I didn't really think about it until just now, but it took me over a month to actually finish this game. That's pretty rare for me, these days. Back when I was a kid, and only played games at my dad's house when I went there on weekends (after my parents split up), this was much less rare. But when you're unemployed, and can spend all day, every day, playing games, I get through games a lot faster (in terms of real world time). But I also think it's unfair to just say that, given that for reasons I'll get to soon enough, I didn't play this game all day every day. But also don't get me wrong, this is a long game, and even though I've finished the story, there's still a good chunk of side stuff that I could, and might some day do.

So much in the game, actually, that I'm not really sure where to start. I know I do usually try to keep things spoiler free, but in this case I have some things I want to say, so be forewarned. Hopefully I'll have remembered to white that stuff out when I copy this over to the blog. But you were warned!

I suppose I'll start by going over my history with the franchise. I never played the first game, because that's a PC only game and I'm still a console scrub. But, given that (so far as I know) it's a mouse and keyboard only game, I don't know that I would have enjoyed it much anyway. Yeah, I know, I'm still one of those people that staunchly refuses to use a keyboard for playing games because keyboards weren't designed for playing games. But I don't want to turn this into a console vs. PC "debate," so forget I even said any of that.

I did, however, play The Witcher 2, though not until it came to 360. Aside from some technical issues (and the fact that there were loading screens EVERYWHERE), I loved that game a whole lot. I loved the story, really liked the characters (at least the ones that weren't complete scumbags), and even enjoyed the combat. The world of the game was especially noteworthy to me, given how it felt like a more detailed representation of how foul things were back in the olden days.

And yes, I know, it's a piece of fiction set in fictional kingdoms with all sorts of magic and fantasy nonsense going on. That said, given that the games have Earth years associated with them, and are very clearly at least inspired by olde timey historical eras, I think that was still a fair statement to make. I just think it made everything feel grimy and filthy in a way that most fantasy doesn't, and I appreciated that.

It was also a game that I played through twice because I wanted to see how the choices I made in the game would play out differently, because there's a couple in there that cause some pretty big changes in the game. The most notable of which involving (spoilers, I guess) picking a side for the second act of the game, which changes things quite a bit. Maybe not as much as I had been led to believe prior to playing the game, but more so than most games. Which I liked a lot.

And I wanted to go and play it a third time before The Witcher 3 came out, but between having other games to play, and my lack of access to my Xbox Live account (long story, don't ask, but remember: Don't forget your password if your account doesn't have any real information in it, thus making it so you can't recover your account, and then have anxiety issues preventing you from going through Microsoft support) means I don't really use my 360 any more. So I didn't replay the game like I had wanted to.

But that didn't stop me from going out and getting The Witcher 3 on the day of release. I was really excited too, especially after the reviews. But... I think the game gives kind of a bad first impression. It starts with this motion comic thing that gives a very brief and very basic back story to the game, and what Witchers are. Then it goes to the main title screen (you have to skip past that motion comic thing every time you turn the game on if you don't want to see it, unless you suspended the game in your console of choice's Rest mode (I'm on PS4), and that works very nicely), then once you start the game, it goes into a pre-rendered cut-scene that, like many pre-rendered cut-scenes, both looks so good that it makes the actual game look worse in comparison, and (I think) has some video compression weirdness that makes it look a little funky (though I might not be remembering correctly on that part). Then you get stuff in engine, which starts with a woman's nude butt and a tutorial.

After that you're let loose into a "small" (relative to the rest of the game) area where the game is still teaching you how to do things. And, don't get me wrong, the game needs it, but it's a pretty limp opening to the game. Especially after The Witcher 2 opens with a castle siege and a dragon attack. I realize that not every game has to open with a bang, and this first area does build up to a neat fight against a griffin, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit leery of the game for the first couple of hours.

Especially when the game is kinda clunky. Just basic movement and stuff isn't great. Though, to the game's credit, the movement was patched to make it better. I can't really describe in words how it's better, but I can tell you that after reading that was patched, I was able to tell instantly that it was different. And better. But still probably not where it should be. There's just kind of a sluggish nature to Geralt's movements that makes navigating in tight spaces kind of a chore. And he's kind of unwieldy in combat too, since he slows to a figurative crawl once he enters a fight, unless you hold the run button to hightail it out of there.

I did enjoy the combat, though. For the most part, at least. It feels like the last game, but with some more stuff in it. Still have the same powers, and a selection wheel that slows down time to pick between them, and whatever you want selected in the quick use button. In combat, I usually kept that on my crossbow, or some bombs, though there are non-combat items that can be used there too, like a torch, or quest items. Don't use the torch, though. You can't block, do heavy attacks, or cast spells with it equipped. Well, you can cast the spells, but Geralt has to put the torch away, cast the spell (or sign, I should say, but whatever), then take the torch back out. That's too involved for combat, especially when there's a potion that gives you night vision (even if it makes the game black and white during the duration).

Speaking of potions, I should get into some of the changes from The Witcher 2. Or, at least what I think some of the changes are, because it's been a while since I played it, and for all I know I could be making a fool of myself by saying something is different when it really isn't. One thing that I know is different is that you can drink the potions during combat. Previously, you had to do that before a fight, and anticipate that you might need the health reviving Swallow, or what have you. Conversely, you now can't apply oils to your sword during combat, which you could in The Witcher 2. Though, to be fair, it seemed super weird then, given that Geralt usually didn't have the time to pull out a thing of oil and pour it onto a sword during the middle of a fight (oils provide damage buffs against specific enemy types, if you didn't know).

Another thing that's changed is how you replenish these things. For one thing, the oils are infinite use. And the way that potions and bombs are crafted and replenished is totally different too. In The Witcher 2, you crafted everything individually, and had to expend more stuff every time you crafted another, though you could substitute different items for other ones, so long as they had the same components (I'm explaining it poorly, but it was a neat system). It was also a system that made logical sense within the world of The Witcher.

Now, in 3, instead you craft something once, and from then on, it gets replenished every time you meditate, assuming you have some "strong alcohol" to do so. And so far as I can tell, it's one unit of strong alcohol to replenish ALL of your used potions and bombs. Which, doesn't make any logical sense? It never gets explained in the game (well, maybe in a tutorial message I missed, but no story reason). I can sort of see how that might work with the potions, but not with the bombs. Like, I know there's all sorts of magic and stuff in this universe, but when it used to not be this way, and there's no in-universe explanation for it, it just seems like the developers came up with a thing and decided that no one would care.

And to be fair, this method is a lot easier than the old way. Rather than constantly having to be on the lookout for specific ingredients to keep brewing potions, you just need to take as much booze as you can (not beer though, that just restores health and makes the screen blurry because one beer makes Geralt drunk). There are upgraded versions of potions and bombs that you can craft using more ingredients (they're more effective and you can carry more of them), but even then, you don't need to collect a ton of stuff. Not that that stopped me from having two apothecaries worth of random flowers and other junk in my inventory by the end of the game. But the game is way more lenient with the inventory, and inventory upgrades, so I never found myself overburdened, which was nice.

Back to using potions in combat, I do kind of wish there was at least some sort of drinking animation during the fight. You know, like in Dark Souls when your character has to actually drink the Estus before your health comes back. Give you more of a risk/reward for doing so during a fight. Toxicity is also way less of an issue in this game. Before you could only drink a couple of potions before the meter was almost full, whereas now you can drink a bunch of Swallow and some other stuff in a fight and be totally fine. And it'll have gone back to normal in no time. There are more powerful potions (decoctions) that will completely fill the toxicity meter, but I literally never used or crafted any of them in the entire game. Not even kidding.

While I'm still on inventory related stuff, I should say that durability is kind of an issue. Not too much, since you can carry repair kits, but I just wish games would give up on that stuff. It's not fun, and the game isn't enough of a simulation in other aspects to justify something like that. I mean, if the game was going for total realism, then sure, having to maintain your equipment could be an interesting mechanic. But in this game, it's just a money sink. Either I have to go talk to a blacksmith every time I'm in town, or keep stocked up on repair kits. Well, generally I did a little bit of both, to keep everything in tip top shape. Also, money wasn't really an issue after the first ten or so hours. I ended the game with almost thirty thousand crowns.

Speaking of money, I think it's cool that the game has other currencies in the game that you have to exchange into crowns to spend them. But I think it'd be more interesting if it was a case where some merchants would only take one of the other two currencies, and you had to make sure you had a decent amount of all three if you wanted to be able to buy stuff anywhere. Which, I suppose that brings me to a bigger issue I have with the game.

I kinda wish this game was more of a simulation of stuff. Like, I know it's a fantasy game, and I know that most of these things were specifically designed or redesigned to make it easier, which I'm sure was the "right" thing to do for the game. But it's also kind of disappointing to me when a game looks so realistic in so many ways, but just seems arbitrarily game-y and fake in others. Though, a lot of that stuff has less to do with game play mechanics, and more to do with the world. And I feel bad saying that a lot of the world feels fake to me, because it just LOOKS so gosh damn good.

But looks don't stop small villages from feeling fake when the time of day doesn't really affect how people are spending their time. Like, I realize that having the blacksmith outside and working twenty four hours a day is advantageous for the player, for all the times I wander in during the middle of the night and need my gloves that are at 98% fixed. But that's not realistic. Sure, I know some people would be out and about at night, especially in Novigrad (the game's biggest city), but that wouldn't be the case with tiny villages in the middle of nowhere. And yeah, I know that some NPCs do go to sleep, but more often than not it seemed like everyone was as much of an insomniac as Geralt. Speaking of night, I think it's a bit disappointing that the nights are always more than bright enough to be able to see, even if there isn't a full moon or anything like that. Again, I understand why in terms of making the game more accessible, but it takes away from the world, to me.

And there's plenty of other things that irk me too, even if I am being overly nitpicky with a lot of them. Like, I think, like most games with day-night cycles, that the time passes way too quickly. I still think that Deadly Premonition is the only one that did accelerated time well. It moved faster enough than real time that it didn't literally take entire days to get things done, but moved slowly enough that you could get what felt like a day's worth of stuff done in the course of an in game day. And it gave you reasons to sleep at night to get back to day, rather than just letting you be an insomniac who never needs to eat or drink (though being a Witcher probably helps with that stuff).

There are plenty of even smaller things that, on their own aren't that bad, but together, they kinda stack up and break a lot of the immersion for me. Things like how wind can move through solid walls to make Geralt's hair blow during cut-scenes when he's inside. Or to make trees sway even though they're standing next to giant/thick brick walls (swaying away from the wall, I should add). Or the draw distance, which, I expected to be not great, but it's not great. There were plenty of times where I was riding along a road, and could see fields of wheat appearing out of thin air down the road as I approached. Again, stuff like that is to be expected in big open world games like this, especially on console, but that doesn't make it any better when I notice it.

I have a lot of issues with the interface too. Most people have complained about the inventory, so instead I'll focus on the in game HUD. It's bad, and takes up too much of the screen. At least the stuff on the right side, anyway. I mean, I don't need button prompts always on screen telling me to hold X to run and double click the left stick to summon the horse (who appears out of thin air, another thing that breaks immersion for me). Having quest objectives ALWAYS on screen instead of when they get updated is pretty annoying too. But neither of those are as bad as the minimap.

If you didn't know, I should tell you that I really dislike minimaps. I think they're bad design. Rather than finding ways to convey that information in the world, instead they just stuff it all into one corner of the screen. And in many games with minimaps, I find myself staring more at the minimap than I am at the actual game. Which, is dumb. I bought The Witcher 3 to play a game about a monster hunter exploring a world, not to play a game about a little arrow trying to follow a dotted line on a small map.

Which is why I turned all of that stuff off in the options. Which, I have to say, good on them for letting me turn stuff on and off individually. Given that the health bar stuff just disappears at full health, it let me play the game with the stuff I needed in combat, but enjoy being able to look at the world (even if I had to check the map screen way more because of this, and had to turn the minimap back on during stuff like horse races). Because, even on my console scrub PS4, there are times when the game looks really beautiful. A lot of that is just me gushing over colored lighting in sunsets and the like, but whatever, my TV has good colors and this game has a lot of colors!

Even if it doesn't have any people of color. Now, I don't really want to get into that, because I think it's been talked to death, and also I'm white, so I feel a little weird getting preachy about it when there are people much more qualified to discuss it. But I do think I should mention how the game doesn't really treat the woman characters in the game super well. To paraphrase the words of my friend Lina, there's only one lady in the game that is halfway important to the story that isn't over-sexualized or relies entirely on Geralt to get everything done for her. And in many cases, both apply to them. And this is the point where I'll start getting into some spoiler-y stuff, so hopefully I'll have remembered to white it out in the final blog.

The only one that neither applies to is Cerys. If you partake in her side quests, you help her help out a Jarl in need, and eventually help her become the new Queen of Skellige. Yes, like I said, she gets help from Geralt, but she does a lot of the heavy lifting on her own, including coming up with a pretty neat scheme in one part that I won't spoil for you. And unlike most of the other women in the game, she doesn't feel the need to show off any cleavage, or actual nudity.

Not that I have any fundamental problems with nudity, or characters being nude in things. Hell, I love not wearing clothes, and wish society would be less prudish about that sort of stuff in general. The problem with that stuff is that it never really feels like the women are nude for any reason than to give you something pretty to look at, and that's about the last reason why there should be nudity in anything other than pornography (another topic I don't want to get into). Though, I don't really want to turn this into a discussion about "male gaze," so I should probably just stop. But, like, does Ciri's shirt really need to be unbuttoned in the front so we see her bra? Especially in the cold of Skellige after she's gotten a fur add-on for the cold? It just doesn't make sense. I don't understand this case at all, because it's not like you even see anything "titillating," it's just her bra. Makes zero sense.

I will, however, say that I think it's weird that while the game jumps on most chances to show breasts or butts, but there's no lady genitals (or male, but there's also no dude butts) in the game. I dunno if that's an ESRB thing, or what, but it just felt weird to me, like they were holding back in a way that the game absolutely does not do in any other aspect. Specifically there's a scene late in the game (I think it was optional) where Ciri winds up in a sauna with some other women, and the other women are sitting in there only wearing what are basically bikini bottoms, and I dunno, it just felt weird and out of place. Not that I think the game needs genitals, but whatever. I'm rambling now, sorry.

Now I should probably write about the actual story. There's a lot that I like about the story, but I don't like what the story ultimately ends up being about. Again, spoilers, but it's basically just another chosen one story about someone destined to either save the world, or destroy it. The only difference here is that you're not playing as the chosen one. Well, at least usually not, because the chosen one is Ciri, who Geralt spends most of the game searching for, but you occasionally play as in flashbacks. And it switches to her a few times after she's teamed back up with Geralt. I think those parts work better than the flashbacks, because the flashbacks aren't great, and I dunno, they kinda break up the flow of the game.

Speaking of, this game has a point where a, "This is the point of no return," message appears. It warns you to go do side quests, because some of them will be failed if you continue onward. When I got to that part, I got a little excited because I thought I was at the end of the game (not in the way you think, I know this has been all complaints, but...). But then the game goes on for what felt like another ten hours. And that's not ten hours of this tightly focused, thrilling conclusion to the game. That's a bit spent on this one part that the game makes you think is the epic, final confrontation, only to keep going and put you into this other situation that seems like it might be the end...Only to put you back in the open world with a handful of quests to do before moving your crew to another spot...Where you have a couple more quests to do before the actual, final confrontation.

And as you might expect, that didn't really keep the pace very well, and dragged a bit, even if the story stuff was still interesting. I know pacing is a hard thing to maintain in open world games. Hell, it's next to impossible in most of them. But it just felt really weird putting the point of no return message there, and then having so much after that point.

Looking back over this (not for typos, don't be silly), and I realize just how negative this all sounds. You might be thinking that I slogged through this game, not enjoying it. But that's not true at all! I certainly have a lot of issues with it, but I also really enjoyed my time with the game. Sure, there were moments of frustration, like the week I had to stop playing because the developers accidentally added a bug where quests weren't giving me XP. But you know what? I really wanted to keep playing during that week. For as many little issues I had with the game, I still loved getting completely lost in the world. Just spending hours wandering around, doing side quests, or whatever.

Speaking of, I haven't really gotten into one of my favorite parts of the game, which is how what would be generic side quests in any other game are pretty well written. In most other games of this ilk, a quest to go kill a monster would be really simple. Just go to the spot on the map, fight the monster, then go back and collect your reward. But here, you have to gather information to figure out what kind of monster is, track it down, and then figure out how to kill it. Each of these things on their own aren't really anything special, but put together, along with a lot of them being pretty interesting story wise goes a long way to make it a lot more enjoyable. Of course, you can also just stumble into some of them and kill the monster out in the world without talking to the people (you might have to actually accept the quest from a quest board first, though), but that only happened once or twice for me.

Lots of the characters that appear in the story have their own side quests too, which are often more interesting and better written than some entire games. And that stuff is really cool. More than cool enough that it outweighs the stuff in the game that I didn't like, really. The main story too, at least up to the point where it becomes more about that saving the world thing, is really good! Everyone has talked the Bloody Baron quest to death, but I think it deserves it. It's just really well done, and the sort of stuff that you don't normally see in video game stories, and I like that a lot.

Is The Witcher 3 one of the best games ever made? I don't think so. But is it a game that I really enjoyed playing, and will probably put quite a bit more time into in the future? Absolutely. It's got its flaws, and quite a few of them. But it's very rare to have a game this big be released with the quality of the actual quests, writing, and combat be as consistently good as they all are. And that's super impressive.

It's also a beautiful game with tons of little touches that help make the world feel more real, even if there are also lots of little things that irked me a lot. Things like how Geralt's beard grows in real time. It doesn't grow forever, or get quite as long as I wished it did, but little touches like that are rad (even if Deadly Premonition did it first).

If you like fantasy games, or action RPGs, you absolutely should play this game. Flaws and all, it is 100% worth your time, and probably your money, because it's a long game. I feel like you could probably get through the story stuff a lot more quickly than people think if you did zero side stuff. But, like I said, so much of the side stuff is so good that you'd be doing yourself a huge disservice by not seeing that stuff.

Play this game. Support the incredible work that CD Projekt Red has done on this game. But, you know, if you're going to talk about it, or write about it, make sure you let them know about the stuff you don't like. If there's ever a Witcher 4, it'd be nice if it treated the women a bit better. Stuff like that.

So, that's all I have to say for now. Thank you for reading! The last few days have been kinda rough for me mental health wise, so finishing this up has, at least temporarily, given me a little boost in that regard, which is nice.

I know I didn't get around to writing a PS+ Catch-Up yet for this month, but I have played all those games, so I'll try to do that next week. I also kind of want to write some sort of reaction to E3, but I feel like two weeks after is a bit much, especially when it basically amounts to, "Holy crap Shenmue 3 is real."

Anyway, thanks again, see you next time! <3