The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition

AMAZING Voice Acting, Music score, writing and graphics... but generally a boring game. I'd give a 1 or 2, but for the Cyberpunk 2077 References and Easter Eggs!

It's literally the best game I ever played, but rendered unplayable next gen and wen not using RTX the world looks worse than before. CDPR should go broke.

If you're reading this, you've probably read a billion reviews saying it's a great game, and those people are all correct: the Witcher 3 is very good. But this game has A LOT of shortcomings that need to be talked about, the biggest ones I'll mention here: 1) The core gameplay. The controls are an absolute mess, and Geralt handles like a schizophrenic ferret on crack (yes, he does). You've got potions, bombs, crossbows, and spells on top of your swordplay, and it all feels shoehorned in. You might focus on ONE of the above disciplines to make it not completely useless, but the others are just going to be dead space on your keyboard. 2) The UI. CD Projekt Red seems to deliberately cover up the gorgeous world they put you in with an extremely-cluttered HUD. They could vastly simplify it by addressing point #1, but, were they better designers, I think they could've made it go away entirely. 3) The combat philosophy. The story builds you up to be a powerful badass, and the combat tears idea that down. The Witcher 3 uses a leveling system for its enemies and loot that is completely out of place in this game. There is nothing more frustrating than spending 10 minutes slicing the ever-loving sh*t out of a nekker, only for it to one-shot you because it's 2 levels higher than you or something. The leveling system literally punishes you for adventuring – if you stray beyond the railroads, you either run into encounters that are ridiculously difficult that give you no reward (because you can't wield the loot), or encounters that are ridiculously easy that also give you no reward (because the loot is worthless). I could rant for hours about this, but honestly that wouldn't accomplish anything. Look, if you're interested in the game, go buy it. It's a very good game. But this isn't the second coming, like some people say it is. CD Projekt Red are not gods, and this is not a masterpiece that should last the centuries. I know I'm pretty much alone in that, but there you have it.

I enjoyed the first Witcher game, but could not get into the second one. Given all of the great reviews for Witcher 3, I thought I'd give it a shot. After 5 hours of gameplay, it completely failed to maintain my interest. The pacing is off, and nothing especially interesting happens for the first several hours. The game is pretty, but the exploration felt generic. You went to one village, then into the countryside, killed a couple of drowners, ran from a alghoul or pack of bandits, then wash, rinse, and repeat. The UI and controls are serviceable but a bit too layered and busy for my taste. Ten years ago, I would have stuck with such a game to see if things improved. However, now with so many games available and a backlog of games that I still need to play, I don't really have time to sink 4-5 hours into a game and still wonder whether it's worth the effort. Anyhow, I still have fond memories of the first game, and I guess that will have to be enough.

It feels odd writing a negative review for a game into which clearly a huge amount of effort was put, and which has received so much praise. The graphics are beautiful, the voice acting is as good as I’ve ever heard, and the size of the world and the level of detail in it are daunting. But I feel that the game has some very serious issues. I will focus on my main complaints about the story, although the gameplay has problems of its own and often feels like a chore. Your choices in this game have consequences (which is good), except that they are completely arbitrary. Without prior warning, doing the “right” thing will sometimes kill hundreds of innocents. What’s worse, some quests have no purely-positive outcomes. For example (minor spoiler): Would you prefer some children to be killed and eaten, or for an entire village to be massacred? I’m not sure what lesson the writers were trying to teach here, but what I learned, once I realized that every small victory would somehow turn into a defeat, was not to bother caring about how the story develops. This arbitrariness culminates when the ending you get depends on prior choices in a way that I can describe only as “stupid”. If you play this game, I strongly recommend reading up on the story in advance, to find out which dialogue options matter, otherwise you might find yourself wondering: “THAT’s what it all came down to?!” But there’s an even bigger problem with the ending. Ciri’s story consists mainly of running from the Wild Hunt, while everyone else is trying to protect her. Once the main plot is resolved, she does something which, during my tens of hours of playing, was never even mentioned as being a possibility, with huge consequences for the entire world. Hold on -- a trilogy ending with a new, unforeseeable plot element being introduced in the final minutes? Does this remind you of anything? … At least for Mass Effect 3 there was an outcry. I don't understand why this game gets a pass...