The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015)

Till 2015, I was the guy with a penchant for the games I had played in my childhood. My top three games were Planescape: Torment, The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind, and Diablo 2: Lord of Destruction. I would relentlessly criticize the current video game industry and the direction it was taking (and I still do).

But something changed with the release of The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt. The game is an absolute masterpiece and, in my opinion, creates an unforgettable experience very rarely seen before in gaming. It should be noted that I do not think that it is the perfect game. It has more negative points that many of the other games in my top ten list. It had a fair number of bugs when it was released, a redundant loot system, a lot of repetitive padding (especially those treasure hunts in Skellige), and a mediocre (but satisfyingly challenging) combat system.

However, the things The Witcher 3 (TW3) does well, it does phenomenally well. The soundtrack, the story, the choices, the side quests, the portrayal of human emotions, the fantastic depiction of the universe’s lore, the wide variety of enemies, and the role playing experience it provides are all brilliant and intricately linked together.

Finally, the real reason I consider TW3 to be the best game I have played to date is the Hearts of Stone expansion. It will introduce you to several complex characters, an absolutely thrilling narrative, a continuation of TW3's euphonic soundtrack, and one of the best villains in gaming history. In fact, if I had to introduce someone to gaming, I would tell them to only play this expansion. Seriously, play The Witcher 3: Hearts of Stone.

Actual Score: 4.5/5

Finished this after many, many hours. Overall I enjoyed it quite a bit.

Pros:
- Fun characters and dialogue. Ciri is a treasure
- Beautiful world, felt very 'lived in' with detail spread out over the whole world.
- Combat difficulty felt pretty balanced over the course of the game. I wasn't ever ridiculously over or under powered.
- Music was wonderful, really contributed to the atmosphere

Cons:
- I wanted to scream every time I saw one of those un-skippable story recap loading screens. I'd rather sit on the spinning wheel screen a bit longer, thanks.
- At times the game really dragged. Both the game and the hype around it encourage you to do a plethora of side quests, and while the writing is good it can get really repetitive and few are worth the rewards
- Not enough time spent controlling Ciri in combat to really get to enjoy it

Got a hair up my butt this weekend and upgraded the front end framework to the newest Bootstrap version.

I did a fair amount of research and work on getting the editor on the main site here updated to what we use on the forums, but that might be a whole lot more work than I think. I'm not 100% sure if it's worth it either. I love that editor, but I don't know if that many people over here care that much.

Let me know if you really hate this editor and want to see a markdown editor like what's over on the forums.

Completed two side quests on this last night. The 'chasing down the fleeing merchant' took me more tries than I care to admit since I had some technical difficulties being coordinated enough to get on the horse before he got too far. Which meant I was loading a save multiple times. Which meant I heard the 'loading' backstory multiple times..,.

I'd rather not see that little snippet again thank you very much...

So I've been playing this game over the past few weeks. While I enjoy the game, there are some aspects of it that are extremely frustrating and infuriating. I feel like I need to get it all off my chest. Here's my list of irritating aspects of Witcher 3:

-The controls in general. I've been playing with a controller, but I shudder at the thought of playing with keyboard/mouse, since I've heard that's even worse. The character Geralt moves so poorly and awkwardly and slowly. He's seriously like an asthmatic 85 year old. The smallest thing on the ground like a stick or a rock will stop him in his tracks. Rolling, dodging and climbing and agonisingly slow. I remember how excellent and responsive the character was in Witcher 2, they definitely fucked up the formula. The slow way he moves makes combat a chore rather than fun.

-Combat. In general. They really should have just used the system they had for Witcher 2. It's just awkward and pretty repetitive. It's irritating that it goes into "combat mode" and suddenly Geralt slows down to snail pace and is suddenly unable to jump. Rolling/dodging is this long drawn-out animation that takes forever. And the whole thing is pretty much disguised QTEs. The combat is way too simplified; most battles can be won by spamming the "quick attack" button. They should have incorporated shields or something, or just used the system from Witcher 2, or stolen some ideas from Dark Souls.

-The horse. OH MY GOD probably the most excruciating part of the game. Riding this horse is like getting around town on a square-wheeled bicycle made out of rocks. Any tiny pebble or blade of glass on the road will make the horse sudden stop for no apparent reason. Even when there's no obstacle the horse will often draw to a halt. Then getting the horse back up to speed takes forever. It's generally much faster just to ran/walk to the destination. The horse is broken. And the whole "autopilot" feature is terrible, it's more of an annoyance than a blessing. It's broken and doesn't work and I only notice it when it's pushing the horse off in some weird unplanned direction.

-No menu access: I'm unable to access the menu and quit/save/etc during cutscenes and many other parts of the game. It's just irritating. Also it's impossible to alt-tab out of the game, which means if I want to check my email or whatever I have to quit to desktop. Irritating.

-Same button for ignite/loot: Any time I run into this "feature" about 100 times per hour. I want to loot a chest, but the game instead ignites a nearby torch. Very frustrating. It should use a different button.

-Broken quests: I've encountered quite a few broken quests. In particular the 'Gangs of Novigrad' quest or whatever it's called. Apparently it's broken for pretty much everyone. It's sad because I really wanted Ziggy to come to Kuer Mohren with me. Sad face.

-Shitty character progression: When I want to level up my character I'm not excited. 99% of the skill tree is boring and hardly gives any perceivable benefits. I wish there was something really cool to unlock at the end of the skill trees, some cool powers or something. It all seems kind of lame. Especially the alchemy skill tree; totally pointless. They should have added in some awesome features/spells/attacks here instead of just things like "1% adrenaline point gain". Sure the spinny quick attack thing is cool and all, but they could have done more.

Fall damage: broken. Basically Gerald must have really bad arthritis or else he wears glass prosthetic legs under his armour. Basically if you fall from more than 1 foot in the air then you will die. I've died in the game by stumbling off a small rock or jump off a tree stump. It's ridiculous.

-Number 1 Irritating Bug:This 'feature' is on par with the broken horse, although I think it's actually worse. This is the most irritating part of the game. It's the "auto-look" feature. Whenever I'm controlling the character, the boat, the horse, etc. the game wants me to look straight ahead. I'm not able to control the camera. For a game that's so pretty I am shocked that I'm not able to turn off this feature. So often I'm sailing a boat past the landscape and I wish to view the scene, but instead the game wants me to look straight ahead. Extremely irritating, it should be disabled.

Wow I didn't mean to write such an essay here, but I really needed to get all of that off my chest. Now that I've aired my grievances, I will conclude by saying that the game is actually still really good and I'd still recommend it. The awesome characters, story, open world, crafting, pretty graphics, etc. more than make up for the cons and it's a fun game for the most part. It's really immersive (once you get into it) and it's just fun to explore this huge, beautiful, rich, and detailed world.