Dad of War, it plays significantly better. Both games lack for any sort of interesting technical play, and both games get the basic foundation you need to have a good combat system, but Dad of War gets the detail right across the board. The Witcher 3 is often half baked, has little to no enemy mixing, the enemies it does have are are shallow, and on a purely game feel standpoint the game is typical western action of being lifeless n unsatisfying on every hit.
Dad of War can be a bit weird with how it doesn't have hitstun on a lot of attacks on enemies, and their animation skeleton for hits using something other than hitstop, but there is plenty of nice crunch to most hits. That shield bash shit he has comes with an appropriate amount of oomph.
Enemies force fun little decisions with how the axe can trip people, freeze people, you can increase stun meter for the insta kill with your fists, the way headshot bonuses send a stronger follow up throw, so you can do things like shoot at the flying eye ball, and then on your second throw you can use that beefed up throw on stronger enemies. Normally cool downs are trash, and while I would prefer moves or moves tied to a magic meter like the old games, the cool downs in Dad of War avoid the typical fire n forget nature of old games.
As an action/adventure title, it avoids the genres usual pitfall, by actually having good combat n enemies, and the valkyries are legitimately some of the best bosses in the series if not the best ones, and not just there for a lame ass spectacle like the Colossus of Rhodes or Kronos in the previous games. If you asked me to replay it? Eh I couldn't do that, I'd much rather replay God of War 2 n 3. Mechanically they still offer a deeper/more replayable game, but Dad of War avoids the weaker neutral of games like DMC, and legitimately has a unique set of tools for lock on based combat, that isn't provided by anything else.
God of War on the other hand, as solid as it was, was a poor man's Devil May Cry. And I am by no means some God of War shill, I fucking hate Kratos. I played that game a whole ass year after it came out, and was legit surprised how much I enjoyed how it played. I want the rpg shit gone, and way less of the bad puzzle solving dad of war has, and way less walking, but its combat is good.
The Witcher 3 has better music n characters n story n shit, but the game itself is a significantly more shallow experience by comparison. So much of the open world gameplay is typical open world bullshit, it just has a bit more interesting context, but the gameplay loop is a whole lot of go to a place, use your witcher vision to follow a red trail, oh my god its a THATMONSTER, kill a THATMONSTER, go back to wherever i got my quest n get paid. That last part sometimes doesn't make an appearance, but generally the game has a pretty consistent routine.
Oh and Dad of War can actually keep you honest on its highest difficulty, The Witcher 3 basically becomes a joke difficulty wise by the time you get to Novigrad. The most issue I had were that the two wild hunt related bosses at the end were sponges, but that had more to do with me putting all my stats in a mage build.
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