The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Great game.

But I just can't bring myself to play it any more. I had completed Witcher 1 (which was mostly a chore but I persisted) and Witcher 2 (much more enjoyable) but I think my expectations for Witcher 3 were just higher than it can deliver. Totally personal to me and my prejudices, but I just found so little niggling things that added up to frustrate me and keep pulling me out of the game. - The controls. Oh, how I hated them. My "use/activate" key to get on the horse - great. But pressing it again doesn't get off the horse - there has to be a separate key for that. Likewise my run/speed-up key should make the horse go faster - but no, that requires a different key (on top of the two speed keys you already have for Geralt). I jumped in the water - I have keys for down (crouch) and up (jump) - but no, you have to have separate keys for "dive" and "swim up". It all meant that instead of using a single set of controls I had to have more and more of them, spread out further and further. I felt like I was battling the interface. - There were all sorts of hovering text (names of people etc), continuously reminding me it was a game. I turned off the minimap, but the game took no account of what would really happen. Example - I was told "Ask the Nilfgaardians about Yennefer" I went up to all the Nilfgaardians I could find, and talked to them, but they didn't tell me anything. In real life they'd have sent me to their commander, or I could have asked where he was, but no - nothing. They were totally dumb. Frustrating. I hated having to bring up the map at all, it was full of icons giving away the locations of everything (including secret treasure caches - right there on the map, as if Geralt had been to Treasure Island and bought every map in the world, or was secretly plugged in to the Matrix. [Last two thirds of this can't be displayed due to arbitrary GOG review length, so I'll have to put the whole thing in my forum post instead: invisible walls, lack of choice etc.]

I like to keep my reviews brief and easy to navigate so I can say as much as possible about the game in question. So, let's begin: Cons: - limited role playing, since you're playing already established character (books + previous games)* - cannot pause cutscenes / dialogues - longer pauses between saves/quick saves (may be an issue for more frantic F5-ers, like me) - seldom crashes, minor bugs (most fixed by patches) - annoying minor game mechanics like sword auto-sheating, constant sword redrawing when fighting monsters and humanoids at the same time - annoying combat** Pros: - * brilliant role playing. Even though you're playing an already established character, the options within are extensive and still retain Geralt's character. This is the perfect combination for both people who already read the books and know who Geralt is, and those who are new to the franchise - **great combat ... let me explain. It basically needs to be mastered. It's not easy to jump into it and hope for the best while frantically clicking around - (let's get the shallow stuff out of the way ...) graphics are amazing, optimization on PC is very good, animations are perfect, lip syncing is more than good. People, who are talking s**t about the "downgrade" obviously never played one certain another AAA RPG this year (2015) - cough*Fallout*cough*4*cough - extensive settings (key bindings, graphics, HUD, ...) - INTERESTING characters (looking at you Bethesda) - interesting and meaningful story, and this applies to side quests as well! (again ... looking at YOU, Bethesda) - run-of-the-mill fetch/kill/save quests are hidden beautifully behind lore and mini stories (... BETHESDA!) - choices have consequences - good dialogues and perfect voice-over - amazing soundtrack and ambient noise - crafting, runes, glyphs, sets, bombs, potions - enemies :) - cameos, ester eggs TL;DR Reading books will greatly enhance the experience. 397 hours in, 3rd play-through and I'm still finding new stuff.

I need to finish this game before 2020 finishes me

I play pc games from 1992.(my first pc was a Quest 286dx ,vga monitor, 1 mb ram with no hard disk.)I have in my gog galaxy 140 pc games. The fact that is the only game that i did comment and wrote review it means a lot. Simply the best pc game ever.