The Witcher 3 presents massive, complex almost real world with rich story and lore, superb graphics and nice skill balance. This sentence summarizes why this game is so incredible. But before I get to details I`m going to bitter this sweet production because the real question is if the flaws aren`t annoying for you. Everyone talks about the good not to many what`s bad. This review is mostly focused on the bad things to show what many didn`t show due to soo much good stuff offered by the witcher.
First of all witcher 3 has problems with proper distribution of xp. You`ll get massive xp from making mainquests, some xp from sidequest, very little form killing monsters and some from few question marks. Why is it wrong? Well I got about 8000 xp and got 4 levels making mainquests in 3 hours, while making sidequests i got 8000 xp in about 15-18 hours of play. I understand that developer intention was to support casual players but forgets others. There should be some kind of rebalance mode (maybe there is ?).
But that`s not the worst part of xp gain. In witcher 3 there is a level cap of +- 5 level on quests, which is very annoying - you can still make a quest if you have higher level but you won`t get xp points. Quest levels are strictly determined by developer. So why is it so bad? There are some quests that have high level cap and you don`t even fight (or the fight isn`t challenging) like playing minigame gwent so I don`t understand why i can`t get some xp from it even in higher level. If you want to have great level you MUST do quests in some order to maintain your level and this spoils the fun because you`re focusing which quest do next more than on the story. Also all monster levels are fixed (They also have level caps but since you won`t get much xp from them it doesn`t matter and I like this way). I think that this system should work more like this: developer suggest on which level the quest is for but doesn`t change the xp for it and with player level the monster level also raises up to 10 levels above originally developed.
The character skill sheet is quite weird for me. Many skills are very interesting and witcher 3 skills are very well balanced (it`s not possible to make swordfighter, powerfull sign user and have powerfull mutations at the same time, but you can make a medium swordfighter using medium magic and 2 other combinations also work very well). Also you can quite cheap buy an elixir which gives back all skill points. You can invest mostly several points in one skill to get it better or unlock the next tier of skills. The`re 4 tiers in every group of skills and this system is quite efficient. The main problem is the possibility to activley use these skills and thier bonuses. To do that you need to have a free slot, one of 12 which are unlocked while getting levels - if you haven`t put skill in slot it gives you nothing. It`s maybe not a big deal for a swordfighter which has almost all skills where he can invest up to 5 skill points but for a mage creation it`s a big problem. I think that there should be a mutation or a mage skill that give you more slots to use but without mutagen bonus.Mutagens drop from monsters and give you additional bonus if you put them in slots, but red mutagen is very hard to get and i don`t understand why (Maybe that`s the try to ballance magic and swordfighting buthaving less 5 level skills reduces stamina regeneration while mutagen changes damage, not adrenalin).
These were the main flaws of witcher 3 and here are some less things mostly plot-related. There`s a part of mainquest where you can`t fast travel and use smiths and this happens when you could upgrade you armor before a big battle but you can`t. Also there are few plots poorly left like how`s doing Prisscilla - after act I to the end you don`t know if something changed and it`s a girl of your best friend Dandelion. Also there`s not much to do with Dandelion after act I. It`s sad for me because Dandelion is one of the most important persons in books and other two games. There`s not much romance plot in the end of game if you choose one of the girls, there isn`t said anything in the end about it. If you played witcher 1&2 you`ll see that your decisions didn`t have impact on almost anything but I think that this way we got much better plot -chandled game. Although there are characters which should have been mentioned like temerian king`s bastard daughter or Saskia, more story for scoiatel which were main fraction in 1 and 2.
So why I`m still saying that Witcher 3 is one of the best RPGs ever? The plot is massive. The plot is very complicated it has many outstanding sidequests which takes deeply from slavs old traditions and culture also polish, russian and nordic. This is the power of witcher - it shows stories that weren`t mostly popular in western Europe or US which are very well narrated. If you asked me which games had the best story overall it would be Planescape Torment, Witcher 3 and KOTOR. W3 has also many very well written characters - I`ll say about 60-80 while mentioned KOTOR had about 15-20.
The world creation and details. This world lives and you can feel it like never before in any game. People are talking about their problems while making simple everyday things like cleaning a carpet, fishing, children playing different games ect. They are trying to hide when it`s raining, they go to sleep when it`s getting dark ect. There is a lot of animals in villages like cows, porks, goose, chickens, cat, dogs, pigeons ect. Witcher 2 was good at it but witcher 3 is much better and the weather effects are really the best. This world creation, top graphic and incredible plot creates a real dirty medieval world that I`ll remember for very long. Put a lot of sarcastic jokes in the mouth of many characters, hard, gray choices which gives you thinking you have unique combination of Witchers world.