I played 13 hours and put it away, realizing I enjoyed the in-game card games more than the main plot. A few months after buying this and Kingdom Come: Deliverance, all I can think to write is that KC:D is a better game in every way. Witcher is slightly more fantasy-y, which I like, and slightly more soap opera-y, which I dislike, but overall it plays like an unbalanced, third-person, fantasy Far Cry ("Please, hero, blindly follow your compass to the thing, and then kill and loot the bad guys there"), without Far Cry's memorable characters/voice-acting. The main character is kind of a jerk, and he's not even a likeable jerk. Maybe he appeals to some folks' inner jerks? The equipment system is completely unbalanced, and I was never sure exactly what my money was supposed to be for. I bought some in-game playing cards, and that was fun. The "Witcher senses" toggle is kind of neat, in the way it provides you with extra information on quests that you can't perceive with your eyeballs looking at the computer monitor, but on the whole I prefer the KC:D model of problem solving, where you do actually have to use your brain to resolve quests and your feet to find answers, instead of just turning on your magic vision like in Witcher/Far Cry/Red Dead Redemption. For the record, I wasn't a big fan of Witcher 2, either, but they have such a devoted fanbase that I figured I'd try this one, too. Yeah, no. Just another mediocre game that takes itself way too seriously.
What is there to like? I played through the whole beautifully rendered game, expecting around each turn to finally meet an interesting or likable character, or to finally embark on a quest that gave all the others some kind of retrospective meaning. It never happened. The characters are flat and stupid, the quests are tedious, the stat system is meaningless, the loot is pointless and repetitive, and none of it makes internal or external sense. I'd give the graphics 4/5 stars, and the combat a generous 3/5. Everything else was a solid 1/5. Barely trying. I've seldom felt so cheated by the promise of a game. I came to warn the rest of you. This is a $5 game, not $50, not $30.
