This game deserves at least a 9 on its face, however, it seems that PC gamers were betrayed in favor of two sticks.
I still do not know what Bioware was blabbering about when they were saying that PC gamers were in for a special treat two weeks before the game's release.
By the way, do no think twice that this is an open world game. It's not. You do the same thing you were doing in the first game, except there are now more areas that are, on average, 5-10 times larger than the ones in the first game. There are simply less loading screens this time around and you can now send agents to complete some of the missions that are not accessible to you anyway.
So far I have spent about 20 hours in the game. I will not comment much on the story because there is just too much to encompass. Although the story WILL take a long time to significantly unfold.
As far as the graphics go, well, meh. Sometimes it's hard to believe that this is Frostbyte 3. I am not saying the graphics are bad, for some reason I just expected more. Here, the graphics look kind of cartoony, but at least there is little texture pop in, at first anyway.
What I WILL focus on here is the basics of the game - the combat.
I really don't understand when this simple convenience of auto-targeting and auto-switching from one foe to another went sour. Had I known that this game got rid of auto-targeting, auto-attacking and auto-switching from a dead foe to another live one I would have went with a ranged class initially - that is, either an archer or a mage. What I initially did was start the game as a warrior but ended up spending 90% of the game playing as a secondary mage character (Solas) because I could just get Solas to use magic from a distance by holding the attack key. Had I chosen to continue playing as my main warrior character I would have ended up running around the battlefield targeting enemies manually, CHASING them if they weren't in the range of my sword, killing them and then running to the next foe. ONE BY ONE.
Given the amount of small and tedious fights this game has with small-time enemies and animals it is simply NOT WORTH PLAYING AS A MELEE CHARACTER.
To play this game with a melee character is tedious on easy/normal difficulty is a chore. To play this game with a melee character on hard/impossible IS impossible. Let me explain in detail.
1. Your melee character does NOT auto-target enemies at the onset of the fight anymore, instead, if you didn't issue your orders in time, your character will just stand there DOING NOTHING at the onset of the fight (Unlike in the two previous games).
2. The absence of auto-targeting and auto-switching for melee characters is problematic because IF you want to switch to another character in the middle of the fight to manage them (you either want them to cast a particular spell, heal or retreat altogether) you can no longer order the character you switched away from to attack a particular foe. (if, for example, you want everyone to first gang up on the toughest enemy and then attack the minions).
3. Now you always have to hold the attack key if you want your character to continue engaging in the fight. No small coffee/tea breaks as you watch some easy battles unfold - NO, you have to hold either a default "R" key or hold the left mouse key (the mouse keys are not rebindable btw).
4. The deep and complex Tactics/Strategies tab that you could develop in the previous games is no longer here. You know the one where you use level points to order your teammates behave in a certain way, attack stronger/weaker foes first, set spells priority use from the most important to the least important, etc.
You cannot do that anymore. All you CAN do is set an ability to either "enabled", "disabled" or "preferred"; and you can also order your teammates to either behave in an offensive/defensive matter, and drink a potion at a particular point. By defensive behavior, I mean they will just stand there and DO NOTHING (not even shoot if they are ranged).
5. You can no longer use a tactical intuitive camera by using mouse and keyboard. NOW you can only use the WSAD keys to move around the battlefield. In addition, switching to the tactical camera will put your in a vantage point above your character looking directly down. After that you have to use the mouse to "look up" and around the battlefield to figure out wtf is going on.
The only reason to ever use a tactical camera is to look at what level foe you are dealing with and what their strength/weaknesses are. Assigning your characters to attack certain foes in tactical view WILL NOT MAKE THEM AUTO ATTACK THOSE FOES. Instead, they will attack whoever they want.
6. Let's say you are playing as a mage holding the attack key. The mage WILL auto target from one enemy to another depending on how your mouse is positioned in relation to enemies. HOWEVER, let's say you want to look around behind you to see if there are any foes gaining on you (like you could in the previous games); should you do that, your character WILL move along with your mouse away from the battlefield and cease attacking his or her targets.
If you are really counting seconds and are playing on hard/impossible difficultly then you would need to pause the fight or go into "tactical" view just to see if there is someone behind or around you. In the previous games you could freely use the camera mid-fight WITHOUT pausing and WITHOUT your character moving along with your mouse in the middle of the fight.
7. Remember how in the good and glorious past you could just click on a chest from afar or click on a door from afar and watch your character run towards those things while you relaxed your fingers, enjoyed the scenery and sipped on your tea? You cannot do that anymore since them consoles do not use a mouse and a keyboard. Now you have to manually run up to any door or chest and use action key to open them. Enjoy.
8. You no longer hold a key that reveals loot in your immediate vicinity. Now you have to use your sonar ability every 5-10 seconds for the remainder of the game by clicking a default "V". The sonar will produce two distinct sounds depending on whether there is an item in the vicinity. Get used to that sound because you will be hearing it through out the entire game.
9. The mounts are kind of useless in the game. They really aren't that fast and if you are planning to ride one to save time you will not be able to use the sonar ability so you may miss out on some loot in the process.
p.s. I would also like to be able to edit the name of my save games in case I want to go back and see how the story would have played out in the short term had I chosen a particular path - you cannot do that here.
To sum up, the PC controls implemented in such an RPG game are broken. These RPGs with this MMO's type of control layout are NOT meant to be strictly action and manual-target based. These RPGs always make you hold a mouse key to easily look around, so in addition to doing that you now have to hold another key to do the actual attacking.
The least Bioware could do is to NOT make us hold the right mouse key at all times to freely look around when we are not in fight since they took away our ability to auto-target.
PLEASE, SAVE US, WITCHER 3.