The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

At this point I don't think this game needs any more praise than it already had been given, however I just wanted to express my opinion; CDPR has nailed alot of things, let's begin; the combat animations are alot better than Witcher 2 or even Dragon Age Inquisition for that matter, the controls feel smooth and responsive, that goes for Geralt and every opponent including monsters, speaking of animations, I felt the mouth movements in dialogues were a little behind, so are the character animations when speaking, they just feel robotic and not very well polished, that, however, won't take away the cleverly and amazingly written dialogue, the jokes aren't cringe worthy they're actually funny and made me laugh several times, the spoken lines convery the game's story perfectly, adding to the atmosphere with interesting character personalities that actually carve a place in your memory, many other games don't do the character side justice, I also like the different accents especially the Skellige one, c'mon it's irish everyone loves the irish accent. Okay we're only at the tip of the ice berg, the character limit won't allow me to dive deeper so I'll "try" to make it as brief as possible, so, something else I'm sure everyone that played this game hates, is the "fall 5 feet and you're dead", the legendary Geralt of Rivia, the butcher of Blaviken, dies from a 5 feet fall in the grass, how's that for a news headline, I know it's a minor thing but I think it's worth mentionning, now onto the more good stuff; the story is very well conveyed and interesting, many many well placed plot twists even for secondary side quests, pretty impressive, the graphics are beautiful, armor designs are spot on, overall, it looks next gen and runs pretty well even on midrange hardware, no fps drops and such crap, it just works! although I wish the textures were a little bit more refined as in some places they look dull and dated. Come on, that's not enough characters :( anyways if you're still thinking about buying this game, just do it and make your dreams come true ;)

First, I am writing this after finishing the whole game (speaking main quest and ALL side quests available to me) and the Heart of Stones DLC. Second, after approx. 150 hours into the game I am fanboying so hard, I hardly can contain myself from throwing the words 'amazing', 'awesome', 'the best ever' in every sentence but I will try to be reasonable. Also, I am waiting for Blood and Wine to come to the stores in my country just to have a neat box with Geralt on my shelf, yeah, that's how low I fell. There are a lot of reviews that tell all about the game mechanics, good-looking graphics, great plot and so on. I will tell you how Witcher takes you and brings you into his world, full of darkness and light, love and loathing, deathly mistakes and heroic deeds. It makes you come again and again, crave for more side quests, more stories, more monsters, anything involving Geralt. It hooked me on the books, the game of gwynt, the mesmerizing soundtracks, made me buy TW2 just to keep it going. From day one I saw myself roaming the White Orchard on Roach's back in my dreams. This game is hauntingly beautiful, every new location makes you do a double take and catch your breath a little. I played on Asus K555L laptop (Nvidia Geforce 940M, i7-5500 Li, 8 GB RAM) on medium settings, though I tried High but it was a little to late into the game and I was a little scared of overheating because it's +30 over here so I continued on medium. I see people complain about the cutscenes. I enjoyed them thoroughly, it's a nice way to rest between gaming and listen to sweet voice of Geralt (I am a girl if you didn't understand earlier). Credits to voice actors - they did an admirable job, I enjoyed the cinematics thoroughly. Also credits to the team of translators - Russian text was superbly written (I played with Russian localization). There are a lot of people who deserve credit for this masterpiece, it's impossible to mention everyone. All in all, AMAZING, AWESOME, THE BEST EVER. Guys, I really tried.

It is friday night...or more like saturday morning around 4:00. I got myself some new games past the last weeks: Overwatch, Elite Dangerous, XCOM 2, Take on Mars, new Fallout 4 DLCs and some of my favorite alpha access games got updated. I ended up playing Witcher 3 all night. Again, only managing to finish one single quest, spending most of the time walking and stopping: to look and listen and drift from one fight to the next; getting caught by surprise, dying; repeating all over again, forgetting about time, life and the world outside. Whatever games you might like; you do not have WItcher 3? - Buy this! It is good for you! Technically: Witcher 3 is the best game for UHD resolutions that I own. Some other look great too: GTA V for example(dump money for SLi rig btw. I stick with 1080), or Fallout 4 (with some 200 mods and ENB+ReShade etc.). Those have a downside though. Although graphics look great, UI scaling does not come out as expected. Fonts, Minimaps etc simply get too small. Total War series for example is fun and looks good in UHD...except that one has to sit 1 meter away from a 50 inch screen, still struggling to read the text windows because everything is becoming to small. Another issue is field of view: Witcher 3 is one of the few games that does not have that "shoe box effect". That feel of looking through a limited frame that Fallout 4 has(tweaks help). The field of view is just right to pull you into this magnificent dreamworld without making you dizzy by scewing and bending on the corners of the FOV. Texture selection and resolution is something in between over the top and mind blowing. It delivers a really decent performance considering the density and variety of the vegetation. No textures look blurred or pixelated. Only few remind you of the possibility that it was originally designed with 1080p in mind...which ain't a downside. Waters are totally stunning, lightning and LOD/Detail scaling are out of this world. Performance: For 1080p get a decent GTX960. For UHD you will need a GTX980. That is if you want to max out on all settings. I got the game preorder and have been through the whole patching process with 3 installations (one modded/two clean). My experience with GOG store application and patching the game was rather unsatisfying; nevertheless the support is superfast and supereffective. So I think five stars is a fair rating. With everything flawless it would deserve a sixth star. Concerning patch content and quality, this game beats what I have seen of BETHESDA and Co. Story: My English lacks the superlatives to describe how awesome the story is. You might think you already know games with fantastic plots and deep characters - If you have not played this yet, you do not know. I really liked the plot of GTA V and III. I also enjoyed Elder Scrolls series and Dragon Age. Compared to these, Witcher 3 knocked me of my feet. Not to mention the language and subtitle options and incredible voice acting. Yen sounds so hot in polish, damn! Gameplay: If you liked exploring and slaying ugly things in games like Diablo, you might just be satisfied with that for quite some time; and follow the story a while later....That way you can blow your mind twice - just sayin. When you should overdose on awesomeness, play a round of GWINT maybe? Difficulty can be set to supereasy for just enjoying the story; or to a really challenging grade with the extra option to levelscale your enemies. Just think of the number of mods you needed in other games to achieve this. There are games out there that are harder to beat. Witcher 3 may not be Dark Souls style difficulty, but it is close. It may also be the possibility to save your game almost everywhere when out of combat, that makes it feel a bit easier. Compared to Fallout 4 survival mode, Witcher 3 on highest difficulty feels more like a real challenge. Controls are, as almost all aspects of the game, formidable. The first RPG I prefer playing with an XBOX controller. User Interface was very good from the beginning. The patched improvements topped my expectations and made UI mods obsolete. Overall: I compared Witcher 3 to other open world games that may not be well comparable. Apples and Oranges? - Yes. Witcher 3 = a masterpiece of art. The rest is just really good games. The games cons are obvious: your sleeping rythm, social life and productivity are going to suffer or will disappear for a while. It is okay and totally worth it, trust me ;)

So that's it, one of the best games I have ever played, plus both of its expansions, completed. After nearly 131 hours played, it is difficult to condense my feelings and experiences of that play time into a short thoughts piece, but I will try. As with almost anything that is simply a pastime, it always comes back to enjoyment, and I can honestly say that throughout my time with the Witcher 3, I didn't once get bored, burned out or otherwise annoyed with it. The games flows beautifully, there were no horrendous spikes in difficulty, enemies and situations slowly ramped up in a perfect difficulty curve, never leaving you in a position where you could mindlessly hammer through it bored to tears, but also not having you smashing your head against a brick wall time and time again. Every challenge in the game could be overcome with some thinking, some skill and most importantly, some preparation. This comes in the form of brewing Witcher potions to drink and oils to coat your sword with, depending on your foe, having the right potions available can turn the tide in a tricky fight, which made the effort and time of brewing these so rewarding. Come up against a bad-ass Vampire, things get a lot easier if you have some Vampire Oil on hand to cover your blade and a "black blood" potion to down. With these in place, your sword becomes poison to the beast and your very lifeblood is toxic to the Vampire, hurting it whenever it feeds on you or otherwise hurts you. Without these things the fight is still do-able, but this preparation side of the game makes you feel like the professional monster hunter you're supposed to be, one that doesn't take chances, who get's the job done and it is great. The world you explore is both lovely and dangerous, the quests you go on, whether they are scavenger hunts to find special equipment, side missions or the excellent story driven objectives are all marvellous, I think it is a testament to the game that side quests in particular didn't become a chore like they do in so many other games, and the characters are believable. In a game as long as this, the main characters need to be interesting, and here they nail it. Like a good book you care about what happens to them, and their relationship with you, something that can only be accomplished with excellent writing, voice acting and in game direction. Honestly, I could probably talk for a long long time about this game and how much I enjoyed it, but I have to give special mention to two very important decisions they made which probably made it as enjoyable as it was for me. The first is that when you brew a potion or oil... that is it, you never need to do it again. As long as you have some alcohol in your inventory your stocks of Witcher oils and potions never run dry. This respects your time as a gamer and you won't spend your finite free time constantly searching the hills for plants and herbs to restock your potion supplies, and I love the game for that. The second mechanic I mentioned is that gaining experience points and therefore levelling up is 100% tied to the quests you complete... not the enemies you kill... which is so awesome I had to mention it. This in one stroke removes grinding and put's the focus solely on adventure, not killing and fighting for it's own sake. If you see some enemies lurking in the woods, you aren't driven to seek them out and destroy them to get XP, you can ride past them without penalty, or perhaps you do want to stop because they are near a village you decide you'd want to protect.. for no reward... but because you're on an adventure, your adventure and it is up to you. Rarely does the game get in the way of you being the protagonist in a glorious story, the systems and mechanics at hand link together so well that it let's you just get on with it. Fantastic. I haven't spoke about my feelings on the narrative in main game and the two expansions as I could go on about that for some time, but it is as much to say they are all excellent with satisfying conclusions and I do encourage you to play the game and it's expansions as one big game. One scene in particular, set in a tavern during the story line for the "Heart of Stone" expansion will probably stay with me forever. It is a moment that someone you're dealing with demonstrates just how dangerous they are.. and for me.. it was a real "oh shit" moment as it dawned on me the situation I was in. If you're interested, I'm sure a search of "Witcher 3 Wooden Spoon" would get you the scene, but obviously... spoiler alert. I haven't spoke about the thousand other things Witcher 3 is and I can't, I'm not sure I can articulate it, or at least do it justice in a short retrospective such as this. All I'll say is that genuinely, if you are a fan of the genre or you're looking for an epic adventure to take part in, currently you need look no further than this game. It is a real achievement and for me, a milestone in what games can accomplish. After 131 hours, there is still plenty to do, side quests I haven't found and literally hundreds of unexplored sites to visit on the map. Should I want to, the adventure can continue for a good while yet, but whether or not that happens, I can safely say I have enjoyed my time with Witcher 3, and if you play it yourself, I think you will too. Cheers.

this was a real struggle, i feel like i love and hate this game for an amount of facts that regard it's relase and the period before the launch, so im just gonna do the classic pro and cons bullet list. Pros: 1- AMAZING AN MANICAL CURE FOR THE DETAILS, Geralt can do lots of things, and shit happen when you do something from walking to slam a monster on the ground. 2- Immersive world and (obviously) flora and fauna at the highest level of interaction that i have ever saw in a videogame. 3-Animations are stunning. 4- Graphics porn. 5- Accurated medieval fantasy for the enviroment: castles, cities, population, swords and armors are really well caractherized but not exaggerated and exasperated with multiple cultures and ages, im Italian so i know something about medieval things (thank god this game wasn't maded by Americans). 6- Outstanding dialogues face expressions and voices. 7- Loads of characters and references from the series of books (which i absolutley love). 8- (this is a pro but also a con) Huge, just huge multi region "open" world. 9- Awesome monsters. 10- Soundtrack and musics are just...WOW. 10- Side quests are better then the main storyline. (wait, is this even a pro?) Now the cons: 1- First of all the gigantic pile of shitty advertisement and speculation in forums, youtube and social media. Disgusting. Just disgusting. Features and gameplay was really familiar when i bought the game because i knew 70% of the shit it was going to happen in the gameplay by just scrolling my facebook page or the browser. 2- Mechanics are well done but are not lore firendly with books, more action and less strategy are not good for a Witcher. 3- THE FRIGGIN LEVEL SYSTEM. im fucking geralt of rivia, butcher of blaviken, the whitewolf, gwynbleidd im a legend for christ sake (and my fucking memory was restored.). what the fuck do you mean that i can't use that silver sword because im not at it's level. and don't get me started about doing a contract with high level of difficulty. sooooo annoying and badly tought. 3-Narrative and storyline are disappointing, don't get me wrong, have some emotional and well written moments but at a certain point it is just dragged and pushed without no sense for a total boring ending no matter what choiches you've done. It had potential, but it's hilarious at one point when you need to find Ciri (and quickly because the fucking wild hunt is looking for her) to save her and: " oh a contract, wow i need money... ooooh what's in that dungeon... oooo look at this smith he can forge me some cool shit (that i can't wear for some reason)... oh look a side quest... oh wow another contract....(yes fallout 4 im looking at you) 4- The cons about a huge giant open world is that you need to FILL IT. And last but not least: 5- THE BIIIIIIIIIG, HUUUUUUGE... FUCKING... LAMING... ANNOYING AMOUNT OF FREAKING UPDATES. don't get me worng, awesome awesome yeah free content cool very cool, but interface has changed so many times, graphic in a month was well optimized and one month later was not, bugs correction, and again interface changing. for my personal point of view this creates a discontinued and unimmersive way to play a game. Conclusion: I loved witcher 1 and 2, and i loved the third one and as a matter of fact my opinin about this game has changed drastically. But really, I felt like my experience was uncomplete and at the end i felt like... "is that it?" the narrative didn't absolutely get me like the first two chapters, I had a real struggle to continue the game with those updates that was like to play an early access, which is the way that games are done in 2015/16 you just feel to have in your hands a shiny new car designed by Bugatti without no doors and 3 tires. This is a technical masterpiece with some wrong choiches by the developers in my opinion, to me was an early access that neeeded more time and better tought decisions about gameplay and narrative. Beside that this game is worth the money and i had a blast with it anyway and i can feel the passion of Cd Projeckt in making it, but i probably was very very anxious to play the game and the general hype and the reasons that i've previously described have done only bad to my experience and also because it's just different from books in many ways but not in others (this is not a guilt) FINAL VOTEs: 8.5/10 For me. For everyone that is not familiar with books and is looking to play it now that is complete is 9/10