Something I love about The Witcher 3 is that quest just exist in the game, they don't spawn only after picking them up. So you may stumble upon a monster, kill it, and after you visit the nearest town you find out it was actually a contract.
Or you doing things out of order. On my first playthough wanted to see everything quickly so had gone to skellige without finishing the Bloody Baron Ciri survey part, not only Yennifer had things to say about this, not meeting Uma resulted in additional quest, they bothered to make original game's and Blood and Wine characters react to Gaunter O'Dimms mark, not wanting to have the black haired one pour her foul mood on poor Geralt made him take over completing tasks of all other Witcher before being asked too, it also mattered. Now doing a 'bad' playthough while also picking 'boring' responses (boy was I pleasantly surprised) and trying to decline quests or stall whenever possible, playing curmudgeon, misanthrope Geralt is just as delightful. XD
About the Witcher contracts: for me they were my favorite part of the game. I'd level up so I could do more challenging Witcher contracts. Mostly because I saw them less as detective work and more like seeing the effects of different monsters on the people living there.
They're great. I'm using the enhanced edition mod, so monsters are tough and money is harder to come by, in addition to making the combat actually balanced. No more quen and mindless attack spam. Monster slaying is fun (except for golems) now
I actually did get the better ending of that tower quest my first time through, but it was specifically because I'd already done the Noon Wraith hunt beforehand! Knowing the lore of the world before catching her in her lie was enough to make me think something was wrong, that moving the bones of the dead from a place of mass death's not a fantastic idea, so I didn't and was thus rewarded. That reward for paying attention really stuck with me after playing it enough to really get invested in the lore and even politics of the setting. God it's such a great game.
I got the bad ending my first time. Velen is my favourite part of the Witcher 3. I adore the setting, the stories and characters and the Keira Metz questline. I could play it over and over again it’s so immersive to me.
They do explain why the temple is killing mages. Radovid is behind them doing that to soften up the defenses. Which is why he walks in no problem later.
@@luiscorreia3000 why do you feel the need to insult him? Yes Radovid motivation should be obvious but i'll let that slide because I think that was a mistake on his part because everything else he said was 100% true . 1) Radovid is supposed to be a military genius but we meet a crazy man who doesn't seem fit to rule or fight and don't even get me started on his rush assassination that decides the winner of the war. 2) speaking of the fate of the war let's talk about that. Dijkstra is a great character and I think he makes for the best king out of the 3 but he should know Geralt wouldn't just let roche get killed the way he did especially how he and ves fought by his side at kaer Morhen. 3) Roche who played such a big role in the witcher 2 with the choice of him and Iorveth doesn't effect your interaction with roche and lorveth who isn't even in the game(But Letho is) Roche is kind of irrelevant in the witcher 3 tbh. 4) Skelligh fate on who rule which has a bias towards Cerys over Hjalmar and Svanrige who first time players wouldn't even know was a choice 5) finding Dandelion just dragged for no reason 6) Emhyr is criminally underused 7) Avallac'h is just a completely different character compared to the books 8) The Wild Hunt who are supposed to be the main villains are dog shit
Novigrad: the witch hunters are burning mages and anyone with magic because Radovid pays them and it’s he who wants the mages dead. It all stems from the end of the second game when he finds our sorceresses we’re behind the assassinations of kings. He has zero trust and like for them. In his mind they’re all enemies and the fact that he started going mad is even more reason for all of this happening. I found this pretty obvious tbh and there’s dialogue that explains some of this as well. Novigrad is one of my favorite parts of the entire game. It’s definitely extreme that they’re burning on pyres but radovid is an extreme, mad king.
Yeah, I understood that on my first playthrough. I had trouble making it past the 7 minute mark on this video. He is calling W3 a Far Cry ripoff, right out of the gate, because of notice boards (which are in every Witcher game.... and book for that matter) and a similar looking mini map. There are only two variations of mini map in the whole gaming industry. Square and round.
Another reason why they were doing it is all the mages are rich and because they are at war they need money so they just kill all the mages and take all they have I dont know if I remember it right but roach tells you this
Finishing the Bloody Baron quest was the first time in my long years of video games where I literally stopped everything and watched him in the tree and just.. thought.. and watched him swing. That was a powerful end to a sad questline.
@@Corrupted you were lucky to get a cool ending my bro! interreditube told me there were good & bad endings. And apparently i was unlucky/bad/whatever. i had almost all, supposedly, bad endings. And they were amazing. People aint perfect, witcher least off all. Reflected how i wanted to play the game perfectly for me. Trying to be as good as you can, ending with a pile off horseshit for lunch. Which made it really cool for me personally that ciri became a witcher after i basically botched everything. Ooh man it felt so much sweater because all off the horror. Would have never hit home if everything went statistically perfect happy ending spree jeeej!
That’s one of the best parts about this game. Replaying it now, but my first playthrough the Baron lived because of different choices I made. I actually had no idea the situation mentioned here was a possibility until I read this.
Small detail: when I reached a small village called Livendale I decided to try my boxing skills in the "arena". My opponent was the so-called Fishgulper, and the the guy had the nerve to ask me to lose on purpose. I told him that there was absolutely no chance I'd take the fall, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him. As I was collectig the reward and slowly walking away, I remembered what he said in the beginning of the fight: he was fighting for a simple sack of grain. The guy (and presumably his family) were starving. I felt really bad and tried to interact with him and talk, while having 0 expectations anything would happen...I kid you not, they added the option to give him a few coins to not go hungry anymore. I was so relieved at that moment, the devs actually gave me a chance to leave the village with a clean conscience. CD PROJEKT RED, you are perhaps the best studio in the entire undustry!
@@DennisSFors Like... every well-regarded cRPG in history? If you're comparing it to action/sandbox games, sure. Like, it's faster to list the few cRPGs that DON'T have far more intricacies than TW3, like the combat-focused Icewind Dale series.
Thank you for actually criticizing the game. I actually have a disagreement when you talk about how the world of The Witcher 3 sets itself up to be harsh and cruel. I actually think the first game does this a lot better when it tells you that you're a professional trying to do a job out the gate rather than leaving Geralt in a weird state betwixt moral and immoral. You know to expect that people are only really out for themselves and that you shouldn't do charity work. For as many problems as the first Witcher had, the world was established so much better and it really felt like you were a professional monster hunter.
darkfireslide even though that’s one of gearlts main struggles in the books is trying to decide between lesser evils even though he honestly doesn’t think that lesser evils exist he feels it’s simply evil and he would rather walk away
So you want the same experience in sequels? To me, the move towards being just a professional monster hunter to having a morality in the game is nice and it feels natural for the devs to move towards that. I've always felt that they would wanna do that in sequels because what's more to a witcher than just professional monster slaying? Witcher universe humans think of them that way. Just an outcast of the society, monster slayer with no emotion who's there to do the dirty job for the money. And for a series to just focus on witcher's monster slaying like you want, it's too shallow for me.
I believe the most confusing thing you can do with the Witcher 3 is to expect it to be just an open world ubisoft style game or another of the elder scrolls. The Witcher's roots are very different, they mostly reminds of other european series popular in early 2000's like Gothic and Stalker. Those were open or semi-open world games driven by narratives, where the world was just another character in a story. There were just more important things to do in those games than exploration and quest checking. Things that made them truly great and memorable. And those are almost the same things, that made the Witcher 3 the game it is. Dialogues, characters, ambiance, humour, world building, immersion. It was similar in the Witcher 1 and 2. Considering CD Projekt was at the time official polish publisher of both of those series it can't be just coincidence. I believe the Witcher 3 does actually a great job as a mixture between those roots and international trends, but you can clearly tell than the game itself is what it meant to be - Gothic on steroids placed in Andrzej Sapkowski's world.
It's the "international trends" then that are ruining this game. I'm playing this game right now(on Death March, so glad I did not choose any lower difficulties, I'm afraid I would be sound asleep right now) after hearing all the hype and I am very disappointed. A Gothic game this certainly is not. This game does far too much hand holding to be something similar to a Gothic game. For every good thing it does, there is something else it does that pulls me right out of the game (like walking into a house and looting everything in sight with no consequence at all). The more I play I'm getting far too many "consolism" and "Ubisoftism" vibes out of this game to truly call it a great game. And it's sad, cause I see the potential for a real masterpiece there.
@@mattmattmatt131313 Excactly my experience playing The Witcher 3. Played for maybe ten hours then got bored. I may try it again and focus completely on the narrative. For me the exploration is a very important part of an open world rpg. I also can't understand the comparison with Gothic. Gothic 2 imo is still the greatest open world rpg i played so far. The world design is far superior to that of the witcher 3. It's quality over quantity. Gothic 2's world is very condensed from a modern point of view. But evey square meter is filled with ineresting and memorable stuff. I still remember most of the world even years after playing it. And that's because exploration actually felt meaningfull and rewarding. There was no minimap and no questmarkers. You got a quest to explore a cave or whatever and you would have to look for it on your own. There were hints from NPC's and from your questnotes so you would have an idea where to look. But you could only find it by exploring the world. And the world was designed in way that exploring didn't felt frustrating. You couldn't get lost because every area felt unique. This made me truly immersed in the game world. Also the character progression felt like a true progression. At the start you were a weak nobody. Even a pack of two or three wolves could easily kill you. You were shit at everything. Most areas where simply to dangerous for you to explore. Compare that to The Witcher 3 where you were pretty much superman right from the beginng of the game, with a giant open world with not much meaningfull or interesting to discover. I travelled through the world on autopilot following a white line on the minmap.
Mateusz Mazur It kind of still does try to be a Ubisoft Open World game though. Think about it. You have lots of places by default which are already littering the map (question marks) yet you haven't even discovered them for yourself. So we take that option off since it is a thing then you come to find that every point of interest that litters the map is so small and insignificant and copy/paste that you really wonder why explore them at all. That is nothing like Gothic which I have gotten to play a bit. Really wish a modern version would be released though complete with full controller support, but that is me getting off topic. Gothic doesn't litter it's map with tons of the same old copy/paste areas in the same way. They have a lot of varying places that feel, for the most part, unique in some way. Also I would still argue that a layered dialogue system still completely stomps the much more limited four button prompt system like in The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3's open world design is very flawed no matter how you look at it though. Of course that isn't the only flaw the game has. It has plenty but that can be saved for a later discussion.
Gamer Singer the playable teaser is from a Spanish developer and not from Piranha Bytes, the german developer who made all gothic games. Everything I’ve seen sonder looks very generic and not much like the original experience. Gothic 1 and 2 are still great games and there are many graphic mods that make them look decent enough to still play them today! Actually I replay them almost every year 😂 just get gothic 1 and 2 on steam for a few bucks and I promise you will have a great time if you give it a chance! And don’t let the controls turn you off, they are weird at the beginning but working quite well after getting used to it. It’s intended to play with only keyboard, even if mouse is supported. I don’t really know about the English localization, maybe the dialogues aren’t great because it was developed in Germany and in the early 2000 dubbing wasn’t as great as it is now 😅
Why wait for Joseph Anderson? I only just discovered your channel and I'm happy to see you're actually doing a critique instead of just fawning over it. I love The Witcher 3, but I dislike how simplified it has become since The first Witcher, with mechanics like alchemy being all but stripped down to one button [herbs become useless after you brew all potions because you only have to brew them once, for example]. It's good to see someone criticize The Witcher 3's weaker points rather than just glossing over them. But regardless, I am loving the video thus far, and you've earned a subscription from me. Can't wait to watch the full Witcher retrospective and the isometric RPGs. Great work, keep it up :)
So you've played the first Witcher? Did you notice that this guys said the notice boards were a Far Cry ripoff, at the beginning of the video? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Witcher 1 still had notice boards and Witcher contracts. I'm pretty sure Far Cry had nothing to do with notice boards.
@@Mephilis78 yeah not gonna lie, he shat on this game for things that he complimented other games on. fallout 1, for example, he complimented that your skill choices will sometimes lead to inefficient builds, but they're YOUR build. witcher has the same thing. it didn't focus on balance, it instead simply focused on choice. i feel like he spent more time just repping an underdog style mentality to put controversial viewpoints into his video.
@@Mephilis78 he literally explained how it fits the Ubishit formula, not just Far Cry. He also explains how inexperienced CDPR were, hence why he says it feels like they're just chasing the trend. Why were you so hung up on this argument?
@@purvdragon-sensei except it doesn’t copy the Ubisoft formula, at all. This formula has been here since 2007 with Witcher 1, where it had no possible Ubisoft inspiration since Ubisoft was still making fairly original and less watered down games in that sense. Witcher uses a system that integrates this stuff with the main story, making it drastically different. CDPR may have been inexperienced, but if this is considered an Ubisoft formula then Ubisoft should be ashamed that an inexperienced company could make their own system before them on their very first big game lmao
The questionmark grind didnt even happen to me on the first playthrough because I usually just look at the questlog/journal and make my way to the next quest I think seems most attractive, making detours along the way when I see something interesting because I dont look much at the minimap. This is all about each persons approach to open world games. On the second run I went for 100% though...and I still have nightmares about the Skellige Sea.
I didn’t even realize there was an ‘All’ option on the map. It starts in ‘Default’, which lists no question marks, and makes no mention this can be altered. So the world felt alive and full of mysteries since the only things I found were things I stumbled across or through quests I received. Honestly glad I didn’t know about the all option. I just flipped over to it and there are a shitload of question marks left on the map. Just means I’ll have new experiences next playthrough, or that I just missed uninteresting stuff like treasure chests and bandit camps. I’ve actually only come across maybe 5 bandit camps and I’m around 150 hours in and in the middle of Blood and Wine. I did actually think it was weird that there were just random bandit camps that would pop up every 20 hours or so, so this makes a lot more sense really that it was more of a widespread thing. If I wasn’t travelling to a quest location and found something of interest, I didn’t find it. Probably would have felt way more tedious seeing all the markers. I did have a feeling there were more treasure locations but I found a couple dozen of them so that was enough for me as it was.
@@mandrews6282 Exactly, those criticisms are idiotic. You just need to keep the map on default. Changing it to all is a choice you make to avoid exploration.
I don't know if you missed it, but it is mentioned in the game that mengen and the witch hunters in Novigrad works directly for Radovid. They aid him both in the search for Phillipa Eilhart, as well as clearing the free city for mages and other magic users, who might fight against Radovid, when he moves in to take Novigrad, which he plans to do soon. And since Radovid hates sorceress to such an extent, he couldn't care less how many innocents he slaughters. The fact that the church grew so powerful in a year, shows how quickly religion and proganda can spread and cause fear, hate, prejudices etc. It has done a pretty good job mimicing how some real world "scare-campaigns" can cause paranoia.
One quest in witcher: Full story with strong connections to the world/surroundings, makes sense, possibly makes a tangible change in the world. One quest in skyrim: "I hate bears, kill them and bring pelts as proof"
Your point regarding being over-leveled and experience point scaling is pretty spot on. I finally got around to playing the Witcher 3, and so far this appears to be the most glaring issue. I'm surprised something so crucial to the game was swept under the rug by the devs.
@Wim Wow. I consider the main story relatively weak. Not bad but short and somewhat bland. I much prefer the Mass Effect story. I also preferred the Witcher 2 game and story. Btw i am not criticizing you, just noting how much ones "likes and dislikes" vary from person to person.
@Wim Ok. Now I get what you are saying however that is not what i meant with my comment. I actually believe the main storyline of finding Ciri etc is actually quite short. Or perhaps it looks that way in light of how big the Witcher 3 is. I might do a playthrough of just the absolute must to see how long it is. Might actually enjoy the game more too.
@Wim It sucks every day. I will wait for reviews and maybe even when it is cheaper. Maybe open world games are not for me. I would have been unhappy with the witcher 3 if i had paid the full price ($15 in my case). Even with ME3 terrible ending i still felt that it was worth the full price.
The best theory I’ve seen is that Ciri lives regardless, but that she does not seek you out after if you’ve made the wrong choices. The endings are more about Geralt than Ciri, as they should be.
Disagree a bit there. Ciri's fate *determines* what Geralt does in the end. If he thinks she's dead he goes on as a straight up suicide mission. I think it's more that it's a 50/50 split between them, much like the games main story itself-even if we spend more time with Geralt
@@marwansobhy7050 I dunno what build or whatever you had but no way the geralt i was using is going out to some mob of level 6 drowners and ghouls. On a serious note tho, I think it actually makes a cool theory if you’re able to accept the possibility of geralt surviving and ciri accepting the offer with nilfgaard but getting cold feet last minute and then running away to become a witcher. Also, it’s a nice retcon to have all the endings happening one after another instead of ciri’s independence as a character being undermined by having her fate tied to arbitrary dialogue choices geralt makes
I too disagree. Remember Ciri is still treated as a child with special powers all around her including Geralt by default. It’s about the choices you make which gives her ultimate confidence and acknowledge that she can take care of herself. Also remember, Ciri is still at early 20s and she’s just at step to enter the adult world where the parents has to make sure she’s well supported in her decisions
Couldn’t agree more on the exploration aspect. I’m sick and tired of games holding my hand. You would think with an open world this big that they would put emphasis on the exploration aspect of it. Like you stated in the video, you can’t even turn it off and play it that way, because you would have no idea where to, since you can’t depend on the NPC’s to tell you. Sure this isn’t a Witcher 3 issue and more of a modern gaming issue, where they think gamers are to dumb. What’s even the point of making your game “open world” if you’re going to have everything highlighted on the map. It really beats the purpose of exploring.This is why gamers appreciate BOTW’s exploration and it should be the standard going forward. Clearly that’s my main gripe with the game, sure it has other minor flaws, I found the world, the story and the characters to make up for it.
"Fighting enemies higher level than you is incredibly slow and difficult, if they are a substantially higher level than you." Once you learn the attack patterns, it's pretty easy to chip away at an enemy without getting hit (as long as it's 1-on-1), but even then it takes much too long to take down a very high level enemy because they just have so much more health than you. My second time through the game, I started the Master Armorers quest extremely early so I could fight an Archgriffin before I was supposed to. That allowed me to brew the Archgriffin Decoction, which allows you to deal percentages of your opponent's health, making it actually feasable to kill extremely high level enemies. Completing later-game areas like this was fun at first, but soon I realized it was pointless anyway, as the only real reward was gear that was too high-level for me to equip yet.
@@strangestecho5088 Yep. I also personally hate when no extra experience is given for defeating a higher level monster and also when monsters level with you even if only to a certain point. It defeats the purpose of improving. I know not all that applies to the Witcher 3 btw.
I know when it comes to other rpgs people like to complain about damage sponge issues at higher levels... Idk, it makes sense to me. You are continuously gaining HP as you level, more or less depending on choice. So wouldn't it also stand to reason that an enemy who reached a high level also would have similarly high HP? I mean if you are playing a role playing game, then the basic premise is that a high level enemy also started as low as you did and had to fight and train and quest etc to get to that level, just like you. That's the role playing perspective. Then there's the "I'm a gamer" perspective. It would say, it's just a set of numbers that was generated to be a damage sponge that can take me out in two hits. I feel like when people review games and talk about "damage sponge", they are deliberately taking themselves out of the game, the same as someone trying to exploit the game is deliberately taking themselves out of the game. I personally cannot think of a single game that doesn't have some kind of damage sponge going on (the exception being games like Call of Duty where every single player, and npc, is a glass cannon that does high damage and has hardly any resistance). This isn't directed at you, more just connecting some dots as to why I never had an issue with it and others do. It's similar with the two different ideas of how PVP should be handled in survival games, or even mmos to a lesser extent. Offline base raiding is absolutely viable in a game like Ark or Conan Exiles from a purely video game perspective, and griefing follows this logic as well. However, there is no reasonable way for a base to be completely filled with sleeping people who can't wake up to the sound of explosions, or dinosaurs etc, if the hypothetical world the developers tried to build existed. Sorry for the rambling.
@@LOTRFAN33 I can agree with that. Even from the roleplay perspective, if you have a dual with a master swordsman and you wear him down and defeat him, you'll still learn more than you would have defeating another novice.
And speaking of the HUD, yes it's extremely hard the first play! My 2nd and 3rd did not use it, and I was astounded how much more I KNEW about the world! Lake positions, road splits, shorelines, I used them all as reference points and I found myself flying down the road on Roach to each destination without needing the map. Highly recommend players give it a try, that minimap literally blinds you to what they created.
I love this channel so much! I just get the feeling it's going to blow up sooner rather than later,I love long game reviews I watch tons of them and you're by FAR my favorite!keep pumping out the great content:)
"The greatest things in life are also heavily flawed because to be truly great involves taking risks and pushing limits and exposing yourself to failure the greatness never come from palying it safe and focsing solely on minimizing flaws" Amazing quote
the stealing thing is clear enough, you can't steal in front of guards. it even puts up screen prompts to tell you this . stealing in front of NPC in houses is a bit odd but every game in the series has it . its just the guards react in this one .
There are places you can steal in front of guards though. You can loot things in front of nilfgardian soldiers or the barons men in villages in velen, and you can loot things inside crows perch in front of guards. Blood and wine also has nothing that counts as stealing, although that's partly because they stopped putting lootable containers outside in settlements but there are still places where you can loot things directly in front of guards and they don't react. As for the message that shows, i think i just loot things too fast to see it, but i guess that is kind of my own fault. Anyway its a small thing, but i didn't feel the inclusion of stealing added anything immersion wise and i don't really understand why houses and settlements were made lootable in the first place. There is plenty to loot out in the wilderness and even if npcs did react it doesn't fit Geralt's character in the first place to wander around looting peoples homes. But anyway, thanks for the comments. Its nice to see other people's opinions on the games and the things i say.
+NeverKnowsBest I'm just starting 3 again now I'll keep an eye out on how it works this time . I suppose as I found guards react early last play through and it tells you not to I maybe just don't try and steal in front of them as I can't recall getting away with it . nice set of critiques by the way .
"These points of interest may start becoming repetitive." So ... the first time I played, I took it upon myself to visit and exhaust every question mark on the map. I started to really realize how much of a mistake that was when I got to Skellige and found about fifty worthless smuggler's caches dotted all over the sea. I went and checked all of them to make sure, of course. What a waste of time ...
In fairness to them it’s pretty obvious after doing a few in Velen and Novigrad that they are just some wrecks with some stuff. It’s not like you were unfamiliar with them.
I did that too, but that’s more of our fault than the game’s. We’re not supposed to go after every marker, we’re supposed to stumble upon them while doing other things. That’s called good game design lmao
As much as I enjoy the roll-playing in TW3, I think the extent to which others do is largely a matter of taste. One of my friends was really put off by playing an established character. I really enjoyed having a deep, canonical backstory for the player character. The trade-off to this is more constrained character creation.
I agree. I like to have a character that has set lore background and motives. After playing all the souls games then playing a game like the Witcher you bond to Geralt so much more than anything in a create a character game.
I'm much more like your friend. Maybe it's because I'm a natural writer, but I love building/creating a character. This is what roleplaying _is _ for me. To create a character from a blank slate and play as if you are them. Think about what they would do in situations. Try your best to immerse yourself in the role. And it is this reason that I will always refer games like The Elder Scrolls over games like the Witcher. But I still love the Witcher series.
This is the best Witcher 3 video on UA-cam. I don't even feel the need to see Joseph Anderson's upcoming video, I don't see how it could possible be much better than this. Great job man, you've earned another sub.
I'm sure there will be some interesting things in Joseph's video when it eventually comes out. I find he usually has at least a few points in his videos that i've never heard mentioned by anyone else and the witcher 3 is such a big game that there's loads you could talk about. I greatly appreciate the compliment however, its very kind of you to say that.
Ok, I would like to mention some of my counter-arguments on your various comments during whole critique: - You do points of interest if you are interested in doing them. If not, don't do them then. Doing main quests followed by side quests give most experience anyway and there are more than enough loot in the locations quests send you to sustain your playthrough monetarily and gear upgrades-wise. - Quen is so heavily used, because it is the most useful sign to use in non-sign builds due to low sign intensity. Sign builds use Igni, Axii and Yrden as much as Quen if not more. - If you don't like changing oils so often, then wear Wolf gear for its' set bonus which let's you apply 3 oils to a sword which you can apply according to the most common monsters at your current area. Fixative skill also gives infinite charges to applied oils. - You can use potions, decoctions and oils in your inventory during combat. You can equip/unequip them(and bombs) too. You aren't limited to the ones you equipped before the start of combat which show on your quick access.
I really appreciate your approach to game reviewing. You understand how games are interpreted differently for different gamers, and always give a fair analysis.
I think the best part of blade oils is trying to predict what enemy you will be facing, based on quest details and location, before you actually encounter it, then applying what blade oil you think you'll need before you get there. That's how I played, and I found that it made that aspect more fun. It gave me a chance to use the knowledge I had been accumulating over the game, plus added some challenge if I guessed wrong, as I decided not to apply them in combat. Definitely valid criticism, but there are ways to keep it a little more fresh.
whad do you mean? witcher 3 is greatest game of all time denying it would be foolish since all the trustworthy professional game journalist wackos have given it 11/10. You obviously have a bad taste. and a bad opinion. go back to fortnite looser.
Whilst it has them it dosent change the fact it's an easy 11/10 every game has flaws but I forgive cdpr since they didn't take the piss with over priced expansions and added well over 20 hours of content for people without the dlc the first expansion alone is bigger than the witcher 2 in its entirety and often bigger than most games in general and that was a 10 pound dlc....
James Somogyi What are you on about? There’s a big difference between being respectful to the customers and making a quality game and content for said game. And the game having problems as a game, such as gameplay and design issues, which the Witcher 3 has by the boatloads. Learn the difference
Except so few Bethesda games ever actually succeeded or excelled in any areas, falling more into standard mediocrity that’s fun but average. The Witcher series (the books to games canon) is objectively one of the best fantasy stories you can find. The actual flaws with Witcher 2 and 3 lies almost solely with some combat and minor pacing issues in a couple parts. Everything else said in this supposed objective critique is his personal opinion projected as fact That’s why the game’s called a masterpiece. Not only is it part of one of the best fantasies ever written, but it’s objective flaws are few, to the point where the few who over-criticize are only able to do so based on their personal and often uncommon opinions. I don’t think this guy ever got that in any of his videos on this series
@@DavidHosey1 even though that's not true at all considering the fact that the entire second half of the game is so poorly written it's not even funny. I mean the completely ruined one of my favorite characters from the books and from the first half of the game by turning him into a giant idiot after you assassinate radovid. Plus the fact that they stupidly change the allegory for climate change into some stupid magical entity and turn ciri into a cliche Chosen One that has to save the world even though with the books it's her son that is destined to save the world which is why who her owned father wants to marry her. Then there's that BS of making triss a romance option even though it's completely out of character for geralt since he is madly in love with Yennifer who is basically his soulmate. Hell it makes even less send considering he could choose to have girl just forgive her for completely taking advantage of his amnesia just so she can trick him into "loving" her. It's basically completely out of character for Siri to be just okay with that s*** considering what triss did to her
@@DavidHosey1 how old are you, because daggerfall and morrowind were my shit and really great even with how broken daggerfall was lol, personally the witcher books are alright but they're not the greatest fantasy, i read it in english but also the last wish in swedish so i dont think it's just the notoriously bad english translation, in fact i thought they were pretty similar in quality
@@DavidHosey1Whenever you claim your opinion on a series as fact ("The Witcher is objectively one of the best fantasy stories!!") your argument loses validity.
It's really interesting how much I love this game despite these issues. Especially the Witcher senses thing I think that one is the only one that truly annoys me. They spent so much time writing these interesting complicated scenarios but rarely are u allowed to work anything out yourself. I don't think it would be hard to implement and Geralt could still narate is all. It's as you say, it doesn't even need to be hard, just more interactive sometimes.
Personally I like that you're always overleveled, in the books most fights geralt takes are over in seconds because he's skilled enough to mow down most people he gets in a fight with, and being overleveled made combat feel like how Geralt is portrayed in the books, a highly trained, very deadly fighter who doesn't have problems fighting groups of enemies and defeating them in seconds
As I do enjoy a comprehensive critique for a game that typically gets a blind praise in many respects; I don't think I've heard so many subjective opinions stated as an objective fact in my life.
Honestly. This guy talked less about why the Witcher 3 has become a masterpiece and more just talked about his personal thoughts on it. Less of a critique video and more of a complaint video
I agree. I noticed that some of the same criticisms were not leveled at other games by the same critic. Skyrim has a quest compass and is very shallow in many respects, but there are a couple of places here where Witcher 3 is compared unfavorably to Skyrim. It’s not that the criticism is unfair, it’s more like he has 30 minutes to cover the dozens of flaws with Fallout 4 so each one sounds really minor, but for Witcher 3 he devotes the same amount of time to far fewer problems, so it makes those problems sound far worse.
Maybe one the most in depth video I ever seen for this game. You are mostly right in everything you said. In the end, the flaws don't weight much compared with everything else, and it will always be one of my favorite games of all time.
Personally, I feel the difference between the Dandelion we get in witcher 3 and the older, wiser sounding narrator is explained in the books. In the books, Dandelion starts taking notes about what happens around him, with the intention of publishing them as his memoirs "half a century of poetry", which he intends to edit and publish in his old age. There are some sections of the books that imply, at least to me, that most of if not all the stories in the books are taken directly from Dandelion's memiors. Therefore, to me, it makes sense that the narrator is an older, wiser sounding Dandelion. He's telling stories from his younger years.
Very fair review. Thanks to all the “best game ever” hype, I was expecting... well, the best game ever. What I discovered was what you describe: an open world RPG which gets a number of open world and RPG elements badly wrong, but which still manages to be great on account of the things it gets resoundingly right. Among those things, Gwent deserves a special mention. I had so much fun playing Gwent that returning to the main game felt like a slight disappointment.
Yeah that's pretty much how I felt about it. You'll never catch me saying that The Witcher 3 is a bad game and I think it well deserved its GotY, but no it's not the best RPG I have ever played, not even close. As RPGs I would rate Dragon Age Origins, Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, NieR Automata, the first two Mass Effects, Dragon Quest XI and Fallout New Vegas well above The Witcher 3, and that's just this decade. I liked The Witcher 3 more than Skyrim and the last two Dragon Ages though.
Nah, it's more like him and matthewmathosis. It's funny you mention that joseph dude, since he still can't sh*t out his w3 video after 2.5 years of 'making' it
So instead of a movie, I watched a 2 hour long Witcher 3 critique lol :-D But seriously now, this video is a f.... masterpiece. You managed to speak about the negatives without making the game look like trash and to talk about the positives without being fanboyish (although we all gathered that you ARE a Witcher fan :) ), all that in a very intelligent, thoughtful and researched way.
The world and lore is something special. The characters are written so well you feel as if you know them especially if you've played all three witchers. Each game improves 10 fold.
The most fun I had was Blood and Wine. I played it severely under-leveled and it was amazing; difficult, rewarding, immersive. That meant, of course, by the time I got to Hearts of Stone... yeah.
No matter what you think of this game, it's amazing how cdpr, a relatively decent sized studio at the time of witcher 3's release, created one of the biggest and most highly rated games of all time (or at least in the past 20 years in this industry). Proves that it's not only huge companies like valve, blizzard, bungie, etc that can create these huge industry wide known games now. Smaller and less well known studios also have a chance at getting the industry's attention
You can actually save the children and not get the Counts wife killed. I was exploring all round and accidentally found the spirit before I met the Crones which will break the chain of events and allow basically the best ending.
The loot for me was the saddest part, I would hunt down a almost mythical sword, used by powerful ancients aaaaaaand my store bought sword is better in everyway possible besides it's aesthetic looks
I consider the Witcher 3 the best game ever made. I wrote the next paragraph before you said remove ? from the map. I'm guessing you didn't know the remove undiscovered points of interest from the minimap removes them from the main map as well giving you a blank slate. You can only have them show up when discovered or never show up at all. When I started the game I went into the HUD and turned off almost everything. I did the major missions like the Witcher contracts and the treasure hunts. While on the way to those locations I explored the major landmarks on the map. This ended up being my favorite open world to explore xD. I am the only one who used the map markers to mark high level monster locations that looked to be guarding good things because I had turned map markers off. My wife though turns the markers on. She gets lost much easier and likes the extra direction. Neither of us removed the mini map. I always used the main map to find the direction of the main quest objective so I figured if i'm just going to open it i'll leave the mini map on. As for your roleplaying comments. When doing the pen and paper stuff I always play pre-made characters. I know their general attitudes then I role play as how I think they would behave or grow based around what I know about the character. This isn't not roleplaying and The Witcher 3 gives you a set template and I think does a good job of giving some varied options that are realistic to the character given. I hate when i'm roleplaying with somebody and they ignore their alignment or just do what they want ignoring the character they are supposed to be. They can also bother me with extreme stupidity where the DM has to cut a lot of slack and make things work when it never should. So i'm not against the sticker rules for how Geralt can lead the story. I do think in the witcher 3 the always full xp mod dramatically improves the game. And I agree also that the detective work should have been made much harder... I would remove the yellow circles and just have you move to the quest area and have it vanish saying find evidence. No circle on the map saying it's in this tiny area. If you go way too far away it gives you the return to the quest location. And make the witcher senses only show up at a much closer distance so you need to look much closer. Items I don't think i'm ever just in the witcher gear. It's good but it's not the best and a lot of the stats are a waste. I always find gear that is better in someway and only find myself in witcher gear near the second half when it's no longer the base version. I always find myself in the nilfgaardian armor and the undvik armor but sometimes I avoid upgrading to keep a good unified look. The over leveling thing is a problem but crafting and shops are too good at gearing you up. The quest items are good if you avoid the other 2. Not as bad as skyrim with it's crafted gear but still a problem. I would make quest rewards much better until late game when crafting overtakes it. There isn't many quest item rewards so idk why they aren't better. The combat is what I am least impressed with. I don't dislike the set up of the skills or feel that the heavy attack is too underpowerd. But I would make dodge, heavy, and light attack take stamina like the souls games. Give multiple light attacks a bigger stamina take away than 1 good heavy so you may get slightly more damage but have less stamina if you choose light attacks. You wouldn't be able to spam attacks nonstop if dodge became unusable momentarily if you over extended. Make timed block a little bit harder to do and use less stamina than dodging. Also make it work on more monsters on all but the big telegraphed attacks. It's all too late though and I feel they are very minor. Many things can be fixed with mods but we'll have to wait for the next game and see how they improve their general game mechanics. *edited for clarity and to fix some of my countless errors*
In regards to your combat criticisms, I would like to suggest installing the Witcher 3 Enhanced mod, found on the Nexus. It really, REALLY, makes the game a different animal.
combat is the most dull part. You have absolutely no choice in combat you will be doing the same thing to a particular monster at the end of the game what you were doing in the begining of the game. Zero variety as compared to other RPGs. Also playing as a premade character is your choice so that doesnot make witcher 3 greatest because many people like me like playing with their own characters with different fields like necromancer or a wizard or warrior etc. Its good that you write "I consider" witcher to be greatest because that is completely your subjective opinion and that doesnot make the game a factual masterpiece :)
Lol, i didn't put much attention to notice boards and I didn't even try to go to every question mark, and I didn't do many of those repetitive quests, seems like I played the game in the correct way without knowing.
seems like you havent played the game the way it meant to be played and only followed the main quest. the game has some repetitive elements but it doesnt mean all side quests are bad and uninteresting.
I don't have the game perfectly fresh in mind, but I really appreciate the improvements in W3 vs 1 and 2 and while some things are not optimal, I really can't see how they would've done them better. In W1, you had 2 quick slots for potions and you had to open the inventory to consume food for health regen and use additional potions. In W2, you had 1 quickslot for bombs/knives. In W3, you have 4 quick slots for potions, automatically stocking with food once Swallow is depleted (which is a God send), 2 quick slots for bombs, a shortcut for crossbows AND a quickslot for a special item. It's a massive improvement. Given how you took damage taking potions in 1 or they expired during a cutscenes or how you had to meditate to take 1-4 potions in W2 to having them imediate in W3 is again a noticeable improvement. Combat. I loved the fact there were 6 individual styles in W1, that all have upgrade paths with new animations. It was a noticeable downgrade in W2 when combat got downgrade to just 2 styles, which was kept for W3 as well. Though I'm not perfectly sure now, I think W3 DOES HAVE different animations (and implicetely, stances) for the steel and silver sword. So the combat doesn't look and feel identical when you're fighting humans vs fighting monsters. It worked well in W2 given how the game was structured, though it would've been nice if they brought it back in W3. However, however you put it, in a game that's 200+ hours for 1 playthrough, any kind of combat system they would've used would become repetitive eventually. I finally got bored of it close to the end of the main story. Got interested again with some of the new stuff in Hearts of Stone and got bored again of the combat in Blood and Wine. But again, it's a huge game. So I find that inevitable. Playing all the Witcher games on (Very) Hard, I find using oils vital. Even on W3, în Deathmarch (especially with Level Scaling on), while it's possible to not use oils, I find that a massive handicap. Everything is simply more tedious and excessively difficult for no good reason. The Baron quest. I dunno why everyone is saying this (except for my game bugging out maybe but I doubt), I freed the spirit, which did murder the village HOWEVER the Barron's wife never died on my playthrough. Personally, I consider W3 having just 3 major flaws. 1) There is no continuation of the Yorveth/Saskia path of W2 in W3. Absolutely nothing. Not even a mention. The devs said how they ran out of time and instead of doing something half assed, they decided to not included anything at all. This saddened me immensely, given that was my W2 save import. 2) The huge amount of question marks in the waters of Skelliga, with all of them being completely pointless, was another negative. It was the only thing in W3 that felt to me like a waste of time and overall a poor design decision. 3) Not a major pain point for me but I did feel it and I understand why people have a problem with it. It Witcher is a defined character template and a skill tree can only offer so much. And again, like W1 and W2, W3 doesn't offer so much new in its skill tree besides passive buffs. A few new moves here and there and some variations on the signs, but that's about it. Which is dissapointing. If W3 kept the 6 different styles from it would've been so much better.
There are lots of flaws in witcher 3, many popular aspects of gaming in witcher 3 is slightly above average. Some people just leave it after few hours and thats legit but with patience, you witness some exceptional marvel. Overall, it's greatest RPG ever made...for me and many. Why? I can't articulate it precisely but its perhaps because its not a game you play but a world and story/stories you live and experience & music, world building, attention to details, choices and consequences and many other aspects are perfectly aligned. Perhaps.
You're channel is severely underrated my friend. I really appreciate your fair critiques, there are too much biased or plain ignorant opinions on youtube. Also thank you for the work you put into this, I love 1 hour+ reviews.
The part about all the question marks on the map being daunting was really interesting. I’m 150 hours into my first playthrough right now, and in the middle of Blood and Wine. Not sure if they changed things since this vid but I had no idea you could show question marks on the map. It starts in ‘Default’ map mode, which excludes all of these and at no point does the game mention you can alter this. I just now checked and I do see you can select an ‘All’ option, and there are a shitload of question marks on my maps now. This probably would have lessened this playthrough to be honest. Instead, without them marked, I only went to the ones I was in proximity of, which weren’t a ton, and I navigated the world through regular exploration or through quests I came upon. Much better experience I think as if I saw all those question marks I would have run around and got off course real quick. Instead I’m having a blast and the world feels alive and full of mystery as I don’t see anything really on my map until I find it myself.
Cool! When I played, I remember seeing them everywhere by default, on the og PS4 version. Noticed the same on PC recently. Didn't bother me though as I come from AC. But glad that it's lack of presence improved the experience to you !
I am half way but I cannot resist to comment now... I did my 1st play in death march. And in this mode, you HAVE TO prepare for fight. Get the proper oils, sign, and potion (like a black blood for blood drinking monster and so on). This is the main attraction of the game and its actual strongest rpg aspect. I agree with many things you said but here I cannot. The real issue is that this game Has to be played in death march from the 1st run. Otherwise you know everything and you are not keen to discover or be amazed by the bestiary and so on. And this is to me the biggest design flaw as normal and difficult difficulties are just useless... One more thing 48:23 LMAO
Not everyone is skilled enough to take death march and most would get discouraged immediately. Having different difficulty options just makes it more accessible. Yes death march is the way to go for rpg fans like myself. But not for everyone.
@@anitelufalemei4200 Exactly! For a game like this, where story takes center stage compared to combat, the multiple difficulty modes are nice. Less skilled players can get invested in the story without being discouraged by difficult combat. Also, I personally feel like Blood and Broken Bones is the most balanced difficulty setting. Death March enemies are a bit too tanky on your first playthrough, but BaBB combat feels just lethal enough to keep you on your toes. BaBB heavily rewards preparation for fights, but it doesn't make preparation feel necessary, so I only really need to apply oils/decoctions/etc for bosses, contract monsters, and particularly difficult fights, which makes more sense to me than preparing for every single monster encounter. Death March is still fun, but the fights seem to drag on for a bit too long unless you specialize your character into a certain build (signs, alchemy, or melee). I prefer BaBB since it lets me use many different techniques in combat without feeling like I have to commit to just one. Also, on Death March, human enemies feel like they do way more damage and are way more resilient than you, which is weird since you're supposed to be a magically mutated superhuman.
The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece unless you happen to enjoy indulging in amphetamines. 200 hours later you realize 70% of the game was just compulsively doing copypasta sidequests that added nothing except making you invincible by the time you got around to the main story...
I think that the Eternal Flame is more of a look at Christianity from the perspective of the Pagans. The witch hunters' burning and oppression are more akin to the forced conversions of the old days then just the idea of religion bad. Most people probably don't realise that probably and just write it off as CD not liking religion. Also Poland has one of the most strict laws on religion that it borders on oppression to anything but Catholicism. A great example of what I'm talking about is Nergal, the frontman of Behemoth and a known Satanist. There are plenty of articles and interviews of him to prove my point. P.s. like your video, love to see more content like this. Thumbs up and subscribing.
You should know about the reasons as to why 1) Mages are hated in the north, 2) Why Humans hate non-humans (especially elves) to realize why the eternal flame does such things.
I've only started watching this (I'm about 7 minutes in), but I love it. I'm researching critiques for my own Witcher 3 video, and so far you've made multiple points I needed to write down. I can tell I'm going to find what you have to say through the whole video very interesting. I appreciate your approach :)
Open world: Ability to explore the Northern Realms, Skellige Isle, Toussaint if you have blood and wine Role Playing: Role playing as, you know, the main character Geralt of fucking Rivia. Does that answer your question?
@@hobomisanthropus2414 uhh the open worlds of Velen, White Orchard, Oxenfurt, Novigrad, Skellige, Kaer Morhen, Vizima, and Toussaint, and the role playing of building your character with a fairly wide array of sword, sign, alchemy, and misc abilities while also choosing what to do in the branching narrative of the game. You know, playing the role of Geralt? Damn if you don’t even know this much about the game, it really puts into perspective what you types of people who over-criticize and hate on this game are like
I'm loving the game currently, and I agree with you completely. I started to get burned out trying to get all points of interest done, and since I'm playing a blade oil based build I feel like I have to explore everything or I may miss a blade oil recipe, guess I'll start googling them from now on, I really want to finish the game and don't want to get bored out of it. Points of interest did give me a break though from the boring quests related to Dandelion, gosh, that sht takes yeaaaaaaaars
you can make an adrenaline/alchemy build with 4 dechocotions and flood of anger and you can use all signs at max power with 3 adrenaline points and have permanent oils on weps, theat makes potions and oils important, and the combat/sing fun because you dont need to put points in sign.
Something strange has happened in video games, where what we call MAPS aren't maps at all, they are GPS systems. A MAP is something you reference against your surroundings, you take what is on the MAP interpret it and then navigate to your destination. A GPS on the other hand shows your exact location at all times, tells you all the info (how far away your destination is,...) and tells you exactly where to turn to get you to where you are going. Both lead to a completely different experience, interaction with the game. Wish more games would understand this.
I don't think limited role-play is bad when it comes to a character that's based on something that's already been established, it does its role well, but like you mention its not a role you create it is a role you follow and observe and experience.
I still don't understand where people are coming from when they say it isn't a masterpiece. A masterpiece doesn't mean it has to be perfect. The gestalt of the thing just needs to be a masterclass in some aspect. In this case, I think this game is a great exemplar of how to make a game out of a book series, while also giving it its own identity. If this doesn't qualify as a masterpiece, then I don't really understand what would. I probably just don't understand what their definition of a masterpiece is.
@@Aethelhald So, your definition of a masterpiece includes some kind of threshold of problem count that excludes a piece from consideration? Interesting. So, would you say it's a masterpiece now that many issues and bugs were fixed through patching, or would you say it's a masterpiece with certain mods that fix certain issues? I'm curious to know where your threshold is.
I think its very subjective in considering anything to be masterpiece, It might be masterpiece for you but for me its far from it. I had too many problems with this game. But then I am very different kind of gamer than you so its totally fine. But you cannot expect literally everyone to consider any game a masterpiece let alone witcher 3
@@Aethelhald Eh, I agree with all of the criticisms in this video and even have more of my own, but I would still say it's valid to call it a masterpiece. This game does enough things extraordinarily well and leaves such a strong impression that I think it warrants that title. When you look at other rpgs considered masterpieces, they all have deep flaws as well.
@@yashkaushik6116 I'm coming at it from a perspective similar to Arsal's here. I'm evaluating it similar to how one would evaluate art pieces. Many paintings are considered masterpieces even though plenty of flaws would be evident. Usually this is either due to the painter being considered a master, or the work being particularly impressive in some way. And I mean impressive in the literal sense, as in it leaves a great impression on the viewer (player in this case). I can see how a player may not fully experience the game if they can't get past the game mechanic issues. However, anyone who fully experiences the game, I can't see how the world-building and presentation wouldn't be considered a masterclass in book-to-game adaptation and wouldn't leave a deep impression. In my opinion, this would be THE game I would point to for this process, even given it's mechanical issues.
I only discovered your channel recently but I have to say you make very thought provoking videos about different games that I never thought about myself. Keep up the good work bro.
well i couldn't complain about the "detective " thing. it's more like investigation but anyway ... they are supposed to be easy because they are easy if you have all the mutations from trial of the grasses + additional second trial of mutagens which only Geralt undertake and more specific only Geralt survives. It makes sense and it's not an issue because when you are a witcher - it's normal to be abnormal - for example superhuman eyes, super strong senses , sense of smell , superhuman hearing, everything so it IS logical for the detective jobs to be easy cause you just have so much more advantages thanks the mutations.
Witcher 3 is a masterpiece not because it's flawless, but because we all still talking about it in 2020 despite it's flaws. It left a powerful impression on players and skyrocket CDP red to a worldwide recognized name for a reason.
I've actually done all the Skeillege points of interest and it was great just taking in the great scenery and music and stopping at some islands and looking around idk I remember having a great time
Wind Waker has same kind of water chests, but they don't bother me the slightest, since they are optional and contain rupees and even some fun stuff like maps etc.
I would play the hell out of Witcher 4 with Ciri as main role, just the few times you're given control over her in W3 feels amazing and special even without the signs. I'm sure she would be good successor on the series and her story is already built up into the story.
The first 3 minutes of this video had more poignant dialog about things we love having flaws and taking risks than most movies. Your writing if great and your delivery of the writing drove to leave my second comment on a youtube video in my live.
I am fully agreed with the conclusion of this video. Yes, looting the houses is stupid, yes, some moments or quest or controls or bugs are pretty bad. My major problem were the faces. 3 fucking faces for all NPCs in the world! I could forgive that to warhorse, but wtf is the problem for cd project to paint a hundred or something faces? But still I love this game so much and this characters have their little place in my heart now and I am grateful to developers for their job
I am a huge fan of the witcher games - especially the witcher 3, and I agree to some of your critiques, but I don't play that game as an "Ubisoft player" would. You never played the sign-alchemie build? :D It is so much fun imho. And I agree this is no real RPG, it is pretty linear - you play Geralt and he is stubborn with a special philosophy. The magic comes when you read the books and feel the heart the developers put into random NPCs. You can feel that the developers loved Sapowskis book and tried to put their heart into it. I love that and I regularly get lost into this small details, journals and ingame books that are enjoyable to read (looking at you, Skyrim :D). And I agree with you - this world is dark, unfair af, this game messes with the player and I love it so much I can't stop replaying it. There is a youtuber that makes videos from of a lot of hidden details after years of playing (xletalis - you are welcome) and I admire this game, that this is possible with this game. What I also love about it, is that the obvious good ending always has a bad taste and the good (rewarding) ending is sometimes the morally worst. I enjoy that so much that this game will make you cry at some points. But you are right, in case of fighting and the roleplay aspect this game is not the best game. To the white frost - there is a nice speculation in fandome if you have the bad ending and assumably ciri died stopping the white frost, you have the ending where you kill the last crown. just have a look at the magic tapestry that the crown made. There is a bird flying away from the tower (of the swallow) on it. Maybe the white frost is a theme that cdpr left open on purpose and if we get some Ciri-related content in Witcher "4", it could be more about the white frost. Or this is the consistent topic in the witcher verse. I mean you had the same problem at the end of witcher 1, where you could assume that the little guy you left at triss/shani is the same as the antagonist and he tried to stop the white frost and failed where Ciri succeded. Normally I don't like the deus ex machina ending but I am still curious if they want to reuse it as a mysterious, world-theatening topic in this witcher-verse. I agree with Eredin though - you don't understand him if you did not read the books. They should have elaborated this ingame and have me the option to hate Avallach more openly :D (but Ciri didn't tell Geralt what Avallch did, so well - he is the unknowing father).
I love witcher 3 mostly as an exploration game and for having well written side characters You are right about the rpg elements though the gearing is easy and boring and its too easy to make broken builds even if you put constraints on yourself like never using quin
You know, when I first started the video (like the first minute) I was concerned this would be a video being critical for be sake of being critical, like a lot of critiques of universally praised games are. But, after hearing all of your points, positive and negative, I can say this could be the most balanced review of this game I’ve ever seen. It’s honest and critical, but none of the criticism is unjustified, and the praise is similar. Good job mate
Stanners it was trash. First thing he said was the Witcher 3 is not an rpg. So all these other critics are lying and this shitty UA-cam channel is better? Geta grip. He can’t even speak properly. No wonder he has no subscribers.
@@anitelufalemei4200 the witcher 3 isnt an RPG.... the term RPG has been watered down by the streamlining of rpg mechanics for consoles. There is no roleplaying that is possible in the witcher. That doesnt mean it's a bad game, it's a fantastic game, one of the best I've played, but that doesnt mean it's good at being an RPG. His criticisms were all fair, and he still really loves the game. Dont let your love/fanboyism keep you from thinking critically or lashing out before watching the full video:(
@Blizard fan I define an RPG as a game that lets you create a character and effectively playthrough the game as that character. I take the name very literal, Role-playing-game. A game that lets you play the role of any character you want and adjusts the game world accordingly and gives you sufficient options to do so. I'd consider skyrim more of an RPG than the witcher 3 personally. The witcher 3 has more narrative choice, but not choice in your character. I could be a lowlife thief in skyrim and complete the thiefs guild, be a psychotic orc mage on a quest for all daedric artifacts, etc. That style of RPG is what i consider "true RPG" for lack of a better term, i know its pretentious.
About the last part.. I understand Dykstra is a likeable characther but hhats from the player perspective. He proved time and time again that he can't be trusted and Gerald knows that. Also i belive Nilfgards victory was iminent regardless who you wanted to win. Gerald may be able to tip the balance a bit but hes 1 man, not an army. Plus " If i have to choise between evil and a lesser evil i'd rather not choise at all " Just my take on the subject...
25:09 - Lol, look at how much that enemy's character model changed the second it got cut in half. Had to watch it a few times over but the enemy goes from being shirtless with a helmet on, to suddenly wearing a dark brown long sleeved robe and the helmet just completely vanishes in 1 frame hahah. Talk about breaking the immersion when your enemies transmute into someone else with different clothing on upon being cut in half...
I did admittedly also get quite lucky when it came to the Red Baron's questline. I did end up taking the path in which his wife dies, and when I returned to his castle to talk with him, it was during the night, and also during a storm. Seeing him there at the end hit me for maximum effect and I don't think I'll ever forget the image.
what a great comprehensive review, i loved it. Most of your points surprised me at first, im too used to people blindly praising or hating on this game as u said. But after thinking about it I clearly remember feeling/thinking ~ the same way while playing, so i can only humbly agree. xD made me want to play it again though. ^^
The best way to play the game is with the Friendly HUD mod. You disable the hud and then you set keybinds that you hold to show parts of the hud. I have mine set up so MOUSE4 shows the left side of the hud (health and consumables) and MOUSE5 shows the right side (map and quests). The mod will automatically show the hud when in combat or when you have a debuff so this only applies for when you are out of combat. This may take a couple minutes to set up but you get the best of both worlds. You get an immersive experience without HUD and you can always toggle it easily when you want.
I'm sorry, but I want to disagree about the witcher 3 not having a great storyline. It's not your story. You're a side character in ciri's story, and a bit player in the world's story. The side quests are all beautifully meaningless. Finding your own meaning along the way is part of it. It's so much like life. The only thing that really matters is your daughter and doing right by her. The end of our journeys aren't always going to be happy or perfectly satisfying. It's up to us to find the meaning in ourselves. Your video making skills are absolutely amazing by the way. You made a 10/10 Video, A 15/10 Critique, & you have my like and subscribe.
I know this is way late and you're unlikely to read this at this point but I just wanted to comment a bit about your appraisal of the game's final story beats. From the perspective of someone who didn't read the books (until after I finished TW3), since you were stating that you felt that you thought people in my situation wouldn't find it satisfying, too confusing or as a bit of a deus ex machina. For the most part, by the way, I agree with your criticisms of the game up until this point. Especially about the RPG mechanics, the minimap, and the TERRIBLE forced choice with Djikstra and Roche (because I DID play The Witcher 2 prior to TW3 and went down the Roche path all those years ago - Roche is a total bro and there is less than zero chance of abandoning him no matter what [and it would have been a lot better if Iorveth was in the game as an alternative solution here since he wouldn't have factored into Djikstra's logic since he has no interest in restoring Temeria]). For me, the major frame of reference going into The Witcher 3 was Mass Effect, and particularly Mass Effect 3 and how they completely botched that ending. The biggest problem with that series was how Bioware had built up the Reapers into completely unstoppable Cthulu Robots that forced them into a corner of going with the terrible and blunt Deus Ex Machina they did. After factoring in my memories of TW2 and the build-up they get through 85% of TW3, I was extremely concerned that the game was going to have the same problem with The Wild Hunt. They were built up to be this basically unstoppable force, and after the battle at Kaer Morhen fails to put any real dent into their force the dread that the conclusion was going to be as bad as ME3's was palpable for me when I first played the game. I was having flashbacks to the 70% mark of ME3 where you watch the Asari homeworld burn, with the me as the player futile to stop the damage of these guys despite all the preparations and effort of our characters. So when the last chunk of the game focused on deconstructing the Wild Hunt into something far more mortal (though still obviously powerful) so that they would NOT be the all powerful force that couldn't be defeated and would cause a terrible Deus Ex Machina into the story, I was actually *very* relieved. All the stuff about them being dimension hopping dark elves was - to me - a great way to prevent the Reaper problem while still allowing for a compelling threat that required getting even "the bad guys" of Nilfgaard onto your side (if only temporarily) to defeat in a very EARNED climax. I can understand now, after having read the books, why this wouldn't seem as compelling to you, and how you could get the impression that non-book readers might get confused or think it's all out of left field. Since you knew all the backstory going into it. But I can assure you, I (and others I've spoken to about the game who only ever played TW3) that I (and we) was able to follow it all, and didn't find it to be a problem. Similarly, with Ciri and the White Frost - eh. I always felt that this element was handled pretty appropriately. Ciri's almost a deity in the story, and she's built up as this one true force of positive destiny in a world where generally destiny doesn't really seem to either work out well if at all. Or I guess one way of putting it is - she's built up to serve the very specific function of confronting this one great threat well enough that it also felt very earned to me in the game's second cutscene only climax 9similar in concept to Neo from the Matrix, Ciri was designed for the outcome that was coming, which can feel contrived if not handled properly but I felt was done so in the game). The concept of her character being completely OP even within the world's rules is well established and as with other completely OP characters in their own universes (such as say, Superman) it makes sense to me that the real conflict that draws interest is going to be more about her internal struggle. CDProjekt hit that beat well as far as I'm concerned, and by keeping the details fairly vague it also worked for me since, well, for the most part we as the player are primarily supposed to be coming from Geralt's perspective in the game and Ciri is given enough mystery to allow for just a little bit more. (it also probably doesn't hurt that I got the "best" ending vis a vis Ciri on my first and only [so far] playthrough, which leaves a better taste in the metaphorical mouth than the really depressing bad ending some players got - I have no doubt that the feel-good emotional high of that which followed helped to ameliorate any issues I might have had in the moment if I spent time to think about it) Ultimately, at the time of finishing the game I felt the ending to everything was literally best part of the whole story, and it put a great button on the the epic that had just been played. I can see how if you had issues with it, it can cause someone to think that the story *isn't* great, since SO much of the importance of any story lies in how it concludes. But frankly, after having read the books now, I feel CDProjekt actually managed to conclude the Witcher saga better than Sapkowski actually did. There NEEDED to be a confrontation with all the talk of Ciri and "DESTINY" on the scale shown in TW3, and that's what was delivered in the game. I get that Sapkowski wanted to do what he does best and mess with fables in a wry way, but the end of her story in the novels as basically being the implied reason for the Galahad of Arthurian legend to ascend to "heaven" and/or being the "true" Holy Grail in his tale is just . . . cheeky to me, and doesn't deliver on the long-in-the-making payoff of her grand character arc about making her own choices in life and not being a tool (or a womb) for someone else. She had to make the purposeful, self-motivated choice to embrace destiny and live up to it all if she was ever going to be free of it. Her just world-hopping away into someone else's story feels immature to me. Again, overall I think you've done fine work here (and with this series, which I binged today on a lazy day off). Just wanted to put forth a different perspective on this particular topic.
So glad on PC I could just hop on the developer console and use slow(2) and slow(4) to increase game speed while doing the undiscovered locations.. all of the Skellige busywork done in 2 hours. Never had to use Swallow either, just get Gourmet for all your healing needs.
You are so far the only critic that mentions how the minimap draws away your eyes from the beautiful world. Too many games do that and it's sad to see how nobody navigates by looking at landmarks and tall buildings but instead stares down a very unhistoric/un-fantasy GPS system.
Most of this I agree on, but I cant say I'm with you on the combat mechanics. Blade Oils are nice mix bonus damage and an impetus to gather and use alchemy - my only gripe is that it would've been nice to have a second quick menu to select them from. I think dodging/rolling works fine, and rolls are still useful for quickly gaining space in groups. And quen is only OP in big, single fights. It's a buffer for tough encounters, play against groups of foes or keep slamming your face into an opponent without letting it recharge, and it'll do you little good. It's all just opinion though, always appreciate how you support your views.
The Baron's guards at that Inn, I decided to let them live, then heard the conversation they had immediately after when they sat down... Killed them straight away after that and will never let them live on any playthrough.
Same! And if you listen to the guys outside, they're all horrible. My first playthrough, I thought killing them would be like fighting soldiers, so I didn't. During my third playthrough, I went after the guys outside first, which has the 3 from inside the inn come outside and fight you too. It makes your arrival at Crows Perch quite different!
Here is the thing: there is an option to have enemy level scale with the player. For most of my playthrough, I really liked playing that way. It kept all the end encounters feeling engageing. EXCEPT in the quest where you have to go through the sewers with Triss, and you get swarmed by a thousand level 50 mice. I died to those damn mice more than any other enemy in the game.
I love W3, I've finished it twice. But the quest design where you press a button and Geralt does things for you, and you can't even think for yourself because Geralt tells you what to do in his monologue, made me so disappointed that I paused playing for a couple of months during the first play-through. It was so hard to find any mention of this issue anywhere that I thought I'm alone thinking like that.
I'm not sure if someone has already said this, but the situation in novigrad is so bad because novigrad is in redania and all trust for mages has been lost due to the events in witcher 2 with the lodge of sorceresses destroying what little trust was left between mages and the kings that remain. To the rest of the world the lodge was responsible for all of letho's actions im the service of nilfgaard. Actions that have shattered the northern kingdom's defenses and allowed nilfgaard to make waaaay more progress taking over temeria than they might have otherwise. Radovid and the church, which is centered in novigrad both spread this information like the plague among the populace to destroy the people's faith in mages, which had already never really recovered from the events in the books, namely thanedd. That's why it's so bad in novigrad for mages. The witchhunters and the church of the eternal fire have ALWAYS been against nonhumans, they've only been emboldened by lumping them in along with the mages for not being normal.
Martin Myggestik There is a lot of problems so I seriously doubt it fixes everything as some things like Skyrim can't be fixed unless you remodel and remake the game completely from the ground up.
Funny thing about crossbow is: it's actually not your anti-air but anti-submarine weapon
Cadogantes Those damn kgb agents in witcher 3
Lmfao. Love how monsters that normally kick the snot out of you outside of their element get one-banged in their element
Crossbows are extremely effective against aerial opponents, you have to time it right tho.
Chad Reno or just aard them
greenthunder1000 I always use Aard, so much easier.
There’s also that siren horn that grounds them.
Something I love about The Witcher 3 is that quest just exist in the game, they don't spawn only after picking them up. So you may stumble upon a monster, kill it, and after you visit the nearest town you find out it was actually a contract.
Exactly
Makes the world feel even more real
One of the main reasons why Fallout: New Vegas is regarded so well, because it operates the same way.
lots of oldschool rpg games also had that
Or you doing things out of order. On my first playthough wanted to see everything quickly so had gone to skellige without finishing the Bloody Baron Ciri survey part, not only Yennifer had things to say about this, not meeting Uma resulted in additional quest, they bothered to make original game's and Blood and Wine characters react to Gaunter O'Dimms mark, not wanting to have the black haired one pour her foul mood on poor Geralt made him take over completing tasks of all other Witcher before being asked too, it also mattered. Now doing a 'bad' playthough while also picking 'boring' responses (boy was I pleasantly surprised) and trying to decline quests or stall whenever possible, playing curmudgeon, misanthrope Geralt is just as delightful. XD
About the Witcher contracts: for me they were my favorite part of the game. I'd level up so I could do more challenging Witcher contracts. Mostly because I saw them less as detective work and more like seeing the effects of different monsters on the people living there.
Another me, hello there!
I liked the hunts because it kind of felt like playing a western Monster Hunter.
They're great. I'm using the enhanced edition mod, so monsters are tough and money is harder to come by, in addition to making the combat actually balanced. No more quen and mindless attack spam. Monster slaying is fun (except for golems) now
@@davidplumb2604
I can't even kill the witch of the well in that mod. She just kills me in 2 hits.
I agree it’s the bread and butter of the IP. Tbh I cared more about that then running all over Poland and Norway trying to find Ciri
I actually did get the better ending of that tower quest my first time through, but it was specifically because I'd already done the Noon Wraith hunt beforehand! Knowing the lore of the world before catching her in her lie was enough to make me think something was wrong, that moving the bones of the dead from a place of mass death's not a fantastic idea, so I didn't and was thus rewarded. That reward for paying attention really stuck with me after playing it enough to really get invested in the lore and even politics of the setting. God it's such a great game.
Zero Anonymity I got the bad ending and felt dumb, bit also felt like the game tricked me and that was cool I though
It's not a noonwraith it's a Peste.
I got the bad ending my first time.
Velen is my favourite part of the Witcher 3. I adore the setting, the stories and characters and the Keira Metz questline. I could play it over and over again it’s so immersive to me.
@@fujinwinds2514 yes but it is still a wraith, a plague wraith.
@@MFenix206 he didn't call it a wraith did he? He clearly called it a NOON Wraith which it isn't.
They do explain why the temple is killing mages. Radovid is behind them doing that to soften up the defenses. Which is why he walks in no problem later.
He finances Witch hunters and church of eternal fire its no wonder he walks in no problem when church basically controls the city.
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i Like this "critique" videos but he clearly just wants to look more intelectual that he actually is.
@@luiscorreia3000 why do you feel the need to insult him?
Yes Radovid motivation should be obvious but i'll let that slide because I think that was a mistake on his part because everything else he said was 100% true .
1) Radovid is supposed to be a military genius but we meet a crazy man who doesn't seem fit to rule or fight and don't even get me started on his rush assassination that decides the winner of the war.
2) speaking of the fate of the war let's talk about that. Dijkstra is a great character and I think he makes for the best king out of the 3 but he should know Geralt wouldn't just let roche get killed the way he did especially how he and ves fought by his side at kaer Morhen.
3) Roche who played such a big role in the witcher 2 with the choice of him and Iorveth doesn't effect your interaction with roche and lorveth who isn't even in the game(But Letho is) Roche is kind of irrelevant in the witcher 3 tbh.
4) Skelligh fate on who rule which has a bias towards Cerys over Hjalmar and Svanrige who first time players wouldn't even know was a choice
5) finding Dandelion just dragged for no reason
6) Emhyr is criminally underused
7) Avallac'h is just a completely different character compared to the books
8) The Wild Hunt who are supposed to be the main villains are dog shit
@@icantthinkofacoolname1308 how is that an insult?
Novigrad: the witch hunters are burning mages and anyone with magic because Radovid pays them and it’s he who wants the mages dead. It all stems from the end of the second game when he finds our sorceresses we’re behind the assassinations of kings. He has zero trust and like for them. In his mind they’re all enemies and the fact that he started going mad is even more reason for all of this happening.
I found this pretty obvious tbh and there’s dialogue that explains some of this as well. Novigrad is one of my favorite parts of the entire game. It’s definitely extreme that they’re burning on pyres but radovid is an extreme, mad king.
Literally my thoughts exactly. Thank God someone has said this painfully obvious thing.
Yeah, I understood that on my first playthrough. I had trouble making it past the 7 minute mark on this video. He is calling W3 a Far Cry ripoff, right out of the gate, because of notice boards (which are in every Witcher game.... and book for that matter) and a similar looking mini map. There are only two variations of mini map in the whole gaming industry. Square and round.
Another reason why they were doing it is all the mages are rich and because they are at war they need money so they just kill all the mages and take all they have I dont know if I remember it right but roach tells you this
When was the part about the kings bias against the mages explained in witcher 3 specifically? I must have missed it
In books Philippa (Lodge of Sorceresses leader) was responsible for death of Radovid's father. That's why he hates her so much in game.
Finishing the Bloody Baron quest was the first time in my long years of video games where I literally stopped everything and watched him in the tree and just.. thought.. and watched him swing. That was a powerful end to a sad questline.
Same, amazing highlight - I was unlucky and got "that" ending for blood and wine too, hit me almost as hard haha
@@Corrupted you were lucky to get a cool ending my bro!
interreditube told me there were good & bad endings. And apparently i was unlucky/bad/whatever.
i had almost all, supposedly, bad endings. And they were amazing. People aint perfect, witcher least off all. Reflected how i wanted to play the game perfectly for me. Trying to be as good as you can, ending with a pile off horseshit for lunch.
Which made it really cool for me personally that ciri became a witcher after i basically botched everything. Ooh man it felt so much sweater because all off the horror. Would have never hit home if everything went statistically perfect happy ending spree jeeej!
That’s one of the best parts about this game. Replaying it now, but my first playthrough the Baron lived because of different choices I made. I actually had no idea the situation mentioned here was a possibility until I read this.
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Small detail: when I reached a small village called Livendale I decided to try my boxing skills in the "arena". My opponent was the so-called Fishgulper, and the the guy had the nerve to ask me to lose on purpose. I told him that there was absolutely no chance I'd take the fall, and proceeded to wipe the floor with him. As I was collectig the reward and slowly walking away, I remembered what he said in the beginning of the fight: he was fighting for a simple sack of grain. The guy (and presumably his family) were starving. I felt really bad and tried to interact with him and talk, while having 0 expectations anything would happen...I kid you not, they added the option to give him a few coins to not go hungry anymore. I was so relieved at that moment, the devs actually gave me a chance to leave the village with a clean conscience. CD PROJEKT RED, you are perhaps the best studio in the entire undustry!
Your standards are embarrassingly low. If you actually played good RPG's you'd see that games have these kinds of details everywhere.
@@warmlycalculated390 Which games?
@@DennisSFors Like... every well-regarded cRPG in history? If you're comparing it to action/sandbox games, sure. Like, it's faster to list the few cRPGs that DON'T have far more intricacies than TW3, like the combat-focused Icewind Dale series.
Warmly Calculated Witcher 3 isn’t an RPG. Its an action game with RPG elements. Ya know, like 75% of all video games released?
@@Deeplycloseted435 100% agree. Don't tell this to its raving loon fanbase, however.
Thank you for actually criticizing the game.
I actually have a disagreement when you talk about how the world of The Witcher 3 sets itself up to be harsh and cruel. I actually think the first game does this a lot better when it tells you that you're a professional trying to do a job out the gate rather than leaving Geralt in a weird state betwixt moral and immoral. You know to expect that people are only really out for themselves and that you shouldn't do charity work. For as many problems as the first Witcher had, the world was established so much better and it really felt like you were a professional monster hunter.
darkfireslide even though that’s one of gearlts main struggles in the books is trying to decide between lesser evils even though he honestly doesn’t think that lesser evils exist he feels it’s simply evil and he would rather walk away
So you want the same experience in sequels? To me, the move towards being just a professional monster hunter to having a morality in the game is nice and it feels natural for the devs to move towards that. I've always felt that they would wanna do that in sequels because what's more to a witcher than just professional monster slaying? Witcher universe humans think of them that way. Just an outcast of the society, monster slayer with no emotion who's there to do the dirty job for the money. And for a series to just focus on witcher's monster slaying like you want, it's too shallow for me.
I believe the most confusing thing you can do with the Witcher 3 is to expect it to be just an open world ubisoft style game or another of the elder scrolls. The Witcher's roots are very different, they mostly reminds of other european series popular in early 2000's like Gothic and Stalker. Those were open or semi-open world games driven by narratives, where the world was just another character in a story. There were just more important things to do in those games than exploration and quest checking. Things that made them truly great and memorable. And those are almost the same things, that made the Witcher 3 the game it is. Dialogues, characters, ambiance, humour, world building, immersion. It was similar in the Witcher 1 and 2. Considering CD Projekt was at the time official polish publisher of both of those series it can't be just coincidence. I believe the Witcher 3 does actually a great job as a mixture between those roots and international trends, but you can clearly tell than the game itself is what it meant to be - Gothic on steroids placed in Andrzej Sapkowski's world.
It's the "international trends" then that are ruining this game. I'm playing this game right now(on Death March, so glad I did not choose any lower difficulties, I'm afraid I would be sound asleep right now) after hearing all the hype and I am very disappointed. A Gothic game this certainly is not. This game does far too much hand holding to be something similar to a Gothic game. For every good thing it does, there is something else it does that pulls me right out of the game (like walking into a house and looting everything in sight with no consequence at all).
The more I play I'm getting far too many "consolism" and "Ubisoftism" vibes out of this game to truly call it a great game. And it's sad, cause I see the potential for a real masterpiece there.
@@mattmattmatt131313 Excactly my experience playing The Witcher 3. Played for maybe ten hours then got bored. I may try it again and focus completely on the narrative.
For me the exploration is a very important part of an open world rpg. I also can't understand the comparison with Gothic.
Gothic 2 imo is still the greatest open world rpg i played so far. The world design is far superior to that of the witcher 3. It's quality over quantity. Gothic 2's world is very condensed from a modern point of view. But evey square meter is filled with ineresting and memorable stuff. I still remember most of the world even years after playing it. And that's because exploration actually felt meaningfull and rewarding. There was no minimap and no questmarkers. You got a quest to explore a cave or whatever and you would have to look for it on your own. There were hints from NPC's and from your questnotes so you would have an idea where to look. But you could only find it by exploring the world. And the world was designed in way that exploring didn't felt frustrating. You couldn't get lost because every area felt unique. This made me truly immersed in the game world.
Also the character progression felt like a true progression. At the start you were a weak nobody. Even a pack of two or three wolves could easily kill you. You were shit at everything. Most areas where simply to dangerous for you to explore.
Compare that to The Witcher 3 where you were pretty much superman right from the beginng of the game, with a giant open world with not much meaningfull or interesting to discover. I travelled through the world on autopilot following a white line on the minmap.
Mateusz Mazur
It kind of still does try to be a Ubisoft Open World game though. Think about it. You have lots of places by default which are already littering the map (question marks) yet you haven't even discovered them for yourself. So we take that option off since it is a thing then you come to find that every point of interest that litters the map is so small and insignificant and copy/paste that you really wonder why explore them at all. That is nothing like Gothic which I have gotten to play a bit. Really wish a modern version would be released though complete with full controller support, but that is me getting off topic. Gothic doesn't litter it's map with tons of the same old copy/paste areas in the same way. They have a lot of varying places that feel, for the most part, unique in some way. Also I would still argue that a layered dialogue system still completely stomps the much more limited four button prompt system like in The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3's open world design is very flawed no matter how you look at it though. Of course that isn't the only flaw the game has. It has plenty but that can be saved for a later discussion.
@Name Name
No kidding!? I will definitely have to keep my eye out then. Thanks for the info.
Gamer Singer the playable teaser is from a Spanish developer and not from Piranha Bytes, the german developer who made all gothic games. Everything I’ve seen sonder looks very generic and not much like the original experience. Gothic 1 and 2 are still great games and there are many graphic mods that make them look decent enough to still play them today! Actually I replay them almost every year 😂 just get gothic 1 and 2 on steam for a few bucks and I promise you will have a great time if you give it a chance! And don’t let the controls turn you off, they are weird at the beginning but working quite well after getting used to it. It’s intended to play with only keyboard, even if mouse is supported. I don’t really know about the English localization, maybe the dialogues aren’t great because it was developed in Germany and in the early 2000 dubbing wasn’t as great as it is now 😅
You can just turn off the dotted line and points of interest on the minimap, then it just becomes a compass more or less.
I was just thinking on searching for mods that replaced the minimap with a compass. No need anonymore, thanks a lot!
Many people criticize aspects of the game without looking at the settings menu
jts105 but the game just isn’t designed around it and it doesn’t really work
@@Isaac-ym8kq Played it twice all the way through without ever using those features. It works if you use your head and pay attention.
@@AndresGarcia-qk3sj For anyone reading the guy in the video has his minimap turned off and addresses this point directly.
Why wait for Joseph Anderson? I only just discovered your channel and I'm happy to see you're actually doing a critique instead of just fawning over it. I love The Witcher 3, but I dislike how simplified it has become since The first Witcher, with mechanics like alchemy being all but stripped down to one button [herbs become useless after you brew all potions because you only have to brew them once, for example]. It's good to see someone criticize The Witcher 3's weaker points rather than just glossing over them.
But regardless, I am loving the video thus far, and you've earned a subscription from me. Can't wait to watch the full Witcher retrospective and the isometric RPGs. Great work, keep it up :)
So you've played the first Witcher? Did you notice that this guys said the notice boards were a Far Cry ripoff, at the beginning of the video? Correct me if I'm wrong, but Witcher 1 still had notice boards and Witcher contracts. I'm pretty sure Far Cry had nothing to do with notice boards.
Yes, there were notice boards and contracts in the first Witcher, as well as in The Witcher 2.
@@Mephilis78 yeah not gonna lie, he shat on this game for things that he complimented other games on. fallout 1, for example, he complimented that your skill choices will sometimes lead to inefficient builds, but they're YOUR build.
witcher has the same thing. it didn't focus on balance, it instead simply focused on choice. i feel like he spent more time just repping an underdog style mentality to put controversial viewpoints into his video.
@@Mephilis78 he literally explained how it fits the Ubishit formula, not just Far Cry. He also explains how inexperienced CDPR were, hence why he says it feels like they're just chasing the trend. Why were you so hung up on this argument?
@@purvdragon-sensei except it doesn’t copy the Ubisoft formula, at all. This formula has been here since 2007 with Witcher 1, where it had no possible Ubisoft inspiration since Ubisoft was still making fairly original and less watered down games in that sense. Witcher uses a system that integrates this stuff with the main story, making it drastically different. CDPR may have been inexperienced, but if this is considered an Ubisoft formula then Ubisoft should be ashamed that an inexperienced company could make their own system before them on their very first big game lmao
The questionmark grind didnt even happen to me on the first playthrough because I usually just look at the questlog/journal and make my way to the next quest I think seems most attractive, making detours along the way when I see something interesting because I dont look much at the minimap. This is all about each persons approach to open world games. On the second run I went for 100% though...and I still have nightmares about the Skellige Sea.
I waited for my third playthrough and yeah, what a grind - and a ultimately pointless one.
I didn’t even realize there was an ‘All’ option on the map. It starts in ‘Default’, which lists no question marks, and makes no mention this can be altered. So the world felt alive and full of mysteries since the only things I found were things I stumbled across or through quests I received. Honestly glad I didn’t know about the all option. I just flipped over to it and there are a shitload of question marks left on the map. Just means I’ll have new experiences next playthrough, or that I just missed uninteresting stuff like treasure chests and bandit camps. I’ve actually only come across maybe 5 bandit camps and I’m around 150 hours in and in the middle of Blood and Wine. I did actually think it was weird that there were just random bandit camps that would pop up every 20 hours or so, so this makes a lot more sense really that it was more of a widespread thing. If I wasn’t travelling to a quest location and found something of interest, I didn’t find it. Probably would have felt way more tedious seeing all the markers. I did have a feeling there were more treasure locations but I found a couple dozen of them so that was enough for me as it was.
@@mandrews6282 Exactly, those criticisms are idiotic. You just need to keep the map on default. Changing it to all is a choice you make to avoid exploration.
I don't know if you missed it, but it is mentioned in the game that mengen and the witch hunters in Novigrad works directly for Radovid. They aid him both in the search for Phillipa Eilhart, as well as clearing the free city for mages and other magic users, who might fight against Radovid, when he moves in to take Novigrad, which he plans to do soon. And since Radovid hates sorceress to such an extent, he couldn't care less how many innocents he slaughters. The fact that the church grew so powerful in a year, shows how quickly religion and proganda can spread and cause fear, hate, prejudices etc. It has done a pretty good job mimicing how some real world "scare-campaigns" can cause paranoia.
"The escalation is a little sensationalist"
Man, coming from 2020, I wish that were true, but boy do things escalate fast.
Yet to burn people on the streets at least...
@@GiygasStarman totally happens in India and Pakistan
True
One quest in witcher: Full story with strong connections to the world/surroundings, makes sense, possibly makes a tangible change in the world.
One quest in skyrim: "I hate bears, kill them and bring pelts as proof"
I wish Skyrim quests were like that. That bear-hater sounds like he actually has an amusing personality.
@@runningcommentary2125 you'll find her in Ivarstead
yeah skyrim sucks as well what of it?
Funnily enough this sentiment is not true at all *shrug*
Your point regarding being over-leveled and experience point scaling is pretty spot on. I finally got around to playing the Witcher 3, and so far this appears to be the most glaring issue. I'm surprised something so crucial to the game was swept under the rug by the devs.
cdpr devs are silver-tongued morons.
@Wim
Wow. I consider the main story relatively weak. Not bad but short and somewhat bland. I much prefer the Mass Effect story. I also preferred the Witcher 2 game and story. Btw i am not criticizing you, just noting how much ones "likes and dislikes" vary from person to person.
@Wim
Not sure about all good stories are short. However better short than just full of unnecessary filler.
@Wim
Ok. Now I get what you are saying however that is not what i meant with my comment. I actually believe the main storyline of finding Ciri etc is actually quite short. Or perhaps it looks that way in light of how big the Witcher 3 is. I might do a playthrough of just the absolute must to see how long it is. Might actually enjoy the game more too.
@Wim
It sucks every day. I will wait for reviews and maybe even when it is cheaper. Maybe open world games are not for me. I would have been unhappy with the witcher 3 if i had paid the full price ($15 in my case). Even with ME3 terrible ending i still felt that it was worth the full price.
The best theory I’ve seen is that Ciri lives regardless, but that she does not seek you out after if you’ve made the wrong choices. The endings are more about Geralt than Ciri, as they should be.
Disagree a bit there. Ciri's fate *determines* what Geralt does in the end. If he thinks she's dead he goes on as a straight up suicide mission. I think it's more that it's a 50/50 split between them, much like the games main story itself-even if we spend more time with Geralt
@@marwansobhy7050 I dunno what build or whatever you had but no way the geralt i was using is going out to some mob of level 6 drowners and ghouls. On a serious note tho, I think it actually makes a cool theory if you’re able to accept the possibility of geralt surviving and ciri accepting the offer with nilfgaard but getting cold feet last minute and then running away to become a witcher. Also, it’s a nice retcon to have all the endings happening one after another instead of ciri’s independence as a character being undermined by having her fate tied to arbitrary dialogue choices geralt makes
I too disagree. Remember Ciri is still treated as a child with special powers all around her including Geralt by default. It’s about the choices you make which gives her ultimate confidence and acknowledge that she can take care of herself. Also remember, Ciri is still at early 20s and she’s just at step to enter the adult world where the parents has to make sure she’s well supported in her decisions
Can say that this is true… so everyone else wrong here lol
Couldn’t agree more on the exploration aspect. I’m sick and tired of games holding my hand. You would think with an open world this big that they would put emphasis on the exploration aspect of it. Like you stated in the video, you can’t even turn it off and play it that way, because you would have no idea where to, since you can’t depend on the NPC’s to tell you. Sure this isn’t a Witcher 3 issue and more of a modern gaming issue, where they think gamers are to dumb. What’s even the point of making your game “open world” if you’re going to have everything highlighted on the map. It really beats the purpose of exploring.This is why gamers appreciate BOTW’s exploration and it should be the standard going forward.
Clearly that’s my main gripe with the game, sure it has other minor flaws, I found the world, the story and the characters to make up for it.
"Fighting enemies higher level than you is incredibly slow and difficult, if they are a substantially higher level than you."
Once you learn the attack patterns, it's pretty easy to chip away at an enemy without getting hit (as long as it's 1-on-1), but even then it takes much too long to take down a very high level enemy because they just have so much more health than you. My second time through the game, I started the Master Armorers quest extremely early so I could fight an Archgriffin before I was supposed to. That allowed me to brew the Archgriffin Decoction, which allows you to deal percentages of your opponent's health, making it actually feasable to kill extremely high level enemies. Completing later-game areas like this was fun at first, but soon I realized it was pointless anyway, as the only real reward was gear that was too high-level for me to equip yet.
@@strangestecho5088
Yep. I also personally hate when no extra experience is given for defeating a higher level monster and also when monsters level with you even if only to a certain point. It defeats the purpose of improving. I know not all that applies to the Witcher 3 btw.
I know when it comes to other rpgs people like to complain about damage sponge issues at higher levels... Idk, it makes sense to me. You are continuously gaining HP as you level, more or less depending on choice. So wouldn't it also stand to reason that an enemy who reached a high level also would have similarly high HP? I mean if you are playing a role playing game, then the basic premise is that a high level enemy also started as low as you did and had to fight and train and quest etc to get to that level, just like you. That's the role playing perspective.
Then there's the "I'm a gamer" perspective. It would say, it's just a set of numbers that was generated to be a damage sponge that can take me out in two hits. I feel like when people review games and talk about "damage sponge", they are deliberately taking themselves out of the game, the same as someone trying to exploit the game is deliberately taking themselves out of the game. I personally cannot think of a single game that doesn't have some kind of damage sponge going on (the exception being games like Call of Duty where every single player, and npc, is a glass cannon that does high damage and has hardly any resistance).
This isn't directed at you, more just connecting some dots as to why I never had an issue with it and others do. It's similar with the two different ideas of how PVP should be handled in survival games, or even mmos to a lesser extent. Offline base raiding is absolutely viable in a game like Ark or Conan Exiles from a purely video game perspective, and griefing follows this logic as well. However, there is no reasonable way for a base to be completely filled with sleeping people who can't wake up to the sound of explosions, or dinosaurs etc, if the hypothetical world the developers tried to build existed.
Sorry for the rambling.
@@LOTRFAN33 I can agree with that. Even from the roleplay perspective, if you have a dual with a master swordsman and you wear him down and defeat him, you'll still learn more than you would have defeating another novice.
That's the thing. It's hard as in it's boring and time consuming not like _git gud_
Diablo 2 called it crushing blow percent damage.
And speaking of the HUD, yes it's extremely hard the first play! My 2nd and 3rd did not use it, and I was astounded how much more I KNEW about the world! Lake positions, road splits, shorelines, I used them all as reference points and I found myself flying down the road on Roach to each destination without needing the map. Highly recommend players give it a try, that minimap literally blinds you to what they created.
I love this channel so much! I just get the feeling it's going to blow up sooner rather than later,I love long game reviews I watch tons of them and you're by FAR my favorite!keep pumping out the great content:)
Thanks, it means a lot that you enjoy my videos so much and I appreciate you taking the time to leave such a positive comment.
Yeah, the thing I love the most is that there are no volume spikes and everything is so chill and I can use it for my "sleeping" playlist.
"The greatest things in life are also heavily flawed because to be truly great involves taking risks and pushing limits and exposing yourself to failure the greatness never come from palying it safe and focsing solely on minimizing flaws"
Amazing quote
the stealing thing is clear enough, you can't steal in front of guards. it even puts up screen prompts to tell you this . stealing in front of NPC in houses is a bit odd but every game in the series has it . its just the guards react in this one .
There are places you can steal in front of guards though. You can loot things in front of nilfgardian soldiers or the barons men in villages in velen, and you can loot things inside crows perch in front of guards. Blood and wine also has nothing that counts as stealing, although that's partly because they stopped putting lootable containers outside in settlements but there are still places where you can loot things directly in front of guards and they don't react. As for the message that shows, i think i just loot things too fast to see it, but i guess that is kind of my own fault. Anyway its a small thing, but i didn't feel the inclusion of stealing added anything immersion wise and i don't really understand why houses and settlements were made lootable in the first place. There is plenty to loot out in the wilderness and even if npcs did react it doesn't fit Geralt's character in the first place to wander around looting peoples homes.
But anyway, thanks for the comments. Its nice to see other people's opinions on the games and the things i say.
+NeverKnowsBest I'm just starting 3 again now I'll keep an eye out on how it works this time . I suppose as I found guards react early last play through and it tells you not to I maybe just don't try and steal in front of them as I can't recall getting away with it . nice set of critiques by the way .
@@MrSmoore77 Not every game. I haven't played that many games but for example in Risen 1 you'd better be hidden when stealing. Same in Skyrim.
Sandkasten36 He said every game in the series. The Witcher series.
@@Sandkasten36 That's unrelated but I wish NKB reviewed the Gothic series at some point
"These points of interest may start becoming repetitive."
So ... the first time I played, I took it upon myself to visit and exhaust every question mark on the map. I started to really realize how much of a mistake that was when I got to Skellige and found about fifty worthless smuggler's caches dotted all over the sea. I went and checked all of them to make sure, of course. What a waste of time ...
In fairness to them it’s pretty obvious after doing a few in Velen and Novigrad that they are just some wrecks with some stuff. It’s not like you were unfamiliar with them.
Turn off the ? Mark icons. Problem solved
I did that too, but that’s more of our fault than the game’s. We’re not supposed to go after every marker, we’re supposed to stumble upon them while doing other things. That’s called good game design lmao
@@DavidHosey1 even though that's a bad excuse. I mean they are all over the place
@@mariobadia4553 yeah you’re right for sure Lmao
As much as I enjoy the roll-playing in TW3, I think the extent to which others do is largely a matter of taste. One of my friends was really put off by playing an established character. I really enjoyed having a deep, canonical backstory for the player character. The trade-off to this is more constrained character creation.
I agree. I like to have a character that has set lore background and motives. After playing all the souls games then playing a game like the Witcher you bond to Geralt so much more than anything in a create a character game.
Yeah for me it’s more interesting to get to know someone else rather than a blank slate that mirrors my own personality/character
I'm much more like your friend. Maybe it's because I'm a natural writer, but I love building/creating a character.
This is what roleplaying _is _ for me. To create a character from a blank slate and play as if you are them. Think about what they would do in situations. Try your best to immerse yourself in the role. And it is this reason that I will always refer games like The Elder Scrolls over games like the Witcher. But I still love the Witcher series.
"I love it when roleplaying games don't allow me to role-play, so immersive!!"
This is the best Witcher 3 video on UA-cam. I don't even feel the need to see Joseph Anderson's upcoming video, I don't see how it could possible be much better than this. Great job man, you've earned another sub.
I'm sure there will be some interesting things in Joseph's video when it eventually comes out. I find he usually has at least a few points in his videos that i've never heard mentioned by anyone else and the witcher 3 is such a big game that there's loads you could talk about. I greatly appreciate the compliment however, its very kind of you to say that.
that video has just been announced to be 11 hours long, so "small" videos like these are very appreciated for a video that you will need to commit to
Sweet, a new Joseph Anderson video!
This is making me more hyped too see Joe's take on The Witcher 3
@@UniEez He still doing that? Starting to feel like an old April Fools joke given how long its taking him
@@derpthegr8689 yes he is doing it, bit by bit between smaller stuff
@@UniEez That's awesome! Looking forward to it
This guys a far better critic than anderson, and his "fun" habit.
Ok, I would like to mention some of my counter-arguments on your various comments during whole critique:
- You do points of interest if you are interested in doing them. If not, don't do them then. Doing main quests followed by side quests give most experience anyway and there are more than enough loot in the locations quests send you to sustain your playthrough monetarily and gear upgrades-wise.
- Quen is so heavily used, because it is the most useful sign to use in non-sign builds due to low sign intensity. Sign builds use Igni, Axii and Yrden as much as Quen if not more.
- If you don't like changing oils so often, then wear Wolf gear for its' set bonus which let's you apply 3 oils to a sword which you can apply according to the most common monsters at your current area. Fixative skill also gives infinite charges to applied oils.
- You can use potions, decoctions and oils in your inventory during combat. You can equip/unequip them(and bombs) too. You aren't limited to the ones you equipped before the start of combat which show on your quick access.
Seriously dude I never noticed the hair thing. Now I can't stop fixating on it. Thanks for that...
I really appreciate your approach to game reviewing. You understand how games are interpreted differently for different gamers, and always give a fair analysis.
I think the best part of blade oils is trying to predict what enemy you will be facing, based on quest details and location, before you actually encounter it, then applying what blade oil you think you'll need before you get there. That's how I played, and I found that it made that aspect more fun. It gave me a chance to use the knowledge I had been accumulating over the game, plus added some challenge if I guessed wrong, as I decided not to apply them in combat. Definitely valid criticism, but there are ways to keep it a little more fresh.
It’s weird, I agree with a fair amount of what you say, yet it’s still my favourite game of all time
you can criticize something you love, amazing right?
Your standards are still shite.
@@I_Cunt_Spell Good thing taste in video games doesn't matter to anyone worth talking to then!
If this is your favourite, you really need to play more games.
@@zenmastakilla go ahead. Tell me what's your favorite game. Go on.
Incredible, glad to see someone truly tackle the issues the game has instead of just fawning over the good.
whad do you mean? witcher 3 is greatest game of all time denying it would be foolish since all the trustworthy professional game journalist wackos have given it 11/10.
You obviously have a bad taste. and a bad opinion. go back to fortnite looser.
Whilst it has them it dosent change the fact it's an easy 11/10 every game has flaws but I forgive cdpr since they didn't take the piss with over priced expansions and added well over 20 hours of content for people without the dlc the first expansion alone is bigger than the witcher 2 in its entirety and often bigger than most games in general and that was a 10 pound dlc....
James Somogyi What are you on about? There’s a big difference between being respectful to the customers and making a quality game and content for said game. And the game having problems as a game, such as gameplay and design issues, which the Witcher 3 has by the boatloads. Learn the difference
@Leeroy JenkinsI've played deus ex and i just thought it was cool that people were changing their prof pics for this old classic. So why not.
@Leeroy Jenkins yeah he knows it's part of a crowd he literally wrote that he did it because he saw other people do it.
Your entire intro about the flaws not taking away from the Love of the game just made me think of every Bethesda game I've ever played
Except so few Bethesda games ever actually succeeded or excelled in any areas, falling more into standard mediocrity that’s fun but average. The Witcher series (the books to games canon) is objectively one of the best fantasy stories you can find. The actual flaws with Witcher 2 and 3 lies almost solely with some combat and minor pacing issues in a couple parts. Everything else said in this supposed objective critique is his personal opinion projected as fact
That’s why the game’s called a masterpiece. Not only is it part of one of the best fantasies ever written, but it’s objective flaws are few, to the point where the few who over-criticize are only able to do so based on their personal and often uncommon opinions. I don’t think this guy ever got that in any of his videos on this series
@@DavidHosey1 even though that's not true at all considering the fact that the entire second half of the game is so poorly written it's not even funny. I mean the completely ruined one of my favorite characters from the books and from the first half of the game by turning him into a giant idiot after you assassinate radovid. Plus the fact that they stupidly change the allegory for climate change into some stupid magical entity and turn ciri into a cliche Chosen One that has to save the world even though with the books it's her son that is destined to save the world which is why who her owned father wants to marry her. Then there's that BS of making triss a romance option even though it's completely out of character for geralt since he is madly in love with Yennifer who is basically his soulmate. Hell it makes even less send considering he could choose to have girl just forgive her for completely taking advantage of his amnesia just so she can trick him into "loving" her. It's basically completely out of character for Siri to be just okay with that s*** considering what triss did to her
especially fallout 76
@@DavidHosey1 how old are you, because daggerfall and morrowind were my shit and really great even with how broken daggerfall was lol, personally the witcher books are alright but they're not the greatest fantasy, i read it in english but also the last wish in swedish so i dont think it's just the notoriously bad english translation, in fact i thought they were pretty similar in quality
@@DavidHosey1Whenever you claim your opinion on a series as fact ("The Witcher is objectively one of the best fantasy stories!!") your argument loses validity.
It's really interesting how much I love this game despite these issues. Especially the Witcher senses thing I think that one is the only one that truly annoys me. They spent so much time writing these interesting complicated scenarios but rarely are u allowed to work anything out yourself. I don't think it would be hard to implement and Geralt could still narate is all.
It's as you say, it doesn't even need to be hard, just more interactive sometimes.
Personally I like that you're always overleveled, in the books most fights geralt takes are over in seconds because he's skilled enough to mow down most people he gets in a fight with, and being overleveled made combat feel like how Geralt is portrayed in the books, a highly trained, very deadly fighter who doesn't have problems fighting groups of enemies and defeating them in seconds
You really nailed it! Sure it had flaws, but there was so much greatness in there one didn't really care.
Yeah indeed. Glad you enjoyed the video and thanks for the comments.
hes more a Diablo kind of Players without dialogues i guess 😅
@@_skaadii there is nothing wrong with enjoying either type.
Both have pros and cons
I agree.
@@NeverKnowsBest You're welcome
As I do enjoy a comprehensive critique for a game that typically gets a blind praise in many respects; I don't think I've heard so many subjective opinions stated as an objective fact in my life.
Honestly. This guy talked less about why the Witcher 3 has become a masterpiece and more just talked about his personal thoughts on it. Less of a critique video and more of a complaint video
I agree. I noticed that some of the same criticisms were not leveled at other games by the same critic. Skyrim has a quest compass and is very shallow in many respects, but there are a couple of places here where Witcher 3 is compared unfavorably to Skyrim. It’s not that the criticism is unfair, it’s more like he has 30 minutes to cover the dozens of flaws with Fallout 4 so each one sounds really minor, but for Witcher 3 he devotes the same amount of time to far fewer problems, so it makes those problems sound far worse.
Maybe one the most in depth video I ever seen for this game. You are mostly right in everything you said. In the end, the flaws don't weight much compared with everything else, and it will always be one of my favorite games of all time.
Personally, I feel the difference between the Dandelion we get in witcher 3 and the older, wiser sounding narrator is explained in the books.
In the books, Dandelion starts taking notes about what happens around him, with the intention of publishing them as his memoirs "half a century of poetry", which he intends to edit and publish in his old age.
There are some sections of the books that imply, at least to me, that most of if not all the stories in the books are taken directly from Dandelion's memiors.
Therefore, to me, it makes sense that the narrator is an older, wiser sounding Dandelion. He's telling stories from his younger years.
Very fair review. Thanks to all the “best game ever” hype, I was expecting... well, the best game ever. What I discovered was what you describe: an open world RPG which gets a number of open world and RPG elements badly wrong, but which still manages to be great on account of the things it gets resoundingly right. Among those things, Gwent deserves a special mention. I had so much fun playing Gwent that returning to the main game felt like a slight disappointment.
Yeah that's pretty much how I felt about it. You'll never catch me saying that The Witcher 3 is a bad game and I think it well deserved its GotY, but no it's not the best RPG I have ever played, not even close. As RPGs I would rate Dragon Age Origins, Divinity Original Sin, Pillars of Eternity, NieR Automata, the first two Mass Effects, Dragon Quest XI and Fallout New Vegas well above The Witcher 3, and that's just this decade. I liked The Witcher 3 more than Skyrim and the last two Dragon Ages though.
you and joseph anderson are kings of in-depth, soothing commentary
Nah, it's more like him and matthewmathosis. It's funny you mention that joseph dude, since he still can't sh*t out his w3 video after 2.5 years of 'making' it
So instead of a movie, I watched a 2 hour long Witcher 3 critique lol :-D
But seriously now, this video is a f.... masterpiece. You managed to speak about the negatives without making the game look like trash and to talk about the positives without being fanboyish (although we all gathered that you ARE a Witcher fan :) ), all that in a very intelligent, thoughtful and researched way.
This is well said and I agree completely.
I see you play the Witcher 3: Enhanced Edition. A cultured choice.
The world and lore is something special. The characters are written so well you feel as if you know them especially if you've played all three witchers. Each game improves 10 fold.
glitcher 3 is ten steps backwards.
Paulo K you really go to every positive comment and say something negative? You’re literally obsessed.
The most fun I had was Blood and Wine. I played it severely under-leveled and it was amazing; difficult, rewarding, immersive. That meant, of course, by the time I got to Hearts of Stone... yeah.
That beggining trying to counter the incoming criticism. Really well played.
No matter what you think of this game, it's amazing how cdpr, a relatively decent sized studio at the time of witcher 3's release, created one of the biggest and most highly rated games of all time (or at least in the past 20 years in this industry). Proves that it's not only huge companies like valve, blizzard, bungie, etc that can create these huge industry wide known games now. Smaller and less well known studios also have a chance at getting the industry's attention
It's basically Gothic 1/2 all over again.
You can actually save the children and not get the Counts wife killed. I was exploring all round and accidentally found the spirit before I met the Crones which will break the chain of events and allow basically the best ending.
The loot for me was the saddest part, I would hunt down a almost mythical sword, used by powerful ancients aaaaaaand my store bought sword is better in everyway possible besides it's aesthetic looks
For me, this issue was fixed in the endgame. After getting Iris I stopped switching swords even if their stats were higher, same with Aerondite.
I consider the Witcher 3 the best game ever made.
I wrote the next paragraph before you said remove ? from the map. I'm guessing you didn't know the remove undiscovered points of interest from the minimap removes them from the main map as well giving you a blank slate. You can only have them show up when discovered or never show up at all.
When I started the game I went into the HUD and turned off almost everything. I did the major missions like the Witcher contracts and the treasure hunts. While on the way to those locations I explored the major landmarks on the map. This ended up being my favorite open world to explore xD. I am the only one who used the map markers to mark high level monster locations that looked to be guarding good things because I had turned map markers off. My wife though turns the markers on. She gets lost much easier and likes the extra direction. Neither of us removed the mini map. I always used the main map to find the direction of the main quest objective so I figured if i'm just going to open it i'll leave the mini map on.
As for your roleplaying comments. When doing the pen and paper stuff I always play pre-made characters. I know their general attitudes then I role play as how I think they would behave or grow based around what I know about the character. This isn't not roleplaying and The Witcher 3 gives you a set template and I think does a good job of giving some varied options that are realistic to the character given. I hate when i'm roleplaying with somebody and they ignore their alignment or just do what they want ignoring the character they are supposed to be. They can also bother me with extreme stupidity where the DM has to cut a lot of slack and make things work when it never should. So i'm not against the sticker rules for how Geralt can lead the story.
I do think in the witcher 3 the always full xp mod dramatically improves the game. And I agree also that the detective work should have been made much harder... I would remove the yellow circles and just have you move to the quest area and have it vanish saying find evidence. No circle on the map saying it's in this tiny area. If you go way too far away it gives you the return to the quest location. And make the witcher senses only show up at a much closer distance so you need to look much closer.
Items I don't think i'm ever just in the witcher gear. It's good but it's not the best and a lot of the stats are a waste. I always find gear that is better in someway and only find myself in witcher gear near the second half when it's no longer the base version. I always find myself in the nilfgaardian armor and the undvik armor but sometimes I avoid upgrading to keep a good unified look. The over leveling thing is a problem but crafting and shops are too good at gearing you up. The quest items are good if you avoid the other 2. Not as bad as skyrim with it's crafted gear but still a problem. I would make quest rewards much better until late game when crafting overtakes it. There isn't many quest item rewards so idk why they aren't better.
The combat is what I am least impressed with. I don't dislike the set up of the skills or feel that the heavy attack is too underpowerd. But I would make dodge, heavy, and light attack take stamina like the souls games. Give multiple light attacks a bigger stamina take away than 1 good heavy so you may get slightly more damage but have less stamina if you choose light attacks. You wouldn't be able to spam attacks nonstop if dodge became unusable momentarily if you over extended. Make timed block a little bit harder to do and use less stamina than dodging. Also make it work on more monsters on all but the big telegraphed attacks.
It's all too late though and I feel they are very minor. Many things can be fixed with mods but we'll have to wait for the next game and see how they improve their general game mechanics.
*edited for clarity and to fix some of my countless errors*
I didn't know that about the map. Thanks for the detailed comment, nice to know your thoughts.
In regards to your combat criticisms, I would like to suggest installing the Witcher 3 Enhanced mod, found on the Nexus. It really, REALLY, makes the game a different animal.
Witcher3 looks good. It's world is very beautiful.
Tho it's mechanics are nothing new and many of them are very bland.
There's also the questmarker...
combat is the most dull part. You have absolutely no choice in combat you will be doing the same thing to a particular monster at the end of the game what you were doing in the begining of the game. Zero variety as compared to other RPGs. Also playing as a premade character is your choice so that doesnot make witcher 3 greatest because many people like me like playing with their own characters with different fields like necromancer or a wizard or warrior etc. Its good that you write "I consider" witcher to be greatest because that is completely your subjective opinion and that doesnot make the game a factual masterpiece :)
Yash Kaushik except the game is a factual masterpiece....
Lol, i didn't put much attention to notice boards and I didn't even try to go to every question mark, and I didn't do many of those repetitive quests, seems like I played the game in the correct way without knowing.
Dry Saliva the correct way? Nah, the easy way
seems like you havent played the game the way it meant to be played and only followed the main quest. the game has some repetitive elements but it doesnt mean all side quests are bad and uninteresting.
I don't have the game perfectly fresh in mind, but I really appreciate the improvements in W3 vs 1 and 2 and while some things are not optimal, I really can't see how they would've done them better.
In W1, you had 2 quick slots for potions and you had to open the inventory to consume food for health regen and use additional potions. In W2, you had 1 quickslot for bombs/knives. In W3, you have 4 quick slots for potions, automatically stocking with food once Swallow is depleted (which is a God send), 2 quick slots for bombs, a shortcut for crossbows AND a quickslot for a special item. It's a massive improvement.
Given how you took damage taking potions in 1 or they expired during a cutscenes or how you had to meditate to take 1-4 potions in W2 to having them imediate in W3 is again a noticeable improvement.
Combat. I loved the fact there were 6 individual styles in W1, that all have upgrade paths with new animations. It was a noticeable downgrade in W2 when combat got downgrade to just 2 styles, which was kept for W3 as well. Though I'm not perfectly sure now, I think W3 DOES HAVE different animations (and implicetely, stances) for the steel and silver sword. So the combat doesn't look and feel identical when you're fighting humans vs fighting monsters. It worked well in W2 given how the game was structured, though it would've been nice if they brought it back in W3. However, however you put it, in a game that's 200+ hours for 1 playthrough, any kind of combat system they would've used would become repetitive eventually. I finally got bored of it close to the end of the main story. Got interested again with some of the new stuff in Hearts of Stone and got bored again of the combat in Blood and Wine. But again, it's a huge game. So I find that inevitable.
Playing all the Witcher games on (Very) Hard, I find using oils vital. Even on W3, în Deathmarch (especially with Level Scaling on), while it's possible to not use oils, I find that a massive handicap. Everything is simply more tedious and excessively difficult for no good reason.
The Baron quest. I dunno why everyone is saying this (except for my game bugging out maybe but I doubt), I freed the spirit, which did murder the village HOWEVER the Barron's wife never died on my playthrough.
Personally, I consider W3 having just 3 major flaws.
1) There is no continuation of the Yorveth/Saskia path of W2 in W3. Absolutely nothing. Not even a mention. The devs said how they ran out of time and instead of doing something half assed, they decided to not included anything at all. This saddened me immensely, given that was my W2 save import.
2) The huge amount of question marks in the waters of Skelliga, with all of them being completely pointless, was another negative. It was the only thing in W3 that felt to me like a waste of time and overall a poor design decision.
3) Not a major pain point for me but I did feel it and I understand why people have a problem with it. It Witcher is a defined character template and a skill tree can only offer so much. And again, like W1 and W2, W3 doesn't offer so much new in its skill tree besides passive buffs. A few new moves here and there and some variations on the signs, but that's about it. Which is dissapointing. If W3 kept the 6 different styles from it would've been so much better.
There are lots of flaws in witcher 3, many popular aspects of gaming in witcher 3 is slightly above average. Some people just leave it after few hours and thats legit but with patience, you witness some exceptional marvel.
Overall, it's greatest RPG ever made...for me and many.
Why? I can't articulate it precisely but its perhaps because its not a game you play but a world and story/stories you live and experience & music, world building, attention to details, choices and consequences and many other aspects are perfectly aligned. Perhaps.
You're channel is severely underrated my friend. I really appreciate your fair critiques, there are too much biased or plain ignorant opinions on youtube. Also thank you for the work you put into this, I love 1 hour+ reviews.
The part about all the question marks on the map being daunting was really interesting. I’m 150 hours into my first playthrough right now, and in the middle of Blood and Wine. Not sure if they changed things since this vid but I had no idea you could show question marks on the map. It starts in ‘Default’ map mode, which excludes all of these and at no point does the game mention you can alter this. I just now checked and I do see you can select an ‘All’ option, and there are a shitload of question marks on my maps now. This probably would have lessened this playthrough to be honest. Instead, without them marked, I only went to the ones I was in proximity of, which weren’t a ton, and I navigated the world through regular exploration or through quests I came upon. Much better experience I think as if I saw all those question marks I would have run around and got off course real quick. Instead I’m having a blast and the world feels alive and full of mystery as I don’t see anything really on my map until I find it myself.
Cool! When I played, I remember seeing them everywhere by default, on the og PS4 version. Noticed the same on PC recently. Didn't bother me though as I come from AC. But glad that it's lack of presence improved the experience to you !
I am half way but I cannot resist to comment now... I did my 1st play in death march. And in this mode, you HAVE TO prepare for fight. Get the proper oils, sign, and potion (like a black blood for blood drinking monster and so on). This is the main attraction of the game and its actual strongest rpg aspect.
I agree with many things you said but here I cannot. The real issue is that this game Has to be played in death march from the 1st run. Otherwise you know everything and you are not keen to discover or be amazed by the bestiary and so on. And this is to me the biggest design flaw as normal and difficult difficulties are just useless...
One more thing 48:23 LMAO
Not everyone is skilled enough to take death march and most would get discouraged immediately. Having different difficulty options just makes it more accessible. Yes death march is the way to go for rpg fans like myself. But not for everyone.
@@anitelufalemei4200 Exactly! For a game like this, where story takes center stage compared to combat, the multiple difficulty modes are nice. Less skilled players can get invested in the story without being discouraged by difficult combat.
Also, I personally feel like Blood and Broken Bones is the most balanced difficulty setting. Death March enemies are a bit too tanky on your first playthrough, but BaBB combat feels just lethal enough to keep you on your toes. BaBB heavily rewards preparation for fights, but it doesn't make preparation feel necessary, so I only really need to apply oils/decoctions/etc for bosses, contract monsters, and particularly difficult fights, which makes more sense to me than preparing for every single monster encounter.
Death March is still fun, but the fights seem to drag on for a bit too long unless you specialize your character into a certain build (signs, alchemy, or melee). I prefer BaBB since it lets me use many different techniques in combat without feeling like I have to commit to just one.
Also, on Death March, human enemies feel like they do way more damage and are way more resilient than you, which is weird since you're supposed to be a magically mutated superhuman.
Still the combat is boring imo...
The Witcher 3 is a masterpiece unless you happen to enjoy indulging in amphetamines. 200 hours later you realize 70% of the game was just compulsively doing copypasta sidequests that added nothing except making you invincible by the time you got around to the main story...
I think that the Eternal Flame is more of a look at Christianity from the perspective of the Pagans. The witch hunters' burning and oppression are more akin to the forced conversions of the old days then just the idea of religion bad. Most people probably don't realise that probably and just write it off as CD not liking religion. Also Poland has one of the most strict laws on religion that it borders on oppression to anything but Catholicism. A great example of what I'm talking about is Nergal, the frontman of Behemoth and a known Satanist. There are plenty of articles and interviews of him to prove my point. P.s. like your video, love to see more content like this. Thumbs up and subscribing.
You should know about the reasons as to why 1) Mages are hated in the north, 2) Why Humans hate non-humans (especially elves)
to realize why the eternal flame does such things.
I've only started watching this (I'm about 7 minutes in), but I love it. I'm researching critiques for my own Witcher 3 video, and so far you've made multiple points I needed to write down. I can tell I'm going to find what you have to say through the whole video very interesting. I appreciate your approach :)
I loved the main story, role-playing, and open world.
Literally what Open world and What Role Playing?
Open world: Ability to explore the Northern Realms, Skellige Isle, Toussaint if you have blood and wine
Role Playing: Role playing as, you know, the main character Geralt of fucking Rivia.
Does that answer your question?
@@hobomisanthropus2414 uhh the open worlds of Velen, White Orchard, Oxenfurt, Novigrad, Skellige, Kaer Morhen, Vizima, and Toussaint, and the role playing of building your character with a fairly wide array of sword, sign, alchemy, and misc abilities while also choosing what to do in the branching narrative of the game. You know, playing the role of Geralt?
Damn if you don’t even know this much about the game, it really puts into perspective what you types of people who over-criticize and hate on this game are like
@@DavidHosey1 you can play any role you like, so long as you're a witcher called geralt
@@DavidHosey1with that logic, fucking Uncharted is a roleplaying game, you're roleplaying as Nathan Drake
I'm loving the game currently, and I agree with you completely. I started to get burned out trying to get all points of interest done, and since I'm playing a blade oil based build I feel like I have to explore everything or I may miss a blade oil recipe, guess I'll start googling them from now on, I really want to finish the game and don't want to get bored out of it.
Points of interest did give me a break though from the boring quests related to Dandelion, gosh, that sht takes yeaaaaaaaars
Using guides is recommended imho, just try not to spoil too much for yourself
The map he shows at 10:13, I am ashamed to say I personally sailed to every single one of those barrels and looted them. Harpies sank my boat twice.
you can make an adrenaline/alchemy build with 4 dechocotions and flood of anger and you can use all signs at max power with 3 adrenaline points and have permanent oils on weps, theat makes potions and oils important, and the combat/sing fun because you dont need to put points in sign.
10:40 - In the Wine&Blood expansion the developers seem to have realized this also. Some of the markers on the map turn out to be related to quests.
Something strange has happened in video games, where what we call MAPS aren't maps at all, they are GPS systems. A MAP is something you reference against your surroundings, you take what is on the MAP interpret it and then navigate to your destination. A GPS on the other hand shows your exact location at all times, tells you all the info (how far away your destination is,...) and tells you exactly where to turn to get you to where you are going.
Both lead to a completely different experience, interaction with the game. Wish more games would understand this.
I don't think limited role-play is bad when it comes to a character that's based on something that's already been established, it does its role well, but like you mention its not a role you create it is a role you follow and observe and experience.
I still don't understand where people are coming from when they say it isn't a masterpiece. A masterpiece doesn't mean it has to be perfect. The gestalt of the thing just needs to be a masterclass in some aspect. In this case, I think this game is a great exemplar of how to make a game out of a book series, while also giving it its own identity. If this doesn't qualify as a masterpiece, then I don't really understand what would.
I probably just don't understand what their definition of a masterpiece is.
It may not need to be perfect to be a masterpiece, but it shouldn't have so many problems if it is a masterpiece.
@@Aethelhald
So, your definition of a masterpiece includes some kind of threshold of problem count that excludes a piece from consideration? Interesting.
So, would you say it's a masterpiece now that many issues and bugs were fixed through patching, or would you say it's a masterpiece with certain mods that fix certain issues? I'm curious to know where your threshold is.
I think its very subjective in considering anything to be masterpiece, It might be masterpiece for you but for me its far from it. I had too many problems with this game. But then I am very different kind of gamer than you so its totally fine. But you cannot expect literally everyone to consider any game a masterpiece let alone witcher 3
@@Aethelhald Eh, I agree with all of the criticisms in this video and even have more of my own, but I would still say it's valid to call it a masterpiece. This game does enough things extraordinarily well and leaves such a strong impression that I think it warrants that title. When you look at other rpgs considered masterpieces, they all have deep flaws as well.
@@yashkaushik6116
I'm coming at it from a perspective similar to Arsal's here. I'm evaluating it similar to how one would evaluate art pieces.
Many paintings are considered masterpieces even though plenty of flaws would be evident. Usually this is either due to the painter being considered a master, or the work being particularly impressive in some way.
And I mean impressive in the literal sense, as in it leaves a great impression on the viewer (player in this case). I can see how a player may not fully experience the game if they can't get past the game mechanic issues. However, anyone who fully experiences the game, I can't see how the world-building and presentation wouldn't be considered a masterclass in book-to-game adaptation and wouldn't leave a deep impression. In my opinion, this would be THE game I would point to for this process, even given it's mechanical issues.
I only discovered your channel recently but I have to say you make very thought provoking videos about different games that I never thought about myself. Keep up the good work bro.
well i couldn't complain about the "detective " thing. it's more like investigation but anyway ... they are supposed to be easy because they are easy if you have all the mutations from trial of the grasses + additional second trial of mutagens which only Geralt undertake and more specific only Geralt survives. It makes sense and it's not an issue because when you are a witcher - it's normal to be abnormal - for example superhuman eyes, super strong senses , sense of smell , superhuman hearing, everything so it IS logical for the detective jobs to be easy cause you just have so much more advantages thanks the mutations.
Witcher 3 is a masterpiece not because it's flawless, but because we all still talking about it in 2020 despite it's flaws. It left a powerful impression on players and skyrocket CDP red to a worldwide recognized name for a reason.
I've actually done all the Skeillege points of interest and it was great just taking in the great scenery and music and stopping at some islands and looking around idk I remember having a great time
Same!
Wind Waker has same kind of water chests, but they don't bother me the slightest, since they are optional and contain rupees and even some fun stuff like maps etc.
I would play the hell out of Witcher 4 with Ciri as main role, just the few times you're given control over her in W3 feels amazing and special even without the signs. I'm sure she would be good successor on the series and her story is already built up into the story.
Witcher 4 where the main protagonist is not even a witcher? That sounds retarded.
The first 3 minutes of this video had more poignant dialog about things we love having flaws and taking risks than most movies. Your writing if great and your delivery of the writing drove to leave my second comment on a youtube video in my live.
That Zoltan at 52:33 scared the crap outta me
Yeah Zoltan does look a bit more like something Geralt would take a contract to kill than be friends with.
I am fully agreed with the conclusion of this video. Yes, looting the houses is stupid, yes, some moments or quest or controls or bugs are pretty bad. My major problem were the faces. 3 fucking faces for all NPCs in the world! I could forgive that to warhorse, but wtf is the problem for cd project to paint a hundred or something faces? But still I love this game so much and this characters have their little place in my heart now and I am grateful to developers for their job
I am a huge fan of the witcher games - especially the witcher 3, and I agree to some of your critiques, but I don't play that game as an "Ubisoft player" would. You never played the sign-alchemie build? :D It is so much fun imho. And I agree this is no real RPG, it is pretty linear - you play Geralt and he is stubborn with a special philosophy. The magic comes when you read the books and feel the heart the developers put into random NPCs. You can feel that the developers loved Sapowskis book and tried to put their heart into it. I love that and I regularly get lost into this small details, journals and ingame books that are enjoyable to read (looking at you, Skyrim :D). And I agree with you - this world is dark, unfair af, this game messes with the player and I love it so much I can't stop replaying it. There is a youtuber that makes videos from of a lot of hidden details after years of playing (xletalis - you are welcome) and I admire this game, that this is possible with this game. What I also love about it, is that the obvious good ending always has a bad taste and the good (rewarding) ending is sometimes the morally worst. I enjoy that so much that this game will make you cry at some points. But you are right, in case of fighting and the roleplay aspect this game is not the best game.
To the white frost - there is a nice speculation in fandome if you have the bad ending and assumably ciri died stopping the white frost, you have the ending where you kill the last crown. just have a look at the magic tapestry that the crown made. There is a bird flying away from the tower (of the swallow) on it. Maybe the white frost is a theme that cdpr left open on purpose and if we get some Ciri-related content in Witcher "4", it could be more about the white frost. Or this is the consistent topic in the witcher verse. I mean you had the same problem at the end of witcher 1, where you could assume that the little guy you left at triss/shani is the same as the antagonist and he tried to stop the white frost and failed where Ciri succeded. Normally I don't like the deus ex machina ending but I am still curious if they want to reuse it as a mysterious, world-theatening topic in this witcher-verse. I agree with Eredin though - you don't understand him if you did not read the books. They should have elaborated this ingame and have me the option to hate Avallach more openly :D (but Ciri didn't tell Geralt what Avallch did, so well - he is the unknowing father).
I love witcher 3 mostly as an exploration game and for having well written side characters
You are right about the rpg elements though the gearing is easy and boring and its too easy to make broken builds even if you put constraints on yourself like never using quin
You know, when I first started the video (like the first minute) I was concerned this would be a video being critical for be sake of being critical, like a lot of critiques of universally praised games are. But, after hearing all of your points, positive and negative, I can say this could be the most balanced review of this game I’ve ever seen. It’s honest and critical, but none of the criticism is unjustified, and the praise is similar.
Good job mate
Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.
Stanners it was trash. First thing he said was the Witcher 3 is not an rpg. So all these other critics are lying and this shitty UA-cam channel is better? Geta grip. He can’t even speak properly. No wonder he has no subscribers.
@@anitelufalemei4200 shut up you shithole. Go fuck yourself and get your fucking ass out of here
@@anitelufalemei4200 the witcher 3 isnt an RPG.... the term RPG has been watered down by the streamlining of rpg mechanics for consoles. There is no roleplaying that is possible in the witcher. That doesnt mean it's a bad game, it's a fantastic game, one of the best I've played, but that doesnt mean it's good at being an RPG. His criticisms were all fair, and he still really loves the game. Dont let your love/fanboyism keep you from thinking critically or lashing out before watching the full video:(
@Blizard fan I define an RPG as a game that lets you create a character and effectively playthrough the game as that character. I take the name very literal, Role-playing-game. A game that lets you play the role of any character you want and adjusts the game world accordingly and gives you sufficient options to do so. I'd consider skyrim more of an RPG than the witcher 3 personally. The witcher 3 has more narrative choice, but not choice in your character. I could be a lowlife thief in skyrim and complete the thiefs guild, be a psychotic orc mage on a quest for all daedric artifacts, etc. That style of RPG is what i consider "true RPG" for lack of a better term, i know its pretentious.
About the last part.. I understand Dykstra is a likeable characther but hhats from the player perspective. He proved time and time again that he can't be trusted and Gerald knows that. Also i belive Nilfgards victory was iminent regardless who you wanted to win. Gerald may be able to tip the balance a bit but hes 1 man, not an army. Plus " If i have to choise between evil and a lesser evil i'd rather not choise at all " Just my take on the subject...
25:09 - Lol, look at how much that enemy's character model changed the second it got cut in half. Had to watch it a few times over but the enemy goes from being shirtless with a helmet on, to suddenly wearing a dark brown long sleeved robe and the helmet just completely vanishes in 1 frame hahah. Talk about breaking the immersion when your enemies transmute into someone else with different clothing on upon being cut in half...
I did admittedly also get quite lucky when it came to the Red Baron's questline. I did end up taking the path in which his wife dies, and when I returned to his castle to talk with him, it was during the night, and also during a storm. Seeing him there at the end hit me for maximum effect and I don't think I'll ever forget the image.
what a great comprehensive review, i loved it.
Most of your points surprised me at first, im too used to people blindly praising or hating on this game as u said.
But after thinking about it I clearly remember feeling/thinking ~ the same way while playing, so i can only humbly agree. xD
made me want to play it again though. ^^
Luckily, there's an option now where you can only show mini map when in Witcher Sense (Patch 4.04, July 19 2023)
This game made players who got the sad/bad ending cry.
Me...
The best way to play the game is with the Friendly HUD mod.
You disable the hud and then you set keybinds that you hold to show parts of the hud. I have mine set up so MOUSE4 shows the left side of the hud (health and consumables) and MOUSE5 shows the right side (map and quests). The mod will automatically show the hud when in combat or when you have a debuff so this only applies for when you are out of combat.
This may take a couple minutes to set up but you get the best of both worlds. You get an immersive experience without HUD and you can always toggle it easily when you want.
Waiting for the Blood and Wine critique.
Should be soon.
I'm sorry, but I want to disagree about the witcher 3 not having a great storyline. It's not your story. You're a side character in ciri's story, and a bit player in the world's story. The side quests are all beautifully meaningless. Finding your own meaning along the way is part of it. It's so much like life. The only thing that really matters is your daughter and doing right by her. The end of our journeys aren't always going to be happy or perfectly satisfying. It's up to us to find the meaning in ourselves.
Your video making skills are absolutely amazing by the way. You made a 10/10 Video, A 15/10 Critique, & you have my like and subscribe.
Great video man , you truly tried your best in analyzing the game and it showed , i am impressed .
I know this is way late and you're unlikely to read this at this point but I just wanted to comment a bit about your appraisal of the game's final story beats. From the perspective of someone who didn't read the books (until after I finished TW3), since you were stating that you felt that you thought people in my situation wouldn't find it satisfying, too confusing or as a bit of a deus ex machina.
For the most part, by the way, I agree with your criticisms of the game up until this point. Especially about the RPG mechanics, the minimap, and the TERRIBLE forced choice with Djikstra and Roche (because I DID play The Witcher 2 prior to TW3 and went down the Roche path all those years ago - Roche is a total bro and there is less than zero chance of abandoning him no matter what [and it would have been a lot better if Iorveth was in the game as an alternative solution here since he wouldn't have factored into Djikstra's logic since he has no interest in restoring Temeria]).
For me, the major frame of reference going into The Witcher 3 was Mass Effect, and particularly Mass Effect 3 and how they completely botched that ending. The biggest problem with that series was how Bioware had built up the Reapers into completely unstoppable Cthulu Robots that forced them into a corner of going with the terrible and blunt Deus Ex Machina they did.
After factoring in my memories of TW2 and the build-up they get through 85% of TW3, I was extremely concerned that the game was going to have the same problem with The Wild Hunt. They were built up to be this basically unstoppable force, and after the battle at Kaer Morhen fails to put any real dent into their force the dread that the conclusion was going to be as bad as ME3's was palpable for me when I first played the game. I was having flashbacks to the 70% mark of ME3 where you watch the Asari homeworld burn, with the me as the player futile to stop the damage of these guys despite all the preparations and effort of our characters.
So when the last chunk of the game focused on deconstructing the Wild Hunt into something far more mortal (though still obviously powerful) so that they would NOT be the all powerful force that couldn't be defeated and would cause a terrible Deus Ex Machina into the story, I was actually *very* relieved. All the stuff about them being dimension hopping dark elves was - to me - a great way to prevent the Reaper problem while still allowing for a compelling threat that required getting even "the bad guys" of Nilfgaard onto your side (if only temporarily) to defeat in a very EARNED climax.
I can understand now, after having read the books, why this wouldn't seem as compelling to you, and how you could get the impression that non-book readers might get confused or think it's all out of left field. Since you knew all the backstory going into it. But I can assure you, I (and others I've spoken to about the game who only ever played TW3) that I (and we) was able to follow it all, and didn't find it to be a problem.
Similarly, with Ciri and the White Frost - eh. I always felt that this element was handled pretty appropriately. Ciri's almost a deity in the story, and she's built up as this one true force of positive destiny in a world where generally destiny doesn't really seem to either work out well if at all. Or I guess one way of putting it is - she's built up to serve the very specific function of confronting this one great threat well enough that it also felt very earned to me in the game's second cutscene only climax 9similar in concept to Neo from the Matrix, Ciri was designed for the outcome that was coming, which can feel contrived if not handled properly but I felt was done so in the game). The concept of her character being completely OP even within the world's rules is well established and as with other completely OP characters in their own universes (such as say, Superman) it makes sense to me that the real conflict that draws interest is going to be more about her internal struggle. CDProjekt hit that beat well as far as I'm concerned, and by keeping the details fairly vague it also worked for me since, well, for the most part we as the player are primarily supposed to be coming from Geralt's perspective in the game and Ciri is given enough mystery to allow for just a little bit more.
(it also probably doesn't hurt that I got the "best" ending vis a vis Ciri on my first and only [so far] playthrough, which leaves a better taste in the metaphorical mouth than the really depressing bad ending some players got - I have no doubt that the feel-good emotional high of that which followed helped to ameliorate any issues I might have had in the moment if I spent time to think about it)
Ultimately, at the time of finishing the game I felt the ending to everything was literally best part of the whole story, and it put a great button on the the epic that had just been played. I can see how if you had issues with it, it can cause someone to think that the story *isn't* great, since SO much of the importance of any story lies in how it concludes. But frankly, after having read the books now, I feel CDProjekt actually managed to conclude the Witcher saga better than Sapkowski actually did.
There NEEDED to be a confrontation with all the talk of Ciri and "DESTINY" on the scale shown in TW3, and that's what was delivered in the game. I get that Sapkowski wanted to do what he does best and mess with fables in a wry way, but the end of her story in the novels as basically being the implied reason for the Galahad of Arthurian legend to ascend to "heaven" and/or being the "true" Holy Grail in his tale is just . . . cheeky to me, and doesn't deliver on the long-in-the-making payoff of her grand character arc about making her own choices in life and not being a tool (or a womb) for someone else. She had to make the purposeful, self-motivated choice to embrace destiny and live up to it all if she was ever going to be free of it. Her just world-hopping away into someone else's story feels immature to me.
Again, overall I think you've done fine work here (and with this series, which I binged today on a lazy day off). Just wanted to put forth a different perspective on this particular topic.
Great comment man, very good insights!
So glad on PC I could just hop on the developer console and use slow(2) and slow(4) to increase game speed while doing the undiscovered locations.. all of the Skellige busywork done in 2 hours.
Never had to use Swallow either, just get Gourmet for all your healing needs.
You are so far the only critic that mentions how the minimap draws away your eyes from the beautiful world. Too many games do that and it's sad to see how nobody navigates by looking at landmarks and tall buildings but instead stares down a very unhistoric/un-fantasy GPS system.
Most of this I agree on, but I cant say I'm with you on the combat mechanics.
Blade Oils are nice mix bonus damage and an impetus to gather and use alchemy - my only gripe is that it would've been nice to have a second quick menu to select them from.
I think dodging/rolling works fine, and rolls are still useful for quickly gaining space in groups.
And quen is only OP in big, single fights. It's a buffer for tough encounters, play against groups of foes or keep slamming your face into an opponent without letting it recharge, and it'll do you little good.
It's all just opinion though, always appreciate how you support your views.
The Baron's guards at that Inn, I decided to let them live, then heard the conversation they had immediately after when they sat down... Killed them straight away after that and will never let them live on any playthrough.
Same! And if you listen to the guys outside, they're all horrible. My first playthrough, I thought killing them would be like fighting soldiers, so I didn't.
During my third playthrough, I went after the guys outside first, which has the 3 from inside the inn come outside and fight you too. It makes your arrival at Crows Perch quite different!
25:10 Character model changes during execution animation, I never noticed that before.
Evidently getting cut in half adds a tunic and makes you bald.
Here is the thing: there is an option to have enemy level scale with the player. For most of my playthrough, I really liked playing that way. It kept all the end encounters feeling engageing.
EXCEPT in the quest where you have to go through the sewers with Triss, and you get swarmed by a thousand level 50 mice. I died to those damn mice more than any other enemy in the game.
I love W3, I've finished it twice. But the quest design where you press a button and Geralt does things for you, and you can't even think for yourself because Geralt tells you what to do in his monologue, made me so disappointed that I paused playing for a couple of months during the first play-through. It was so hard to find any mention of this issue anywhere that I thought I'm alone thinking like that.
I'm not sure if someone has already said this, but the situation in novigrad is so bad because novigrad is in redania and all trust for mages has been lost due to the events in witcher 2 with the lodge of sorceresses destroying what little trust was left between mages and the kings that remain. To the rest of the world the lodge was responsible for all of letho's actions im the service of nilfgaard. Actions that have shattered the northern kingdom's defenses and allowed nilfgaard to make waaaay more progress taking over temeria than they might have otherwise. Radovid and the church, which is centered in novigrad both spread this information like the plague among the populace to destroy the people's faith in mages, which had already never really recovered from the events in the books, namely thanedd. That's why it's so bad in novigrad for mages. The witchhunters and the church of the eternal fire have ALWAYS been against nonhumans, they've only been emboldened by lumping them in along with the mages for not being normal.
The mod “Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition” fixes A LOT of the bad things from the vanilla game.
tried it, still prefer the vanilla
Too many trash mobs?
How do you get it if you already have the old one?
Can it be updated, or do you have to buy it outright?
Martin Myggestik
There is a lot of problems so I seriously doubt it fixes everything as some things like Skyrim can't be fixed unless you remodel and remake the game completely from the ground up.
@Victoria Carson
Yep. Just another sad case of overrating a video game.