Coming from someone who has played both the Witcher 1 and the Witcher 2, the Witcher 3 was more or less the same game but on a grander scale of immersion and interactivity.

Like all Witcher games, the story, characters, world-building and lore are why we all fall in love with this series. While there is no branching storyline in the main story like you see in the Witcher 2, all the choices you make in the Witcher 3 including those in side missions have consequences that can affect future story events and questlines. In fact, some of the side-missions in this game could pass off as being main quests since they do have a direct impact on what ending you get. Quests are so well written that you can even get different cutscenes and dialogue simply because you started a quest at a different time of day or did a quest objective or completed another quest at a different order. To this day, people are still finding new things in this nearly decade-old game, which shows how great the attention to detail was.

For a game with so many choices, the Witcher 3 also does a brilliant job in respecting choices you make. Sure, sometimes a choice may yield unintended consequences, but it will never be because of your character doing something completely different to what you have decided to do. There are so many choice-based games out there where picking a choice may cause a character to perform an action that isn’t in line with that choice, due to how vaguely the choice was presented or simply because the writers wanted to add an element of shock or surprise. The Witcher 3 does not fall into this immersion-breaking trap and instead relies on its strong narrative to create this effect.

Another reason why the storytelling is so great is because of its believable open-world. The game has a full day/night cycle where NPCs will have their own lives and schedules. Some will even have new dialogue after completing certain story events. It’s not the most dynamic system out there, but it’s enough to set a realistic world. The absence of loading screens when exploring a map also allows for better immersion within this world.

Speaking of exploration, exploring in this game is always rewarding since loot scales with your character level (you will find higher level weapon and armor as you level up). However, this stops becoming relevant once you start crafting the Witcher gear which overpowers all the other gear in the game. Nonetheless, exploration is still worth doing as you can find all you need in food, materials and gold just from looting. Geralt is still able to go unpunished for looting people’s homes, but that’s a game mechanic that dates back to the very first Witcher game and is pretty much a staple in most RPGs. The Witcher 3 does improve on this a bit by making certain guards hostile when caught stealing, but some might find this added mechanic annoying.

Traversal is easily the weakest part about this game. Travelling on foot is fine, and the parkour in this game is surprisingly good as you can climb or jump onto most reachable roofs and platforms. However, travelling via boat is very clunky and tedious, and it is only made worse by the inclusion of a durability system. Horse-riding can also be just as bad, as any small obstacles you stumble onto can cause Roach to suddenly stop moving (which CD Projeckt even admitted to themselves via an in-game quest). Fortunately, we never have to rely on these modes of transport for too long at any instance as the map is filled with fast-travel points all over the world.

As for the combat, it is very similar to the one in Witcher 2 - same real-time hack and slash combat with Witcher signs and rolling & parrying mechanics. However, this time they added a side-step manoeuvre, which is great for dodging attacks while still maintaining proximity to the enemy (the previous game only had rolling so whenever you dodge an attack you would always create distance). There are also no more quick-time events like the ones you see in Witcher 2, but this does mean there are less cinematic fights if that’s your thing. The worst part about the combat is its awful targeting system as Geralt would sometimes attack a random mob instead of the closest one. You could swing at a completely different direction despite having an enemy or targetable object right in front of your character. There’s also the issue that you cannot jump during mid-fight, so you can unintentionally become stuck somewhere like in a ditch, which makes for awkward fighting. Initially, the overworld may seem lacking in enemy variety, but there’s actually a lot of different monsters you can encounter, especially those from contracts and places that stray far away from the main path. I highly recommend playing this game at the hardest difficulty (Death March) because it forces you to utilise your potions, oils and bestiary knowledge more, making you feel more like a real Witcher (plus it’s necessary for 100-percenting the game in one playthrough for all you achievement hunters out there).

On a tech scale, the next-gen update provides much vastly improved graphics in the form of upgraded textures, higher detail level, ray-traced reflections and shadows, higher crowd and vegetation density, and greater draw distances and foliage visibility range. As a result, the environment is now brimming with more flora and fauna, breathing more life into this world. The only downside is that the more realistic lighting of ray-tracing makes the interior of buildings too dark to navigate in, which means you will need to carry a torch or candlelight at all times. There’s also a noticeable hit in performance and increase in game crashes, but the graphics upgrade is worth these trade-offs. The game honestly looks like a triple-A game that was made from this year.

In summary, despite its shortcomings in certain mechanics, the Witcher 3 is still a masterpiece thanks to its strong storytelling alone. Fans of the series will enjoy the same structure of storytelling with returning characters and references from the old games and books, while new fans can enjoy an original story that was designed to be standalone. The DLCs are also worth playing, and one can argue they are better written than the main story. The Heart of Stone DLC has a tight and well-crafted story with very unique missions and impressive boss fights, while the Blood and Wine DLC is basically another game itself as it adds another map that is packed full of content. Bring on the Witcher 4!