The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

I finished the Baron quest on that original play through.

I can see why people think it’s good, but the characters leave me cold and, a bit like some of the music I used to listen to, I honestly think I’ve just “grown out of it”.

Which is funny when I realise that most of my gaming is ZX Spectrum stuff.

Dunno!

I must be some kind of simp cos I enjoyed the combat.

I am too, but still I'm glad I've played W3 because it is special in some of the stories it tells.

And as you can see, not everyone hates the combat. I do, and many do, but that doesn't necessarily mean you will.

I just don't want to be the guy who made you not play the game in case you might actually enjoy it. Just giving my personal experience. Which is that even though I'm a very gameplay focussed gamer, I still enjoyed the story parts of W3, or at least some of them. From a gameplay-centric perspective I think Skyrim is by far the superior game, but while I hardly gave a shit about its stories, W3 tells some stories I genuinely cared about.

Ulythium

You know what. We could talk about the combat all day but the simple truth is that it's a game that is not without faults, but it is fucking great. For me, The Witcher 3 pissed all over Skyrim from a massive height, and every other open world fantasy game right up until Elden Ring drunkenly staggered in, pulled it's pants down, and pissed all over The Witcher 3.

There's piss everywhere. Play it.

Could never get into Zelda games. Thought of controlling a sprightly child in dress up never appealed to me tbh.

I joke.

Yes, you do need to buy Elden Ring. Everyone needs to.

Witcher 3 goes on sale all the time. I’d just love it up sometime then download it once they do the next-gen patch. I did this with Cyberpunk.

To add on opposite opinion, I love RPGs but hate combat. My ultimate preference is RPGs that let you use smarts to get around fighting. That said, in games like TW3 where you can't do that I turn the difficulty all the way down and just hope holding down the left mouse button will do the job.

Will that work in TW3? I hope so cos it sounds like the story is well worth my time and it +DLC have been in my backlog for ages.

The combat is alright when you start figuring out the weaknesses of what you're about to fight and prepare using potions/fuck it up with signs. If you just wade in and start swinging your steel sword at monsters it's not so fun.

But yeah, it was primarily about the story and the world rather than the combat for me (also played on easy to get past the combat faster)

The odd thing about story being its strength is that as others have said the main Ciri plotline is confusingly redundant most of the game.

I know it's a bit of an RPG trope that you end up doing loads of side-quests for random villagers when you're apparently meant to be saving the world but it seemed particularly jarring in this. The premise shouldn't be "save Ciri" it should be "live as Geralt for a bit - see what that's like!"

I also remember lots of the missions consisting of following trails in the Witcher-vision mode, so you have this visually incredible open world yet spend half the time staring at the ground through a fish-eye lens and wibbly orange lines (and the other half watching cut-scenes).

Still looking forward to replaying with spruced up visuals and fast load times though... But with a better sense of what to expect and how to get the most out of it.

So if I plan ahead on potions and play on easy I should enjoy it then? How do I tell which plot lines are DLC and should I avoid them till after the main plot?

Very similar to me. Just couldn't sustain interest in BOTW. It especially annoyed me that everything you used to hit things would break after about 5 swings.

That was kind of the sales pitch that made me fork out £300 for Botw. In practice I rarely actually got that sense of being well rewarded for exploring.

I'm a sucker for stumbling upon an ancient ruin, or mysterious village, or foreboding temple. Delighted when finding a breadcrumb trail to something bigger. Skyrim does this aspect brilliantly where you only see markers when very close. Constantly got enjoyably sidetracked in that game.

In Botw I was frustrated that something that looked interesting and mysterious from afar often turned out to be just another kurok puzzle or another fairly superficial cartoon character with minimal backstory asking me to do something mundane. I played it for 60hrs and the only quest I remember is that one on an island, the rest totally forgettable. I didn't hate the game, the weapon thing didn't bother me at all, and I liked the climbing and gliding and physics puzzles. I just gradually realised that I was never going to find what I wanted in that world and then the motivation to keep exploring died.

Witcher 3 I can recall 10+ surprising, moving, or amusing quests and side stories despite playing it several years before. I felt I had to do every quest as the risk of missing something great was high given their quality. So many moments stick in the memory.

My whole point was, if you feel like spending time exploring for no reason other than because something tugged on your curiosity that's a true open world game. If the game is designed purely around the "reward" you stop just being there and begin chasing things down often for diminishing returns.

Im sure some of the quests in the Witcher were excellent, perhaps I took on the wrong ones. I did the stuff with the demon baby and the Witches that was alright I guess. To be fair I've had this conversation a few times and posts like this one convince me to try again but my last save sees me stuck in a cave with a monster I can't kill.. ☺️