The Witcher trilogy experience

[FakeSympathy]

Intro

My experience with the series has been somewhat weird. I never played the first game, beat Witcher 2 on Xbox 360 once, then beat witcher 3 multiple times on Xbox One and on PC. While I loved Witcher 3, I distinctly remember also loving Witcher 2 but don’t remember too many details, and was also curious about the first game. So I bought the first two games during a steam sale and decided to play through the entire trilogy. I wondered if my thoughts on Witcher 3 would change as I observe the gameplay and technological changes, as well as seeing how the characters and the world evolve with the choices I’ve made

And oh boy, it left me with lot to say.

Witcher 1

Now, I had to install a few mods. Because within the first few hours, I have felt the game was horribly outdated in terms of gameplay. Won’t complain too much about graphics, but I had to make gameplay more tolerable. And even then, the game ended up being my least favorite of the three.

What the first game does excel at, like with its two sequels, was the story, the world-building, and the characters. There’s always the moral ambiguity where no matter what choice I made, there are consequences to be paid. There are no clear good/bad groups here (aside from some NPCs who were designed for the sake of being evil), and the aftermath of my actions was always felt, in more ways than one. All the characters were really well-written, and I felt bad when some of them were caught in the mess that I had created. The way I built relationships with the characters feels really significant, especially considering I know the eventual outcomes after playing W3. I am genuinely curious to see how much my choices will influence the story of the later game.

I was a tad bit let down to see some of the future characters that I got to know in the sequels didn’t appear in this game, when it’s indicated Geralt had a history with them for quite some time. Yeah, there’s Zoltan, Dandelion, Lady of the Lake, Shani, and other major characters that you meet in later games, but characters such as An Craite family, Regis, and Henrietta, are nowhere in the game. I guess I need to check out the books.

The dark fantasy world is really dark. We see racial prejudice between humans and nonhumans, people living in slums doing dirty work to survive, and monsters hiding just around the corner. As you play the game, you come to see why some folks hate witchers. Unlike other RPGs that claim to be dark but don’t seem to go too far, this game is actually dark and has some really disgusting subject matters. In my memory, the only other game that managed to hold the dark RPG genre was Dragon Age Origins. Though I would argue This game is much darker.

Speaking of monsters, I also love the monster designs here, and I can see the design being shared through the trilogy. I love the fact there are sub-species within the same monster group. For example, there’s no simple generic vampire, but in breaks down to different types such as Bruxa, Alps, Garkin, and Fleder. They might share a similar design and attack patterns, but I love the CDPR’s idea of having these different tyles, and we later get to see some REALLY powerful ones in B&W expansion in Witcher 3.

The gameplay….. Ugh, the gameplay. I hate the combat in this game. Instead of individually inputting attack combos, you have to wait for Geralt to finish a flurry of attacks, then press attack again to launch another flurry of attacks. There are three stances you can take depending on what sort of opponents are you facing. This really sucks because Geralt is essentially rooted whenever he does the flurries. You can dodge/go over some enemies which cancel the flurry, but then it gives the enemy a time to attack. It’s super easy to get surrounded when facing multiple enemies. There’s a group attack form, but the flurry takes way too long and you take damage just standing there. Some enemies will go down easy, while some enemies will tank your attacks until next year. And you know what? I barely found reasons to dodge. For most of the time, I just had to do the timed left-click on my mouse to win. This made combat really boring.

There’s also the problem of running back and forth everywhere. There are a few fast travel points here and there, but most of my time was spent traversing the same scenery over and over again. You are forced to go through glorified corridors, and exploration is not as open. Which is a shame because some of the areas in the game are still amazingly designed, but I can’t explore them to my heart’s content. Thank god for a faster Geralt mod, because this would’ve been an absolute nightmare. There’s also the annoying aspect of using a fireplace to level up and do alchemy. Not only is this annoying, but there are only a handful of alchemy recipes that were worth using. The only stuff I made in my playthrough were Cat, Swallow, and a bunch of perma-buff potions.

I’ve clocked in exactly 32 hours into the game, but I feel they artificially increased my time with the game by having me walking back and forth and making combat take longer than necessary. This was definitely one of those games where I loved the story, but hated the gameplay enough to not make me wanna go back. Even with alternative paths the game offers (i.e. romancing Triss instead of Shani), the painfully outdated gameplay does not make me wanna go back. There’s also no achievement for this game (at least on Steam), which makes it even less appealing to play.

6/10. Fantastic story and setting, but terrible gameplay

 

[FakeSympathy]

Witcher 2

As I’ve said in the intro, I remember beating the game once on Xbox 360. I did try to go back and play as Iorveth path, but then I got Xbox One and I had to sell off the 360 and the games I had to afford the console and some other stuff. I always wanted to go back to it, but I couldn’t find a convenient time or way to play it again. Now on my pc w/ 3080 and i7-8700k, a spec that surpasses well over the recommended specs for the game, I knew it was time.

And just like the first game, the game is beautiful in a creepy way. It’s atmospheric. I guess the engine they used this time around was really good, because the graphics was such a huge leap. The simple, dark, and dab color tone of the first game is gone, now replaced with more detailed and saturated colors. And utilizing the graphical prowess, the game does a great job of depicting its dark world. The racial segregation, the war of the northern kingdoms, the political espionage, and all the NPCs who are caught in the between. All of the character models actually look great, and that’s saying something because in the same year original Skyrim, MW3, SWTOR, MK9, and Dragon Age 2 came out, and they all look outdated even at the default max setting without any mods. Only a few games of that year, such as Witcher 2, Dead Space 2, Arkham City, seem to still look good IMHO. Regardless, I decided to download some graphic mods for Witcher 2, because if I’m gonna play this on my pc w/ 3080 and i7-8700k, you can bet on the name of Gabe Newell I was gonna fully utilitze its capability. After the mods, the game looks even more gorgeous.

The story was a much bigger improvement. What I like about the game most is that Geralt’s memories still haven’t recovered fully yet, and the player is still left with the mystery of what kind of individual he really is. I think it’s rather a great plot device as it allows the player to decide Geralt’s motivation and personality. I prefer this Geralt over his W3 counterpart, because by then his memories have returned and his persona is much more defined.

I also appreciate the bigger scale of the storytelling here. In the first game, you take on the seemingly simple task of hunting down Salamandra, which turns into warfare between the order and the scoia'tael. Here, the world is much more bigger, the characters have more defined motivations and personalities, and Geralt’s mission to hunt the kingslayer is affecting thousands of people in the world. I find it amazing with so much stuff already happening, Geralt’s actions seem to resolve and cause the major events. Also, the storytelling is much more cinematic, lengthier, and detailed. I love it. W1’s dialogs and expositions always felt like they began out of the blue and ended in interruption. Here, everything feels much more well-paced.

Gameplay is also a definite improvement over the last game. Combat is much more fluid. Gone are the static inputs and clunky mechanics of the first game. Here, each movement, sword strikes, sign cast, and dodges feel much more responsive. Gone is the attack animation where you just stand there. Geralt now launches and lunges himself towards enemies and can backstep to get out of the way. The targeting system is kinda terrible. It seems the game just targets whatever is in front of you. I think I spent more time trying to make the enemies split up than attacking. Blocking/Parrying timing also takes some time to get used to. I heard the combat was designed with controller in mind, and while it’s not completely unplayable with KB/M, I do wish there was a better optimization. I also wish potions were drinkable mid-fight. I know the concept is to prepare yourself before the fight, but I also feel witchers were trained to be adaptable to any situations. Meaning, it’s very reasonable thing for a witcher to drink potion mid-combat. I personally feel this is something W1 did better, as you could open the inventory menu any time to drink a potion or eat a food. As Angry Joe said in is W2 video, the inability to drink potion mid-combat does make the alchemy skill tree pointless. Because of how combat is much more real time compared to W1, I was more interested in investing points into skills that had an immediate effect. The only skills in the alchemy tree that do help are the ones that give you more HP,

While each area is still glorified corridors, the spaces are a lot more open and there’s always something to discover. As I said above, the game is beautiful and I found every area to be an enjoyable exploration. Still, I hit boundaries everywhere, and despite the quest marker being only a few steps away, I had to find my way around because of the walls. When I wasn’t distracted by how amazing each level were, I was annoyed about many paths being so close yet so far because of those walls. I appreciate CDPR putting more stuff to find and do, but goddamn that just made some areas longer in going back and forth. Some areas lead to mini-dungeons with annoyingly twisted corridors, once again adding the artificial time spent on the game. Still, it was nowhere near as bad as Witcher 1.

Quest designs have improved a lot as well. In the past game, the quests were your standard stuff in an RPG. Go kill this many monsters, gather this many ingredients, fight some number of enemies, etc. While those are definitely still here, what I’ve noticed as how much flavor and a small number of them were. Because I feel In witcher 1 they kept slapping you with side quests upon side quests, but in this game there are only a set amount of side quests. This is sort of the quest design I prefer. Small in quantity yet diverse in their nature, and no radiant quests.

Side activities were fun enough. There are a lot more women to fuck including those at the brothel, there are monster contracts of course, as well as dice games and fistfights. While I definitely love more quantity of these activities, I was a tad bit disappointed with dice and fistfights. Dice Poker was more or less the same, and the fistfight was reduced to QTE. W1’s fistfight wasn’t exactly Mortal Kombat either, but at least there were more inputs. Thank got both of these issues are addressed in the next game. There’s also arm wrestling, but no one talk about those.

Speaking of QTE, I know it was a trending mechanic back when the game came out, but good god, they are inconsistent. Outside of the fist fights, there were only handful of QTE moments and they all caught me off-guard. I just want to enjoy amazing cutscenes, and button prompt appears out of nowhere.

Just like with the first game, I love the monster designs here. There are some new ones as well, and compared to W1, the devs definitely went for quality over quantity here. In Witcher 1, there were many monsters who were simply reskins of each other, each dealing different amount of damage. While we still see same design recycled in W2, CDPR added more variety in types. In fact, if you compare the wiki pages for list of monsters in each game, W2 is fewer in numbers. Yet I found myself enjoying hunting them far more in W2.

Sound designs were all great. From sword clashing against the enemies, the ambient sounds in each area, and the sound of Geralt fucking all the women he comes across. The music is absolutely in a master class, and I can see this being carried on to the third game.

I finished this run in 24 hours. I heard that’s the average amount. I feel the hours were short compared to the first game simply for the fact that there were less running around to do. Geralt moved a lot faster, and there weren’t near as much ground to cover as the first game. This is a game that I will definitely come back to it in the future, maybe teaming up with Iorveth this time. The game still looks and plays great for an 2011 game.

8/10. Pretty damn good. Will post something about Withcer 3, but might take a while since that game is way bigger and I also need to cover the DLCs

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Witcher 1 was using a Bioware engine from like CRPG days. Witcher 2 is their own proprietary engine. It's also explicitly designed to include console style play. So, yeah, the leap was absolutely huge.

I kind of hate the gameplay of both. For the first one, I just do NOT play PC games other than little indy things (like I plan on checking out Stanely Parable soon finally). So Witcher 1 was made for players who play things like Baldur's Gate or whatever.

Witcher 2 was the action game foray, and consider it came out around the same time as Dark Souls so 3rd person action games are all the rage. The reason I don't like W2 gameplay is I just think it's clunky.
WItcher 3 is where they smooth everything out and I love it. It is still their own game engine and its swansong, as they recently announced their next Witcher game will be using Unreal 5.

Whatever my criticisms of W2's gameplay though, I was absolutely enthralled when I played it, my intro to the world, hyping me for W3 which then became my favorite game of all time. In fact I am planning a replay in a month.

That led me to read the books and play the first game heavily modded and I really think it's an interesting game. I think your opinions OP are pretty much consensus, for a reason. The world and characters are super interesting in W1, but the combat is awkward, the moving around painful, and the middle chapters in the city and swamp get really dull and tedious compared to the more contained and weird/creepy vibes of the outskirts before it and the fish-people lake area after.

I honestly would NOT recommend W1 to anyone who is not already familiar with the books or other games, but I would STRONGLY recommend it for those who are.

I'm assuming you're playing on PC, are you importing characters from one game to the next? If so, there is one really insignificant but very cool thing you can import to W3 only this way.

 

[FakeSympathy]

I'm assuming you're playing on PC, are you importing characters from one game to the next? If so, there is one really insignificant but very cool thing you can import to W3 only this way.

Yes, I'm on PC. And if you are talking about the tattoo in W1, unfortunately I missed it. Which is weird, because I was pretty sure I did every side quests and tried to explore every corner of the game, but I just never came across the part of getting the tattoo. Was pretty disappointed by that as well, but I don't want to play the game again just to get that lol

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

My brief opinions on the games are as follows:

TW1: Wonderful questing and atmosphere despite its engine limitations. Gameplay was…tolerable for the most part once adjusted to its quirkiness, and I actually kinda enjoyed the rhythm based melee for what it was worth. The worst part of the gameplay was just general environmental traversal. Geralt moved like a geriatric with a full diaper and damn those ankle-high barriers.

The inventory system was also more restrained than either sequel to follow and felt appropriate for PC.


TW2: Gameplay/combat improvements while perhaps being a bit too linear and streamlined, which dampened its sense of adventure and freedom of progression. Geralt was more fun to play as here, but the game felt like it was riding on the coattails of design tropes of the time, especially with the highly cinematic action sequences that other games did better.


TW3: In-progress, but it feels like CDPR went overboard in correcting the above criticisms. It kinda feels like excess is the game’s biggest fault here, even though it also has some of the series’ best content. There’s just too much trivial busy work thrown in via inventory management, ? icons, contracts, etc., and it bogs the main narrative down in a way that kills the sense of urgency it tries to imply with Geralt’s main task of “finding Ciri”.

Plus, the leveling system in this game is frustrating. I’m a “Master Witcher” that can’t use any armor or gear beyond pleb levels, or take on a good chunk of quests or contracts until I’m a high enough number because sequel, I guess.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Yes, I'm on PC. And if you are talking about the tattoo in W1, unfortunately I missed it. Which is weird, because I was pretty sure I did every side quests and tried to explore every corner of the game, but I just never came across the part of getting the tattoo. Was pretty disappointed by that as well, but I don't want to play the game again just to get that lol

I am talking about the tattoo, but it is in W2 not W1. So I'm gonna go ahead and "spoil" it for you but you already played the game and it's like 11 yrs old at this point...

In Chapter 1 of W2, the Flotsam section, you can visit Roche and Vess and their troop, in one of the inns or some such. And it's a whole side quest where you fist fight Roche and then party with his soldiers. That is where Gerald wakes up with a neck tattoo.
You can then actually have it removed in the game by finding some ingredients and having either Seila or Triss do a spell.

But if you keep the tattoo and import that save into W3, the tattoo stays. This is the only thing that can only be imported via save file. All the other stuff can be "simulated" when you start a W3 game and select that option and then you get a dialogue tree after you complete White Orchard.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Oh, about the potion/alchemy stuff in W1: one of the most popular mods for W3 is called Preparation, which adds W1 style alchemy to W3. Which means you have to be at a fire and that you have to actually have all the ingredients each time you want potions, as opposed to the much easier thing in W3 where you only need alcohol in your inventory to re-stock automatically anywhere when meditating.

So for most of us, we appreciate the easier approach but some players who like the RPG and survival style really like that old-school alchemy, apparently. I actually did play with that mod and it was interesting for a while but I'm happy without it.

If you are replaying W3 on PC, I do strongly recommend the Ghost Mode mod, which fixes W3's major weakness- the bullshit leveling/XP/reward system.

(Yes, I have a lot of thoughts about these games.....)

 

[CriticalGaming]

6/10. Fantastic story and setting, but terrible gameplay

Agreed.

8/10. Pretty damn good. Will post something about Withcer 3, but might take a while since that game is way bigger and I also need to cover the DLCs

If 2 gets this score I think I already know what 3 will get . AS IT SHOULD! #Imwatchingyou.

 

[Bartholen]

I went through a similar experience some years ago when I got my gaming PC. If I were to score them, they'd be Witcher 1 3/10, Witcher 2 7.5/10, Witcher 3 10/10.

I logged something like 30 hours into Witcher 1, and I'd be hard pressed to remember even 5 percent of it. The gameplay was just unbearably bad (repetitive, clunky, loaded with unnecessary mechanics), so much so that it overshadowed everything good about the game. Not that the gameplay was the only problem: the UI is terrible and unintuitive, the map straight up misleads you, act 2 is one of the most tedious things ever in gaming, the story is just plain badly told and the environments are super generic. The little merit the game has lies in its writing, branching narratives and occasional atmosphere. But it's such a slog to get to those good bits that you'd honestly have to pay me to play it again.

Witcher 2 is a massive step up, but it's kind of made obsolete by Witcher 3. One thing it has over the other 2 is environment design, which is easily the most fantastical and otherworldly of the games. The forest around Flotsam legit feels like something out of a fairytale. The story is complex and multilayered almost to a fault, its graphics (bar the facial animation) also hold up stunningly well. And it introduces the best bro in all of gaming, Vernon Roche. But it has its fair share of problems: the UI is still godawful, there's lots of stuff that feels straight up pointless (crafting for example), the combat is kinda clunky and bafflingly gatekeeps some essential features behind skill points. But it's still well worth playing.

Witcher 3 is a straight up unbridled masterpiece, but everyone and their dog already knows that.

 

[hanselthecaretaker]

I went through a similar experience some years ago when I got my gaming PC. If I were to score them, they'd be Witcher 1 3/10, Witcher 2 7.5/10, Witcher 3 10/10.

I logged something like 30 hours into Witcher 1, and I'd be hard pressed to remember even 5 percent of it. The gameplay was just unbearably bad (repetitive, clunky, loaded with unnecessary mechanics), so much so that it overshadowed everything good about the game. Not that the gameplay was the only problem: the UI is terrible and unintuitive, the map straight up misleads you, act 2 is one of the most tedious things ever in gaming, the story is just plain badly told and the environments are super generic. The little merit the game has lies in its writing, branching narratives and occasional atmosphere. But it's such a slog to get to those good bits that you'd honestly have to pay me to play it again.

Witcher 2 is a massive step up, but it's kind of made obsolete by Witcher 3. One thing it has over the other 2 is environment design, which is easily the most fantastical and otherworldly of the games. The forest around Flotsam legit feels like something out of a fairytale. The story is complex and multilayered almost to a fault, its graphics (bar the facial animation) also hold up stunningly well. And it introduces the best bro in all of gaming, Vernon Roche. But it has its fair share of problems: the UI is still godawful, there's lots of stuff that feels straight up pointless (crafting for example), the combat is kinda clunky and bafflingly gatekeeps some essential features behind skill points. But it's still well worth playing.

Witcher 3 is a straight up unbridled masterpiece, but everyone and their dog already knows that.

But 3 shares a similarly clunky UI, excessive crafting, inventory management, level gatekeeping and also adds a plethora of busy work that goes cross grain from the urgency invoked by the game’s main plot point. It’s very much a ‘kitchen sink kind of design of two halves that works only if the player ignores one or the other.

I’m about 60 hours in so far and I’ve enjoyed it overall, but there’s also a reason why it’s taken me over four years to get even that far.

 

[meiam]

But 3 shares a similarly clunky UI, excessive crafting, inventory management, level gatekeeping and also adds a plethora of busy work that goes cross grain from the urgency invoked by the game’s main plot point. It’s very much a ‘kitchen sink kind of design of two halves that works only if the player ignores one or the other.

I’m about 60 hours in so far and I’ve enjoyed it overall, but there’s also a reason why it’s taken me over four years to get even that far.

And terrible/clunky gameplay/movement while adding unnecessary open world that's mostly empty and full of incredibly repetitive side quest with poor environment variety. imo 2 and 3 are about on the same 6/10 level, what little improvement 3 brought in were undone by how unpolished everything new was.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

And terrible/clunky gameplay/movement while adding unnecessary open world that's mostly empty and full of incredibly repetitive side quest with poor environment variety. imo 2 and 3 are about on the same 6/10 level, what little improvement 3 brought in were undone by how unpolished everything new was.

Compared to games that have come out since, Witcher 3 is a tight, focused linear small game.
I mean, what you say is also true, but my god has it gotten way worse in AAA.

This is why I feel like W3 is pretty much the cap stone of this style of open-world-RPG-ish number level story game.
Unfortunately, Breath of the Wild cemented the idea that, no, this is how all big games should be, and here we are.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Ok on a more constructive/positive note, how do we feel about the Big Choice in Witcher 2. You know, the end of chapter 1 that is a complete binary irreversible determinant of how the rest of the game goes. And the fact that only one of them reveals a key plot point, while the other ended up being the "default"/canon option when you consider W3.

When I first played the game, I chose to go with Roche because I was thinking Geralt would want to side with the actual political and military authority that would have more access to information about Letho and Triss, rather than risk siding with a militant splinter group. This puts you in the Kaedwin camp and you are dealing with King Henselt and that slimy sorcerer. You also have an excellent side quest with a ghost daughter that you can screw up if you believe her (this concept is re-done as the Pesta quest for Keira in W3, a personal favorite) and the opportunity to find Odrin the drunk.

On a replay I did Iorveth and was astounded at how completely different Vergen is. You are completely cut off from Henselt and the sorcerer until Chapter 3 but instead you have dwarves, a deeper insight into Philippa Eilhart, side quests that take you into mines, the opportunity to literally fuck a succubus AND a guilt-ridden elf girl (yep, Witcher franchise was super-sexist before W3). Most importantly you learn the truth about the dragon! Blew my mind when I saw that- it was the first time I saw a game actually withhold key information from the player based on an amoral choice.

The reason I call the Roche path "canon" is simply because he, not Iorveth, is in W3. In fact, I would argue that "canon" choices in W2 are based on what you see in W3 if you choose to not import or simulate a save. These are:

- Killed the Baron LaValette, Seila de Tanserville, and Letho
- Went with Roche

 

[FakeSympathy]

Witcher 3

So it finally has come to this. The end of Geralt’s journey (maybe? Witcher 4 was recently announced as of the time of writing this). As I’ve said in the intro, I played a crap load of this game in the past, and absolutely loving it despite my numerous playthroughs. At first, I was gonna simply do a New Game ++ on top of my pre-existing NG+ save, but I found out I wasn’t allowed to do that. There is apparently a mod for it, but when I checked out its page all I saw were comments after comments about how this mod broke their games.

So it’s off to a fresh start for me, on deathmarch because I gotta get those achievements. Also, I love to torture myself.

Graphically speaking, of course it’s the best-looking Witcher game. For a game that came out in 2015, I would believe if someone were to told me the game came out this year. It seems that 2015 had a lot of graphically impressive games. TW3, MGS V, Bloodborne, Ori and the Blind Forest, Batman Arkham Knight, and even The Order 1886 (yes, the gameplay and story were trash but the graphics still look great).

The sunset, fire crackling, underwater details, and even the clothing of Geralt and the NPCs. They all look great. Yes, there are times when I noticed objects clipping through, but they were really minor. Character models look great both in and outside of cutscenes. Their facial expressions are more defined. That’s something I just realized with the last two witcher games. Only on rare occasions did I notice facial expression change in those games. Most of the time, they had the same neutral look whether they were laughing, shouting, lamenting, etc. I guess this game had the technology to have those expressions.

All of the locations look great, and I can actually tell the difference in each location. Kare Morhen’s mountainside still blows my mind away every time I start the prologue, Velen’s swamp still creeps the crap out of me, and Skellige Isles definitely has that Viking-inspired rough islander lifestyle. Seriously, I am impressed with the details that separate people of Skellige from people living in the mainland. Like, other games seem to simply copy-paste NPC behavior and movement patterns for every settlements/cities in their world, yet here we see similar yet different ways NPCs act and talk.

The story is amazing. There’s not a single character who feels one-dimensional. (Well, except for Whoreson Junior, but he’s Whoreson Junior) All of them have superb writing, with great backstories and personal journeys they undertake. Voice Acting is so good. Charles Dance as Emperor Emhyr especially stands out, despite being on the screen for a short time. Dance’s intimidating voice of Game of Thrones is carried over here, and I see a lot of Tywin Lannister in Emperor Emhyr. They both sound dignified, passive-aggressive, and well-put-together. Other VAs did phenomenal jobs as well. The final boss and the main antagonist, Eredin, was sadly a bit of a letdown. He’s a character with a complex backstory and all, but the fight was kinda boring and his dialogue throughout the entire game was a bit flat. Still, the base game was a great ride. And I’ll happily start another playthrough from time to time.

Despite this being my 7 or 8th playthrough, I can never get enough of the story. In fact, I think it has made the storytelling much more enjoyable. You began to connect the dots and early clues of what’s gonna happen later and how they all connect together to the overall story. It feels like I just read a really good dark fantasy book or watched an actually good Netflix show….. Wait a minute.

I think that’s what makes the DLCs so much more enjoyable, because not only are the main stories strongly written, but also the characters in the DLCs are just as good as if not better than the ones I met on the base game. I love Ogierd in HoS. The voice and the character development he has is excellent. But I think the true star of HoS is Gaunter O’dimm. He is terrifying. He makes wild hunt look like pre-schoolers. His neutral smug face and inconspicuous tone and appearance are total contrast to his true nature, which makes him so much scarier. While it still takes place within Novigrad, I love this DLC for opening up so much of the Northern area, and allowing me to attend a wedding. Vlodimir is a hilarious asshole, and I was a bit sad to see him go away like that

BAW seems to have a better story compared to HoS and its own area. I love the presentation of BAW. On the outside it shows the idealistic fantasy world with the bright color tone, chivalrous knights, heroes slaying monsters for the great good, and everyone living in peace. But in reality, there are horrors lurking in the corner, nobles conspiring for their own gains, and not-so-friendly knights who think they are better. While Dettlaff wasn’t the evil incarnate that Gaunter was, I think he still was a great main antagonist. His motives are justifiable, and I wish there was an option for everyone-wins ending. I am surprised to learn there were so many ending variations for this DLC. Also, this expansion added a new Gwent card faction, a new mutation mechanic, Grandmaster tier for witcher sets plus Manticore set, and Aerondight.

The only thing that sucks about the story in TW3 is how your choices in the first two games don’t really matter. I know this decision was made so that anyone can grab the game without playing the first two, but I feel like all those oh-so-important decisions that I’ve made up till this point have been for naught. In some cases, they just flat out retconned my choices. This makes going back to previous games (especially Witcher 1) and making the other choices kinda hard, because there are certain decisions that are destined to happen according to Witcher 3. I see a lot of youtube videos on what happens if you make different choices and do quests out of sequence, and as much as I love the details the devs put into all the different dialogs and series of events that comes from doing so, in the end it doesn’t really make a difference.

I am mostly happy with the ending reflecting some of the major choices, but I also feel a lot was left out. What happens to Triss/Yen if I don’t romance the other or none? Does Blood Baron indeed help his wife recover her sanity? What happens to Novigrad now that Dijkstra is dead and Dudu is impersonating Whoreson Junior? Does Priscilla ever recover her voice?

Sound effects and music are absolute top-tier. I heard some players turn off the music to get more realistic and ambient experience while exploring the overworld, but I personally think they fit well. Silver for Monster is still one of my favorite game soundtracks of all time. Kudos to the women who reached those high notes and continuous “le le le le”. The theme makes fighting monsters so much more fun. It’s so good, I find myself humming the tune randomly throughout the day even when I’m not playing.

When I’m not jamming to the music during battles, I like to listen to the sound of ambiance. The background music’s volume is small enough for me to listen, and I love the sound of winds brushing against the trees and plants, people going about their day, street performers in cities, and patrons relaxing at the inns and pub. What I love is the different background music for each region. They perfectly reflect the people and the background of each region. Sound effect for signs are great. They are an improvement from the previous game. Aard sounds like a sudden push of air, Igni’s sounds more like fire, and quen’s shield-shattering effect sounds amazing. The sound of my sword clashing against the enemies is satisfying, and when they die they make the disgusting sound of drawing their last breath. I love it.

And now the gameplay…. Ahh yes, the gameplay. I hear people are very divisive on this aspect, and I agree. There are definitely things that work well for the game, and things that work against it.

I think this was CDPR’s first open-world game, and it shows. It’s flawed but I gotta give them credits for building such an impressive world. One of things I do not like in an open-world game are pointless collectibles and side activities. And while it’s not nearly as bad as other AAA open world games, TW3 has them as well. Particularly, I’m talking about spoils of war and hidden treasures. The rewards aren’t that great, and I feel they just slow things down. The undiscovered location markers area really annoying, because they can be something great like monster dens (which do have high-price loots) and place of power, or something awful like spoils of war and hidden treasures. I don’t understand why there are so many spoils of war and hidden treatures in each area. And I swear, this design philosophy carried over to CP2077.

Other than those, the side activities in the game are great. Fist fights are once again real time, horse races are fun, gwent is amazing (I’ll talk about this in a minute), and hunting for those witcher gears is fun and rewarding.

But I also find there’s a huge imbalance issue with the leveling in this game. What I mean is that certain areas on each map are clearly meant for higher level, when the area next to them are for lower levels. Because of this, I found myself running away from a lot of monsters and bandit camps because I knew I would get my ass kicked to the ground, especially when I’m on deathmarch difficulty. This made freedom of exploration rather restricted, because it clearly meant I had to come back to that area later. You can overcome this by leveling up, but there’s a problem with the game giving you too many side quests and giving you xp for just about anything. Find a new area? XP. Clear an abandoned site? XP. Win a horse race? XP. I actually found myself leveling really fast just by doing side quests and exploring around. This might sound great, except now some undiscovered areas are below my level.

 

[FakeSympathy]

Witcher 3 (cont.)
Thankfully, quest designs aren’t copy pasted objectives. The devs clearly tried their best at putting some spins on what you do and how you do the quests, and quite frankly some of them were done really well and hilarious. Like when Geralt has to perform in a theater play, helping Dandelion to get a girl by pretending to be a robber, or helping an old find her special pan. Which includes the side activities I’ve mentioned above as well.

This brings me to another great addition to the game; Gwent. I love this activity. It certainly beats the dice game of the first two games. I am not usually a fan of these digital ccg and tcg games, but Gwent is just super fun. It actually takes some form of strategy. I kept challenging everyone I met to a game of Gwent, collecting rare cards and building my deck. Although I do have to say some cards are way too OP and since there's no limit to how many hero cards you can have, you can break the system pretty easily.

Combat is something I definitely have mixed feelings about. I swear to god some of the hitboxes are complete bullshit, because sometimes I was clearly in the range with my sword but the hit didn’t register, but when I’m slightly within the range of an enemy, I can get hit? There’s no I-frame, and this can be a problem. Some of you may argue this makes the combat much more strategic and I should be careful not to just swing away, but there’s a difference between being fair and just plain annoying. I sometimes got stun-locked for a 5-6 sec, long enough for enemies to group up and kill me. The I-frame issue is especially apparent with a mutation called Second Life in BAW. For those of you who don't feel like looking this up, when the vitality reaches 0, you get an unbreakable quen shielding for a brief time until you recover to 100%. 3 min cooldown. You might be thinking "Well what's wrong with immortality?" Well, I personally found there's a huge problem with this mutation. You see, when you go into the healing animation you get grounded, and can't move. After your vitality reaches the full about, there's a brief time frame where the quen shield goes off while you are still rooted to the ground. This may not sound like a big deal at first, but when you are going agest enemies with combos or surrounded by multiple enemies, you are forced to take all that damage. And let me tell you, the damage you can take in that short time frame can almost drain your entire vitality, if not kill you. Seriously, I died to the pack of wolves. WOLVES. And don't even get me started on some of the bosses. A boss with beat me to 0 vitality, second life kicks in, and when it's full, the boss gets to do unfair amount of damages on me while I'm completely immobile! You have no idea how much second life made the final boss fight more difficult than it should've been.

But when combat actually works, it’s fun. You got your signs to experiment with, bombs to give you an edge, oils to deal extra damage, and the general hit-and-dodge mechanics. Potions and bombs are actually helpful now. I never realized just how OP Northern Wind can be. This makes collecting all those alchemical ingredients meaningful, because they all become useful at some point. Crossbows only seem like they are good for bringing down airborne enemies or using them underwater. I do have to question why crossbows suddenly become near 1-hit killing machines underwater?

Overall, I think Witcher 3 has a fantastic story, great atmosphere, hit-or-miss combat, and average open-world gameplay. It’s not a perfect game, but then it’s not like that can ever exist. It’s certainly not for everyone, especially if you prefer something more fast-paced. If you are a fan of a game with deep lore, well-written characters, and a dark fantasy world not shy of violence and edgy shit, this game will be great for you. Just expect to run into some issues.

10/10, that was exhausting, but well worth the time

 

[FakeSympathy]

Conclusion

Overall, I’m glad I played all three games. The character interactions and what they’re talking about make so much more sense, the characters on Gwent cards have more meaning, and I witnessed the growth both in terms of graphics and gameplay.

To say which game I prefer really depends on the element. For story, I still prefer Witcher 1 due to amnesia creating a clean slate for Geralt, and I got to decide what kind of character he is. For general gameplay, I prefer Witcher 2 because it retained the familiar format of the first game and made it better for the most part. Witcher 3 is obviously the best-looking game, but it’s also more atmospheric and filled with details. Quest designs are better compared to the previous games, and it also has two DLC expansions. If someone completely new asked me which witcher game they should start with, I would tell them to start with 3, then work their way back from the first game.

I am writing this on a google doc, and just reached page 10, longer and more enthusiastic than any college paper I’ve written. I guess that makes sense, because I just love the world of Witcher that much. It’s one of those series where gameplay is divisive but the story, the world, and the characters are so fucking good. There’s no complete one-dimensional, black and white characters. But the most important character, is obivously Geralt himself. In-world, Witchers are supposed to be devoid of any emotions, kill monsters for coins, and go find their next target. Yet, by my choice, he shows he has more humanity than most humans around him. Some witchers have shown to be capable of loving others and be loved in return. I think there's a moral lesson here of deciding who you are supposed to be vs who you chooses to be.

CDPR might be in not the leading, shining examples of game publishers/devs after CP2077 fiasco and controversies surrounding Witcher 4 annoucement, but they did incredible job of bringing a relatively unknown source material to the rest of the world

 

[meiam]

Thankfully, quest designs aren’t copy pasted objectives. The devs clearly tried their best at putting some spins on what you do and how you do the quests, and quite frankly some of them were done really well and hilarious. Like when Geralt has to perform in a theater play, helping Dandelion to get a girl by pretending to be a robber, or helping an old find her special pan. Which includes the side activities I’ve mentioned above as well.

We can quibble about the boring gameplay or empty, repetitive world, but this is the one thing that I see that always make me question if we even played the same game whenever I see it mentioned about TW3. Quest design is incredibly copy paste, the entire monster hunt side activity is 90% the exact same quest (check board, talk to NPC, go to area 1, active red vision trail, follow trail, loot quest item, go back to NPC, go to area 2, fight generic monster) and most other side quest are also very repetitive. Even assassin creed and WoW would be embarrassed by how lazy and uncreative it is.

Maybe most people don't realize it because they skip all side quest and just do main quest, that's probably what I should have done, but its weird that a supposedly 10/10 is only good if you skip 2/3 of the content.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

TW3 is my favorite game of all time so I pretty much agree with everything, @FakeSympathy , including the criticism about leveling and treasure rewards.

Here's what this game means to me- it is so good, that since it came out, I play a bunch of games and then replay W3 to table-set because it is still the best.

This year alone I played Horizon: FW, Elden Ring, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, Guardians of the Galaxy, and Sifu. All excellent, all recommended, all having some great combat or world exploration or characters or story or graphics or some combination therein.

But something about the combination of which parts of those I really like is something TW3 does in a way that pleases me way better than all of those.

Next Wednesday I being another play-through. I always do NG so I can find all the alchemy recipes and build my character builds.

uest design is incredibly copy paste, the entire monster hunt side activity is 90% the exact same quest

Usually people are probably referring to the other side quests. @FakeSympathy explicitly mentioned some examples.

As you play the main quest, characters offer you optional side quests and those are the best parts of the game. The places and stories that Keira Metz, Triss, Dandelion, and each of the An Crachte kids... they are wildly different and breathtaking. If you're into that, that is.

My favorite example of what separates TW3 from other games is when you finish the first required story quest in Skellige, the leader says "both of my kids went off on stupid adventures, go help them please." This is where many other open world games makes you find them on a map, do a bunch of fights and sit through some at-best-decent-but-usually-boring dialogue.

They put each one on its own island and that sets up radically different vibes. The one kid is on a big ol' abandoned island haunted by creatures and you gotta save his dumb ass by tracking down his crew and a big fun stupid boss fight. The vibe and setting is sunny, windy, ocean, open, and lonely.
The other kid is on a smaller more contained area dealing with a haunted leader and its darker, more claustrophobic, and dialogue-heavy.
Each also serves to resonate with the characters in question- one is a quest about bold warriors damn the consequences, and the other about out-witting an opponent and careful thought. Then when the game asks you to choose who to support and eventually help make ruler, you have a personal stake based on style. Sure, the end result doesn't really matter like most "game story choice," but that is my point about why this game does this stuff better than the rest- the end experience is so much richer for it.

This type of action/adventure/3rd person RPG-ish open world quest stuff is my most common type of game and I've yet to encounter anything that comes even close to how good TW3 did it. Red Dead 2, all the Asassins Creeds, Horizons, Uncharteds, Gods of Wars... all lovely games, I enjoy them, but it's not even close and I have no desire to replay them.

And as for the monster contracts- well, they're great, too. The similarity between them is kind of the point, as they are just opportunities to forget that complicated stories and just be an actual witcher. What makes them great is the variety of monsters. Tracking down a griffin is pretty rote as you describe (board, talk, kill, talk), while nailing down a wraith involves strategy around day/night cycle, while tracking down the succubus is more a gritty urban mystery with a kill/no-kill choice at the end. The very first one in White Orchard offers the option to explore the deep backstory of the area that if you pay attention you can connect with dialogue from characters in the main quest.
One of my favorite quests in the game is a contract in Skellige where you are supposed to hunt drowners but instead have to copy their scent to kill a water hag.
One of the things I like about monster contracts is that you can prepare for the fight as much as you're willing to pay attention. Exposing extra tracks, dialogue or items will tell Geralt what kind of monster it is so you can use your oils. Granted this loses its impact on replays since you already know what to expect but to me this is still way more interesting to plan your battle strategy based on the specific quest and not with the open world trend of skill trees and "play your own way," especially games were the enemies are much more narrow like Assassins Creed or Far Cry where everybody is human so it doesn't matter.

I totally recognize that the impact of these designs are subjective. I mean I also genuinely love the combat in this game, I dunno, I can't explain it in detail, I just know I like it.

 

[Drathnoxis]

One day, when the time is right, I will play The Witcher 3 and see what everybody is fussing about.

 

[FakeSympathy]

One day, when the time is right, I will play The Witcher 3 and see what everybody is fussing about.

The story is great, and the voice acting is superb. Just expect an average open-world experience. It's certainly no BOTW, but it's not as bad as AC Odyssey. The dlcs are so worth the extra bucks, tho.