates rather than settled by argument.

What the free update actually includes

The commercial detail behind the score, since it is the reason the review pool will behave the way it will.

The remaster is a free update for existing owners, and per Vandal's review it includes the first two expansions for players who had not previously purchased them, Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone. This site has already covered the free upgrade path and the fact that the update ships with both expansions, so this is context rather than news.

It matters for the score in one specific way. A free update that bundles two expansions is being reviewed by an audience with no purchase decision to make and no refund window, which is the profile of a review pool that skews positive. That is not a criticism of the eight reviews, several of which are clearly careful, and Uagna.it's performance criticism is evidence they were. It is a reason not to read 94 as a verdict on the remaster's merits alone, and a reason to expect the user score to diverge from the critic score once it opens.

Why outlets beyond eight will decide this

The practical question for anyone reading a scoreboard on September 29 is when the number becomes real, and the answer is that it becomes real when the large publications arrive.

Eight same-day PC reviews from a mix of regional and enthusiast outlets is the shape of an embargo lift, not the shape of a review cycle. The outlets that historically move a Metacritic average most are the ones that take longer to publish, and they are also the ones whose readers are most likely to be deciding on this. Vandal, Combo Infinito, Eurogamer Germany, Uagna.it, GamingBolt, The Games Machine and Noisy Pixel are all real publications doing real work, and two of the three perfect scores are defensible on their own text. None of that makes the average stable.

There is also a scheduling reason to expect movement in a particular direction. The remaster launched on September 29, so the reviews currently on the board were written on pre-release builds, which is the same condition our own performance coverage was working under. Uagna.it is explicit that patches are coming. If those patches land before the major review wave, the scores being averaged now will not be the scores that get averaged later.

FAQ

What is The Witcher 3 Remastered's Metacritic score?

94, labelled Universal Acclaim, as of the morning of September 29. The important qualifier is that it is based on eight critic reviews, all from September 28, all for PC, and all positive with no mixed or negative scores on the board. Three of the eight are perfect 100s. The user score does not exist yet and Metacritic does not open user reviews until 12:00pm PST on September 30.

Is it really the best-rated game of 2026?

It is the highest-scoring game released in the 2026 calendar year on Metacritic, currently, which is a different claim from being the best-reviewed game of the year. The comparison is against a very small and very recent sample, and the outlet reporting it conceded that the remaster has far fewer reviews than the titles it is being compared against, Forza Horizon 6 and Resident Evil Requiem, both of which had been in review for weeks. Three of the eight scores are perfect, which is the part of the average most likely to move as the review pool widens.

Does the remaster score better than the original Witcher 3?

Yes, by two points. The Remastered scores 94 while the original The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt scores 92 and Blood and Wine also scores 92, on the same site. The remaster is two points behind Hades II and level with Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree and Diablo. What the two extra points are measuring is presentation rather than content, and the reviews in the sample say so in their own terms.

Can I read player reaction to the Remastered yet?

No, not at all. Metacritic shows the user score as tbd, states that user reviews are not available for this game yet, and gives an opening time of 12:00pm PST on September 30, 2026. The user panel currently shows zero ratings. Any claim about how players are rating the remaster is currently unsupported, and this is the number that will move fastest once it opens, particularly since the update is free to existing owners and bundles both expansions.

Is path tracing better in this remaster?

The eight reviews disagree, and the disagreement is real rather than a matter of taste. Vandal, scoring 100, calls the path tracing visual leap spectacular and says it surpasses many of this year's releases. Uagna.it, scoring 90, praises the lighting realism from ray tracing and path tracing but says the result is inconsistent and performance takes a significant hit. TechSpot's launch-day benchmark reached a third position, finding path tracing frequently looks worse than conventional ray tracing. All three are describing pre-release builds, and patches are promised, so the most likely resolution is a software update rather than a verdict.

Is the Remastered really free, and what comes with it?

It is a free update for existing owners, and per Vandal's review it includes the first two expansions, Blood and Wine and Hearts of Stone, for players who had not bought them. This site has covered the free upgrade path and the expansion inclusion separately. The reason it matters for the score is that a free update with bundled DLC is reviewed by an audience with no purchase decision to make, which tends to produce a positive-skewed pool.

Bottom Line

A 94 is a real number and a small one, and the two facts will travel separately.

The score is real: eight critics, all positive, three perfect, two of the 100s making arguments about lighting and free value that hold up on their own text. What is not real is the confidence the number implies, because eight same-day PC reviews is an embargo lift rather than a review cycle, and the perfect scores are the most fragile part of the average. Meanwhile the number that will actually tell you how the remaster landed with players does not exist yet and does not open until tomorrow lunchtime Pacific.

The comparison worth making is the one the coverage skipped. The remaster scores two points above the nineteen-year-old game it replaces on the same aggregator, which tells you the reviewers are responding to presentation and that the underlying content was already rated very highly in 2007. And the one live disagreement inside the sample, over whether path tracing is an improvement, resolves into the same hardware question this site covered yesterday: the mode where the 5090 and the 5080 become the same card, four Radeon cards hit an artificial ceiling, and the cheapest card in the chart manages 14 FPS. Three reviewers, three positions, and patches promised. That is the story to come back to, not the average.

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