If you enjoy these reviews and want to help the channel grow, then please do me a favor and like, comment, subscribe, or share this video. Interactive engagement like that helps the algorithm to pick up on the video, and makes it more likely to reach a wider audience. This video took a huge amount of time and effort to put together, and I would be very grateful and appreciative of any help you can provide in spreading it and helping me grow more as a content creator. Thank you all for watching, and I'm looking forward to reading your comments!
Great video. I really hope that you posted these issues on the official Witcher forum of CDPR with the hopes of some of these being addressed and fixed with the upcoming update.
@@masontroglen3413 You're right, the Witcher 3 isn't an RPG. It's an Action Adventure game - which I think is the crux of part this video's complaints about Witcher 3 lacking meaningful player choice and consequence, the game outright ignoring player choices, and on-rails questing where the player is directed and pulled through scripted, linear quest narratives rather than playing and shaping it by their actions and choices, and figuring out what to do with information. The difference between an Action-Adventure game and an RPG is the focus on player agency in an RPG, while an Action-Adventure puts the questing on rails. Everything else can be the same between those genres. An Action-Adventure game is pretty-much exactly an RPG, but without the focus on player agency (after which, what's left is action, exploration, story, and all the common player management tasks), while an RPG is like an Action-Adventure game, but with a major focus on player agency.
What you say at 1:19:19 is what completely kills the game for me. There is no real agency. I'm just following visual markers without any cerebral component to the gameplay. It's mind-numbing.
Thank you for this excellent essay. The Witcher 3 is one of the few games I have played and finished not once, but twice over the past three years, including the main storylines of both DLC. I think what makes the Witcher 3 so appealing to many people (including myself) is a combination of several factors: - Excellent world building, atmosphere and writing with regards to lore, world and characters, at least by videogame standards. Ironically, I'm convinced that this is less of an accomplishment on the part of CD Project Red but is in large part due to the game being based on well-established characters in one of the best-written and most successful fantasy novel series. - Accessibility: the game is very easy on "normal" difficulty. The average player can get through the game without having to mess with intricate or complex gameplay systems (which do not really exist anyway). I.e. you don't need special skills, items, loot etc. to beat most enemies in the game rather easily (except for a few encounters like the "final" boss from Blood and Wine). - Gameplay isn't great, but "decent enough not to get in the way". None of the game's core mechanics are particularly innovative, complex, or just exceptionally well done. It's actually a pretty mediocre and oftentimes rather shallow game. For example, you never actually use your Witcher senses to solve puzzles or detect things outside of the "prescribed" use in the context of a quest. However, many gameplay elements are used to vary things up just enough to let you enjoy the story. - Despite most gameplay elements becoming repetitive rather quickly, the game is just short enough not to get boring (when focusing on the main story).
Thank you for the response. These are all points I can agree with that help in achieving the game's widespread popularity; while some of the shortcomings can be a huge detriment to me, personally, I concede that they might not be issues for others who either don't care as much about deeper mechanical systems in games, or else who just become so enamored with the world, story, characters, or other such elements that the shortcomings are easier to overlook. Regarding the world-building, atmosphere, and writing, I think Hearts of Stone might stand as a good example of CD Projekt's raw talents as writers and creators -- as far as I'm aware, it's not based on any existing source material from Sapkowski, but is something they created entirely on their own. That DLC's story, characters, and atmosphere are my absolute favorite from the entire game, base game or DLC. Of course, it's still set within the established world and ideas that Sapkowski created for The Witcher universe, and I've heard that Cyberpunk 2077 lacks a lot of the deeper lore and world-building of The Witcher games, so you could be right after all.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Agree with you on Hearts of Stone. One of my favorite parts of the game. Overall, Witcher 3 is certainly not a flawless videogame, but it is a really enjoyable interactive movie with great characters and exceptional writing by videogame standards (better than the Netflix show, that's for sure...).
@@karllenassonNetflix show is a squib so there is nothing to compare. Just like you cannot compare their "documentary" about black Cleopatra with history books. All they want is to gaslight and brainwash people.
I've always thought that the Witcher feels like a great movie or TV series, and the combat and quest solving is just a nuisance you put yourself through to see the next episode. The depth of the characters is great and the story has many twists and turns, the cutscenes are well done and make you feel even more like watching a great series. But combat is clicking 2 buttons (left click and roll) with the occasional sign and quest solving is following a red blur in every single quest. You don't even put clues together yourself, you follow a red blur so Geralt can talk to himself to solve the riddle for you.
And that's the reason why it is not a great game. A great game should be able to combine the gameplay with the story so well that you really feel immersed and drawn into the action while you are actually playing it. The cutscenes should be the highlight, not the only enjoyable part of the story. If only the cutscenes are good enough to show you the story, then you can even watch it on TH-cam, because there is no actual reason to purchase and play the game. Kingdom Come Deliverance does a very good job in terms of gameplay design. And ironically the first two Witcher games did too. But the third Witcher manages to be incredibly boring in terms of actual gameplay. I am sorry, but that is not a masterpiece of a game for me. Furthermore, the story is in my opinion far from being as good as so many claim to be. But that is subjective.
@@Agent49aufStreifzug I agree that it is flawed and has too many hand holding elements to it. I want to figure out where I have to go without having every step telegraphed for me, what's more I want to have to solve riddles myself and progress a quest by virtue of my own observation and putting clues together, the game totally spoils the detective elements of the Witcher concept, since the avatar has all the answers even when the player doesn't, you play this game basically on autopilot and don't need to think at all, every path, every solution get's spoiled for you. You still enjoy it because of how fleshed out the story and characters are, but you enjoy it more the way you would enjoy a theme park ride, it's not very involving gameplay. Maybe I am just an old fashioned RPG player, but this dumbed down gameplay ruins the satisfaction you'd otherwise have by solving quests through your own efforts and reasoning. For me it's still a good game, but it's not on par with the likes of Kingdom Come Deliverance or Elden Ring, or even some old RPG classics.
Also. How many fucking times is Geralt gonna move at a snails pace when doing basic af things? It honestly annoyed me so much that I dropped the game entirely.
I absolutely love this game and have played it an insane number of hours. Yet I find myself agreeing with absolutely everything you say. Which is a testament to both the game's quality and your skill as a writer and critic. Love it.
@@gabifergsson5166 sorry to disappoint, I'm German. I have Polish roots, but those are about 100 years in the past and I have no ties to the country at all.
One thing I forgot to mention, which might've been worth including in "The Ugly" section, is that certain mechanics are obfuscated behind vague or otherwise non-existent descriptions. For example, a lot of decoctions tell you they'll buff certain attributes (like extra critical hit damage when attacking from behind, or healing you whenever you deal damage) but they don't specify by how much, exactly. Sometimes you can discern this information in the character stats window accessed from the inventory screen, but not always. It's especially confusing when it comes to toxicity, since the game counts toxicity from decoctions against your total limit, but doesn't count them for the overdose threshold or other skills that rely on your percentage of toxicity. A lot of this stuff isn't explained well or at all in the actual game, and so it would've been nice for that information to be conveyed better so that you can make more informed decisions about your character building options, as opposed to guessing and going through a bunch of trial-and-error to figure it out yourself (or further disrupting the flow/immersion by looking things up online).
All these complains are not valid. The game is easy enough to not need to micro manage everything and weather you go online to look stuff up is up to you not a requirement. You don't need to have the game explain everything, you don't know the outcome of a dialogue choice for example. If you ask me I wish I'd knew the outcome of a decision more than how much damage a buff adds in any RPG.
@@gearfriedtheswmas It seems pretty reasonable to me to want to understand how game mechanics actually work, especially when it comes to things like character building since those are potentially long-term decisions that directly influence the core gameplay experience. Just because it makes narrative sense to not know how a character will respond in dialogue, doesn't mean it makes mechanical sense to not know how a particular skill or item will actually function, and that logic for unpredictable story-related outcomes shouldn't apply to things like mathematical computation of stats and skills and how they actually work together. If, for example, you go heavily into an alchemy build and start mixing skills that relate to decoctions, potions, and toxicity, it would be pretty frustrating to play for several hours wondering why certain skills aren't working the way you thought they would -- that's not a case of "you made a bad decision and need to live with the consequences" but rather "the game's mechanical systems don't always make intuitive sense based on how the information is given to you." It's not analogous to not knowing the outcome of a particular dialogue choice; it's more like not knowing what Geralt is actually going to say when you select a particular choice. Imagine a scenario where you pick a dialogue option where the text prompt sounds warm and comforting and then Geralt says it in a cold and detached sort of tone, or where you select "Yes I'll help you" and then Geralt instead says "No, I don't have time for that." That's how it feels with some of these obfuscated mechanics that don't give a clear enough indication of how they'll actually work in practice. And personally speaking, I'm someone who enjoys min/maxing and finding statistical efficiencies in these types of games, and the vague, sometimes conflicting descriptions directly interfere with that avenue of enjoyment. It's a minor complaint to be sure, that doesn't have a serious impact on the actual gameplay, but I don't think it's something that should be so easily excused, or my criticisms blanketly dismissed as invalid, particularly not by the logic you're using. I'd also go so far as to say that "wanting to know the outcome of a decision more than how much damage a buff adds in any RPG" goes directly against the core design philosophy of this series. "Unintended consequences" is specifically part of this series' mantra when it comes to its quests and character interactions -- the whole point of the first game was making small, seemingly insignificant decisions that would have some kind of gameplay or story-altering affect sometime down the road. By delaying the consequences until an entire chapter or two later it forced you to have to live with your decisions, and they were always framed in a moral gray area where there were no obvious "right or wrong," "good or bad" choices. It was meant to make you struggle figuring out what you personally considered the better option, knowing that there might be valid pros and cons to each decision, while offering a more realistic and immersive atmosphere in not knowing how things will shape up later on, based on information you couldn't have possibly known at the time of making that decision. If The Witcher games were to indicate exactly what consequences would happen with each decision, when you're making those choices, it would completely betray these games' intended purpose. I completely understand why you would want that in an RPG, but that's mostly a matter of personal preference, and it's incongruous with these games' core design philosophy. In comparison, "vague and non-descript mechanical systems" is NOT part of the game's core design philosophy, seeing as they give you hard numbers and vivid descriptions for most things -- it's just that 10% of the time where they dropped the ball that it gets a little annoying.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I can understand why you would like more details in the descriptions but I don't agree with your opinion. A lot if not the majority of games have esoteric mechanics and having a different standard for this game just cause it already offers more info than most games is a bad take. About the story choices I totally disagree, some decisions have unpredictable outcomes and saying that it is a witcher thing doesn't make me feel less cheated by the story. Having to play 50 hours in a doomed decision path sure beats using a potion of skill resetting and trying a different build. I appreciate you taking the time to write all that response but I don't agree with anything you said other than that it is indeed a minor complaint.
My main problem with that game is the fact that i's more akin to a movie than a video game. Not that there's anything wrong with movies, but I play video games for, well, gameplay. And it's seemingly not what they focused on, choosing instead plot, characters and the whole "spectacle" part, if you will. There's no point in going back once you've finished it once, you pretty much saw it all. That annoys me in video games nowadays, they have too high budget so developers don't want you to be able to skip anything they've paid millions to make. And content they "don't want you to skip" is unfortunately, actual branching storylines and gameplay, you'll see it all whether you like it or not, damn it. Problem is that's not an RPG anymore, you'll just watching what they prepared for you with minimal input.
Such a great video! There is not enough critique of this game. I am a huge fan of this game and Witcher universe in general, but I don't understand what makes some people so intolerant to any criticism for it. All I can add is I have read the books and even though it helps with understanding the characters more it also reveals other problem with game's plot. ImO, devs disregard the book plot way too much, sometimes they ignore some events or characters, sometimes contradict them. For example, I would imagine people who haven't read books will be quite surprised to find out Emhyr and Ciri are officially married. And it's only one thing among many others which are ignored or make no sense with what's going on in the game.
Reading the books ruined the witcher 3 for me. For 3 primary reasons, the first reason is the fact that the witcher 3’s plot is basically the exact same plot in the books, second is that geralt seems a bit out of character because unlike in the books he’s less philosophical but yet more calm and composed, rarely getting angry, and he’s very neutral and doesn’t stand up for people or mind his business into silly matters, soo if you want your geralt too be like that in the game you’ll miss out on a lot of content because most side quests involve you doing stuff geralt in the books wouldn’t really do, like saving people, retrieving a guy’s horse or an old lady’s chickens, erecting some statues on the road, and other side quests like that.
You deserve more views. This channel is painfully underrated. I enjoy watching almost every critique and review you make. They are very well made and high quality.
This is such a well-written and well-edited review. It goes into a lot of depth and is pretty long, but the structure keeps everything focused and flowing well, while providing a pretty fair and balanced look at the game overall. I know this must have taken a lot of time to put together, so I hope you get the recognition you deserve for such great effort!
I always thought that The Witcher 3 was the most perfect RPG that had ever been created. After this critique I see all the shortcomings I didn't see before or which I ignored. You really opened my eyes. Despite all the critique, The Witcher together with Gothic will still remain my most favourite video game series of all time. Thank you for your fantastic videos and highly detailed reviews.
@@frogglen6350 How does it feel being dickhead in TH-cam comments? This was quite unnecessary man. What is wrong on forming my opinion based on constructive criticism?
It's funny Witcher 3 is a game where simply trying to move Geralt through a doorway, loot a treasure chest or ride your horse over a bump in the main bridge to Novigrad is an ordeal but it's still good. Oh and don't forget to double tap dodge everytime you fall more than 30 centimeters or Geralt will break both his legs and lose 75% of his HP!
Great video, very well structured, you highlight the most important aspects of the game, be it good or bad. It might be a long video, but it does not feel like it, because it constantly keeps the flow going. Your channel deserves a lot more recognition! Thank you for your work!
This video was great. While I can't help but feel that the game does mostly succeed in what it aims for, at least most of the time, which is why I hold it in such high regard, it also has many flaws and I can't disagree with you much on the bad and ugly parts. Also seeing you show a picture of Dragon's Dogma at the end made me so happy. That game is so good!!
This video is good but some other things I disagree with "The world doesn't always feel alive" Big disagree. Towns and villages are flooded with people and animals. And in the world, there are some intentionally abandoned areas, but there's also bandits, animals, and monsters going about their day. "Alchemy is too simple" I think that's good. I don't play games like this to stare at a menu alchemy screen for 10 minutes. It makes sense that Geralt at this point in time can instantly brew a potion "Combat isn't fun" I disagree. It's not God of War or DMC or Dark Souls level of good combat, but Witcher 3's combat is still satisfying to see Geralt slice a monster in half or set a guy on fire. Geralt being overpowered is kinda sadistic. It's like a GTA character with cheats.
im glad as hell you talked about shortcomings in this game. I just played witcher 3 and I really liked game, but it have some serious and clear flaws. it was frustrated that I couldn't find even one video maker who did say about Witcher in superlatives. ty!
Yes that what I’m saying I know people out there that can’t find anyone that actually know this games shortcomings it’s amazing in story world and all but gameplay is clunky as fuvk
They bullied them offline. There was a great honest review on youtube by WORTH A BUY but he got bullied and pulled it down. I never watched his channel again.
None of the critiques I’ve seen neglect the game’s shortcomings. They just don’t enumerate them and put them all together in one spot in their review. This is a good review and it is organized in a somewhat unique way but it’s not unique in pointing out the problems in the game. And Jfc gamers are such babies. “People who criticize W3 were bullied off the internet.” No they weren’t. Y’all need to have a tiny bit of self awareness. Live lives offline.
Outstanding effort and extraordinary depth! I appreciate you putting so much work in a quality review that deserves so much more attention in my opinion. Looking forward to the next one!
I think this was a great review. I agree with most of your points even though the review spent most of the time on the game's negative aspects. Despite its faults, this is still my favorite game of all time. I'm just in love with the characters and the world. I like watching other people experience almost as much as playing it. For me it's like an interactive movie, rather than an Open World RPG. Witcher 3 is a game trapped by its genre. It has a fantastic world, very well written quests and amazing characters. The moral ambiguity and the gray choices you have to make are remarkable. Its visual design and graphics are incredible. Its soundtrack is the best of any game I've ever played. However, its scope is way too big and it suffers from being overly stretched out. It's too long and poorly paced (looking at you Novigrad). The combat is passable but you do so much of it over the course of 100 hours that its shortcomings become obvious and frustrating. Character progression and loot systems are flawed and do not feel rewarding after the first 20 hours. If this game was shortened to half its size, points of interests did not show on the map by default, skill slots were increased to 20 and Witcher gear equivalents could be found in the world it would be a near perfect Open World RPG. Now, the combat still would have been the weakest part of the game but I don't see an immediate fix for that. It's too shallow to support 100+ hours of gameplay. It would need to be twice as complex and paced better to be enjoyable. The enemy AI would need a lot of improvement too. Quen spam, dodging and chugging potions mid-fight would require down sides so that the combat is much harder. Also that 20 minute food perk makes the game trivial and it needs to go. Again, this a well thought out review. The criticisms were harsh but fair.
*Such a well done video, you deserve more attention!* A lot of problems i had with Witcher 3 you have mentioned, which is my main problem with the game and the franchise itself is that it calls itself an "RPG" while lacking a lot of RPG features and the Freedom an RPG gives you... you are forced to play what the developers wanted, you can't change the outcome of any events unless it's scripted by the developers to be so otherwise there is no player choice you are forced to be what the developers want you to be thus making every players interaction with the world the same and boring. I have played through the game twice and i only noticed how boring and empty the world felt because the lack of choice and RPG elements were basically not there... the scripted dialogues were a pain and forced events like fist fights or being locked into combat mode it's just horrible. in the end Witcher 3 knows how to tell a story but doesn't know how to make a good gameplay or RPG, for me Witcher 3 is an action story game and i refuse to call it an RPG, the term RPG is so useless nowadays not to mention you can barely tell or talk about these stuff about Witcher 3 because the amount of hate you get back from fanboys thinking you're a hater...
I appreciate the work you put into a long video such as this. I suppose we can only wish for a world where a game designed in the vein of Gothic, Risen or Elex could get a budget similar to that of the Witcher.
One of those moment when you hear the man in the video, you watch the video, you enjoy it ALOT and then you scroll down to find that he does not have 1 million subscribers but 8 thousand.
I've only just started the video, but I want to say that it's so refreshing to see a criticism of W3 that doesn't consist of drooling all over the game, universal praise and telling that everyone should learn from this perfect masterpiece. I think I've only seen that once, in NeverKnowsBest's critique. 55:23 You are talking about difficulty curve here, not game balance. Funnily enough, I agree with the premise that the balance is non-existent because, well, quen sign exists and it's extremely overpowered, heavy attacks are significantly worse than light attacks so building for them is pointless, crossbow is a piece of trash and you can make traders go bankrupt by selling a single club from a high-level bandit. I hope it's addressed later. Okay, you did address it in the next point. I'm not changing the text because it would fit really well under balance. Okay, now you've voiced my concerns about the world beautifully. I've always said that an open world is actively damaging to this game. My favorite area is Kaer Morhem, and it's most of them all like areas in W1 and W2. Since you're talking about Witcher Sense (and once again telling my thoughts exactly), I have to add one particularly aggravating example of it being used as a crutch in quest design. In a quest about a werewolf, at some point you lose the trail. And then you use your witcher senses to track the creature using the scent from a single piece of fur on a tree, through the whole forest. At this point, I just can't. With senses like this, why didn't Geralt just find Dandelion by sniffing his diary or something? On the subject of choices, there are also cases that aren't exactly like you described, when you're forced into a choice, but similar, it's when you have 2 choices, neither of which makes sense. When Ciri and her friends want to get horses, you get an option to either beat the guy or to steal the horses. The option to buy the horses is presented to you, but no matter how much you insist, it doesn't work. Even if it's the most sensible thing to do. And you can't just say “no” either. You have to beat the guy up and upset Ciri if you want to refuse. Considering the main story, it's a shame that you haven't read the books (though you probably saved yourself some sanity by not watching the show), but if you did, you'd also notice how much the key premise of the story in the game just repeats the key premise of the books. “Everyone's looking for Ciri, including the Wild Hunt, while there's a war with Nilfgaard” is the plot of the books 5-7, shortened. What makes it baffling is that those main conflicts were very well tied up in the last book, and I mean all of them, and now they basically just undo the conclusion. About the third act, I think it's related to how the Wild Hunt is an extremely weak opponent. They are deliberately dehumanized to the point where they are mutually interchangable with Sauron's orcs or Night King's undead. Or Arthas' undead. Doesn't matter. They are even visually similar. And because they are so dehumanized, there is almost no room for personal interactions. It stings even more considering that the most obvious message the books (and to a lesser degree, the games) were telling, is that the most evil creature isn't some horrible monster, but a person just like you. I like this video. Even more so for the fact that there are so few like this one.
I know it's been 3 years, but I am replaying Witcher 3 and this topic got renewed. I've been your subscriber for quite some time and I always enjoy your content. It's always balanced, professional, with high production value. Regarding this particular video, similarly to its title, it also has it good and bad sides. While I agree with most of your points, some of the negative ones feel like nitpicks or elements that are not really a problem. Examples would be about controls or struggling at the start of the game, witchers doing side quests, little introduction of new characters, or feeling of the world not being actually alive. More points could be debated, but these can serve as what I mean. These are more a matter of personal taste or approach, and could not be used as an objective measurement. Many of the things you have listed were never a problem for me, and in few cases I would argue that they are downright false. All in all, I appreciate alll your work done on this and all your other videos. I hope you will have the means and the will to continue doing them. Cheers.
Thank you for the comment. However, please bear in mind that many of the subjects you're calling out are put in the "ugly" section, which I specifically intended to be for things that I consider to be minor nitpicks that don't have a significant negative impact on the gameplay experience, or more personal issues that I don't anticipate being universal issues inherent to every player's experience. So if they feel like "nitpicks or elements that are not really a problem" to you then yes, that was the point. Ordinarily I might choose not to include some of those subjects in a given review, but with this one I specifically wanted to be comprehensive in covering every subject and every varying perspective that I could, especially since I have such complicated and nuanced thoughts on the game overall, which meant including those possibilities in the interest of being as fair and honest as possible. That goes both ways -- I likewise covered several positive aspects that I don't personally care about or necessarily agree with because I felt there was a legitimate argument to be made in their case. You've mentioned some things I saw as negatives that were never a problem for you and that are arguably "downright false," but I would contend that there is a degree of truth to every single topic statement I make in this review, with maybe just a couple possible exceptions. Regarding controls or struggling at the start of the game, for instance, that was a legitimate issue that MANY people struggled with back in the day, to the point that CDPR had to add in the "Alternative Movement" option in a patch two months after release and then apparently continued to stealthily modify sometime after my original playthrough to make things smoother. By the same token I'd say it's completely fair to criticize the tutorial for overloading you with lengthy walls of text that sometimes go into completely irrelevant details, or for not having the sense to put a checkpoint save before your first moment of real gameplay where you're likely to fail and have to start over. None of that may have been an issue for you personally, but that's not to say those things don't exist or can't be an issue for someone else. Likewise, there's certainly an argument to be made that the world DOES feel alive (I do so myself during sections of the "good"), but to the contrary I'd point to all the cardboard cutout NPC's who occupy the vast majority of landmass and character space of the game, who make no reactions to so much of what you do in their presence and often seem like animatronic robots in a theme park ride with their repetitive ambient dialogue and linear quest scripting, as being clear evidence of ways in which the "living world" simulation comes up short. The game's positives may ultimately outweigh the negatives when it comes to this specific aspect, as I don't consider those lifeless filler characters (or odd moments where quest dialogue doesn't progress naturally) to completely break the game's immersion. But they do stand out at times and there are obvious ways they could've been improved to suit the game's atmosphere and immersion better. I'll also challenge the assertion of things being "personal taste [and not] objective measurements," because for starters, why does everything have be purely objective? Video games are an art form, after all, and as we all know, art is subjective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you can't objectify "fun." Although I firmly believe that many aspects of game design can be judged from a purely objective standpoint, the reason we play video games is for the subjective feelings they evoke within us as an individual. At the end of the day, every single review is a matter of subjective opinion because we're human beings discussing entertainment and not robots crunching numbers; I've long maintained that it's impossible for any review to be 100% objective and that one should always strive to achieve a balance therein, where subjective opinion generally guides the core of a review's thesis to convey how a game resonates for someone on a personal level, but with that thesis supported by objective evidence that impartial readers/viewers can look to as a way to form their own opinion based on how they interpret or react to those stimuli. People are always free to disagree with my ultimate assessments of whether something is actually a good or bad thing, but I always try to ensure that The Thing Itself is an accurate, objective observation of something the game is doing. For example, it's not my opinion that Yennefer had little to no exposition in the previous games, or that she only gets one brief flashback before you're thrust into the gameplay and have to make role-playing decisions based on an implied relationship that you've only ever seen a short glimpse of -- that's just how it is. It is my opinion, however, that that's not enough exposition for the character to serve the Story they're trying to tell with her, or to support the Role-Playing decisions you're expected to make. Because I personally felt no connection to her whatsoever and thought it was jarring to have spent two whole games with Triss and then suddenly have the third game say that my character is supposed to have been deeply in love with someone I've literally just met, and then had disappear off-screen for so much of the early gameplay with no opportunity to reinforce that story element. I'm certainly subject to my own biases and preferences, and I can't claim that I'm perfectly sound in how I present my thoughts, but I put a lot of rational thought into WHY a game makes me feel a certain way, or HOW it accomplishes certain effects, and then in how I'll express those thoughts to be as fair and reasonable as I can. While I do believe that there is objective merit to most of my arguments, the conclusions are ultimately just my opinion; my goal is not to say "my subjective opinion is correct because of these objective reasons," but to show the logical steps for how I came to my conclusions and how specific elements in the game design contributed to that assessment, so that you can (hopefully) understand my point of view and decide for yourself if you would feel the same way about the given subject. If you disagree with anything in that context then that's fine and I understand; it's also possible that I've overlooked or misremembered certain things in which case I would concede to an error in judgment if it's pointed out to me in a way that I can reason with. For example it's been pointed out to me that my understanding of Geralt's character and witchers in general are a little flawed based on my interpretation of how the games portray them, versus how others see things and the way they were established in the books, which I can see as being a mistake on my part. I frequently have have issues with the "games versus books" argument because the games should be able to stand on their own (and indeed as I understand it, that was the original intention of setting TW1 years after the events of the books and giving Geralt amnesia), so I don't really buy the "Yen in the books" or "Geralt in the books" arguments, but I can see how the game may have intended things differently than I interpreted them and thus maybe I was mistaken on certain nuances.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Hello. To be honest, I was not exactly expecting a reply. :) Still, I really appreciate that you have made time for such a detailed answer. To respond to the points you’ve made, I would like to first say that I understand that many arguments can be seen as subjective, and that’s not a bad thing. To give an example, one of the main reasons we, as the audience, decide to watch specific creators or reviewers, is not because we expect a list of facts about certain content, but because we enjoy their personality, way of expressing opinions, presentation form, or even their voice (if I may add, you have a really good voice!). It’s the flavoring of the base dish that makes the meal enjoyable. When it comes to specific topics, I understand your point, when you talk about parts like over-cluttering tutorial sections (Gothic 3 was absolute hell after 1 and 2). This is something that is universal, and can easily be proven to be unnecessary or even annoying. Elements like these can be considered objective flaws. It is important to point them out in every review, and I know that you always diligently present your points to cover various angle of every issue (plus providing examples). Full agreement on those. What I would like to point out is that there is a subtle, but crucial difference between ‚subjective’ and ‚objective’ elements. Even if we consider some games as a form of art, we must remember that we need to differentiate between opinions and facts. „This is difficult” would be an example of an opinion. „The controls are incorrectly implemented and your character doesn’t move the way you want” is a statement of fact. Again, it’s vital to see the difference between them. Also, some things depend on the varied level of tolerance or approach of individual players (like you have mentioned in the disclaimer for your Skyrim review - experience might vary) An example of this would be the case of the world not feeling/feeling alive. Some people would complain that many NPCs do not have varied interactions with the player, or that their existence is very repetitive. However, that does not land too well, given that the goal of those NPCs is just that - be the set dressing. So this case looks like more of a personal preference, rather than a game problem. Just to be clear, I understand that you have your reasoning for your views, and it’s only natural that we sometimes cannot agree on some topics. I absolutely respect your opinions (which is why I’m a subscriber :) ), but in some minor parts I simply disagree. All in all, I am always looking forward to your content and I hope that you will continue your work for a really long time and that you will find it fun and rewarding. Definitely waiting for your review of the upcoming Gothic 1 remake, as I consider you one of the best authorities on the Gothic franchise. Cheers!
This was the most spot on critique of this game I've seen so far. I really hope you do one for Cyberpunk, though it seems a lot of the stuff you've said about this game applies to that one too.
As a casual gamer who gave up on the witcher 3 within the first hour of gameplay, I was scouting YT for reasons to go back to the game and stick with it this time. This was an extremely well thought-out review. I knew the story has a lot to offer since the game is so praised. You nailed it right on the head with your first point from "The bad" though - it is an absolute nightmare in the beginning, which makes more casual players lose interest. Thanks for the great video!
The Witcher 3 is one of my absolute all-time favorite games, and I am ready to fight for it. However, I completely agree with everything in this video. You presented your arguments very well and in a very objective manner.
Now as someone who doesn't think this game is the 2nd coming of christ, I don't fully agree with all these criticisms. Meandering does make the pacing weird, but that's on the player if they choose to get distracted from the main story and important side quests. I can see Geralt needing to do some odd jobs or exploring lost dungeons and cabes to loot treasure for his adventure. He definitely won't find Ciri in one day. It could take literal in game months. I found myself needing money quite often to repair my gear and buy improvements. You are right about *some* quests not having impactful choices, but that honestly applies to every gane with decision making. And with a game this big and long I can understand as to why not every quest needs to be a story altering event. If anything, it makes the story altering quests stand out more and be more impactful.
This is a quality piece of content. Thank you for the time in creating this. Very useful 2+ hours of my time as I embark on a NG+ Death March on the PS5 update. My first playthrough was years ago, this video provides me a balanced reminder on the good, bad and ugly. Cheers
I appreciate this game for what it is, but I also hate it for everything it does. I’ve played this game for dozens of hours and can’t find myself enjoying it. I’ve come back to it time and time again, and I can’t finish it.
Dude I LOVE the Skellige Isles as well. Novigrad started getting super repetitive and Skellige was like a great breath of fresh air in almost every way. I didn't want to leave the place haha.
Great video. It notes that Witcher 3, despite being labelled as one, isn't an RPG but is an Action-Adventure game. The difference between an Action-Adventure game and an RPG is the focus on player agency in an RPG. Everything else can be the same between those genres. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Mass Effect games are also Action-Adventure games that are mislabelled by their publishers as RPGs, to get them to sell more.
Perhaps the game should have ended with the Battle of Kaer Morhen (though, logically, it should've been the Battle of Kaer Trolde). I know people kind of hate cliffhangers but hey, W1 & W2 already had cliffhangers, too. So how about this: Witcher 3 ends with the Battle of Kaer Morhen/Trolde (or maybe even the Battle of Novigrad, as they originally planned). Ciri gets captured by Eredin but at the very last second she saves the lives of Geralt & Avallach by teleporting them to a random world. To Be Continued. Then Witcher 4 could've been like: Prologue - Geralt & Avallach do some dimension-hopping (similar to Through Time & Space, but longer), hoping they can reach the Aen Elle world. Act 1 - the Aen Elle capital. I think it would've been interesting to have Geralt interact with such an unusual environment. This act could focus on gathering allies who could help against Eredin. Maybe they could give Geralt some McGuffin that disrupts the Wild Hunt's teleportation abilities. Act 2 - back to the Continent, Novigrad scorched by the Wild Hunt. Showing the aftermath of the finale of the 3rd game. This act would end with Geralt rescuing Ciri and stranding the Wild Hunt on the Continent (with that McGuffin from Act 1). Act 3 - Nilfgaard capital. The Wild Hunt can't teleport but they still know where Ciri went. So as they ride on horseback, Geralt, Emhyr & everyone else prepare for the final battle. The game's hard difficulty mode could include an actual time limit (which would still be very long as the Nilfgaard capital chapter should probably be the longest in the game). Just spit-balling here. I do think the Witcher series shouldn't've limited itself to 3 games. It really does feel like they had an idea for another game after the Battle of Kaer Morhen but decided to squeeze everything in W3.
I have to agree with you. I watched this video because I'm planning to pick the game up again after not playing for awhile. I've never finished it and have heard great things about the dlc. My friends rave about how great the game is, but I've never felt it. My biggest problem with the game is that I love to explore at the expense of ignoring the storyline. That means I pretty much found all the good armor, weapons etc before finishing the story and lost interest since there wasn't much left to work for. Sure, the storyline is great, but I tend to lose interest unless there's something other than finishing the story to work for. I love open world games, but this happens alot in them. Watching your video has me rethinking going back and trying to finish it.
After years of playing Piranha Bytes games and hearing about this game being a masterpiece i started playing it in late 2020 and havent finished it yet. Pretty much everything apart from writing is a mess - movement, combat, ubisoft style map + minimap that i switched off but it really does not help because the game is intended to play with eyes glued to it most of the time. I preffer Elex to this even lol. I wanted to love this game but its just not for me i think... I will finish it anyways but i will have to focus on main quest only. I found your channel because of Gothic and Elex and i stayed for more. Great vids man.
So true about the mini map! I played the game without it on a subsequent run because of some (Bad) advice from a video i think, with the exception of maybe the tutorial map the maps are 100% NOT designed to be navigated by landmarks and signposts and you often end up hopelessly lost or stuck with lengthy backtracking due to dead ends. What's more, unlike her contemporary MGS5's D-Horse who could gallop his way through any rocky terrain, Roach is worthless, getting stuck on any Geo that isn't perfectly flat so you have to stick to the roads, even critical path bridges meant to be crossed dozens of times stop her dead. The reason the map is so hard to navigate is severe technical limitations. The Witcher 3 has some of the most savage, immersion breaking LOD i've ever seen, they simply couldn't build the maps with large Vistas and where they do occur they are very carefully presented, for example there is only one approach to Novigrad where you can clearly see the city in the distance, otherwise you can only see it's walls. Instead they occlude the view and LOD issues, with numerous hills and impenetrable forests, essentially funnelling you down little corridors. To be fair to CDPR this is 100% not the case with the DLC 'beauclair' map, they realized the problem and fixed it really well. That said i actually did enjoy the game as the combat is serviceable and it has awesome alchemy and crafting. They also fixed many of it's problems, if you think the UI is bad now you should have seen it at release haha!
I always liked the idea of several Open-World-Hubs instead of one Big Open World. (A game which did this well was "Metro Exodus"). I could imagine having these hubs along the main storyline and after the ending, the hubs merge into one big world where you can finish all sidequests and find even some who where not be available before. This would give the players a shorter game who just want the story, is more immersive because "finding ciri is urgent" and players who want more have stuff to do have content after the main game.
I agree. I'm all about freeform, non-linear exploration in games, and I like open-world games in concept, but there's a point when world design simply becomes too big to accommodate the gameplay and story. Having several smaller, open-world "hub" areas instead of one big open-world seems like a great compromise between giving players open areas to explore with plenty of opportunity to go off searching for optional side-content, while also tailoring the world design and progression more closely to the main story and ensuring that there's less wasted space. A lot of my favorite games are like this, in fact: Vampire Bloodlines, The Witcher 1, Gothic 2, KOTOR 2, etc, all divide their maps into smaller playable spaces, with each area built around a specific series of main quests with lots of side quests and hidden secrets to discover if you're so inclined.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Funny thing is, in a certain way several Hubs give me more the illusion of a bigger world than a combined Open World, because my brain can imagin distances between the hubs, thus resulting in a very big world.
The first Red Dead Redemption did that exact thing and I think RDR2 suffered for not replicating that. The reveal of San Denis in chapter 4 or 5(?) had none of the intended impact on me since I spent 16 hours in chapter 2 playing poker there
This is a fantastic review, i just wanted to point out that adrenaline is actually ridiculously op with a particular build. If you focus on sign casting, there is an ability that lets you use an adrenaline point to sign cast before you use up your stamina. When combined with abilities that increase your adrenaline gain, you can basically cast as much as you could ever want after you've built up a point or two. I can quen with 3 adrenaline, have the shield break on a hit and recast over and over. It just shreds everything. Combine that with alternate mode yrden or the damaging aard upgrade and gg, you win.
I'm planning to do a full video review of Dragon's Dogma at some point in the near future, but I have several others to get to, first. In the meantime, I wrote a written review of it on my blog way back in 2013, which you can read for some of my thoughts from back then: thenocturnalrambler.blogspot.com/2013/11/dragons-dogma-is-pretty-damn-good.html
I finished this game 3 times across 2 platform, I have the physical edition and even bought the season pass before cdpr gave away the goty update to base users, and the more I play the game the more I realize the shortcomings of this game that mirrored that of Skyrim. The de-emphasization of role playing elements, simple combat, open and empty open world, the obvious lack of choices at times, and reliance on the mini map, not to mention the amount of bugs at launch. Witcher 3' story is still some of the best I experienced and the game is beautiful and smooth (this got demolished with the ray tracing update). The game do deserve the love it got and not.
Excellent review! Agree with most of your points. It's a very good game, but has too many flaws in the actual gameplay to be a great game. Noticed that a lot of the problems you list are in comparable games in the genre. Repetitive quests, too much junk, unalive world, too many cut scenes. Pseudo-decisions that change nothing. The triumph of quantity over quality. I'd add that, in the story, the obsession with including "adult themes" actually has the opposite effect and makes it immature. Boobs and bums! Adult for adoloscent boys, perhaps, but not for actual adults. Felt kind of peurile and forced in for effect.
I agree with just about every one of your points. I think my biggest issue is that I'm having trouble taking this games storytelling seriously, and that's it's main draw. I don't like games that force me into moral quandaries with no consequences, or scripted consequences. For instance I finished the Baron questline only to be shoehorned on a romantic moonlit date with Keira. All in a span of 5 minutes. Like you said, this game doesn't know whether it wants to be a serious drama or a fun action romp.
My main problem with this game? It uses the same "ubisoft formula" that people claim to hate. But for some reason when it comes to this game, it gets a pass? To me its very hypocritical. This games so bloated, the amount of map vomit is some of the worst out there. People call the ? marks on the map content, it isnt. Thats called bloat to pad a story. ITs hard to take the story serious when there is 100 ?'s to clear inbetween each story bit. Thats my problem with this game. Also, its not an RPG, its more like red dead 2 and a modern Assassins creed game in structure and design than it is an RPG.
Fantastic video. Great channel. Liked and subscribed! Witcher 3 didn't need to be an open world and I do believe this is the main cause of most of its problems. I also firmly believe that if you'd ask CDPR to answer honestly, than they would have preferred to follow the same hub-based more linear format as the previous games. The only reason they didn't is because it wouldn't have sold as well. Open world is the way to go if you want the highest sales numbers, so I can hardly blame them for following this path. One flaw that you didn't mention is the lack of the atmosphere that made the first game so unique. I can't really put it into words, but the first game had a very unique ominous and almost otherworldly vibe to it that made it stand out. The Witcher 3 looks and feels much more like your typical generic high fantasy game and never captured that same feeling. Even the monsters, which are still more unique than most other games of this type, didn't feel as unique, bizarre and literally scary like they did in the first game. I did love the Witcher 3 and it might be the only game I will actually replay a second time. That being said I still find both Witcher 1 and 2 better in pretty much every way.
Thanks for stopping by! It's always nice to hear from people who discovered my work years ago on the blog, where it all started. I'm pretty satisfied with where my editing and production skills are at right now, but if you go back and look at some of my earlier video reviews you'll notice there's been a lot of improvement since 2019, when I was first getting into video editing.
Great video. On point 6 of the bad (the world is too big), i feel like the world would fine if the bottom part of Velen would have been left out. Most of whats under the horizontal line through Fyke isle is pretty much ‘filler’. Besides that, i feel like the world is just fine.
Thank you for this review/critique. i have not played this game, and this review didn't really give me a strong desire to. Open world games have gone entirely in the wrong direction if you ask me -- opting for bigger, emptier, and more repetitive instead of tighter and more satisfying. Give me Risen 1 or Gothic 2 + NotR. For that matter, give me Gothic 1. But unfortunately, immersive and organic doesn't sell like "huge". This is true not just with RPGs, but with open world action games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and the annual sandbox pushed out by Ubisoft. I have never really liked the grey choices of The Witcher series. When I feel like every choice is simply a "lesser of two evils" then it makes me totally disinterested in the world. My choices don't make a difference if everyone's quality of life sucks no matter what. Add on top of that the bombardment of characters that are introduced with little or no background or context (this is a problem in Witcher 2) and I just can't get interested. The one thing that I love seeing in this game though is the use of the full color palette. It looks like a visually beautiful game, much more so than any recent Assassins Creed game or Horizon: Zero Dawn.
@@frogglen6350 I agree that the main plot itself with the Sleeper is pretty uninspired, but the rivalry amongst the three camps was great. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any game that has done factions that well.
The wild goose chases seem to be this trilogy's most common trope because 1 and 2 had them too. 1 has you on a wild goose chase after Salamandra for most of the game while 2's chase is after Letho. And in both, you also end up doing a bunch of unrelated things until the plot is ready to move you to the next chapter.
Yeah, I remember TW1 had a lot of arbitrary road-blocks in the early chapters whose main purpose seemed to be to impede progress in the main story by giving you more things to have to accomplish to get to your destination. Things like being locked out of town in chapter 1, to then being locked out of the upper quarter in chapter 2, and so on, each requiring a circuitous process of doing seemingly unrelated things just to unlock the next area. TW1 might be even worse about this, since at least TW3 allows you to ignore the main quest if you don't want to get bogged down with it, at least for the most part, but I found the overall quest design and structured progression through TW1 interesting enough that it didn't bother me as much in that game. I didn't like the atmosphere and side quests in Novigrad as much, compared to what came before in Velen, which made the excessive side-tracking more tedious and annoying to me.
"The wild goose chases seem to be this trilogy's most common trope " That's because it is the premise of the books, at least the main 5 ones that are one continuous story. It's essentially the same as in Witcher 3: Ciri is far away and in grave danger.
I feel like I need to address the "Witcher doesn't have time for this stuff" and the "Forced to RP in a certain way." Now, it's valid if you don't enjoy that. For sure, but Geralt isn't your create a character. He has a personality. And if you've read the books.. Geralt is a very RARE Witcher. A GOOD man who CAN'T just.. let people suffer. So, a lot of the time Geralt gets DEEPLY involved with non-witcher stuff. It's one of the reason Vesemir complains during the "Killing Monsters" trailer. Geralt cannot keep his nose outta other peoples business if it means letting people suffer. So, while a normal witcher wouldn't Geralt would.
I know I’m a few years late to this, but I have always been extremely ignorant to this games flaws. Thank you for opening my eyes to the fact that this game isn’t perfect. It is still one of my top three favorite games, but it’s not as perfect as I always thought it was. Great video!
Thank you for your work. I think that this version of payment is the best. 5$ is a price of a movie ticket in my country and I think that this video will be better than many movies that I watched
Thanks for watching! I hope you enjoyed the video. Remember that I have a backlog of other articles and videos and Patreon, so be sure to check those out if you haven't already, since that's all included in your $5. Thanks again for your patronage!
I‘m really interested in your opinion on the 2dlc‘s, since you didn‘t mention them at any point- are you planning to review them seperately or not at all? I think they are absolutely phenomenal and add massively to the overall experience.
Separate reviews are coming for each DLC. I've already finished replaying Hearts of Stone and have a rough draft for the review, so I'll be going into video production on that shortly, with Blood & Wine to follow.
I enjoyed the game and totally agree with all your points, there is another point to add to the ugly. As you mentioned that the too much useless junk clutter the inventory, I would like to expand on the issues of the 'inventory' itself. Inventory management is absolutely dreadful and a nuisance, this game has one of the worst inventory UI and menus. Aside from the limited sorting options, the automatic sorting done by the game itself is rather terrible. Trying to compare 2 items in the stash storage is pretty much impossible. Some of the UI icons of the equipment actually don't represent the actual equipment correctly at all. To give you an example. The Swordsman's boots inventory UI/icon seem to indicate that the shoe is a 2 piece equipment. The lower part is a light brown base and the upper part is a white looking sock. The actual Swordsman's boots, when you have them equipped look more like Tracker's boots rather than what I described above.
For me, the "nothing to spend money on" was solved in the Blood and Wine DLC. Pretty sure I spent every single coin I had just to get some Grandmaster armor.
I guess if you're making Grandmaster armor for every set, then that would eat up a lot of income. In my case, I only made the one Grandmaster set for the gear I wanted (Manticore), spent ~15k upgrading Corvo Bianco, and spent a few thousand other crowns on random things like horse armor and house paintings, and wound up 40,000 crowns richer than I was at the start of the DLC. Hearts of Stone was ultimately a bigger money-sink for me with the Runewright quickly eating up 30,000 crowns and me spending thousands more on the upgrades.
I honestly dont care about most of all these points, what really gets me is how acrobatic a measly drowner can be. The combat sucks when you can be hit as you're spinning for an attack.
I think a great solution to witcher senses could be separate Seeing, Hearing and Smelling Senses. Especially the seeing Part would just be a zoom, not a highlight. For example investigate in say first Person like the switching of first and third person in skyrim. If you find a trail, then it could be highlighted, so that you dont have to stare at the ground all the time if following a trail.
@@MetalGearyaTV Especially because witcher senses are a part of the lore, they shouldn't be like they are in the game. A witcher is able to smell things humans cant, hear things humans cant or see things humans cant with aid of the witcher senses. If those in the game now highlight a corpse or big carriage indents on the road, a dead fiend etc etc, then it deflates the fact that they are supposed to be special powers. Thus it would be more appropriate to have a zoom-in as just a "focus" ability, not a witcher sense.
But I think, you're right in having it only appear rarer as a necessity. Sometimes I even only get the prompt to investigate a thing I discovered without witcher senses, after using witcher senses on it, which is really dumb.
@@Tenferenzu that's not a pacing problem in any game like that you will spend most of the time in the first half of the game more than the second half because of you exploring the world and doing side quests ect and after you are done with that the second half will be story focused which is why it will feel shorter
The only reason I finished it with constant crashes while perfectly fine for my PC was the absolutely gripping story and things to explore. Clunky controls, awful camera at times and hard crashing were a reason to stop playing for any other game.
Why are you not more popular man??? Whether i agree or not with your takes, you justify pretty well your points enough to understand where that opinion is coming from.
Such an awesome review that i 100% agree with. Witcher 3 is definitely not the best game of all time, it has a lot of (unexpected) flaws but it is an extremely good and well-crafted game that makes you want to play it again and again. And your channel is painfully under-rated. You have my subscription sir. Well done.
The amount of spots you can get soft locked in in is very infuriating. Specially in the marshlands in Velen since Geralt will sometimes stat swimming in a foot deep ponds so then you can't jump out of them
Watching this in 2024 after my last play of the game on Ps4... Agree with you that the game has these problems, but even so it's still one of my favorite games ever 😊
I try to imagine a world where the stand RPG of 2011 was witcher 2 and not Skyrim. What would things look like if we didn't have everyone scrambling thinking large map = good RPG and completely missing why people liked Skyrim and why they like RPGs or worse thinking those two questions have the same answer. Witcher 3 was too big for its own good leading to a bizarre game that seems to want to have an open world but also not want the player to explore out of fear they won't experience its story. So its solution is to load you with map markers and lock you in massive cutscenes between running around.
Very good points, i think exactly the same from the game! I always tried to love it, (funny just today finished the core game), but i cant help but see its weak points. With a can of beer i can chill with it and play it even 7-8 hours constantly, but i never really enjoy if u know what i mean. Very overrated game due to rpg fans whos read the books, deeply love the witcher universe etc. but for a non-witcher-lover average players its just an average open world rpg. For instance i think Horizon Zero Dawn or Days Gone are much better open world games, with less flaws and better, tighter gameplay and story.
I agree with most of your criticisms and have plenty more of my own but i think the high quality of the dialogue and the addicting crafting and alchemy pursuit salvage the game. The combat is also fairly serviceable with a good mix of player freedom through spells/potions/bombs and prescriptive 'hard counters'.
Good video. People often claim Witcher fans are toxic and dont accept criticism but just going a few videos back on your channel i can see Bloodborne video having 50% dislikes because you dare to say negative aspects of the game, hell..even the Skyrim video has more dislikes, this twisted distorted notion about witcher 3 fans is based on the constant ranting of these two fanbases, the first one is Bloodborne who hate Witcher even before actually playing it, simply due to the fact that it won GOTY over their precious game. And the second fanbase is Bethesda who got exposed with Fallout 4 at the same year and due to witcher 3 taking the acclaim away from Skyrim. This is facts my dude. I like all the games i mentioned and i think there is good fans in all of them. Good video and as a person who loved Witcher 3 i appreciate the effort, i just wish it could have been shorter, honestly dude im tired of these long videos haha. Anyway i want to know your opinion on the 2 expansions because frankly i think they carry the game more than people think, they are imho excellent.
Wonderful, balanced review. One nitpick, Witcher-superhuman death by falling >3ft is very very "ugly". Losing 10 minutes of gameplay and several monster fights just because you step of a curb the wrong way is beyond infuriating. Witchers should have super-human fall tolerance, especially for exploring such great environments. And what a missed opportunity. They could have also added a persistent injury mechanic from especially large falls, limiting abilities and requiring natural or magic healing, Broken legs mechanic limiting your fighting abilities. Maybe a broken hand mechanic limiting your sign casting for a spell.
Music can be on both good and ugly. I get why people love it, and Percival is an amazing band, but the music as a whole is a bit too generic on top of the game. Honestly, the worst Percival songs are in Witcher 3 lol The first Witcher's music complemented the atmosphere MUCH better. Typical holywood fantasy aesthetics with decent to good "slavic folk" (not really, its a mix of many things) in W3 does not impress me. Couple that with how long the game is making the same track repeat over and over in 100+ hours of game time
From Polish perspective: CD Project is often criticized for copying whole plots from the original Witcher saga. For example, the story of Wither 1's Alvin (the superhero boy) is a copy of Ciri's origin story.
I've heard some things along those lines but haven't looked very far into it. From what I've heard, it sounded like they treated Triss as a stand-in for Yen in TW1/2 and gave her some of Yen's personality traits, but I'm not familiar with the books to know much about that, or might be misremembering what I heard. I'm curious to hear from someone who's read the books about how well the games sync up with characters' established histories and personalities.
20:56 These were pretty exaggrated claims back in 2015 i think about 135 or 136km^2,i've played both games for tens of hours and can easily say that GTAV has a bigger map,it's just feels smaller due to fast cars and much more cleaner draw distance. In fact it takes 2,5 hours to walk across GTA5 while 40-50 minutes to walk Witcher 3's Velen.About an hour to cross entire Skellige Ocean and Isles on foot and 30-40 minutes to walk across Toussaint.In area size Skellige occupies a bit more than half of entire game map size at 29-30km^2,Velen's itself is 15km^2 and Toussaint around 8km^2.While GTAV including a bit of it's ocean just like Witcher 3 between 100-130km^2.
"not enough content is gated behind level progression" funny how this is the exact opposite of how I see the problem - the is *too much* level-gating, and the combat isn't skill-based enough. that's why mods like No Levels exist.
The threshold for player skill in TW3 is definitely much lower than other similar games, considering that basic combat strategies you learn in first two hours are all you ever need to get through the entire game because the attack options are so limited and enemy AI so simplistic and repetitive. Every fight against every enemy is basically the same from beginning to end, and it all boils down to spamming the attack button and dodging when the enemy's health bar flashes red. So the relative lack of player-skill in the combat system is a criticism I can agree with and a large part of why I consider it shallow and boring in the first place. The gated-level progression, on the other hand, is really only applicable for the first 10-or-so levels, or roughly the first ~20 hours, when the game is actually difficult and you're actually required to level-up to face better challenges. After that point, though, the difficulty drops off completely and leveling up becomes superfluous. As my footage shows, I was playing on the hardest difficulty and routinely killing enemies so much higher level than me that the game doesn't even display their level (it's just "??" or whatever), while facing no real challenge or tension whatsoever. Defeating these high-level enemies didn't feel like a tremendous accomplishment because it was a given that I could kill practically anything and everything I came across; it was just a matter of how much time and equipment wear it would take to do so. In effect, NOTHING was off-limits for me, and I therefore never felt like leveling up was actually required to handle higher-level quests or more difficult enemies. At least, not if you play through the game in the expected order of Velen -> Novigrad -> Skellige.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I wouldn't say the game was always too easy in my experiece, it's more like the difficulty was just inconsistent to a ridiculous degree. for example, I'd find a group of drowners that couldn't even put a dent in me, and merely a hundred meters away from them there'd be another group, except these would kill me in one hit, despite there being no logical or lore reason for such disparity. this, combined with the randomness of Geralt's combat animations, makes this part of gameplay feel unsatisfying. the loot from higher-level quests is always level-restricted, so by the time I actually reach the required level, I would likely already possess better items from elsewhere, thus, even non-monetary rewards from quests feel pointless.
Thanks for the video. It really helped me understand why I enjoyed the game at first then just... stopped around the S- islands. I went back to playing Ac: Odyssey cause I enjoy the combat, so going to the different question marks ? is fun instead of a chore. In open world games, I want to stumble on fun stuff, and wander around, and feel like a bad a ss. I'm not a good gamer, and even on the second hardest difficulty, Witcher just lost any challenge. I don't feel like a bad a ss when there's no challenge.
That Gothic 3 reference hurt me in my soul. Mainly because I probably never would have looked in the direction of the Witcher if it weren't for Gothic and Gothic 2.
![“อ.เบียร์ คนตื่นธรรม” มาตามคำเรียกร้อง แหกศาสตร์ฮวงจุ้ย เตือนสติอย่างมงาย | แฉ 7 พ.ย. 67 [1/3]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/5fc4S3xBNfc/mqdefault.jpg)
![[안방1열 풀캠4K] 베이비몬스터 'DRIP' (BABYMONSTER FullCam)│@SBS Inkigayo 241110](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/AQ4RIghEvUs/mqdefault.jpg)
If you enjoy these reviews and want to help the channel grow, then please do me a favor and like, comment, subscribe, or share this video. Interactive engagement like that helps the algorithm to pick up on the video, and makes it more likely to reach a wider audience. This video took a huge amount of time and effort to put together, and I would be very grateful and appreciative of any help you can provide in spreading it and helping me grow more as a content creator. Thank you all for watching, and I'm looking forward to reading your comments!
Great video. I really hope that you posted these issues on the official Witcher forum of CDPR with the hopes of some of these being addressed and fixed with the upcoming update.
The fighting music reminds a little bit of 'Lacuna Cole'... woman front woman with hard rock...from Italy, check them out.
I wouldnt even day tw3 is rpg at this point... Ughhh
Makes me not want to finish my 2nd Play through now
@@masontroglen3413 You're right, the Witcher 3 isn't an RPG. It's an Action Adventure game - which I think is the crux of part this video's complaints about Witcher 3 lacking meaningful player choice and consequence, the game outright ignoring player choices, and on-rails questing where the player is directed and pulled through scripted, linear quest narratives rather than playing and shaping it by their actions and choices, and figuring out what to do with information. The difference between an Action-Adventure game and an RPG is the focus on player agency in an RPG, while an Action-Adventure puts the questing on rails. Everything else can be the same between those genres.
An Action-Adventure game is pretty-much exactly an RPG, but without the focus on player agency (after which, what's left is action, exploration, story, and all the common player management tasks), while an RPG is like an Action-Adventure game, but with a major focus on player agency.
What you say at 1:19:19 is what completely kills the game for me. There is no real agency. I'm just following visual markers without any cerebral component to the gameplay. It's mind-numbing.
Thank you for this excellent essay. The Witcher 3 is one of the few games I have played and finished not once, but twice over the past three years, including the main storylines of both DLC. I think what makes the Witcher 3 so appealing to many people (including myself) is a combination of several factors:
- Excellent world building, atmosphere and writing with regards to lore, world and characters, at least by videogame standards. Ironically, I'm convinced that this is less of an accomplishment on the part of CD Project Red but is in large part due to the game being based on well-established characters in one of the best-written and most successful fantasy novel series.
- Accessibility: the game is very easy on "normal" difficulty. The average player can get through the game without having to mess with intricate or complex gameplay systems (which do not really exist anyway). I.e. you don't need special skills, items, loot etc. to beat most enemies in the game rather easily (except for a few encounters like the "final" boss from Blood and Wine).
- Gameplay isn't great, but "decent enough not to get in the way". None of the game's core mechanics are particularly innovative, complex, or just exceptionally well done. It's actually a pretty mediocre and oftentimes rather shallow game. For example, you never actually use your Witcher senses to solve puzzles or detect things outside of the "prescribed" use in the context of a quest. However, many gameplay elements are used to vary things up just enough to let you enjoy the story.
- Despite most gameplay elements becoming repetitive rather quickly, the game is just short enough not to get boring (when focusing on the main story).
Thank you for the response. These are all points I can agree with that help in achieving the game's widespread popularity; while some of the shortcomings can be a huge detriment to me, personally, I concede that they might not be issues for others who either don't care as much about deeper mechanical systems in games, or else who just become so enamored with the world, story, characters, or other such elements that the shortcomings are easier to overlook.
Regarding the world-building, atmosphere, and writing, I think Hearts of Stone might stand as a good example of CD Projekt's raw talents as writers and creators -- as far as I'm aware, it's not based on any existing source material from Sapkowski, but is something they created entirely on their own. That DLC's story, characters, and atmosphere are my absolute favorite from the entire game, base game or DLC. Of course, it's still set within the established world and ideas that Sapkowski created for The Witcher universe, and I've heard that Cyberpunk 2077 lacks a lot of the deeper lore and world-building of The Witcher games, so you could be right after all.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Agree with you on Hearts of Stone. One of my favorite parts of the game. Overall, Witcher 3 is certainly not a flawless videogame, but it is a really enjoyable interactive movie with great characters and exceptional writing by videogame standards (better than the Netflix show, that's for sure...).
@@karllenassonNetflix show is a squib so there is nothing to compare. Just like you cannot compare their "documentary" about black Cleopatra with history books. All they want is to gaslight and brainwash people.
I've always thought that the Witcher feels like a great movie or TV series, and the combat and quest solving is just a nuisance you put yourself through to see the next episode. The depth of the characters is great and the story has many twists and turns, the cutscenes are well done and make you feel even more like watching a great series. But combat is clicking 2 buttons (left click and roll) with the occasional sign and quest solving is following a red blur in every single quest. You don't even put clues together yourself, you follow a red blur so Geralt can talk to himself to solve the riddle for you.
And that's the reason why it is not a great game. A great game should be able to combine the gameplay with the story so well that you really feel immersed and drawn into the action while you are actually playing it. The cutscenes should be the highlight, not the only enjoyable part of the story. If only the cutscenes are good enough to show you the story, then you can even watch it on TH-cam, because there is no actual reason to purchase and play the game. Kingdom Come Deliverance does a very good job in terms of gameplay design. And ironically the first two Witcher games did too. But the third Witcher manages to be incredibly boring in terms of actual gameplay. I am sorry, but that is not a masterpiece of a game for me. Furthermore, the story is in my opinion far from being as good as so many claim to be. But that is subjective.
@@Agent49aufStreifzug I agree that it is flawed and has too many hand holding elements to it. I want to figure out where I have to go without having every step telegraphed for me, what's more I want to have to solve riddles myself and progress a quest by virtue of my own observation and putting clues together, the game totally spoils the detective elements of the Witcher concept, since the avatar has all the answers even when the player doesn't, you play this game basically on autopilot and don't need to think at all, every path, every solution get's spoiled for you. You still enjoy it because of how fleshed out the story and characters are, but you enjoy it more the way you would enjoy a theme park ride, it's not very involving gameplay. Maybe I am just an old fashioned RPG player, but this dumbed down gameplay ruins the satisfaction you'd otherwise have by solving quests through your own efforts and reasoning. For me it's still a good game, but it's not on par with the likes of Kingdom Come Deliverance or Elden Ring, or even some old RPG classics.
Also. How many fucking times is Geralt gonna move at a snails pace when doing basic af things? It honestly annoyed me so much that I dropped the game entirely.
I absolutely love this game and have played it an insane number of hours. Yet I find myself agreeing with absolutely everything you say. Which is a testament to both the game's quality and your skill as a writer and critic. Love it.
I think you are from Poland, based on your name, do you feel that you being Polish influenced how you view this game? for the good i mean..
@@gabifergsson5166 sorry to disappoint, I'm German. I have Polish roots, but those are about 100 years in the past and I have no ties to the country at all.
@@marcwittkowski5146 All good! cheers
One thing I forgot to mention, which might've been worth including in "The Ugly" section, is that certain mechanics are obfuscated behind vague or otherwise non-existent descriptions. For example, a lot of decoctions tell you they'll buff certain attributes (like extra critical hit damage when attacking from behind, or healing you whenever you deal damage) but they don't specify by how much, exactly. Sometimes you can discern this information in the character stats window accessed from the inventory screen, but not always. It's especially confusing when it comes to toxicity, since the game counts toxicity from decoctions against your total limit, but doesn't count them for the overdose threshold or other skills that rely on your percentage of toxicity. A lot of this stuff isn't explained well or at all in the actual game, and so it would've been nice for that information to be conveyed better so that you can make more informed decisions about your character building options, as opposed to guessing and going through a bunch of trial-and-error to figure it out yourself (or further disrupting the flow/immersion by looking things up online).
All these complains are not valid. The game is easy enough to not need to micro manage everything and weather you go online to look stuff up is up to you not a requirement. You don't need to have the game explain everything, you don't know the outcome of a dialogue choice for example.
If you ask me I wish I'd knew the outcome of a decision more than how much damage a buff adds in any RPG.
@@gearfriedtheswmas It seems pretty reasonable to me to want to understand how game mechanics actually work, especially when it comes to things like character building since those are potentially long-term decisions that directly influence the core gameplay experience. Just because it makes narrative sense to not know how a character will respond in dialogue, doesn't mean it makes mechanical sense to not know how a particular skill or item will actually function, and that logic for unpredictable story-related outcomes shouldn't apply to things like mathematical computation of stats and skills and how they actually work together. If, for example, you go heavily into an alchemy build and start mixing skills that relate to decoctions, potions, and toxicity, it would be pretty frustrating to play for several hours wondering why certain skills aren't working the way you thought they would -- that's not a case of "you made a bad decision and need to live with the consequences" but rather "the game's mechanical systems don't always make intuitive sense based on how the information is given to you." It's not analogous to not knowing the outcome of a particular dialogue choice; it's more like not knowing what Geralt is actually going to say when you select a particular choice. Imagine a scenario where you pick a dialogue option where the text prompt sounds warm and comforting and then Geralt says it in a cold and detached sort of tone, or where you select "Yes I'll help you" and then Geralt instead says "No, I don't have time for that." That's how it feels with some of these obfuscated mechanics that don't give a clear enough indication of how they'll actually work in practice. And personally speaking, I'm someone who enjoys min/maxing and finding statistical efficiencies in these types of games, and the vague, sometimes conflicting descriptions directly interfere with that avenue of enjoyment. It's a minor complaint to be sure, that doesn't have a serious impact on the actual gameplay, but I don't think it's something that should be so easily excused, or my criticisms blanketly dismissed as invalid, particularly not by the logic you're using.
I'd also go so far as to say that "wanting to know the outcome of a decision more than how much damage a buff adds in any RPG" goes directly against the core design philosophy of this series. "Unintended consequences" is specifically part of this series' mantra when it comes to its quests and character interactions -- the whole point of the first game was making small, seemingly insignificant decisions that would have some kind of gameplay or story-altering affect sometime down the road. By delaying the consequences until an entire chapter or two later it forced you to have to live with your decisions, and they were always framed in a moral gray area where there were no obvious "right or wrong," "good or bad" choices. It was meant to make you struggle figuring out what you personally considered the better option, knowing that there might be valid pros and cons to each decision, while offering a more realistic and immersive atmosphere in not knowing how things will shape up later on, based on information you couldn't have possibly known at the time of making that decision. If The Witcher games were to indicate exactly what consequences would happen with each decision, when you're making those choices, it would completely betray these games' intended purpose. I completely understand why you would want that in an RPG, but that's mostly a matter of personal preference, and it's incongruous with these games' core design philosophy. In comparison, "vague and non-descript mechanical systems" is NOT part of the game's core design philosophy, seeing as they give you hard numbers and vivid descriptions for most things -- it's just that 10% of the time where they dropped the ball that it gets a little annoying.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I can understand why you would like more details in the descriptions but I don't agree with your opinion. A lot if not the majority of games have esoteric mechanics and having a different standard for this game just cause it already offers more info than most games is a bad take.
About the story choices I totally disagree, some decisions have unpredictable outcomes and saying that it is a witcher thing doesn't make me feel less cheated by the story. Having to play 50 hours in a doomed decision path sure beats using a potion of skill resetting and trying a different build.
I appreciate you taking the time to write all that response but I don't agree with anything you said other than that it is indeed a minor complaint.
@@gearfriedtheswmas wow you're opinion is just wrong
U also forgot to mention the horse riding in the ugly section
My main problem with that game is the fact that i's more akin to a movie than a video game. Not that there's anything wrong with movies, but I play video games for, well, gameplay. And it's seemingly not what they focused on, choosing instead plot, characters and the whole "spectacle" part, if you will. There's no point in going back once you've finished it once, you pretty much saw it all.
That annoys me in video games nowadays, they have too high budget so developers don't want you to be able to skip anything they've paid millions to make. And content they "don't want you to skip" is unfortunately, actual branching storylines and gameplay, you'll see it all whether you like it or not, damn it. Problem is that's not an RPG anymore, you'll just watching what they prepared for you with minimal input.
Such a great video! There is not enough critique of this game. I am a huge fan of this game and Witcher universe in general, but I don't understand what makes some people so intolerant to any criticism for it.
All I can add is I have read the books and even though it helps with understanding the characters more it also reveals other problem with game's plot.
ImO, devs disregard the book plot way too much, sometimes they ignore some events or characters, sometimes contradict them.
For example, I would imagine people who haven't read books will be quite surprised to find out Emhyr and Ciri are officially married. And it's only one thing among many others which are ignored or make no sense with what's going on in the game.
Reading the books ruined the witcher 3 for me. For 3 primary reasons, the first reason is the fact that the witcher 3’s plot is basically the exact same plot in the books, second is that geralt seems a bit out of character because unlike in the books he’s less philosophical but yet more calm and composed, rarely getting angry, and he’s very neutral and doesn’t stand up for people or mind his business into silly matters, soo if you want your geralt too be like that in the game you’ll miss out on a lot of content because most side quests involve you doing stuff geralt in the books wouldn’t really do, like saving people, retrieving a guy’s horse or an old lady’s chickens, erecting some statues on the road, and other side quests like that.
You deserve more views. This channel is painfully underrated. I enjoy watching almost every critique and review you make. They are very well made and high quality.
tbh no one would want to see a review for 2 hours, he should've shorten it to like 15 mins like most review
@@almightynova4095 A channel like this is for people with a longer attention span than 10 minutes. Thats the job of the mainstream media.
This is such a well-written and well-edited review. It goes into a lot of depth and is pretty long, but the structure keeps everything focused and flowing well, while providing a pretty fair and balanced look at the game overall. I know this must have taken a lot of time to put together, so I hope you get the recognition you deserve for such great effort!
I always thought that The Witcher 3 was the most perfect RPG that had ever been created. After this critique I see all the shortcomings I didn't see before or which I ignored. You really opened my eyes. Despite all the critique, The Witcher together with Gothic will still remain my most favourite video game series of all time. Thank you for your fantastic videos and highly detailed reviews.
welcome to your mid 20s, kid
the world turned out wider than you thought, huh?
@@frogglen6350 How does it feel being dickhead in TH-cam comments? This was quite unnecessary man. What is wrong on forming my opinion based on constructive criticism?
It's funny Witcher 3 is a game where simply trying to move Geralt through a doorway, loot a treasure chest or ride your horse over a bump in the main bridge to Novigrad is an ordeal but it's still good. Oh and don't forget to double tap dodge everytime you fall more than 30 centimeters or Geralt will break both his legs and lose 75% of his HP!
You can only like 1. They r completely different games.
I think it shows how good it was that you didn’t see any of these short comings, cause they didn’t really take away from the game
The funny thing about your review is that they should of solved these issues in Cyberpunk 2077 but they did worse!
Thata what happens when they have too many fantards acting like Witcher 3 is the best thing ever creates.
@@SSchithFoo facts
@@SSchithFoo i mean it still is the best game so..
@@zdv3119 the first two games were better for their time
@@zdv3119 Have you ever played Kingdom Come Deliverance? It is a far better game than the Witcher 3.
best critique ever. this is how reviews should be done not all praises and not all hate.
Exactly
Most reviews are like that. You’re self-selecting for people who do that if that’s what you’re seeing.
Great video, very well structured, you highlight the most important aspects of the game, be it good or bad. It might be a long video, but it does not feel like it, because it constantly keeps the flow going. Your channel deserves a lot more recognition! Thank you for your work!
This video was great. While I can't help but feel that the game does mostly succeed in what it aims for, at least most of the time, which is why I hold it in such high regard, it also has many flaws and I can't disagree with you much on the bad and ugly parts. Also seeing you show a picture of Dragon's Dogma at the end made me so happy. That game is so good!!
This video is good but some other things I disagree with
"The world doesn't always feel alive"
Big disagree. Towns and villages are flooded with people and animals. And in the world, there are some intentionally abandoned areas, but there's also bandits, animals, and monsters going about their day.
"Alchemy is too simple"
I think that's good. I don't play games like this to stare at a menu alchemy screen for 10 minutes. It makes sense that Geralt at this point in time can instantly brew a potion
"Combat isn't fun"
I disagree. It's not God of War or DMC or Dark Souls level of good combat, but Witcher 3's combat is still satisfying to see Geralt slice a monster in half or set a guy on fire. Geralt being overpowered is kinda sadistic. It's like a GTA character with cheats.
I agree with all of what you say
The commentary on your videos is so well written. Hopefully there's many more to come
im glad as hell you talked about shortcomings in this game. I just played witcher 3 and I really liked game, but it have some serious and clear flaws. it was frustrated that I couldn't find even one video maker who did say about Witcher in superlatives. ty!
Yes that what I’m saying I know people out there that can’t find anyone that actually know this games shortcomings it’s amazing in story world and all but gameplay is clunky as fuvk
They bullied them offline. There was a great honest review on youtube by WORTH A BUY but he got bullied and pulled it down. I never watched his channel again.
None of the critiques I’ve seen neglect the game’s shortcomings. They just don’t enumerate them and put them all together in one spot in their review. This is a good review and it is organized in a somewhat unique way but it’s not unique in pointing out the problems in the game. And Jfc gamers are such babies. “People who criticize W3 were bullied off the internet.” No they weren’t. Y’all need to have a tiny bit of self awareness. Live lives offline.
Outstanding effort and extraordinary depth!
I appreciate you putting so much work in a quality review that deserves so much more attention in my opinion.
Looking forward to the next one!
I think this was a great review. I agree with most of your points even though the review spent most of the time on the game's negative aspects. Despite its faults, this is still my favorite game of all time. I'm just in love with the characters and the world. I like watching other people experience almost as much as playing it. For me it's like an interactive movie, rather than an Open World RPG.
Witcher 3 is a game trapped by its genre. It has a fantastic world, very well written quests and amazing characters. The moral ambiguity and the gray choices you have to make are remarkable. Its visual design and graphics are incredible. Its soundtrack is the best of any game I've ever played. However, its scope is way too big and it suffers from being overly stretched out. It's too long and poorly paced (looking at you Novigrad). The combat is passable but you do so much of it over the course of 100 hours that its shortcomings become obvious and frustrating. Character progression and loot systems are flawed and do not feel rewarding after the first 20 hours.
If this game was shortened to half its size, points of interests did not show on the map by default, skill slots were increased to 20 and Witcher gear equivalents could be found in the world it would be a near perfect Open World RPG. Now, the combat still would have been the weakest part of the game but I don't see an immediate fix for that. It's too shallow to support 100+ hours of gameplay. It would need to be twice as complex and paced better to be enjoyable. The enemy AI would need a lot of improvement too. Quen spam, dodging and chugging potions mid-fight would require down sides so that the combat is much harder. Also that 20 minute food perk makes the game trivial and it needs to go.
Again, this a well thought out review. The criticisms were harsh but fair.
This may be the best review I ever saw. Great job.
*Such a well done video, you deserve more attention!*
A lot of problems i had with Witcher 3 you have mentioned, which is my main problem with the game and the franchise itself is that it calls itself an "RPG" while lacking a lot of RPG features and the Freedom an RPG gives you... you are forced to play what the developers wanted, you can't change the outcome of any events unless it's scripted by the developers to be so otherwise there is no player choice you are forced to be what the developers want you to be thus making every players interaction with the world the same and boring.
I have played through the game twice and i only noticed how boring and empty the world felt because the lack of choice and RPG elements were basically not there... the scripted dialogues were a pain and forced events like fist fights or being locked into combat mode it's just horrible.
in the end Witcher 3 knows how to tell a story but doesn't know how to make a good gameplay or RPG, for me Witcher 3 is an action story game and i refuse to call it an RPG, the term RPG is so useless nowadays not to mention you can barely tell or talk about these stuff about Witcher 3 because the amount of hate you get back from fanboys thinking you're a hater...
Amazing critique. Seriously, this is one of the best channels I have come across in a while. Keep it up!
probably the most painfully underrated channel on youtube, the man needs way more audience. great in depth video and easy to follow
I appreciate the work you put into a long video such as this. I suppose we can only wish for a world where a game designed in the vein of Gothic, Risen or Elex could get a budget similar to that of the Witcher.
One of those moment when you hear the man in the video, you watch the video, you enjoy it ALOT and then you scroll down to find that he does not have 1 million subscribers but 8 thousand.
Never played the witcher 3 , but was surprised by how much depth and effort were present in this video , as expected of this channel
I've only just started the video, but I want to say that it's so refreshing to see a criticism of W3 that doesn't consist of drooling all over the game, universal praise and telling that everyone should learn from this perfect masterpiece.
I think I've only seen that once, in NeverKnowsBest's critique.
55:23 You are talking about difficulty curve here, not game balance. Funnily enough, I agree with the premise that the balance is non-existent because, well, quen sign exists and it's extremely overpowered, heavy attacks are significantly worse than light attacks so building for them is pointless, crossbow is a piece of trash and you can make traders go bankrupt by selling a single club from a high-level bandit. I hope it's addressed later.
Okay, you did address it in the next point. I'm not changing the text because it would fit really well under balance.
Okay, now you've voiced my concerns about the world beautifully. I've always said that an open world is actively damaging to this game. My favorite area is Kaer Morhem, and it's most of them all like areas in W1 and W2.
Since you're talking about Witcher Sense (and once again telling my thoughts exactly), I have to add one particularly aggravating example of it being used as a crutch in quest design. In a quest about a werewolf, at some point you lose the trail. And then you use your witcher senses to track the creature using the scent from a single piece of fur on a tree, through the whole forest. At this point, I just can't. With senses like this, why didn't Geralt just find Dandelion by sniffing his diary or something?
On the subject of choices, there are also cases that aren't exactly like you described, when you're forced into a choice, but similar, it's when you have 2 choices, neither of which makes sense. When Ciri and her friends want to get horses, you get an option to either beat the guy or to steal the horses. The option to buy the horses is presented to you, but no matter how much you insist, it doesn't work. Even if it's the most sensible thing to do. And you can't just say “no” either. You have to beat the guy up and upset Ciri if you want to refuse.
Considering the main story, it's a shame that you haven't read the books (though you probably saved yourself some sanity by not watching the show), but if you did, you'd also notice how much the key premise of the story in the game just repeats the key premise of the books. “Everyone's looking for Ciri, including the Wild Hunt, while there's a war with Nilfgaard” is the plot of the books 5-7, shortened. What makes it baffling is that those main conflicts were very well tied up in the last book, and I mean all of them, and now they basically just undo the conclusion.
About the third act, I think it's related to how the Wild Hunt is an extremely weak opponent. They are deliberately dehumanized to the point where they are mutually interchangable with Sauron's orcs or Night King's undead. Or Arthas' undead. Doesn't matter. They are even visually similar. And because they are so dehumanized, there is almost no room for personal interactions. It stings even more considering that the most obvious message the books (and to a lesser degree, the games) were telling, is that the most evil creature isn't some horrible monster, but a person just like you.
I like this video. Even more so for the fact that there are so few like this one.
I know it's been 3 years, but I am replaying Witcher 3 and this topic got renewed.
I've been your subscriber for quite some time and I always enjoy your content. It's always balanced, professional, with high production value.
Regarding this particular video, similarly to its title, it also has it good and bad sides. While I agree with most of your points, some of the negative ones feel like nitpicks or elements that are not really a problem. Examples would be about controls or struggling at the start of the game, witchers doing side quests, little introduction of new characters, or feeling of the world not being actually alive. More points could be debated, but these can serve as what I mean. These are more a matter of personal taste or approach, and could not be used as an objective measurement. Many of the things you have listed were never a problem for me, and in few cases I would argue that they are downright false.
All in all, I appreciate alll your work done on this and all your other videos. I hope you will have the means and the will to continue doing them.
Cheers.
Thank you for the comment. However, please bear in mind that many of the subjects you're calling out are put in the "ugly" section, which I specifically intended to be for things that I consider to be minor nitpicks that don't have a significant negative impact on the gameplay experience, or more personal issues that I don't anticipate being universal issues inherent to every player's experience. So if they feel like "nitpicks or elements that are not really a problem" to you then yes, that was the point. Ordinarily I might choose not to include some of those subjects in a given review, but with this one I specifically wanted to be comprehensive in covering every subject and every varying perspective that I could, especially since I have such complicated and nuanced thoughts on the game overall, which meant including those possibilities in the interest of being as fair and honest as possible. That goes both ways -- I likewise covered several positive aspects that I don't personally care about or necessarily agree with because I felt there was a legitimate argument to be made in their case.
You've mentioned some things I saw as negatives that were never a problem for you and that are arguably "downright false," but I would contend that there is a degree of truth to every single topic statement I make in this review, with maybe just a couple possible exceptions. Regarding controls or struggling at the start of the game, for instance, that was a legitimate issue that MANY people struggled with back in the day, to the point that CDPR had to add in the "Alternative Movement" option in a patch two months after release and then apparently continued to stealthily modify sometime after my original playthrough to make things smoother. By the same token I'd say it's completely fair to criticize the tutorial for overloading you with lengthy walls of text that sometimes go into completely irrelevant details, or for not having the sense to put a checkpoint save before your first moment of real gameplay where you're likely to fail and have to start over. None of that may have been an issue for you personally, but that's not to say those things don't exist or can't be an issue for someone else.
Likewise, there's certainly an argument to be made that the world DOES feel alive (I do so myself during sections of the "good"), but to the contrary I'd point to all the cardboard cutout NPC's who occupy the vast majority of landmass and character space of the game, who make no reactions to so much of what you do in their presence and often seem like animatronic robots in a theme park ride with their repetitive ambient dialogue and linear quest scripting, as being clear evidence of ways in which the "living world" simulation comes up short. The game's positives may ultimately outweigh the negatives when it comes to this specific aspect, as I don't consider those lifeless filler characters (or odd moments where quest dialogue doesn't progress naturally) to completely break the game's immersion. But they do stand out at times and there are obvious ways they could've been improved to suit the game's atmosphere and immersion better.
I'll also challenge the assertion of things being "personal taste [and not] objective measurements," because for starters, why does everything have be purely objective? Video games are an art form, after all, and as we all know, art is subjective, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and you can't objectify "fun." Although I firmly believe that many aspects of game design can be judged from a purely objective standpoint, the reason we play video games is for the subjective feelings they evoke within us as an individual. At the end of the day, every single review is a matter of subjective opinion because we're human beings discussing entertainment and not robots crunching numbers; I've long maintained that it's impossible for any review to be 100% objective and that one should always strive to achieve a balance therein, where subjective opinion generally guides the core of a review's thesis to convey how a game resonates for someone on a personal level, but with that thesis supported by objective evidence that impartial readers/viewers can look to as a way to form their own opinion based on how they interpret or react to those stimuli.
People are always free to disagree with my ultimate assessments of whether something is actually a good or bad thing, but I always try to ensure that The Thing Itself is an accurate, objective observation of something the game is doing. For example, it's not my opinion that Yennefer had little to no exposition in the previous games, or that she only gets one brief flashback before you're thrust into the gameplay and have to make role-playing decisions based on an implied relationship that you've only ever seen a short glimpse of -- that's just how it is. It is my opinion, however, that that's not enough exposition for the character to serve the Story they're trying to tell with her, or to support the Role-Playing decisions you're expected to make. Because I personally felt no connection to her whatsoever and thought it was jarring to have spent two whole games with Triss and then suddenly have the third game say that my character is supposed to have been deeply in love with someone I've literally just met, and then had disappear off-screen for so much of the early gameplay with no opportunity to reinforce that story element.
I'm certainly subject to my own biases and preferences, and I can't claim that I'm perfectly sound in how I present my thoughts, but I put a lot of rational thought into WHY a game makes me feel a certain way, or HOW it accomplishes certain effects, and then in how I'll express those thoughts to be as fair and reasonable as I can. While I do believe that there is objective merit to most of my arguments, the conclusions are ultimately just my opinion; my goal is not to say "my subjective opinion is correct because of these objective reasons," but to show the logical steps for how I came to my conclusions and how specific elements in the game design contributed to that assessment, so that you can (hopefully) understand my point of view and decide for yourself if you would feel the same way about the given subject. If you disagree with anything in that context then that's fine and I understand; it's also possible that I've overlooked or misremembered certain things in which case I would concede to an error in judgment if it's pointed out to me in a way that I can reason with.
For example it's been pointed out to me that my understanding of Geralt's character and witchers in general are a little flawed based on my interpretation of how the games portray them, versus how others see things and the way they were established in the books, which I can see as being a mistake on my part. I frequently have have issues with the "games versus books" argument because the games should be able to stand on their own (and indeed as I understand it, that was the original intention of setting TW1 years after the events of the books and giving Geralt amnesia), so I don't really buy the "Yen in the books" or "Geralt in the books" arguments, but I can see how the game may have intended things differently than I interpreted them and thus maybe I was mistaken on certain nuances.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Hello. To be honest, I was not exactly expecting a reply. :) Still, I really appreciate that you have made time for such a detailed answer.
To respond to the points you’ve made, I would like to first say that I understand that many arguments can be seen as subjective, and that’s not a bad thing. To give an example, one of the main reasons we, as the audience, decide to watch specific creators or reviewers, is not because we expect a list of facts about certain content, but because we enjoy their personality, way of expressing opinions, presentation form, or even their voice (if I may add, you have a really good voice!). It’s the flavoring of the base dish that makes the meal enjoyable.
When it comes to specific topics, I understand your point, when you talk about parts like over-cluttering tutorial sections (Gothic 3 was absolute hell after 1 and 2). This is something that is universal, and can easily be proven to be unnecessary or even annoying. Elements like these can be considered objective flaws. It is important to point them out in every review, and I know that you always diligently present your points to cover various angle of every issue (plus providing examples). Full agreement on those.
What I would like to point out is that there is a subtle, but crucial difference between ‚subjective’ and ‚objective’ elements. Even if we consider some games as a form of art, we must remember that we need to differentiate between opinions and facts. „This is difficult” would be an example of an opinion. „The controls are incorrectly implemented and your character doesn’t move the way you want” is a statement of fact. Again, it’s vital to see the difference between them.
Also, some things depend on the varied level of tolerance or approach of individual players (like you have mentioned in the disclaimer for your Skyrim review - experience might vary) An example of this would be the case of the world not feeling/feeling alive. Some people would complain that many NPCs do not have varied interactions with the player, or that their existence is very repetitive. However, that does not land too well, given that the goal of those NPCs is just that - be the set dressing. So this case looks like more of a personal preference, rather than a game problem.
Just to be clear, I understand that you have your reasoning for your views, and it’s only natural that we sometimes cannot agree on some topics. I absolutely respect your opinions (which is why I’m a subscriber :) ), but in some minor parts I simply disagree.
All in all, I am always looking forward to your content and I hope that you will continue your work for a really long time and that you will find it fun and rewarding. Definitely waiting for your review of the upcoming Gothic 1 remake, as I consider you one of the best authorities on the Gothic franchise.
Cheers!
I can agree with you on all points and share similar sentiments. Thank you for sharing them and taking the time to elaborate.
This game is so hyped but flawed in many ways and you are the first and probably the one to speak of those flaws
This was the most spot on critique of this game I've seen so far. I really hope you do one for Cyberpunk, though it seems a lot of the stuff you've said about this game applies to that one too.
It's really stupid that video doesn't have million views, thanks for the effort
As a casual gamer who gave up on the witcher 3 within the first hour of gameplay, I was scouting YT for reasons to go back to the game and stick with it this time. This was an extremely well thought-out review. I knew the story has a lot to offer since the game is so praised. You nailed it right on the head with your first point from "The bad" though - it is an absolute nightmare in the beginning, which makes more casual players lose interest. Thanks for the great video!
Character focused moral dilemma quests and the best ever NPC modelling make this game special
The Witcher 3 is one of my absolute all-time favorite games, and I am ready to fight for it.
However, I completely agree with everything in this video.
You presented your arguments very well and in a very objective manner.
Now as someone who doesn't think this game is the 2nd coming of christ, I don't fully agree with all these criticisms.
Meandering does make the pacing weird, but that's on the player if they choose to get distracted from the main story and important side quests. I can see Geralt needing to do some odd jobs or exploring lost dungeons and cabes to loot treasure for his adventure. He definitely won't find Ciri in one day. It could take literal in game months.
I found myself needing money quite often to repair my gear and buy improvements.
You are right about *some* quests not having impactful choices, but that honestly applies to every gane with decision making. And with a game this big and long I can understand as to why not every quest needs to be a story altering event. If anything, it makes the story altering quests stand out more and be more impactful.
This is a quality piece of content. Thank you for the time in creating this. Very useful 2+ hours of my time as I embark on a NG+ Death March on the PS5 update. My first playthrough was years ago, this video provides me a balanced reminder on the good, bad and ugly. Cheers
That was magical - and I haven't even played Witcher 3 yet
I appreciate this game for what it is, but I also hate it for everything it does. I’ve played this game for dozens of hours and can’t find myself enjoying it. I’ve come back to it time and time again, and I can’t finish it.
Damn bro ever since I saw your gothic reviews , I've loved all your videos , can't wait for this one !
Dude I LOVE the Skellige Isles as well. Novigrad started getting super repetitive and Skellige was like a great breath of fresh air in almost every way. I didn't want to leave the place haha.
Great video. It notes that Witcher 3, despite being labelled as one, isn't an RPG but is an Action-Adventure game. The difference between an Action-Adventure game and an RPG is the focus on player agency in an RPG. Everything else can be the same between those genres. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, and Mass Effect games are also Action-Adventure games that are mislabelled by their publishers as RPGs, to get them to sell more.
What about the older Elder Scrolls and Fallout games? Are they RPGs?
@@DJWeapon8Yes
Perhaps the game should have ended with the Battle of Kaer Morhen (though, logically, it should've been the Battle of Kaer Trolde). I know people kind of hate cliffhangers but hey, W1 & W2 already had cliffhangers, too.
So how about this:
Witcher 3 ends with the Battle of Kaer Morhen/Trolde (or maybe even the Battle of Novigrad, as they originally planned).
Ciri gets captured by Eredin but at the very last second she saves the lives of Geralt & Avallach by teleporting them to a random world. To Be Continued.
Then Witcher 4 could've been like:
Prologue - Geralt & Avallach do some dimension-hopping (similar to Through Time & Space, but longer), hoping they can reach the Aen Elle world.
Act 1 - the Aen Elle capital. I think it would've been interesting to have Geralt interact with such an unusual environment. This act could focus on gathering allies who could help against Eredin. Maybe they could give Geralt some McGuffin that disrupts the Wild Hunt's teleportation abilities.
Act 2 - back to the Continent, Novigrad scorched by the Wild Hunt. Showing the aftermath of the finale of the 3rd game. This act would end with Geralt rescuing Ciri and stranding the Wild Hunt on the Continent (with that McGuffin from Act 1).
Act 3 - Nilfgaard capital. The Wild Hunt can't teleport but they still know where Ciri went. So as they ride on horseback, Geralt, Emhyr & everyone else prepare for the final battle. The game's hard difficulty mode could include an actual time limit (which would still be very long as the Nilfgaard capital chapter should probably be the longest in the game).
Just spit-balling here. I do think the Witcher series shouldn't've limited itself to 3 games. It really does feel like they had an idea for another game after the Battle of Kaer Morhen but decided to squeeze everything in W3.
I have to agree with you. I watched this video because I'm planning to pick the game up again after not playing for awhile. I've never finished it and have heard great things about the dlc. My friends rave about how great the game is, but I've never felt it. My biggest problem with the game is that I love to explore at the expense of ignoring the storyline. That means I pretty much found all the good armor, weapons etc before finishing the story and lost interest since there wasn't much left to work for. Sure, the storyline is great, but I tend to lose interest unless there's something other than finishing the story to work for. I love open world games, but this happens alot in them. Watching your video has me rethinking going back and trying to finish it.
This wound be fixed with adding max level weapons and items to give a reason to get to Max level
After years of playing Piranha Bytes games and hearing about this game being a masterpiece i started playing it in late 2020 and havent finished it yet. Pretty much everything apart from writing is a mess - movement, combat, ubisoft style map + minimap that i switched off but it really does not help because the game is intended to play with eyes glued to it most of the time. I preffer Elex to this even lol. I wanted to love this game but its just not for me i think... I will finish it anyways but i will have to focus on main quest only. I found your channel because of Gothic and Elex and i stayed for more. Great vids man.
So true about the mini map! I played the game without it on a subsequent run because of some (Bad) advice from a video i think, with the exception of maybe the tutorial map the maps are 100% NOT designed to be navigated by landmarks and signposts and you often end up hopelessly lost or stuck with lengthy backtracking due to dead ends. What's more, unlike her contemporary MGS5's D-Horse who could gallop his way through any rocky terrain, Roach is worthless, getting stuck on any Geo that isn't perfectly flat so you have to stick to the roads, even critical path bridges meant to be crossed dozens of times stop her dead. The reason the map is so hard to navigate is severe technical limitations. The Witcher 3 has some of the most savage, immersion breaking LOD i've ever seen, they simply couldn't build the maps with large Vistas and where they do occur they are very carefully presented, for example there is only one approach to Novigrad where you can clearly see the city in the distance, otherwise you can only see it's walls. Instead they occlude the view and LOD issues, with numerous hills and impenetrable forests, essentially funnelling you down little corridors. To be fair to CDPR this is 100% not the case with the DLC 'beauclair' map, they realized the problem and fixed it really well.
That said i actually did enjoy the game as the combat is serviceable and it has awesome alchemy and crafting. They also fixed many of it's problems, if you think the UI is bad now you should have seen it at release haha!
"You just ve been told story with passive gameplay"
Witcher 3 in nutshell , good visual novel but nothing more
I always liked the idea of several Open-World-Hubs instead of one Big Open World. (A game which did this well was "Metro Exodus"). I could imagine having these hubs along the main storyline and after the ending, the hubs merge into one big world where you can finish all sidequests and find even some who where not be available before. This would give the players a shorter game who just want the story, is more immersive because "finding ciri is urgent" and players who want more have stuff to do have content after the main game.
I agree. I'm all about freeform, non-linear exploration in games, and I like open-world games in concept, but there's a point when world design simply becomes too big to accommodate the gameplay and story. Having several smaller, open-world "hub" areas instead of one big open-world seems like a great compromise between giving players open areas to explore with plenty of opportunity to go off searching for optional side-content, while also tailoring the world design and progression more closely to the main story and ensuring that there's less wasted space. A lot of my favorite games are like this, in fact: Vampire Bloodlines, The Witcher 1, Gothic 2, KOTOR 2, etc, all divide their maps into smaller playable spaces, with each area built around a specific series of main quests with lots of side quests and hidden secrets to discover if you're so inclined.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Funny thing is, in a certain way several Hubs give me more the illusion of a bigger world than a combined Open World, because my brain can imagin distances between the hubs, thus resulting in a very big world.
The first Red Dead Redemption did that exact thing and I think RDR2 suffered for not replicating that. The reveal of San Denis in chapter 4 or 5(?) had none of the intended impact on me since I spent 16 hours in chapter 2 playing poker there
This is a fantastic review, i just wanted to point out that adrenaline is actually ridiculously op with a particular build. If you focus on sign casting, there is an ability that lets you use an adrenaline point to sign cast before you use up your stamina. When combined with abilities that increase your adrenaline gain, you can basically cast as much as you could ever want after you've built up a point or two. I can quen with 3 adrenaline, have the shield break on a hit and recast over and over. It just shreds everything. Combine that with alternate mode yrden or the damaging aard upgrade and gg, you win.
Thanks for this amazing review! I have seen Dragon's Dogma in the conclusion list. I would absolutely love to see an actual review for that game too.
I'm planning to do a full video review of Dragon's Dogma at some point in the near future, but I have several others to get to, first. In the meantime, I wrote a written review of it on my blog way back in 2013, which you can read for some of my thoughts from back then: thenocturnalrambler.blogspot.com/2013/11/dragons-dogma-is-pretty-damn-good.html
very interested in listening to this after hearing your Skyrim analysis. The Witcher 3 is on the top 3 of my all time favorite games!
Dude you have ripped the witcher 3 apart and you have done it so neatly that i can't even disagree.
love watching critiques on my favorite games! and Witcher 3 at that?! ill eat this video bit by bit. automatically subscribed!
glitcher 3 is the most overrated game of all time.
I finished this game 3 times across 2 platform, I have the physical edition and even bought the season pass before cdpr gave away the goty update to base users, and the more I play the game the more I realize the shortcomings of this game that mirrored that of Skyrim. The de-emphasization of role playing elements, simple combat, open and empty open world, the obvious lack of choices at times, and reliance on the mini map, not to mention the amount of bugs at launch. Witcher 3' story is still some of the best I experienced and the game is beautiful and smooth (this got demolished with the ray tracing update). The game do deserve the love it got and not.
Excellent review! Agree with most of your points. It's a very good game, but has too many flaws in the actual gameplay to be a great game. Noticed that a lot of the problems you list are in comparable games in the genre. Repetitive quests, too much junk, unalive world, too many cut scenes. Pseudo-decisions that change nothing. The triumph of quantity over quality. I'd add that, in the story, the obsession with including "adult themes" actually has the opposite effect and makes it immature. Boobs and bums! Adult for adoloscent boys, perhaps, but not for actual adults. Felt kind of peurile and forced in for effect.
I agree with just about every one of your points. I think my biggest issue is that I'm having trouble taking this games storytelling seriously, and that's it's main draw. I don't like games that force me into moral quandaries with no consequences, or scripted consequences. For instance I finished the Baron questline only to be shoehorned on a romantic moonlit date with Keira. All in a span of 5 minutes. Like you said, this game doesn't know whether it wants to be a serious drama or a fun action romp.
i think the main reason is if the whole game was a serious tone you'd suffer from burn out.
2 could get away with that as it was a much shorter game.
My main problem with this game? It uses the same "ubisoft formula" that people claim to hate. But for some reason when it comes to this game, it gets a pass? To me its very hypocritical. This games so bloated, the amount of map vomit is some of the worst out there. People call the ? marks on the map content, it isnt. Thats called bloat to pad a story. ITs hard to take the story serious when there is 100 ?'s to clear inbetween each story bit. Thats my problem with this game. Also, its not an RPG, its more like red dead 2 and a modern Assassins creed game in structure and design than it is an RPG.
This needs more views! Amazing job, man. Though, as always)
Fantastic video. Great channel. Liked and subscribed!
Witcher 3 didn't need to be an open world and I do believe this is the main cause of most of its problems. I also firmly believe that if you'd ask CDPR to answer honestly, than they would have preferred to follow the same hub-based more linear format as the previous games. The only reason they didn't is because it wouldn't have sold as well. Open world is the way to go if you want the highest sales numbers, so I can hardly blame them for following this path.
One flaw that you didn't mention is the lack of the atmosphere that made the first game so unique. I can't really put it into words, but the first game had a very unique ominous and almost otherworldly vibe to it that made it stand out. The Witcher 3 looks and feels much more like your typical generic high fantasy game and never captured that same feeling. Even the monsters, which are still more unique than most other games of this type, didn't feel as unique, bizarre and literally scary like they did in the first game.
I did love the Witcher 3 and it might be the only game I will actually replay a second time. That being said I still find both Witcher 1 and 2 better in pretty much every way.
Best Witcher 3 critique on TH-cam. You sir deserve more subs.
lol I used to read your blog back in the day. interesting to see your video making skills are pretty good too.
Thanks for stopping by! It's always nice to hear from people who discovered my work years ago on the blog, where it all started. I'm pretty satisfied with where my editing and production skills are at right now, but if you go back and look at some of my earlier video reviews you'll notice there's been a lot of improvement since 2019, when I was first getting into video editing.
Great video. On point 6 of the bad (the world is too big), i feel like the world would fine if the bottom part of Velen would have been left out. Most of whats under the horizontal line through Fyke isle is pretty much ‘filler’. Besides that, i feel like the world is just fine.
Thank you for this review/critique. i have not played this game, and this review didn't really give me a strong desire to. Open world games have gone entirely in the wrong direction if you ask me -- opting for bigger, emptier, and more repetitive instead of tighter and more satisfying. Give me Risen 1 or Gothic 2 + NotR. For that matter, give me Gothic 1. But unfortunately, immersive and organic doesn't sell like "huge". This is true not just with RPGs, but with open world action games like Horizon: Zero Dawn and the annual sandbox pushed out by Ubisoft.
I have never really liked the grey choices of The Witcher series. When I feel like every choice is simply a "lesser of two evils" then it makes me totally disinterested in the world. My choices don't make a difference if everyone's quality of life sucks no matter what. Add on top of that the bombardment of characters that are introduced with little or no background or context (this is a problem in Witcher 2) and I just can't get interested.
The one thing that I love seeing in this game though is the use of the full color palette. It looks like a visually beautiful game, much more so than any recent Assassins Creed game or Horizon: Zero Dawn.
@@frogglen6350 I agree that the main plot itself with the Sleeper is pretty uninspired, but the rivalry amongst the three camps was great. Off the top of my head, I can't think of any game that has done factions that well.
The wild goose chases seem to be this trilogy's most common trope because 1 and 2 had them too. 1 has you on a wild goose chase after Salamandra for most of the game while 2's chase is after Letho. And in both, you also end up doing a bunch of unrelated things until the plot is ready to move you to the next chapter.
Yeah, I remember TW1 had a lot of arbitrary road-blocks in the early chapters whose main purpose seemed to be to impede progress in the main story by giving you more things to have to accomplish to get to your destination. Things like being locked out of town in chapter 1, to then being locked out of the upper quarter in chapter 2, and so on, each requiring a circuitous process of doing seemingly unrelated things just to unlock the next area. TW1 might be even worse about this, since at least TW3 allows you to ignore the main quest if you don't want to get bogged down with it, at least for the most part, but I found the overall quest design and structured progression through TW1 interesting enough that it didn't bother me as much in that game. I didn't like the atmosphere and side quests in Novigrad as much, compared to what came before in Velen, which made the excessive side-tracking more tedious and annoying to me.
"The wild goose chases seem to be this trilogy's most common trope "
That's because it is the premise of the books, at least the main 5 ones that are one continuous story. It's essentially the same as in Witcher 3: Ciri is far away and in grave danger.
I feel like I need to address the "Witcher doesn't have time for this stuff" and the "Forced to RP in a certain way." Now, it's valid if you don't enjoy that. For sure, but Geralt isn't your create a character. He has a personality. And if you've read the books.. Geralt is a very RARE Witcher. A GOOD man who CAN'T just.. let people suffer. So, a lot of the time Geralt gets DEEPLY involved with non-witcher stuff. It's one of the reason Vesemir complains during the "Killing Monsters" trailer. Geralt cannot keep his nose outta other peoples business if it means letting people suffer. So, while a normal witcher wouldn't Geralt would.
I know I’m a few years late to this, but I have always been extremely ignorant to this games flaws. Thank you for opening my eyes to the fact that this game isn’t perfect.
It is still one of my top three favorite games, but it’s not as perfect as I always thought it was. Great video!
It's always nice to have an open mind about things. Thanks for the kind words, and I'm glad you enjoyed it!
Playing this game in 32:9 (5120x1440) is such an experience that I stuck to replay it for the 5th time
Thank you for your work. I think that this version of payment is the best. 5$ is a price of a movie ticket in my country and I think that this video will be better than many movies that I watched
Thanks for watching! I hope you enjoyed the video. Remember that I have a backlog of other articles and videos and Patreon, so be sure to check those out if you haven't already, since that's all included in your $5. Thanks again for your patronage!
Movie tickets in my country are $10 , $5 at Noon, and more Like $15 on weekends
Yennifer: the Ramona Flowers of the Witcher series (Knives: Triss)
I‘m really interested in your opinion on the 2dlc‘s, since you didn‘t mention them at any point- are you planning to review them seperately or not at all? I think they are absolutely phenomenal and add massively to the overall experience.
Separate reviews are coming for each DLC. I've already finished replaying Hearts of Stone and have a rough draft for the review, so I'll be going into video production on that shortly, with Blood & Wine to follow.
@@TheNocturnalRambler Great to hear! Already looking forward to it.
I enjoyed the game and totally agree with all your points, there is another point to add to the ugly.
As you mentioned that the too much useless junk clutter the inventory, I would like to expand on the issues of the 'inventory' itself.
Inventory management is absolutely dreadful and a nuisance, this game has one of the worst inventory UI and menus.
Aside from the limited sorting options, the automatic sorting done by the game itself is rather terrible.
Trying to compare 2 items in the stash storage is pretty much impossible.
Some of the UI icons of the equipment actually don't represent the actual equipment correctly at all.
To give you an example.
The Swordsman's boots inventory UI/icon seem to indicate that the shoe is a 2 piece equipment.
The lower part is a light brown base and the upper part is a white looking sock.
The actual Swordsman's boots, when you have them equipped look more like Tracker's boots rather than what I described above.
For me, the "nothing to spend money on" was solved in the Blood and Wine DLC. Pretty sure I spent every single coin I had just to get some Grandmaster armor.
I guess if you're making Grandmaster armor for every set, then that would eat up a lot of income. In my case, I only made the one Grandmaster set for the gear I wanted (Manticore), spent ~15k upgrading Corvo Bianco, and spent a few thousand other crowns on random things like horse armor and house paintings, and wound up 40,000 crowns richer than I was at the start of the DLC. Hearts of Stone was ultimately a bigger money-sink for me with the Runewright quickly eating up 30,000 crowns and me spending thousands more on the upgrades.
I honestly dont care about most of all these points,
what really gets me is how acrobatic a measly drowner can be.
The combat sucks when you can be hit as you're spinning for an attack.
I think a great solution to witcher senses could be separate Seeing, Hearing and Smelling Senses.
Especially the seeing Part would just be a zoom, not a highlight. For example investigate in say first Person like the switching of first and third person in skyrim. If you find a trail, then it could be highlighted, so that you dont have to stare at the ground all the time if following a trail.
@@MetalGearyaTV Especially because witcher senses are a part of the lore, they shouldn't be like they are in the game. A witcher is able to smell things humans cant, hear things humans cant or see things humans cant with aid of the witcher senses. If those in the game now highlight a corpse or big carriage indents on the road, a dead fiend etc etc, then it deflates the fact that they are supposed to be special powers. Thus it would be more appropriate to have a zoom-in as just a "focus" ability, not a witcher sense.
But I think, you're right in having it only appear rarer as a necessity.
Sometimes I even only get the prompt to investigate a thing I discovered without witcher senses, after using witcher senses on it, which is really dumb.
Wanna see you do a proper Gothic 2 NotR review :)
@@Tenferenzu that's not a pacing problem in any game like that you will spend most of the time in the first half of the game more than the second half because of you exploring the world and doing side quests ect and after you are done with that the second half will be story focused which is why it will feel shorter
I love your concent, man. Keep going. Last year, Mortismal Gaming was my discovery, this year is The Nocturnal Rambler. I root for your first 100k !
The only reason I finished it with constant crashes while perfectly fine for my PC was the absolutely gripping story and things to explore.
Clunky controls, awful camera at times and hard crashing were a reason to stop playing for any other game.
I playing the Witcher 2 and 3 on Series X as we speak.. masterpieces , Witcher 3 is best game ever made imo! Nice review keep it up mate 🥃
Why are you not more popular man??? Whether i agree or not with your takes, you justify pretty well your points enough to understand where that opinion is coming from.
Such an awesome review that i 100% agree with. Witcher 3 is definitely not the best game of all time, it has a lot of (unexpected) flaws but it is an extremely good and well-crafted game that makes you want to play it again and again. And your channel is painfully under-rated. You have my subscription sir. Well done.
The amount of spots you can get soft locked in in is very infuriating. Specially in the marshlands in Velen since Geralt will sometimes stat swimming in a foot deep ponds so then you can't jump out of them
Phenomenal review and contextualization with generalization is excellent. I would love to see you post an analysis over Fallout New Vegas!
Watching this in 2024 after my last play of the game on Ps4... Agree with you that the game has these problems, but even so it's still one of my favorite games ever 😊
hopefully this video gets to 2mil views and more. cause it's only 2k plus.
I try to imagine a world where the stand RPG of 2011 was witcher 2 and not Skyrim. What would things look like if we didn't have everyone scrambling thinking large map = good RPG and completely missing why people liked Skyrim and why they like RPGs or worse thinking those two questions have the same answer. Witcher 3 was too big for its own good leading to a bizarre game that seems to want to have an open world but also not want the player to explore out of fear they won't experience its story. So its solution is to load you with map markers and lock you in massive cutscenes between running around.
its tough to tell a good main story and have side quests that are at odds with the main story.
This is a thorough review id say 😆 i must also add, i thought all these things playing this just would never be able to articulate it like you did.
Very good points, i think exactly the same from the game! I always tried to love it, (funny just today finished the core game), but i cant help but see its weak points. With a can of beer i can chill with it and play it even 7-8 hours constantly, but i never really enjoy if u know what i mean. Very overrated game due to rpg fans whos read the books, deeply love the witcher universe etc. but for a non-witcher-lover average players its just an average open world rpg. For instance i think Horizon Zero Dawn or Days Gone are much better open world games, with less flaws and better, tighter gameplay and story.
I agree with most of your criticisms and have plenty more of my own but i think the high quality of the dialogue and the addicting crafting and alchemy pursuit salvage the game. The combat is also fairly serviceable with a good mix of player freedom through spells/potions/bombs and prescriptive 'hard counters'.
Good video. People often claim Witcher fans are toxic and dont accept criticism but just going a few videos back on your channel i can see Bloodborne video having 50% dislikes because you dare to say negative aspects of the game, hell..even the Skyrim video has more dislikes, this twisted distorted notion about witcher 3 fans is based on the constant ranting of these two fanbases, the first one is Bloodborne who hate Witcher even before actually playing it, simply due to the fact that it won GOTY over their precious game. And the second fanbase is Bethesda who got exposed with Fallout 4 at the same year and due to witcher 3 taking the acclaim away from Skyrim. This is facts my dude.
I like all the games i mentioned and i think there is good fans in all of them. Good video and as a person who loved Witcher 3 i appreciate the effort, i just wish it could have been shorter, honestly dude im tired of these long videos haha. Anyway i want to know your opinion on the 2 expansions because frankly i think they carry the game more than people think, they are imho excellent.
I doubt any of these dislikes are from people who actually listened and thought about the points you suggested.
Wonderful, balanced review.
One nitpick, Witcher-superhuman death by falling >3ft is very very "ugly". Losing 10 minutes of gameplay and several monster fights just because you step of a curb the wrong way is beyond infuriating. Witchers should have super-human fall tolerance, especially for exploring such great environments. And what a missed opportunity. They could have also added a persistent injury mechanic from especially large falls, limiting abilities and requiring natural or magic healing, Broken legs mechanic limiting your fighting abilities. Maybe a broken hand mechanic limiting your sign casting for a spell.
You read my thoughts
Music can be on both good and ugly. I get why people love it, and Percival is an amazing band, but the music as a whole is a bit too generic on top of the game. Honestly, the worst Percival songs are in Witcher 3 lol
The first Witcher's music complemented the atmosphere MUCH better. Typical holywood fantasy aesthetics with decent to good "slavic folk" (not really, its a mix of many things) in W3 does not impress me.
Couple that with how long the game is making the same track repeat over and over in 100+ hours of game time
From Polish perspective: CD Project is often criticized for copying whole plots from the original Witcher saga. For example, the story of Wither 1's Alvin (the superhero boy) is a copy of Ciri's origin story.
I've heard some things along those lines but haven't looked very far into it. From what I've heard, it sounded like they treated Triss as a stand-in for Yen in TW1/2 and gave her some of Yen's personality traits, but I'm not familiar with the books to know much about that, or might be misremembering what I heard. I'm curious to hear from someone who's read the books about how well the games sync up with characters' established histories and personalities.
20:56 These were pretty exaggrated claims back in 2015 i think about 135 or 136km^2,i've played both games for tens of hours and can easily say that GTAV has a bigger map,it's just feels smaller due to fast cars and much more cleaner draw distance.
In fact it takes 2,5 hours to walk across GTA5 while 40-50 minutes to walk Witcher 3's Velen.About an hour to cross entire Skellige Ocean and Isles on foot and 30-40 minutes to walk across Toussaint.In area size Skellige occupies a bit more than half of entire game map size at 29-30km^2,Velen's itself is 15km^2 and Toussaint around 8km^2.While GTAV including a bit of it's ocean just like Witcher 3 between 100-130km^2.
"not enough content is gated behind level progression"
funny how this is the exact opposite of how I see the problem - the is *too much* level-gating, and the combat isn't skill-based enough. that's why mods like No Levels exist.
The threshold for player skill in TW3 is definitely much lower than other similar games, considering that basic combat strategies you learn in first two hours are all you ever need to get through the entire game because the attack options are so limited and enemy AI so simplistic and repetitive. Every fight against every enemy is basically the same from beginning to end, and it all boils down to spamming the attack button and dodging when the enemy's health bar flashes red. So the relative lack of player-skill in the combat system is a criticism I can agree with and a large part of why I consider it shallow and boring in the first place.
The gated-level progression, on the other hand, is really only applicable for the first 10-or-so levels, or roughly the first ~20 hours, when the game is actually difficult and you're actually required to level-up to face better challenges. After that point, though, the difficulty drops off completely and leveling up becomes superfluous. As my footage shows, I was playing on the hardest difficulty and routinely killing enemies so much higher level than me that the game doesn't even display their level (it's just "??" or whatever), while facing no real challenge or tension whatsoever. Defeating these high-level enemies didn't feel like a tremendous accomplishment because it was a given that I could kill practically anything and everything I came across; it was just a matter of how much time and equipment wear it would take to do so. In effect, NOTHING was off-limits for me, and I therefore never felt like leveling up was actually required to handle higher-level quests or more difficult enemies. At least, not if you play through the game in the expected order of Velen -> Novigrad -> Skellige.
@@TheNocturnalRambler I wouldn't say the game was always too easy in my experiece, it's more like the difficulty was just inconsistent to a ridiculous degree. for example, I'd find a group of drowners that couldn't even put a dent in me, and merely a hundred meters away from them there'd be another group, except these would kill me in one hit, despite there being no logical or lore reason for such disparity. this, combined with the randomness of Geralt's combat animations, makes this part of gameplay feel unsatisfying. the loot from higher-level quests is always level-restricted, so by the time I actually reach the required level, I would likely already possess better items from elsewhere, thus, even non-monetary rewards from quests feel pointless.
Thanks for the video. It really helped me understand why I enjoyed the game at first then just... stopped around the S- islands.
I went back to playing Ac: Odyssey cause I enjoy the combat, so going to the different question marks ? is fun instead of a chore. In open world games, I want to stumble on fun stuff, and wander around, and feel like a bad a ss. I'm not a good gamer, and even on the second hardest difficulty, Witcher just lost any challenge. I don't feel like a bad a ss when there's no challenge.
I need to play this game again.
That Gothic 3 reference hurt me in my soul. Mainly because I probably never would have looked in the direction of the Witcher if it weren't for Gothic and Gothic 2.
which is ironic how the bad and the ugly in this review gothic 3 did it right
thanks for the observations, I've never thought about the things you pointed out in the video until I've watched your video.
Your taste in video games is so similar to mine, it's scary. I'm so looking forward to this.