The Witcher 3: Greatest game of all time

I give The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a solid 8/10. It's an excellent game that can be raised to ~9.5/10 after some patches - glitches not inclusive because they're expected in grandiose games of this nature (or else disappointment is inevitable).

The game's characters, and side quests are done with eloquence. The Gwent game is quite addicting and I find myself wishing there were a multiplayer version of the game in the vanilla release. While it may take many hours, my hope is to eventually enter the grand tournament and dominate. Sadly, despite winning many rare cards, my deck is not where it needs to be to have a chance at taking the Champion title.

Unfortunately the game's largest shortcoming is one of its largest aspects--the combat. Following this, the game fails to hit accolades with respect to its looting system, the fact that it's loosely an open world game, and its general performance. I will explain.

Combat

Skyrim's combat wasn't its selling point, yet I found it far superior to this game in early stages for a primary reason--player control. When I was injured in Skyrim, I felt like it was my fault yet in the Witcher 3 I often find that it's clearly damage due to faulty game design. The lion's share of this occurs with mob battles (2+ enemies versus the player-character). In particular, the "focus" system is utterly broken therefore it's ill advised to make us of it... ever as if there is one enemy then you'll obviously attack said enemy, and controlling the camera without it--focus--enabled is a non-issue. Focus changes automatically when you move the camera, yet it should be designed to control Geralt/Ciri's attacks - it doesn't which is absolutely absurd, and making matters worse the camera goes haywire in this mode.

Obviously the player shouldn't use the player focus mode when battling mobs then, right? Correct, but that doesn't fix the issue because without it, Geralt/Ciri (hereinafter called PC for player-character) will choose who it wants to attack on its own. Well it should, shouldn't it? Correct again, but the fashion in which it does this is bugged. I can't count on 100 hands the amount of times I was focusing on one enemy--the closest in proximity--yet the PC will suddenly begin leaping into the middle of the mob to attack some random hostile NPC. It's an absolute joke.

Exacerbating the issue is the PC's utterly unrealistic fighting style, and the method in which he uses it. We players have absolutely no control over how the PC attacks beyond being normal or strong. By this I mean Geralt will swing or swirl on his own accord, and each have substantially different interval times to complete the maneuver. Want to slash an opponent and evade before his mate attacks? Go ahead and try but don't be surprised if Geralt chooses to swirl around like a ballerina which cannot be stopped by the player after its initiation. Who fights like this? I thought he was a Witcher? Whatever. While this would be fine in concept, the programmers forgot one of two fundamental requirements when going for flamboyant/grandiose animations - the game needs either invincibility frames (e.g. During Nimpo attacks in Ninja Gaiden) or eligible player-induced interrupts (e.g. Arkham City combat, absent that game's danger-alert system).

Against individual opponents this issue is lesser, but it still suffers massively against humans. Explain to me how it makes any sense for my level 2 Geralt to crush a mob of level 20 Bandits equipped with shield and sword, with rangers at their rear? It shouldn't happen but the human AI is deaf and dumb. The player has infinite side steps. For this reason, just side step indefinitely until you reach the ranger, and them spam your quick attack button until you've killed the lad. Afterward, just spam Axii and watch Geralt kill-animation everyone else over and over. If someone calls that fun, I beg to differ. They're level 20 - what do these levels mean?!

The invisible arrows from the bog (fog) is another issue but I discount it as a glitch. It will definitely occur if you're not actually in combat and the opponent is so far you cannot see their body. But upon entering combat, the arrows magically begin to appear.  I bring this up to get at the point of initiating combat. Why isn't there a button for this? Prosecutor-Edgeworth, have you been fortunate enough not to encounter scenarios wherein ranged enemies are attacking you but combat won't initiate for Geralt and if you try to dodge, your character leaps up and down like a basketball player measuring his vertical? It's stupid, and I have no idea how many times free blows have occurred because I couldn't rightly position and control the PC.

Final point which I will surface here is the annoying automatic sword drawing. Who thought this was a good idea? The game decides for the player which sword to draw, and for this reason my Silver sword is almost always degrading at a rapid pace. Usually this wouldn't be an issue, but I've specifically sheathed by silver sword for the steel as the former wasn't necessary and was being overused when I wasn't noticing it drawn, yet when the fight ended I found that my Silver sword had been redrawn because for a split second I lost aggro.  They should have left it like the older games where the player made the choice of which sword to draw. This automatic decision stuff is poorly done - a level 12 Geralt does not need his silver sword against a level 5 Warg and a few wolves. Give me a break and stop wasting my Crowns (coins) and/or Whetstones for repetitious repairs.

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At this point I was going to continue about the broken looting system (e.g. smashing the loot button but nothing happening because your position is slightly off ) and how completing unrecommended (higher recommended level than you by a long shot) side quests often still grants laughably weak gear amongst other things, but I've harped on the game enough and I'm beginning to feel like my inference is that the game sucks. For this reason, I'll stop here.

Overall the game is phenomenal and worth my $60. But there are many issues and it's certainly not my greatest game of all time. Though with that said, I am glad you--Prosecutor-Edgeworth--have thoroughly enjoyed your experience enough to consider it a perfect score. (not implying you believe it's a perfect game)

I am only one man with one heart.

Since my health doesn't automatically refill, I have to buy supplies very often and have to go into battles conserving my resources and fighting strategically.

I am only one man with one heart.

Great game and the best this gen, but I wouldn't give it a 10/10. The ending is the weakest part of the main quest imo.

Memento mori

what the hell is this? this is completely unrelated to dragon ball z.