The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

FIrst time playing a game like this, my first experiences were mixed, but after some time game seems to get better, pretty enjoyable, graphics are very nice, pretty much a steal for around 7 euro (bought on sale)

Witcher 3 is a repetitive experience. It shines for the first 30 hours or so when the music and world feel refreshing and inviting. Once the loop has been figured out it gets to be quite boring and a chore. They missed the boat with the Witcher senses, which boil down to holding a button that changes the HUD. Voice acting and storytelling are melodramatic and lacking in real substance. Pompous kings and queens, womanizing actors, pandering beggars and thieves. Weapons boil down to stats and names rather than movesets and abilities. Combat is the same block, dodge, shoot, throw a bomb, and roll that isn't too dissimilar to the Arkham series style of floating acrobatic engagements. It really wears itself out taking over 100 hours to finish. Quests are "go here, fight this monsters, go here, fight this monster" and it gets to be a real slog. This game came out the same year as Fallout 4, Bloodborne, and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Every single one of these games is more fun than Witcher 3.

Amazing game, played it a bunch of times, but whatever they did to it broke it. The 2025 experience of playing this is open game, crash, open game, crash, open game crash. I can't even play an hour without a fucking crash. Apparently hair works and anti aliasing is one of the causes, but like, its been so long, maybe don't bother making Witcher 4 if you still need to fix past entries. If you can push past the issues it's a great game, but honestly you are gonna need a lot of patience.

I would like to give it a 5 star if not the obvious combat flaws: 1) Garrett of Rivia likes to sneath his sword right in front of attacking foe 2) Target selection based on pure line of sight: thus if two wolves attacking from one side there's a 50% chance it would select the one farthest, no matter how far it is. It's ridicoulus considering most beast attack in packs. I can't describe how inconvinient it is. I think targeting should be based rather on line of sight AND proximity. Got that feeling combat was not tested properly beyond "Normal" difficulty level. I wish it will be fixed, and do something with match-stick trees, please!

If you played The Witcher 1 and 2 the story of The Witcher 3 starts kind of weird. You need to start completely from scratch. All knowledge of monsters and potions from Witcher 2 is gone and it's not explained why Geralt suffers from amnesia. A better way for veterans would have been to give them a headstart (some bestairy entries, some recipes, some skillpoints) and make the monsters more difficult in the starting area. The biggest disappointment for me are the game mechanics. I don't like the alchemy system at all. The number of potions is limited even if you got the ingredients to create more. This punishes a players decision for a certain playstyle. The number of potions, etc should be limited by the ingredients I got to create them, the number of potions I can stomach limited by toxicity and the number of potions I can carry limited by their weight. The skill-system is botched. It's not enough to level up a skill you need to "activate" it as well. Only a maximum of 12 skills (of 70) can be activated at a time. So you constantly need to switch "active" talents depending on what enemy you are facing. One skill enables you to deflect arrows. It's only useful against enemies with bows (afaik). I need to constantly switch this talent from active to inactive and vice versa depending of what enemy I fight. This is completely stupid. Either Geralt knows how to do it or he doesn't. It makes no sense. The A.I. is broken or very limited at least and keyboard input still feels clunky. I'd like to rebind the "C" key but can't. Why do I need "C" to sheathe my weapon if "1" and "2" do the same? The game is fun nonetheless, the quests very well written and the voice acting very good. But unlike the trailers it looks now more like Whimsyshire. I really liked the washed out and darker look seen in the trailers more. After 25 hours of play I now leave this game and hope for a better version. I do this reluctantly cause the story is awesome and I'd like to see more of it.