This isn’t a game that hits the highs of Witcher 3. There’s too much evidence of half-baked ideas and troubled development, and it doesn’t quite coalesce into something that hits those same highs. And while it won’t be a classic for me, I enjoyed my time with the game and racked up 70 hours to beat it, and then 99 hours overall as I finished off side quests and gigs. I will be back for the DLC and would recommend that people who are looking for that mix of Witcher 3 and Deus Ex absolutely check out this game, but focus on main and side quests only, ignoring anything else unless they stumble onto it and fancy a change of pace.
A solid third-person shooter with an interesting story and setting which is ultimately let down by a host of instability issues. I was eventually forced to give up after 15 hours due to a crash corrupting my save and the only option being to restart a chapter and lose hours of progress. The fact that previous saves are inaccessible is such an incredible no-no.
I came into this as a fan of Gwent from The Witcher 3 but understanding that this game would need to offer a new system. Gwent in that game was reliant on a progression system gated by the surrounding RPG, where you picked up better cards as you played. There simply isn't enough Gwent in the game. As you travel you'll engage either in a battle, or a puzzle. A battle is Gwent, three rounds, get the most points, etc. Great, Gwent is what I'm here for. Puzzles give you a small number of cards, special rules, and a single round. This makes for a nice palette cleanser between rounds of Gwent as you're basically taught card combos. But there are way too many shortened battles, which is Gwent but only one round. And often there are special rules applied. This destroys meaningful deck building as you’re never actually sure what you’re building for. Did you take a leader, powering up a card and putting it at the top of the deck? Tough, because this is a short battle and so there’s only one round and no card draw. Did you remove ranged attacks from the deck? Well that was silly because in this battle some special rules apply, and you need to destroy a target on the other side and power values mean nothing. The game is filled with this, and you’re never quite sure what you’re getting yourself into until you trigger it, at which point you can’t change your deck. Even if you just intentionally lose the first time, then reload to whenever the game last saved, there’s no mechanism by which you can setup separate decks. Despite the vast range of circumstances you can wander into, and special rules which apply, you have to construct a single deck which tackles all of it. Just the idea of a one-size-fits-all deck feels so antithetical to a CCG. The writing is still on point, and the choice stuff is fun. Hell, even some of the special challenges make for an engaging twist. But there simply isn’t enough Gwent in the game, which is what I thought I was signing up for.
