The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

Finished the game too and quite disappointed.
There is simply no reason to replay the game. The main quest has zero choice, no siding with A or B, no moral dilemma as there were in the first and second game.
Gameplay without a gamepad is awful but clickfest wins you most fights. There are about 2 difficult fights in the whole game, when you don't know how to handle the opponent, and then it's just clickfest/very easy.
The cutscenes can't be paused, which is also way bad. Many times you can't save (like in the middle of a cutscene).
The amount of side quests is worthless. There are too many, so most of them won't offer any kind of reward or thrill as you're likely way too high level for most of themif you want to play most.
Overall very disappointing.

We've been conditioned as gamers to extinguish every annotation that shows up on a mini map... Many feel a sense of loss or not exploiting the game's full potential (and our monetary investment in it...) if we don't diligently do as many of the side-quests as possible. Honestly I'll give a medal to the game designers who will manage to make a huge world with a lot of things to do, without drowning us in a shower of mini-map icons and quest arrows.

It`s sort of why I fell in love with Dark Souls. It doesn't really have "side-quests" per say, well sort of, but... Anyway... It's a game that just drops you somewhere and tells you "if you go around, talk to people, and explore, you'll see a bunch of cool stuff, at some point the game will end, have fun". It's hard playing something like Ubisoft's games such as Assassin`s Creed or Far Cry, which have basically become mini-map icon whack-a-mole. I haven't played Witcher 3 yet but it's one of the things that made me wary of it.

I think it's possible to have a lot of side quests, but don't tickle, poke and annoy my unconscious gray matter with an explosion of notifications. It's made worst with the buckets of "codex updates" and "journal entries" and exclamation marks everywhere in the menus. Can't the things "just be there" without the developers constantly pointing at them? They seem quite afraid to invest in making things that we won't see... I think I'd see many of them without the notifications, and I may enjoy it more, and I may actually come back and play again and see what's in other places.

You do get a lot of unmarked stuff in TW3, though yes sometimes stuff still shows up as a ! or ? on the map for actual quests (and not the minor ones and some of the more filler content like smugglers caches).

LDiCesare said:

Finished the game too and quite disappointed.
There is simply no reason to replay the game. The main quest has zero choice, no siding with A or B, no moral dilemma as there were in the first and second game.

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Actually a good point, there really isn't a lot of choice in the MQ.

Gameplay without a gamepad is awful but clickfest wins you most fights. There are about 2 difficult fights in the whole game, when you don't know how to handle the opponent, and then it's just clickfest/very easy.

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It's only a clickfest if you're overleveled,, though fair enough point I actually wish I faced more enemies that matched my level. I don't see how it is any different with a gamepad, except a pushfest in that case.

The cutscenes can't be paused, which is also way bad. Many times you can't save (like in the middle of a cutscene).

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What game even allows that? Not a big deal although I can see situations it would be annoying if you do get uninterrupted, ie have kids (my condolences) or are a teenager who lives at home (I remember those days). Not really a major issue though, and you can hit escape while in cutscenes (or at least choices) to pause it afaik.

The amount of side quests is worthless. There are too many, so most of them won't offer any kind of reward or thrill as you're likely way too high level for most of themif you want to play most.

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Though fair enough issue to raise boo hoo . You can say that about almost any RPG. Although I do agree that some are filler (ie smugglers caches), most of them aren't that bad. You don't have to do all of them anyway and they doin't get in the way of the MQ, most of them are quite skippable (especially the ? marked ones and caches), personally I am super enjoying a long stretched out game playing as Geralt the Witcher, I only just got back to kaer Morhen. I'd absolutely love another 100 hour game just doing Witcher stuff as another witcher in a different time period. Though it would be nice to have more challenging monster battles for sure.

Maniacal said:

and you can hit escape while in cutscenes (or at least choices) to pause it afaik.

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My point is that NO, you cannot do that. And it is a real problem when you happen to have a family because the game throws cutscenes at you all the time. Only dialog choices allow you to pause, but not the 'quick answer' ones.

Regarding the side quests, the problemis that doing them means you will be overlevelled for everything else pretty fast, so they turn the rest of the game into a no-challenge game. A colleague of mine told me he did somewitcher equipment quests and then every fight has been abreeze. There's a realbalance issue here. Consider Pillars of Eternity: They level the main quest a bit depending on your level, so it's always somewhat challenging, although they don't overdo it (so if you come back stronger, the opponent doesn't remain too tough for you).

Just for the hell of it I started a new game to see if they separated your characters in any way. Nope. No naming of save games (which we had in the 90's), and no separation of characters (at least the Dragon Age games do this). They just plop your new games saves right on top of the old ones. Good luck telling which is which (the date makes it easier, but not a perfect solution if you go back and forth between 2 play throughs). Games over 20 years old (like X-com) allowed you to name save games, why can't we do them today? And I'm not buying the console argument, I've seen how the keyboard comes up on consoles, and you use the controller to select letters and numbers. They should adapt to us, not the other way around. I automatically knock many points off my game review for not having the ability to name save games.

A lot of criticism of the game above. I did like the game, the "action" part of it is damn fun. I didn't find it so much a click fest (I used the space bar and other keys just as much). Some fights were hard, and required you to time dodges. Although sometimes I was just lazy, and loaded up with a thunderbolt and axii and just whomped on the baddie (clickfest) until they died. I couldn't be bothered to play the dodge game.

I do like the Witcher senses in this game, although they are a bit overused. Better than MMO's that tell you exactly where to go to find this hard to find and tough boss monster. At least you have to work a little to find these tougher monsters, making your job as a Witcher seem valuable in that no one else can find the creatures but you.

Disgustipated said:

Just for the hell of it I started a new game to see if they separated your characters in any way. Nope. No naming of save games (which we had in the 90's), and no separation of characters (at least the Dragon Age games do this). They just plop your new games saves right on top of the old ones. Good luck telling which is which. Games over 20 years old (like X-com) allowed you to name save games, why can't we do them today? And I'm not buying the console argument, I've seen how the keyboard comes up on consoles, and you click which letter you want to use. They should adapt to us, not the other way around. I automatically knock many points off my game review for not having the ability to name save games.

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That is pretty bad... Given how often I save, I probably have between 50-100 saves. You never know when you fall off a cliff, get stuck, pick the wrong answer, etc. A few quests have bugged for me too. I've played far too long with what I thought was some bugged skills, only to find out you have to activate them in some mutagen slot. Probably should've known, but that part isn't very intuitive. The whole inventory is due to be fixed next week also, which is needed. You can't craft higher runes from lesser either, due to some bug. ...still a great game. Almost too large. I would've traded Velen for a slicker experience.

I play mouse and keyboard. Tried controller but had a more difficult time with it. Only thing I repeatedly have to load due to dying/losing are horse races and fist fights. I kind of avoid both. Gwent is fun though. Play every merchant I meet.

Yeah the Dragon Age games did a great job of clearly seperating save games. Most others do not, but at least allow you to name them. Morrowind, Oblivion and Skyrim all forced you to use the console if you wanted to custom name them, terrible basic system.

Patch 1.07 is out and has some pretty big QoL changes and fixes as well as just lots and lots of fixes and tweaks in general.

https://www.reddit.com/r/witcher/comments/3dnpji/patch_107_discussion_thread/

And some annoyances too. They've raised level requiements for Witcher gear. I can't equip my Enhanced Feline Armor after Geralt took it off for sexy time.

Yeah I read about that, seems rather silly considering how low level the main story line is in relation to a lot of other quests.

Well, I finally finished after ~120 hours over more than two months.
I think it was slightly too long and branching stories would have been better, but that was about five days of my life well spent. I still have a lot of ? in Skellige and some open contracts and side quests because I just wanted to be done and I wanted to be able to discuss endings without fear of spoilers.
I'm not that cocerned about spoilers for endings I didn't get. I doubt I'll play to get them all any time soon.
It was very satisfying, even though I don't like how the game played with my emotions.


So, what endings did y'all get ?

I kind of messed up and tried romancing both Triss and Yennifer. I won't spoil it, just advising not to do that. I guess I was used to Bioware games that make you choose at some point.

Heh heh that was a brilliant move by them. Although there isn't really much warning and its rather easy to accidentally start cheating on Triss with Yen.

Anybody get or played the expansion?

I'm a little burned out on the Witcher series right now. But if it adds some great gameplay I may check it out. Or even just an interesting story would be enough reason for me to play it.

I have it, but I still haven't gotten back around to finishing TW3. Procrastination is a major flaw of mine. I think I'll get back to it this week though.

I haven't played the expansion yet but I've heard that it is amazing.

LOL, well it's interesting, I'll give it that. I never did really learn the game or bother to collect cards.

I don't usually like in-game minigames. There are a few exceptions I can think of, like Might and Magic VII's Arcomage... In Witcher 1 and 2 I basically never played any of the mini-games. In Witcher 3 though, I find myself playing a lot of Gwent and collecting cards. It's a decent game.

I wish CDPR would add multiplayer gwent to the game.