Reviews - HarisonPudding

It's a solid sequel with improved weapon and armor crafting, settlement building, and feels like a shooter when you opt to use guns. But it's on the same old engine, with the same bugs (though much fewer), and more of the same in terms of muddy graphics, ho-hum main quest, and fairly aged AI and environmental design practices. That said, I have played hundreds of hours in two high level character builds. The companions and settlement building were the best, if a bit flawed, aspects for me. I feel like ESO, they really needed to double down on this but decided to keep it on the conservative and mass appeal side.

[No Spoilers.]
It's a great story and an okay game. High marks for the emotional connections and writing for most of the main narrative and some of the sub plots. I was truly moved by how the story played out at several points: Two playthroughs with two very different outcomes during and at the end means what I did mattered (for a good chunk of the narrative at least). And I was impressed with the graphics both in game and cut scene. Playing on PC helps that last part, obviously.

Low marks, however, for not figuring out that Witcher 2 combat in vanilla state is not what gamers wanted all over again for Witcher 3 vanilla, and it's even worse in certain situations. Geralt combat is like trying to take a fully loaded truck through the Indy 500 race course. Even in Cat Armor, he's a tank to move and fight with. Armor types should determine agility/speed as well as stamina regen. I found the lack of meditation healing in the harder difficulties to be more annoying than anything. Meditation should be optional for all levels with increased AI and damage from monsters as well as stat adjustments to make Geralt use every trick in his bag, rather than just making it an ad hoc survival sim. Geralt and the camera are too tight during fights and even in smaller rooms/areas. It makes combat an absolute chore, rather than a skills-based joy.

Overall, though, it is a satisfying end to a series (maybe). CDPR gets major props for turning out a game that was not broken day one (At least for me, I know there were and will always be issues for some of us day one.); gave us several freebies throughout the last couple of months; and have been great in using customer feedback to patch the game in a timely fashion. Also included in my rating is the fact that CDPR is a gamer-first, mod-friendly company that will be rolling out the engine for this game and mods are out there in the droves already, even before getting the guts of the thing. Which is the one, true way to allow for maximum player agency in a game. I'm looking at you, Ubisoft.

This game was a gateway drug into Bethesda's Elder Scrolls series for me. I didn't know what I was supposed to do and didn't care because I could explore and quest without rails. It was a revelation. I managed to kill an entire House very early in the game, not realizing the consequences, and forever earned their enmity. Had to re-kill that area over and over just to get some new armor or finish certain quests. Remembered me my old school Bard's Tale and it was "Kites Ahoy!" That's the kind of thing Morrowind and most of the Elder Scolls games do: create moments for you.

I can't tell you how many times I used levitate over any other mode of travel. I finally finished it over 150 hours later. Glorious.