It's a decent game, elevated mostly by the world design, atmosphere, music and character design. The actual gameplay is, as is mostly already detailed in other reviews, a hodge-podge of action adventure, racing and RTS, with none of these being particularly good or exciting. The story is honestly too short and underdeveloped to really be interesting, with all of the characters having very shallow development or just even... character. Most of the dialogue is just punch lines and throw-away jokes, with the serious parts usually sticking out like a sore thumb - particularlly the Eddie/Ophellia romance is just a bit cringy at points. The world is very interesting but at the same time also very underutilized, there are many points of interest that you just see through the binoculars or drive through, that have no context, no backstory, no content. It is mostly populated by secondary misions that are of 4 types - an ambush, a turret shooter, a race or a mortar game. There's I think 4 secondary missions that break this mould, with all of them being pretty simple. The game is generally pretty easy, there is not a lot of depth, and there are no real decisions you make as the player. But the world building through the legends, the design, and what is given through dialogue, is really cool, and is often really well elevated by the music you unlock in these sections. The final HUGE issue with this game - there is a really good soundtrack but most gameplay sections are too short for even a third of each song to play, when you are driving the distances are also too short, and on top of that the songs will reset or change when you open up a menu, enter dialogue, or when you play a solo. Basically you're just hearing the first 30-40 seconds of each song over and over and over. Overall a pretty meh experience if you can't get into the metal shtick. Also pretty short, I think you can get through the campaign in probably 4-5 hours tops, and probably 100% it in 10-12 hours.
Very well polished, great visuals, decent performance, great writing and voicework, animations, visual design etc., basically overall presentation is great. But This game is pretty shallow for a supposed RPG, and a bit grating. Now Witcher games were never very deep RPG's because of how established a character Geralt is, but still this one feels incredibly not RPG-y. The big problem is that the progression system is very slow, so it takes a very long time to actually influence your build. The second problem is that while you have choices in dialogue and how you approach things, they're pretty damn shallow and not very impactful most of the time. Yes you might be able to avoid a fight here and there, but you for example wont be able to build up your character to be very good at talking your way through things at the expense of combat expertise. And a lot of the time it feels the game gives you multiple options, just to end up with the same result. Now the grating bit - the loot, the alchemy system, the equipment. You get so, so, so much junk, with so so so many crafting and alchemy options that it quickly feels like an absolute chore to figure out what you have, what you need, what is useful and what is junk. Yes I love the idea of preparing yourself for a specific foe with oils, potions, bombs, decoctions etc. - but the problem is that you have too much of everything to really keep up, each with marginal effects. And in the end it basically boils down to oils give bonus damage, decoctions give defense, potions give buffs and remove debuffs, and bombs. And finally the really really stupid part for me - this game thinks you're an idiot. Intersting parts on the map are always marked, the spidey-senses make quest stuff glow red, and Geralt automatically figures everything out for you and responds accordingly. Like for real - leave the players so space to think and connect the dots on their own.
