TL:DR => Generic and predictable story with fresh idea how to show it. Good combat, at best average gameplay and "big choices" that don't matter at all. And I'm really sorry it turned out to be that long review, it surely didn't feel to be that big in my head D:

Pros:
- Good graphic
- Climatic voice acting
- Way of storytelling
- Feel that our decisions really matter and we can change something on 1st run (just like in Telltale games)
- Some minor choices have visible consequences
- For such a big game (with Skyrim / Fallout 4 type of open world) it's basically bug free
- Blood Baron arc
- Geralt don't have to collect plants to make elixirs every time he uses them. It's enough to meditate and have 1 alcohol to replenish all potions and bombs. And thanks god for that, this ridiculous "create your potions constantly anew" mechanics made me not use potions and bombs at all in Witcher 2
- Support for AMD Chill

Cons:
- All game mechanics that were listed [here](http://www.backlog-assassins.net/posts/el5m86b)
- Albeit game looks really good, in places where it's unlikely for players to wander textures are terrible
- Story is terribly generic without any kind of "wow" moment
- Happiness that we found game where choices matter disappears when we try to play 2nd time with different choices
- Player choices from Witcher 1 and 2 don't matter at all
- Only arc that shows that people can be "gray" is Blood Baron arc. Everything else is black & white
- Enemies were clearly designed for fights in open areas, so combat can get wonky when you have to fight big enemy in small space
- Menu and inventory are a mess
- Bad minigames AI
- You can specialize in magic or alchemy, but it's obvious that only good way is melee build
- Extra ability slots as part of paid DLC
- Tons of fetch quests
- Map resets every time to default legend, so you can't pick what you want to see by default or choose desirable zoom
- What's the point in using custom markers if you can mark only few places? I tried to mark gwent cards and armor places that way and failed miserably
- Occasional problems with ALT + TAB and game crashes to desktop without error prompt

Story:

From people comments from past 2 years I got impression that plot in this game is amazing. But it's not. Really. It's generic bad guy wants to invade us with his army and destroy us, we have to kill him. Plus he chases Geralt's "daughter" so it's additional reason why we have to kill him. There is no big revelation behind main villain actions. Villain is not well-written. You don't feel any kind of pressure to solve rescue her quickly, even though whole game takes place during (another) war between humans. But invaders have enormous camp on the south of the map and just sit there through whole game.

And entirely different thing is how story is told. And it's done very well. So you can have bad story, but showed in nice way. In order to kill bad guy we have to find Ciri, as he's looking for her as well. So we travel through whole continent looking for her. Game is not linelar in this regard, we can do quests in any order we want (level requirement is not really important). Main NPCs we meet are interesting. And even though it's more like few small separate stories tied by Ciri's searching it works well. Her story is not given to us on golden plate, so we have to put some effort into understanding it.

Some minor choices have visible consequences - like rescuing random dude on another island may result in them killing tiny camp of fleeing people somewhere else. And after moments like this I really thought "Yeah! Small choices matter! I won't rescue your lazy ass next time!". But this crumble when it comes to choices that should matter. There is side quest to kill some king, and after whole assassination thingy his subjects still roam around city shouting "long live the king!". Even though half of the city saw assassination and afterwards I was pursued by all city guards (sic!). We have standard "prepare castle and gather allies" point and I thought "God, please do this right". But no. Battle sequence was the same when I spend time to gather allies and solve their problems, and where I didn't care and didn't ask anyone for help. It's not even close to Mass Effect 2 suicide mission. I won't write more (albeit I wanted to give few more examples) to not spoil things too much.

Ending also has little sense. We also look for Ciri for really important someone (Geralt and them share the same goal, so players don't feel too forced to be someone's doggy on a short leash). This certain someone wants to find her really badly, as he needs her for something. There is only one ending (we have no choice how game will end) and we don't do exactly what this important someone wants. But as result he's like "oh well, whatev" and it's their whole reaction. And then CDP Red gave players "happy ending" which is one big bullshit. I won't say what happens bc of spoilers, but seriously. They could came up with something better

Combat:

Thankfully enemies don't scale with the player. Bandits in Dragon Armor are most ridiculous things ever.

It's really Dark Souls like. My first run was with melee build and it worked like a charm. Evade enemy attack (or counter attack human enemies), few quick slashes and repeat. And it felt really good when I could beat enemy that was 10 - 15 levels above me by knowing it's attack patterns and acting accordingly.

My second run on Insanity level was also painless, even when i put all my points into sign (magic) tree and had to kill some enemies manually (signs don't work on enemies like magic golems etc). But it was one big mess when it comes to fighting last bosses. They are immune to signs (so my DPS build was useless), teleport around (so you can't really do much damage with basic sword attacks). Battling last boss took me around one hour (when whole run took ~18h). They let you play through whole game in certain way, to force you into completely different play style at the very end when you can't change your abilities or gear. Well done. On top of that your attacks keep locking on minions (that are constantly re spawning after their death), so you run to "main" enemy that teleported himself, to stop mid-way, face minion and die of ranged enemy attack.

But in general signs and alchemy trees are inferior to melee tree. Only useful signs are fire and shield. Telekinesis don't do much damage, trap it totally worthless (just like in 2 previous games and is needed in few scripted fights) and casting mind control takes way too much time (and can be easily interrupted by enemy attack). Many enemies are immune to fire, and shield lasts only one hit. So they have big disadvantage. Alchemy is pointless because without good melee basics you won't be able to do much damage either way. Potions poison you pretty quickly, and applying oils on swords is annoying (pause game, find right oil, apply, repeat after few strikes) so you won't do this at all.

Having to wait in certain locations to proper daytime before monster will show and we can kill it is really nice idea. But again - immersion is broken when you walk in the wood in the middle of the night and have to kill midday lady there. Like why CDP Red, why were you so lazy to not script her appearance only during daytime?

But keep in mind that I write about flaws that are visible when you play on high difficulties. So when enemies have 2 - 3x more health and do way more damage than normally. I think that playing on normal would be ok for most of the players. As even with shitty gear and without bonuses from melee tree you will do quite a lot of damage and won't die from 1 - 2 hits. So you won't feel like you sacrifice "always good melee" DPS in favor of signs or alchemy.

Abilities & Leveling:

I feel like this deserves separate paragraph, as ability system is weird. It's not enough to unlock ability to use it, it needs to be equipped to special slot. Extra slot is unlocked every 2 - 3 levels, so when you start you can't pick up "more quick strike damage, fire sign, shield and bonus for armor set" as you have only 2 slots. So you're forced to max out 2 of them, even tho in theory you could use 4. This lead to situation when it's pointless to level up past 30rd level, as at this point you unlock all slots (12) and fill them all with abilities. What can you fit in 12 slots? For me it were all abilities from quick attack and adrenaline branch (so 2 out of 5 branches, nothing in heavy attack, crossbows or "defense") , bonus for armor set and regeneration of health after eating something, plus persuasion and slightly better shield ability. And that's all, you can't add any bonus from alchemy or signs to this. Same when you want to specialize in alchemy or signs. You will be able to max out 2 signs and pick up 4 most important abilities from other categories.

I really don't like this system, especially that you can have 4 extra slots in DLC Blood and Wine, but it's end-game content and getting them require way too much mutagens grind to be worth it. So only solution is to use mod to enable more slots "but this break game balance". So I didn't use it to not be "accused" to have it "too easy" on Insanity level.

Side note: When I spent 87h doing every side quest, contract etc in base game I was able to level up to 30rd level. In my speed run on Insanity level (ONLY main quests, 18h in total) I leveled from 30rd to 62th lvl. And difficulty doesn't affect exp gain at all (I didn't get bigger exp rewards). So don't worry to miss few quests, as exp reward is most of the time not worth it. Only main missions give reasonable amount of exp. And if you're slightly under leveled you will get more exp for killing enemies. Which isn't hard.

Another thing is to not care about mission requirement too much. I was able to easily beat missions that were 15-18 levels above my level (on 2nd play through, so all ability slots unlocked which easier things) but it requires that you can use evade (ALT key on keyboard by default) efficiently. But even without unlocked abilities (on normal) it shouldn't be a problem. As you won't die after 1 taking hit, so you have way more space for errors. Plus mission requirements are really inconsistent. You may be 57th level, start main mission with requirement level 59, and after beating it you unlock mission with requirement 55. Yay. So at first mission is above your level, and later on it's under it.

Only thing that is really affected by levels is gear you can wear, so game tries to force you to hoard exp in order to use better gear. But it's stupid (hence I used items restriction mod on my 2nd run). Strong schematics should be simply guarded by very strong enemies, so if you can beat them earlier - yay you're awesome, now go and wear this awesome boots. Not travel through half of continent, defeat enemy and then have to wait 10 levels before getting ability to wear your gear.

Crafting, Inventory, Menus:

God it's bad. It is really bad. First of all ability to sort anything is non-existent. Same as you can't organize inventory the way you want by moving things around. Instead you have tiny icons with different colors (like in potions / oils case) and you have to hover mouse over every item when you want to find something. As they don't even have simple graphic representation what they do (like monster type symbol on oils).

There are tons of alchemy / crafting ingredients that can't be sorted otherwise than alphabetically (amount you have, quality etc?). You end up hoarding everything, as you can't highlight few things you want to focus on and will need in future. And you can't easily check when you're looting how much of something you already have. Same goes for schematics, only alchemy schematics disappears when you craft them. Item crafting schematics can't be sold or dropped, so if you make mistake and pick up all schematics you find (don't do this, only witcher gear is worth crafting) you will end up with tons of junk positions in crafting menu that make finding something usable a nightmare. It's be way better to have categories with sub-categories (like Witcher gear => Feline / Gryffin / Bear school; Skelige armors, Novigard armors. unique armors) instead of throwing every single boot schematic into "boot" category and try now to find particular boot.

I don't know if it's bug or "feature", but most of unnecessary quest items stay in inventory. They can't be destroyed, they can't be sold, they can't be dropped. So you end up with tons of unnecessary junk in inventory that takes all visible space. (thankfully on 2nd run I found mod that lets you drop this junk).

Plus there are way too much tabs in the menu, they could be easily gathered in one "text" place under tabs "bestiary" "quests" "characters" and so on. As right now you have to switch between 11 tabs. Instead of few like "character" "inventory" "map" "glossary". And on top of that when you have a lot of things in inventory and want to switch tabs quickly they freeze for a moment. Even switching between different inventory categories is not instant and you have to wait a little.

It may be considered as blasphemy (he he) but I like inventory and crafting in Technomancer (you know, average "budget AAA game") way more. I don't need few dozens of useless craft items and schematics to play. I want neat and easy to use crafting without having to browse through tons of positions to find what I want.

Quests:

There are few quest types:
- main quests - focused on finding Ciri, good quality
- side quests that are tied to main quests - mostly helping our friends, good quality
- hunt quests - Geralt agrees to kill something. So it's simple go - kill - bring trophy fetch quest. Enemies are standard, just higher level than mobs you can find around. And reward is not really worth it. No matter enemy level, trophy has always +5% gold or +10% chance to cut limb bonus (so there is no feeling that you get something better for defending 30th lvl enemy in comparison to 5th lvl enemy). Plus small exp bonus. They also get really tiring and repetitive, as you always have to go to place a, use witcher sense to follow red marks to location b and kill monster that stays there. And you will get more money from selling 2 uncommon swords at swordsmith than from quest reward.
- " ? " marks around the map. Just like hunting quests they are in 95% pointless, and put there to fill otherwise huge empty world. It's either "kill everything on place" quest or "dive to find treasure" quest. There are few funny ones tho - like when you find mini quest that makes fun from DRM games and say that GOG is only solution. But they're really rare.
- " ! " marks - super short "quests" where you have to escort some poor citizen or do other action that require 2 min of playtime. Again it's not worth hassle.
- minigames-related quests - Gwent is terribly predictable and AI is dumb. Horse races are so terribly rubber-banded it's impossible to loose them. And fisting is fisting, the same like in previous games. So those mini-activities aren't really good. There is only one moment when Gwent is challenging - in last 3 matches for whole continent championship.

In general you can do only main and side quests without all this fetch-filling-void quests without loosing game experience. As they give little to none exp and really small money reward.

Geralt:

Well he's not really likable. I mean you can use lore to explain that withers are in general emotionless, thought you can sometimes make snarky comment or angry comment. Instead of just saying "ok" and "no". But it's rare. Same as Geralt love interests. Some of them look like having amnesia (devs didn't want to bother with actions from previous games, so they "reseted" everything, or "didn't want to make it hard for new players"). Plus Geralt can sleep with everyone without any kind of regret. Even though he says that he "loves" and cares about someone deeply. I really disliked that. It seemed ok in W1 or W2 when he had amnesia and didn't really know what was going around. But it's not ok when he meets "the one" pretty much constantly. It feels wrong and forced. And lame. Emotional-love theme of Witcher 3 is really weak.

You can either bribe people or use mind control to force them into something. Or beat them up. And ability to sweet-talk someone is rare.

Controls are generally ok and combat is really fluid. But movement outside of combat can get wonky. Trying to highlight certain object when there are others around is hard. It's nicely visible when you walk (normally, without holding CTRL) around and try to light up torches on the walls with igni. Sometimes you can do this without problems, and sometimes need few attempts. As "pointing direction" is not decided by camera movement, but way in which Geralt is looking. CDP Red tried to address this issue by releasing "alternate movement mode" (which is turned on by default). But it's still not perfect.

Also beard D: Why it's growing like crazy? I don't want to look like monkey, so why can't I turn off beard grow? Especially that hair style stasy the way you want it infinitely. But not beard.

Hearts of Stone takes place in the same area as base game, so you won't see new locations. And it's possible that you will do some of DLC side quests while roaming around. Which is not bad, as main DLC missions are clearly marked in journal

Story has bit of foreshadowing about main game plot. And it'd be way better if it would be expanded and included as part of main plot. As it was not-so-standard fight with bad arch-enemy theme. And I enjoyed it more than base game main plot. It's moderately long, took me 15h to beat it in 100% (I deliberately omitted all quests from expansion while playing main game).

Just like main game, DLC takes a lot from Slavic folklore. In this case it's from Adam Mickiewicz "Lady Twardowska" ballad. Adam Mickiewicz is our teacher's favorite poet, hence I think that every single kid in Poland knows how the story goes. So for me it wasn't really surprising how story from DLC ended. Dunno if other nations have ballads like this and won't be surprised as well. Even tho I wasn't surprised whole story was really solid, no weird space magic or plot holes detected

We have few tasks to complete, ones that at first sight look impossible. We have to steal and bring back house, allow someone to have fun and bring back very delicate flower. House quest is kinda meh, flower is interesting. But fun quest is top-notch. As Geralt is more "free" than usual and we take part in traditional Slavic wedding with all attractions and so on. I won't write more to spoil this, but it's really good.

Blood and Wine takes place in new region. It's in the south, in the land of wine plant hills and brave white knights. Which is nice, scenery change into peaceful and colorful view, villagers are happy and only thing that destroys this peaceful image are monsters that roam lands (there are few new enemy types).

At the beginning of the story queen invites you to get rid of someone that kills knights. Which later turns into nasty "family business" and "broken love" theme. So I think that story from Hearts of Stone is way better and less standard. Everything is super expensive here, but you also get bigger rewards to compensate it. So it feels like moving from working at shithole countryside (aka Novigard) to luxury and expensive Hollywood.

During gameplay you will learn that you have long-known friends (you didn't know about previously), some stuff about vampires and sphere conjunction (so time when space-magic happened and monsters invaded Witcher's reality). Devs added Skyrim's and Falout's "build your own" house to not be "behind", but IMO it doesn't feel right, as "not single witcher ever died in his bed" and Geralt is killing machine, not landlord that will sit and enjoy how his grapes rise in summer's sun. Meh. Plus for some reason interior of the house is super dark, so you can't even properly enjoy it's upgrades. Dunno why they didn't put more candles inside.

I must admit that I did only main and some side quests, as I didn't have patience anymore for those fetch quests. So I can't say anything about quality of hunt quests or " ? " quests here.

All quests on the map
Armor item level requirement
Auto apply oils
Disable storybook videos
Drop quest items
Fast travel from anywhere
Increased creature loot
Indestructible items
No dirty lens effect
Over 9000 but tbh it wasn't necessary to have more inventory space
Sort everything
Script merger
This mod if you want ability to quickly find oils or potions - I didn't use it, had auto apply oils instead