A short management sim that is worth at least one play through. It does keep you on your toes, especially if you do the harder method. I would play another management sim by this team.
I played this game for the first time with patch 1.31, which is roughly nine months after release. This review contains spoilers. The Pros: -I went into the game unspoiled. I expected Johnny Silverhand to be an NPC I'd meet & do quests for. I didn't expect he'd become a second main character. Once he appeared, I realized I was playing Johnny Mnemonic in Johnny Mnemonic with Johnny Mnemonic, & that was awesome. -The quest Gig: Guinea Pigs had surrounding NCPD scanner activities tied to it, & it was a great surprise & made the entire quest more involved. -The River Ward series gave us a look inside the NCPD, solved a case, had a TV newsblip about it, & also had a decent romance. -The Love Rollercoaster quest was a surprise delight in the middle of my playing the game. -The attributes made for good dialogue alternatives. -The Shards & Johnny's rant about why he nuked Arasaka tower had serious digs at America, & I loved it. Well played, Polish team! -I stayed true to my corpo roots & initial goal of getting rid of Johnny/saving myself, & enjoyed the ending I received. The Cons: -Many, many graphics glitches. I don't mind floating people/objects, crazy ragdoll physics, collision issues, and clipping. I *do* mind when a special effect lingers instead of turns off after the effect is suppose to be over & requires logging out to fix. -The world felt like a GTA reskin, but empty and dead. -Many quests were on time triggers, meaning you had to wait for time to pass for them to appear. Or they had hidden triggers. Irritating. -Only one quest had any consequences that I knew of, Judy's storyline. Otherwise, it didn't matter. -Main questline was boring, except for Takemura's. Found out after the game, I could've saved him but that was a secret. Pissed me off. Overall, this game is less than mediocre. A looter shooter, as someone put it, with a dead city, quests that have no consequences & aren't tied together, a lot of waiting around, & too many graphics glitches to enjoy.
Glitches, empty POIs, repeated falling through the lands, and an oren sink that isn't worth going to every vendor in creation to sell your wares to make enough money. For all the good reviews, I'm peeved that I wasted $10 and made a great game have an ending that left a bad taste in my mouth.
I loved both Witcher 1 and Witcher 2, but Witcher 3 blows both out of the water. The story continues Geralt's life of battling monsters and getting reluctantly involved politics. Things that happened and people you met in the first two games are relevant, and you finally get a good explanation as to why you lost your memories in Witcher 1. Everything in Witcher 3 is a choice - there are more cut scenes than battles - but every choice you make is not black and white, good or bad. Most of them are the lesser of two evils, and a chunk of what you choose ends up results in someone dying or being angry with you. It's a thankless task made enjoyable by the depth and breadth of the NPCs. The game within a game, Gwent, is crazily addicting. I had to force myself to stop playing and get back to the main game. There are pages upon pages of side quests, contracts, and treasure hunts, and each bring more than simple xp and gear as rewards. As a down side, I would say that unless you mod, you'll out level quests and gray quests don't give experience. You can't climb when you're stuck in combat mode. Spell casting doesn't respond as well as I would've liked. Also, NPC clothes changed a couple times in the cut scenes, but that's a trifle. Overall, this series has become my second favorite trilogy of all time and I have over 35 years of gaming under my belt. I highly recommend it for people who enjoy immersive storytelling and sandbox exploration. 10/10.
