The Witcher 3 passes Elden Ring to become the best open-world RPG again

The Witcher 3 has passed Elden Ring and become the best open-world RPG - again. 

The highly anticipated next-gen port of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt finally arrives tomorrow, letting players relive Geralt's epic adventure with "dozens of visual, performance, and technical enhancements over the original." There are also speedier loading times and a "variety of mods", as well as brand new content inspired by The Witcher Netflix series. 

It's a generous package, even more so given that it's free for anyone who already owns the game. And all those technical tweaks and next-gen polish appear to have paid off for developer CD Projekt Red as currently, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Complete Edition for PS5 is sitting proudly with a score of 97 on Metacritic.

This lofty rating means that it's overtaken the mighty Elden Ring to once again become the best open-world RPG. But CDPR is currently only a gnat's whisker ahead as FromSoftware's latest is on 96. The PS4 and Xbox One versions of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which scored 92 and 91, respectively, were surpassed by Elden Ring when it launched earlier this year. Witcher 3's PC version, which earned a very respectable 93, was also marginally beaten. 

Of course, it's still early days for the next-gen version of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and its score could change as more critic reviews get uploaded. Given the level of quality we've seen so far, we don't expect that figure to change much, but there's still a chance that it could dip just enough to allow Elden Ring take back its crown. 

Take a look at our hands-on impressions of The Witcher 3 next-gen update to see what we think of the upgrades so far.