Imagine jumping on here to give a 1-star review to a game you’ve never played, simply because you’re upset about pricing that had been known in advance for months. Yes, it’s expensive. No, that’s not what reviews are for.
For the benefit of those who haven't played this epic game, I just thought I'd weed out the few negatives I came across when playing. They can be tough to identify among all of the deservedly glowing reviews. Firstly, no matter what you do, you're always Geralt. Sure, you have choices as to how you level up (more on that below) and how the story unfolds, as you should have in any decent RPG. But Geralt is a pre-defined character and everything you choose just results in different shades of the same gruff monster slayer. TW3 is not about building your own unique character. Secondly, there is less build variety than might be apparent at first. Signs, potions and your crossbow are all useful but they are better suited to supporting swordplay than being a primary means of defeating enemies. At the end of the day you'll spend a lot of time hitting stuff with fast/strong sword attacks because... well, you're Geralt. Thirdly - and this was my biggest gripe with the game - there is only one key/button for casting signs. In previous games you could map different signs to different insta-cast keys. Here, though, you have to manually switch between signs before you can cast something different. It's not impossible to do but it's much more fiddly than before. If you're like me, you'll end up casting just one sign for most battles, which makes Quen the most useful sign by a large margin. Everything else (except perhaps Aard) becomes much more situational. Finally, there's Velen. It's the largest area in the game and you'll spend more time here than anywhere else. In isolation it's interesting enough but (a) it feels very similar to the starting area, White Orchard, and (b) it's just less interesting than most other locations. When you've been roaming around Skellige for several hours, going back to the grubby, depressing villages of war-torn Velen can be a bit of a letdown. And that's about it. The game is frankly fantastic, and worth every cent.
TQAE has pretty graphics, vast hordes of re-spawning enemies and bosses to battle and plenty of classes and abilities to choose from. Annnnnnnd... that's it. If all you want is to power-game your character build and slaughter countless monsters then you've absolutely come to the right place. You'll love this game. If you want literally ANYTHING else in your game - an engaging story, interesting characters, combat variety, thoughtful quests, freedom to role play your character - then look elsewhere. I know that this is an ARPG and maybe I was expecting too much (hence 3 stars, not 2) but there could have at least been a decent story or some different kinds of quests. I made it most of the way through Act I before the repetition of 'go here, kill/get this' ultimately bored me. There's just no depth, which is a pity because the idea of questing through ancient Greece, Egypt and Asia really appealed to me.
