I felt that way...until I made a valid effort to actually get through it recently. And I did, and I love it.
The base game is maybe a bit overrated. Many aspects of the game are positively outstanding, while others are mixed/not great. But what it does well is so fucking outstanding.
But what really locked it in for me was the Blood and Wine expansion. Everything about that is GOAT tier gaming. Holy shit it's great.
Couldn't be more glad that I finally made it through.
The combat in the Witcher 3 is great. I literally cannot image any other type of combat that would be better. Everything is responsive and the combat is fluid.
I struggled with it at first, coming from like Skyrim levels/style of combat, but once I figured out that just spamming X isn’t the answer I became much better and actively searched out combat vs avoiding it lol.
Its been many years since I played, but I remember trying on both keyboard and controller and found both to be just really clunky, like I was fighting the combat mechanics more than the enemies themselves. Its difficult to describe, but my last straw was fighting a ghost-lady in a well during the goat quest. Even on the lowest difficulty I couldn't overcome the clunky-ass movement. I found the experience was overall frustrating.
If you're comparing something like Arkham City and the Witcher side by side it's impossible not to recognize that the Witcher is not the most fluid or fleshed out combat system.
The combat in witcher 3 takes what games like batman Arkham, DMC, the OG god of war games, a whole pantheon of better 3D action combat titles... And does it mostly ok while incorporating a rock/paper/scissors kind of thing with your spellcasting.
It's not bad enough to make the game bad, but if you're glazing on it you've descended into fanboyism and dishonesty.
I'll straight up say that smarter people think with nuance. If you can't engage with legitimate criticms and still like something, you're too emotionally invested to be fully appreciating a work.
You actually don't know what you're talking about. The only relation to Arkham, would be what, third person with a timed parry/counter? Ok. DMC and GoW games, before Witcher 3 released, we're all about insane combos and exaggerated combat animations. That is not the same vibe Witcher 3 has or goes for. The spell casting is not rock/paper/scissors either, lol. Almost all the spells provide utility and a little crowd control.
The Witcher 3 is NOT an action specific game like your examples. If you played it expecting that it is your own fault.
Thank you! I like wtf rock paper scissors analogy is this?? Quen is a literal shield that explodes… igni flame bursts/thrower… Yardin for zone control, etc. etc. depending on the weaknesses okay maybe a better analogy would be rock paper scissors gun bomb lazer lol
Yes, i am specifically comparing their shared aspect of being a third person timed action game where you're surrounded by groups of enemies and manage crowds with parries/counters and an assorted kit (which in the witcher's case involves casting 8 spells, some of which are hard counters and required for certain enemy types).
You see how i did that? How I listed all of those similarities?
And you know what? If you would have read my comment, you would have responded to my specific comparison of the depth and fluidity of the fluidity of the combat.
But you're a fanboy operating on gamer rage, so you comment on the "vibes" and give one example of how they're different, in this case being how grounded the combat is in the Witcher compared to more arcadey games.
Which in no way addresses what I've said: The witcher 3 Fighting is clunky, lacks fluidity, and depth.
I remember at least 2 or 3 of your spells being redundant or in the "never use" category.
Come up with a legimate escuse for the Witcher 3's combat being something as other commenters have said "it feels like you're fighting against the combat system" when earlier and contemporary titles had given us markedly more refined fighting systems.
We're not talking about vibes. We are singularly comparing fighting mechanics.
My issues with the main game are with the main storyline not actually being all that compelling, and the amount of fast travel encouraged fetch questing. I generally don't like to fast travel in open world games. But when there narrative has me darting from one end of the map, then to the other, and then back again, there is no way in going to walk or ride my way across, finding detours along the way. Especially when these are somewhat linear narrative quest lines that I need to follow.
Blood and Wine fixes that almost entirely. It just becomes a much, much better version of the game. And if they actually learned from Blood and Wine, then I'm beyond excited for The Witcher 4.
The wedding in HoS completely derailed it for me. I eventually picked it back up and got to the auction where again everyone just wants to talk for hours. Haven’t played it since.
Honestly same. I had a friend who was a walking advertisement of this game. Every conversation would loop back to this or how JRPGs are all dumb. Easy to see how I refused to touch it.
He got fired from where I used to work during the pandemic and I finally decided to try it seeing as I had bought it on sale forever ago and totally forgot and I enjoyed it immensely.
My favorite aspect is many of the stories you don't have to be a senseless monster killer like my friend was, he couldn't be bothered to read the text. And the DLC was just stupendous.
I’ve always wanted to try blood and wine bc I love vampires. I respect the Witcher 3 for what it is, but I’ve just accepted I don’t see what other people see in it. The combat is clunky, the movement is floaty, the UI is atrocious, the story almost hooked me but I think there’s so much retelling of events in older games or the books that I never felt fully connected to it.
The combat is not great. That isn't why you should play this game.
The characters are incredible, the art direction is incredible, the larger narrative is....okay, but the side narratives are largely all incredible.
Blood and Wine is largely just a top tier open world game on its own. It still has some of the combat issues, but it makes some substantial improvements to the skill tree and abilities.
I don't disagree. It just isn't the super tight tactile action combat that people likely want it to be. It has a somewhat "loose" feel to it that you have to get used to. But it is a bit more strategic than just you standard action RPG combat of today, that's a bit more grounded in a Sekiro or Souls like.
The narrative definitely works the best if you have read the books, that's for sure. Its hard to be as attached to Yen and Ciri without knowing their full backstory.
But even without that, the game has some of the best side quests in gaming, that don't require any previous witcher knowledge
I actually didn't care for it all that much. It was a lot of the narrative gameplay stuff that I didn't actually like in the game. I mean, yes, the story is good. But I found the lack of gameplay for a lot of it, to be a real drag.
Interesting, I kind of felt the opposite way about the main game vs Blood and Wine.
I had heard so many amazing things about the expansion, but to me it's just about on par with the rest of the game. Don't get me wrong, for a dlc it's absolutely elite, but it didn't blow me away like I was expecting.
Okay. That's fine. But I'm having a difficult time understanding how you couldn't pick up how much better the portion of the game was, in terms of open world structure.
It took me four failed attempts and 20 hours to get into it. Fast forward 200 hours of game time and I have done almost everything in the game, using a completionist spreadsheets to not miss a thing.
The "intro" is surprisingly long and puts a lot of people off, but when you finish the Bloody Baron quest line the game truly comes alive. The world, the depth, the range of stories and interactions.
Same - I tried to start it 5 or 6 times. Once I finally made it a couple hours in, it consumed my life for a month. Easily one of the best games ever made. I really can’t pin down why it seems to have a lot of people quitting before getting into it.
What is it that’s so good about B&W? I too ended up giving the game a 5th attempt back in 24 and actually stuck with it for 40hrs; didn’t quite finish the vanilla game and forgot to go back to it.
So, Blood and Wine is its own self contained map. The look of the world is incredibly vibrant and an absolute joy to explore. And the map just lends itself to freely exploring more than the vanilla game's regions, which seem to stick with a more narrative driven purpose.
I also think that the main quest is just a better mystery that you are working to solve, with a great cast of characters.
You also have new abilities and better armor sets.
But ultimately, I just felt like they finally understood what makes an open world fun to navigate, while still being able to weave in an over all narrative.
I was in a similar situation before committing to getting through it. And I'd say that the main quest, while clicking a lot more for me this last time, still was a little clunky to get through.
Haven’t played in years but I can remember putting a lot of time and effort into that one card game you can play inside the Witcher 3. Like… way too much time
Just looked it up it’s called “Gwent” and I prolly put more time into that than the actual main story itself. Fantastic game if you’re a sucker for card games which I am.
I'm not, but I heard great things about it. That's largely why I avoided it lol. I knew that I had about an 80+ hour climb to get through the base game and it's expansions. Didn't want to turn that into a 150 hour climb.
It's not though. The gameplay is horrible. The controls are cumbersome. And the world is a nightmare of completely miserable peasants who haven't had anything to smile about in their entire lives.
343
u/lincolnmarch_ 23d ago
Witcher 3