The game is great and I used to play a lot when I had Windows 10, but not since I moved to Win 11. Be warned.
This is probably one of the most overrated titles of the last decade or so. Graphically, it's really pretty and judging by the level of details one can tell the devs put their heart in this game (very rare these days!). However, combat on foot is tedious, combat on horse is simply awful (both PC and NPCs will keep missing the target) and, worst of all, the quests are simply boring. The quests are of the "fetch" type for the most part, with a lot of: 1. go speak to Mr X; 2. go on the other side of the map and investigate/kill/talk to Mr Y; 3. go back to Mr X to get your reward, but wait! since you're here, why don't you do me another favour and go to the other end of the map and talk/kill/investigate Mr Z? Thanks! Rinse and repeat. Side quests also seem to have relatively little background/story so far, and are very disconnected from one another. I tend to be a completionist when it comes to RPGs, but after 25h of The Witcher 3 I stopped doing secondary quests and only focussed on the main plot; by 37h, I gave up on the main quest as well, as that also became repetitive (I got as far as Skellage, but my interest in finding Ciri was decreasing by the minute). Sure, the world is big, but it feels like it's not really worth investigating after the first couple of locations. You mostly find only a bunch of monsters/bandits to kill, a couple of pretty (eye candy) places to admire and more fetch-quest givers. No dungeons, no long and articulated side quests, no mysteries to unravel. Even the cities like Novograd, which is rendered magnificently in great detail, feels pointless and bleak as it is devoid of ***interesting*** things to do. Sometimes it felt like the devs went for quantity (of quests, monsters, alchemic reagents) rather than quality. In all honesty, I could recommend this game only to players who have A LOT of time to kill, have fairly low expectations of what a REWARDING quest should look like and love combats where they can SMASH buttons on the keyboard.
In terms of gameplay, it's well done, very entertaining and decently long (it took me ~70h to finish the base game). Gameplay hasn't changed much from DXHR, perhaps a few more augmentations and trinkets. Plot-wise, it's pretty bland and both the story and the side quests are quite forgettable. There are a few glitches, such as NPCs walking mid-air, but nothing too frequent nor game-breaking. There are, however, some serious plot holes: for instance, I managed to kill the same named guy not once but twice (in Prague I and Prague III), and this was never acknowledged in the game. All dialogues (including the ending "slideshow") were as if he was alive and well! All in all, a 7/10. A special demerit note goes to the devs for the unskippable credits at the end of the game.
The game may well be great, but it's incredibly sluggish on my pc although it meets the recommended specs. Requested a refund.
