The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

Having not played any of the previous games, I jumped into Witcher 3 with no expectations.

Holy shit, this is a perfect game. I did experience the launch issues nor the updates. As a sole "collector's edition" experiencer, this was a great game.

The story left me wanting to play again in NG+. which i did. And i spent more than the total game hours to just go back and hunt side quests, including armor unlocks.

This game is beautiful. A statement to those that say video games are not art, as this was a story told in the most artistic way possible.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – A Masterpiece of RPG Design

Developer: CD Projekt Red

Release Date: May 19, 2015

Platforms: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, Nintendo Switch

Overview

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt isn’t just a game—it’s an experience. As Geralt of Rivia, players are thrust into a sprawling, meticulously crafted world teeming with rich lore, morally complex choices, and characters that linger long after the credits roll. Its open world is a triumph of environmental storytelling, and its narrative depth sets a gold standard for the RPG genre. Enhanced by next-gen updates and a thriving modding community, The Witcher 3 has aged like fine wine, proving itself a timeless classic despite a few dated mechanics.

What Makes It Great?

✅ Unparalleled Storytelling & Impactful Choices

The heart of The Witcher 3 lies in its storytelling. The quest to find Ciri is a masterclass in narrative design, weaving political intrigue, personal sacrifice, and moral ambiguity into a tale that feels both epic and intimate. Every choice—whether in the main story or side quests—carries weight, leading to consequences that are often surprising and always meaningful. This isn’t just a game you play; it’s a world you inhabit.

✅ A Living, Breathing World

From the troubled swamps of Velen to the snow-capped peaks of Skellige, every region in The Witcher 3 feels alive. The world is dense with history, secrets, and stories waiting to be uncovered. Environmental storytelling shines here: a crumbling ruin, a forgotten diary, or a haunting melody can reveal more about the world than any exposition ever could. It’s a world that rewards curiosity and exploration.

✅ Rich Characters & Memorable Relationships

Geralt’s journey is elevated by a cast of characters who feel real, flawed, and deeply human. Yennefer’s sharp wit, Ciri’s resilience, and even the Baron’s tragic complexity make the story unforgettable. Even minor characters leave an impression, ensuring that every interaction feels meaningful.

✅ Side Quests That Rival the Main Story

The side quests in The Witcher 3 are anything but filler. Stories like the Baron’s questline are so well-crafted that they often overshadow the main narrative. Each side quest feels unique, with its own emotional weight and moral dilemmas, making the world feel even more alive.

✅ A Symphony of Voices & Music

The voice acting is nothing short of exceptional. Geralt’s gravelly tone, Yennefer’s commanding presence, and the emotional depth of characters like Ciri and the Baron bring the story to life. The soundtrack, composed by Marcin Przybyłowicz and Mikołaj Stroiński, is a masterpiece in its own right. Tracks like Silver for Monsters and The Fields of Ard Skellig are iconic, perfectly capturing the game’s tone—whether you’re in the heat of battle or gazing at a breathtaking sunset.

✅ Deep RPG Mechanics

The Witcher 3 offers a robust RPG experience with its skill trees, crafting, and alchemy systems. Players can tailor Geralt’s abilities to suit their playstyle, whether focusing on swordplay, magic, or alchemy. While the systems are deep, they can feel overwhelming at first, but they add significant depth to the gameplay for those willing to dive in.

✅ Expansive DLCs That Feel Essential

The DLC expansions—Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine—are more than just add-ons; they’re essential chapters in Geralt’s saga. Hearts of Stone delivers a dark, twisting tale of love and betrayal, while Blood and Wine introduces the vibrant, fairy-tale-like region of Toussaint. Together, they add dozens of hours of content and deepen the game’s already rich lore.

✅ Next-Gen Visuals & Modding Support

The next-gen update breathes new life into The Witcher 3, with enhanced textures, lighting, and performance that make it look better than ever. On PC, the modding community has taken things even further, offering graphical overhauls, gameplay tweaks, and quality-of-life improvements that keep the experience fresh and customizable.

What Could Be Better?

❌ Outdated Combat Mechanics

While serviceable, the combat system feels clunky compared to modern RPGs. Swordplay can become repetitive, and the mechanics for dodging and parrying lack the fluidity of newer titles. The tactical use of Signs adds some variety, but the system as a whole shows its age.

❌ Clumsy Movement & Traversal

Movement in The Witcher 3 can feel awkward, especially in tight spaces or during platforming sections. Roach, Geralt’s trusty steed, is a mixed blessing—while useful for traversing the open world, he often gets stuck or behaves unpredictably, breaking immersion.

❌ Cumbersome UI & Inventory Management

The inventory system is a low point. Sorting through countless weapons, potions, and crafting materials can feel overwhelming, and the UI hasn’t aged well. Mods on PC help alleviate these issues, but console players are stuck with the original design.

❌ Inconsistent Quest Scaling & Repetitive Elements

Quest difficulty can feel uneven, with some missions becoming trivial if you’re over-leveled. Additionally, while the game’s side content is generally excellent, some elements—like monster contracts and bandit camps—can feel formulaic over time.

Final Verdict

⭐ 10/10 – A Masterpiece That Stands the Test of Time

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is more than a game—it’s a benchmark for what RPGs can achieve. Its deep narrative, immersive world, and unforgettable characters create an experience that is as emotionally resonant as it is visually stunning. While its combat, movement, and UI show signs of age, these flaws are overshadowed by the game’s sheer brilliance. From its gripping main story to its rich side quests and expansive DLCs, The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece that continues to set the standard for the genre. Whether you’re a seasoned fan or a first-time player, this is a journey you won’t soon forget.

Just finished my first replay of the game, albeit with a more critical eye now, but the experience was better than I remember. I won't say too much; chances are if you're on this forum, you've probably played this already.

The only criticisms I have are that the combat and movement can be frustrating at times, and there is a gross overuse of NPC faces, even for named characters.

With that said, if you haven't played this yet, you MUST!

Review subject to change I guess since I'm still playing. My 40-ish hours in impression is that this is a very polished open-world fantasy RPG with a deep well of decently interesting lore, good writing (at least by video game standards), a unique skill and magic system, but extremely disappointing combat. And I think "disappointing" is the appropriate word, rather than "bad," because when Elder Scrolls is one of the only other big-budget open-world fantasy RPGs that even exists, and has the combat that it has, it feels a tad unfair to say the combat in The Witcher 3 is bad, but it's definitely disappointing. I think that's down to the combat in Elder Scrolls being doomed from minute one. It's first-person, it doesn't even attempt to present itself as an action game. It's easier to just accept it as it is. You also have a lot more build/playstyle freedom in Elder Scrolls, which helps a ton with the core combat not being great. There's no stealth archer build in this game, or any stealth at all for that matter. Whether you go combat, magic, or alchemy, you're pretty much fighting things the same way, you don't have a lot of choice as a player. In that sense this is a "roleplaying" game in more of a japanese sense than in a traditionally western rpg sense. You play a set character with little player freedom.

What hurts is that The Witcher 3 presents itself as an action game. You have a parry, you have a dodge. On first blush it appears to be like Dark Souls, but it doesn't even live on the same planet. The vast majority of enemies have one attack. One. Bigger/rarer enemies might have like three. They're all very predictable. Enemy behavior in general is very predictable. Most enemies will let you get two hits in before dodging away and then attacking. The amount of hits they'll let you get in never changes, so you know exactly when to dodge. Being able to perfectly plan your dodge several button presses into the future, with a 100% success rate, is never a good sign. Enemy attacks have hyper-armor and can't be interrupted by one of your attacks, so you'll have to axii them or something to keep getting hits in; or, if you're lazy or didn't spec into magic, combat will devolve into pressing light or heavy attack twice and then dodge. Rinse and repeat until dead. There's a skill in the game that makes you invincible during your dodge animation (much like Dark Souls) which further trivializes things because it doesn't even matter where you dodge. I could literally play this game with my eyes closed with that skill on. No really, I actually tried it. This is not me saying I'm some amazing gamer, this is me saying the combat has zero variance or dynamism to it. It's predictable and simplistic to a fault, there just isn't anything there of substance.

Higher difficulty levels only make fights take longer due to more enemy health and add zero mechanical complexity. I started on Blood and Broken Bones and briefly tried Death March, because in my experience playing some games on a higher difficulty do force you to engage with the mechanics in a way you otherwise wouldn't and get a deeper experience (DOOM 2016 being one of the best examples), but all it added was tedium rather than an actual challenge. After that experiment I wound up putting the game on the easiest difficulty and, honestly, have been having a much better time. I get to the story bits faster, and unsatisfying combat, it turns out, is much more tolerable when you're having a power fantasy rather than taking five minutes to slowly whittle down a basilisk's health and thinking about all the games with leagues better combat you could be playing instead.

The short version:

The greatest game I've ever played. When it comes to open-world RPGs, there are none better.

The long version:

If I could write long reviews about games I don't particularly like, then I realized I should come back and write a long review for my most favourite game ever.

Why do I need to give more lavish praise to a game that won more than 800 awards? Why review a game that has become so well-loved that it's become a meme to say how much you love it? After the masterpiece CDPR created with the Witcher 3, I fell into a video game midlife crisis, as nothing matched the brilliance of this open world RPG. I think that deserves some extra praise!

The Witcher 3 is many things: narrative masterpiece, premier RPG experience, the bar by which all other open-world games have been compared. But above all it is one thing: an adventure. No game has better encapsulated what it is to be completely free to choose, to explore, to discover and to wonder at this completely living, breathing world around you. And even in a game with such vast amount of choices, such customizable options for your character, there still manages to be a story that weaves together seamlessly to be just as good as the novels it's based upon!

The story and making choices

The Witcher 3 continues the grand tale of Geralt the Witcher from the previous installments. Fans of the books will be familiar with many of the people, places, monsters and conflicts on display here, but the story is not canon and is its own imagining. Geralt's ward, Ciri (a budding Witcher in her own right), is being pursued for her other-worldly powers by the Wild Hunt, mystical elves who wish to bring the world under their reign. Even though it's not canon, it's done with great care and respect to the source material, often weaving in key moments from the books (and previous games) to flesh out the plot points and move the story forward.

You do not have to have played the first two games to jump in, as there is a scene early in the game that lets you reminisce to a character about your previous memories, letting you fill in the story gaps of earlier games. It was a neat mechanic to play catch up and still feel like you hadn't lost anything.

The most important thing to know about the story is how integral it is to the entirety of the game. Imagine making a seemingly innocuous choice within the first hour of gameplay, only to have that choice reflected in the story 40 hours later, when you'd long forgotten about it. Now multiply this a hundred times! Every choice matters and carries weight. At first this can be daunting for players like myself who want to "min-max" the "right" decisions, but once you embrace the possibilities, the game really opens up. Do you want to help lead elven rebellions? Squash political uprisers? Aid territorial kings? Shirk the requests of an emperor? Perhaps you just want to focus on hunting the monsters that plague the countryside? It's all there, and it all carries weight for the larger game narrative. Once you learn to accept that you'll make as many "wrong choices" as "right choices"--or rather, that there aren't any right or wrongs--the game becomes the true adventure you can sink many, many, many hours into. The best part about it is that you can do it your way.

Become the Witcher you want

Fancy yourself a blade-twirling virtuoso? An arcane aficionado? How about a potion-guzzling alchemy addict? Combat, Sign, Alchemy and General are the four main ability trees and you can dive as deep or as shallow into each tree as you like. If jumping into battle and whipping your sword around like a hyper-active baton twirler in a parade is your style, invest heavily in the Combat tree. If you prefer to pump Geralt full of ability-altering potions, then go deep into alchemy. But it's even more involved than that: each tree carries 5 sub-trees. If you like combat but prefer quick blows, you can focus on fast attacks rather than strong attacks. If you like alchemy but prefer creating bombs and oils for your blades instead of trying to manage your potion toxicity meter, you can do that too. Focus all on one, or a little on all, as you build Geralt the way you want to play.

Exploring the world

The Witcher's greatest strength is its living, breathing world. Whether you're galloping Roach (your trusty steed) along the well-beaten path between towns, running off in the woods to pick herbs, tracking a monster through the harsh mountains, sailing a skiff out to a deserted isle in search of Witcher gear, or walking through Novigrad in search of a particular elven blacksmith, the world is always ready to throw a new and exciting distraction your way. NPCs can interrupt you with requests, enemies can come out of nowhere, Geralt can spot places of power, cut-scenes can begin when you approach an important monument--there's so much to this game, and it all feels worthwhile. Whether or not these distractions are part of the larger "main" story, they all feel important and carry weight. There are side-quests in the Witcher that are better acted and better written (and sometimes even longer-lasting) than the entirety of other RPG adventure games. There are entire articles written about how amazing some of the side quests are in this game, so I won't go into depth other than say I'm looking at you Bloody Baron, Keira Metz and the Crones!

The downside

Wait, so after all that gushing and praise there's actually something bad about the game? Well, sort of. In the case of the Witcher 3's stupendous amount of content, it is possible for some people that too much of a good thing can be a bad thing. Or at least, an exhausting thing.

The Witcher 3 is huge. There are literally hundreds of hours of content. You can sink 40 hours into the game before reaching the first major city. It's wonderful, engrossing and one of the best examples for losing yourself in a game world. Unfortunately, if you're not careful, it can also lead to burnout.

During my first playthrough of Witcher 3 I chased every lead, did every side quest, followed every ? on the map and grinned from ear to ear throughout each of my 4-5 hour play sessions. This continued for a few weeks until I started to realize that for every main quest I did, I completed 10+ side quests/monster contracts/treasure finds. I decided to look up just how far I had gotten in the main story, only to discover I'd barely scratched the surface. This was both exciting but also kind of overwhelming. The game really was THAT huge. So I took a break. Months went by before I dove back in, and when I did, I decided to force myself to pivot and do 10+ main quests for every couple of side quests. It helped better manage the pace and allowed me to finish the game in what I would consider a reasonable amount of time. I didn't 100% everything, but I was happy to let the game sit a while before diving back into the incredible DLC (each of which could warrant massive reviews like this, they're that good.)

The word of caution here is this: take the game slowly and don't get overwhelmed by trying to do everything. Realize that when you set out to become the world's greatest Witcher, it doesn't need to happen all at once.

The conclusion

This game has customization galore, diverse and interesting mechanics, so much content that after a hundred hours you'll still have a hundred more hours to go, but the real takeaway from the Witcher 3 is that it's a phenomenally emotional fantasy experience. It's equal parts challenging and engrossing. Remember when you were a kid and would read those "choose your own adventure novels" where you could flip ahead twenty pages based on your choice? The Witcher 3 is that game made into a reality. There's so much to do and see that you can't help but smile like a kid again. This is a world worth living in at least once for every gamer that loves adventure.

+ Combat is fun, challenging and rewards those who take their time preparing for a fight

+ Amazing storyline driven by well-written characters

+ Fun minigame called Gwent to serve as distraction

+ Immersive world filled with various types of enemies to take on

- Ridiculous fall damage

>>> Currently on my second playthrough because I got the worst ending on my first

I started playing The Witcher 3 in 2015 around the time it came out. I've played the previous games, and really enjoyed them as they were releasing. The Witcher 1 had some novelty to it with its bizarre combat system and old-school feeling, European RPG jank. The Witcher 2 improved on everything the first did, throwing the old combat system out the window and replacing it with something challenging and involved with the actual business of being a Witcher. But in both of these games, the narrative elements were the obvious draw. Between W2 and W3 I even read one of the books, and I think fantasy books are for nerds.

When I started The Witcher 3 in 2015, I knew I had a lot of work ahead of me. Many quests, many markers, many things to craft, much world to sop up and marinate in. I didn't think it would take me three years to finish, but here I am now with a save file that attests as much.

Looking back at my experience playing The Witcher 3, I can say that I only barely enjoyed it. In 2015 I was wowed by the scale of it and the astounding feat of presentation that the same people who made W1 had accomplished. I wanted to pat them on the back. But after hitting all the markers in White Orchard over 10 hours, I didn't want to play their game. If I recall correctly, at some point in late 2015 I came back to try out Velen, but after blowing up a few nests and rolling and swinging to death some soldiers, I put it aside until 2016 where I ceased to believe everything in the game was really worth seeing, or every engagement worth having to put up with the combat.

Between 2016 and yesterday, my taste in games changed. I began to recognize how important it was for me that systems act as player expression in meaningful, broad ways; and I came to believe that if a game had to have a story, it better be a story that I influence or take part in through intuitive game mechanics, and not dialogue trees or button prompts. The model of the board game, or the pen-and-paper RPG became the ultimate form which video games ought to emulate, instead of something immersive and unbelievably, but superficially, pretty, i.e. an amazing filmic experience, or OASIS from Ready Player One. By the time I made my way back to Witcher 3 for my last real push to complete it, I had already been sufficiently brainwashed by ludo-games to sort of despise any time I spent with it.

All that really dragged me through The Witcher 3's final quests was its writing and world-building. The combat, progression, the way which the game offered three moods of responses to me as some cheap CYAstory, everything seemed so shallow and unengaging, actualizing a game's ultimate failure. The towns and world-building had the appearance of a dynamic, systems-driven world which a better game would have exploited and made reactive in small but meaningful ways, but by the 60th hour all I wanted to do was connect sign-post to sign-post and get the fuck out. Three games into the series, The Witcher 3 stands as a bitter compromise that has garnered praise which spells spooky things for triple-A games. If no one seems to care that the combat is boring, the world is mostly without mechanics, that progression literally stops having any purpose by a pretty early point, what are these people going to do when writers learn how to merely sound like The Witcher 3, and everyone is too dumb to realize it's just an appearance? This will happen. Eventually.

This isn't a terrible game, but as everyone has launched it so high to hang in the video games cosmos as some shining example of a modern-day RPG (...yuck), criticism against it needs to be harsh and iconoclastic.

10/10 - Masterpiece - My fourth favourite game

Pros:

One of the most epic RPG stories in gaming, full of adventure, romance, betrayal, politics, magic and monsters, all with a memorable antagonist that makes you feel like you've got something to lose unless you stop him.

Many memorable characters and locations, especially with the DLCs. Toussaint is breathtaking, the Northern realms are savagely beautiful, and Geralt is one of the best video game protagonists I've ever had the pleasure of playing

Cons:

Some bugs and graphical issues, mostly at launch. The movement can also feel unnatural sometimes, especially when trying to walk indoors.

The combat can feel clunky and weird at first, and the perk system is quite confusing and not all that useful

I won't say The Witcher 3 killed other video games for me (although I'd also be honest in saying that nothing since I've finished it has caught my attention), but it's not for a lack of trying on CDProjektRed's part. This feels like the conclusion of a genre--a statement of open world RPGs that cannot be topped. A game that may not ruin the RPGs that came before, but certainly relegates them to being mere echoes by comparison.

Of course, things advance. That is the nature of things. So The Witcher 3 will get matched and surpassed. Kids in 20 years (your brats, probably) will be playing video games that will make our brains explode to even contemplate. By then? The Witcher 3 will be but a video game history footnote.

But until then we can thank God for Geralt, Gwent, and Goddamn good times.