Its fantastic. Its like a combination of Mount and Blade and the Xcom games. Its beautiful, deep, challenging and rewarding. The map generation system is great. The difficulty settings and sliders are intuitive and it does not have such a steep learning curve. And even after clocking in 10+ hours I am still finding new things and generally just realzing that I have barely scratched the tactical surface. If you like light fantasy RPG games that are difficult, but not impossible. With a strategy map like in MaB series and combat gameplay like XCom, this is for you. I truly recommend this game. Bless the developers :)
Disappointed. 90% of Card encounters are Trial And Error. You have to know the EXACT order in which to play your cards, otherwise you will fail. This essentially boils the game down to reloading a save at least 10+ times until you figure out by TRIAL AND ERROR what should you do if you want to succeed. Sure, there is an option to skip the gwent battles and just enjoy the story. But thats what the wiki summary is for, right? And you dont have to pay for that.
I am a fan of Old Norse mythology. This is something of a Walking Simulator, however the pace is much faster than your regular Dear Ester ripoff and it is much more about immersion, rather than fear factor (Amnesia). There is no combat. But that is a good thing. From what I have heard about this game, I did not have my hopes up. However, there is a moment where you meet two siblings that are actively mocking you and trying to catch you, where I was not regretting my purchase. It was excellent. This is not exactly Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice. But it is scratches the same itch. I do not regret my purchase and would love to see more from these developers.
This is the best RPG I played since the Witcher 3... however it is no Witcher 3. The quality of this game is excellent - the combat mechanics, the horse riding, the RPG system, survival elements (eat and sleep), healing and taking care of your equipment. The gameplay as it were is really good and fun. My gripe is with the story. This is a long game (60+ hours). There are side quests, however mostly you will be doing the main quest and this is where I have issues with the game. There are very few choices you can make, even during dialogue. You are not shaping the character of Henry, you are guiding him along the rails. You cannot determine what he will say (apart from some meaningless persuade/intimidate/charm interactions outside of the main quest). You have multiple ways how to achieve an objective, however the result is always the same. There are no long-lasting effects of your decisions, because you make no decisions. There are also no multiple endings. There is one. And oh yes, the ending. There is none. I play for the Story and stay for the Gameplay. This game really made me enjoy as much content as there was, but when I finally hit the end credits and after a short epilogue was booted into the main menu I felt very... cheap. The proper term would be sequel-bait. As is the game does not feel finished. The story is not resolved. There is no closure. To be continued in a sequel or a dlc! And just like with movies and TV-Shows a good ending can make a bad movie awesome. A bad ending can break an otherwise really good movie. I feel like this is the case. I can recommend playing this game for the journey it offers, however be prepared that there is no satisfying conclusion of any kind. And after finishing it once and seeing the ending that /is/ here, I feel discouraged at a second playthrough. Having almost no replay value outside of some side quests and persuasion interactions, there is no replayability here.
I could go on for hours how this game is fantastic. I will try to limit myself. This game has upped the bar in RPG video games in its history. This is an excellent RPG, you play Geralt and although it is up to you to determine what kind of man he is, there is a baseline there which is extremely sympathetic. Geralt is a very gloomy brooding individual. However, when he smiles, he will melt your heart. I cried three times during this game. And every time my heart was jumping out of my chest. The story is excellent. Even if you have not played the previous games, this will grab you and will not let go. This is also not a short game. I clocked in around 90 hours in my first playthrough and still had things left unfinished - this is also vanilla game, not talking about the excellent expansions, (which are not modern dlc, they are expansions like they used to make them 10 years ago). Thusly, even if the story is excellent, you will be doing something outside of conversations. Hows the gameplay? The answer is excellent. The game truly made me feel like a professional monster hunter. Each contract had me reading up on my kill, preparing adequate potions, oils and traps. I would fight a single monster for 20+ mins and felt like a total badass when I finally killed it. I cannot stress this enough. RPGs and video games in general will be compared to the Witcher 3 for the upcoming 10 years, if not more. This game came out in 2015. And I have played many games since. None have been better than the Witcher 3: the Wild Hunt. Get yourself a copy and let it change how you view video games from now on :)
