For the longest time, I thought I was just becoming a jaded asshole. Every RPG I bought I was skipping dialogue and cutscenes after 5 minutes because the story bored me. Gameplay on those games was good enough to where I kept playing, but didn't have a clue what was going on. The worst part? I didn't care. Well the Witcher 3 definitively proves: It's not me, its the quality of games that's been steadily on the decline. I've been playing games since I was a kid. Even at 4 years old, I was playing Mechwarrior in my dads lap, and I've always loved playing. The Witcher 3 is the first game in a long time where I don't skip dialogue. I don't skip cutscenes. I definitely don't watch a movie at the same time to fill the void of narrative a lot of games have. This game has an interesting story, and I don't mean "oh, hey, that's interesting," I mean, "wow. This has held my interest in a single playthrough of over 150 hours, and I'm not even done with the base game." The story is wonderful, rich, and interesting. There were only a few times where I wanted to do or say something in a conversation that I couldn't, but not enough to take me out of it. The combat, in my opinion, is nothing exceptional, but that is by no means a criticism. I'd much rather a fairly standard, but robust combat system, than a fairly standard, but robust story. The combat holds up, there's only a few issues in my opinion, and those are with the dodges. The roll-dodge covers too much distance, and the sidestep doesn't cover enough. Beyond that, I've no complaints. The last thing I have to say is I avoided this game for a long time, because the first few times I tried it, I was trying to play with M+KB. I forced myself to play 3 hours where I was just miserable. After a third attempt at playing this game, but with a controller, I was hooked, and bought both DLC when I was 70 hours into the game. If you're on the fence, you should buy this game. Now... Back to playing Blood and Wine. Love to CDPR
