Christ on a pogo stick I just know this opinion is going to potentially get me assassinated. Go anywhere on the internet where video games are at the least bit relevent and you’ll find someone standing on a skyscraper-sized soap box declaring how The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is literally the best thing to happen since the birth of Christ, indoor plumbing and sliced bread.

“It’s an amazing RPG with lovable characters, fun gameplay and a story that makes Shakespeare look like Michael Bay!” you’ll hear them say at the highest pitch of voice while vigorously bopping their bologna in the most heated, passionate declaration of love since Romeo and Juliet commited ritual suicide over each other. But is this praise justified at all, is there any modecum of truth to it what-so-ever?


Well, most of you will probably not like what I have to say. It’s by no means an awful game, it’s more than certainly a competent, if mediocre, open-world-action-adventure title, but that isn’t to say that I don’t find the people declaring The Witcher 3 as the best game of all time and they’re incapable of playing anything else after it because it was so good just a little ridiculous. If you love the game and need it in your life to keep breathing, by all means more power to you (please don’t stop breathing), but it’s high time The Butcher of Blaviken recieved some no-holds-barred criticism. I’m only harsh because I love!

What now you piece of filth?!


The Story



Nothing too terribly complex, you play as Geralt of Rivia, who is a Witcher. Which has nothing to actually do with witches, as Witchers are monster hunters mutated by potions and rites to make them superhuman.


Sounds like a great premise for a video game right? Well, here are where my problems with the game begin. The Witcher 3's story and, by extension, setting are both trying so very hard to be grimdark and edgy that no one in their right mind would want to actually exist in it.

Geralt can generally be played as a noble and empathetic character, but just because he’s gone through mutations he’s a ‘freak’ and no matter what he does, even if he saves children from a burning building inhabited by Satan’s raging pet chihuahua, people will almost always nine times out of ten show him prejudice and contempt. No one is ever grateful for anything Geralt ever does for them is this miserable world of monsters. I play video games to escape the unfairness and general fecality of life, if I want to relive the moments I was bullied in school I’ll just have a PTSD flashback, I don’t need this edgy grimdark nonsense in my epic fantasy adventure.




Take for example the ending to White Orchard. Elsa the Barmaid (whose cousin Bram you saved from being mauled by a Griffon earlier the same day) is accosted by a young woman whose sister was executed by the atheist Nilfgaard regime for practicing her religion, because Elsa took down her now-defunct country’s coat of arms so the occupying Nilfgaardians wouldn’t arrest/kill her and/or burn down her livlihood.

No thanks, you miserable ungrateful cow!


The young woman proceeds to grab Elsa by the head (who reaches for a butcher’s cleaver in self defense) and repeatedly brain her against the wooden counter to the point where her face is black, blue and bloody until we intervene, and then a group of bandits rise from their tables and threaten to bludgeon us to death with billy clubs. Self defense ensues and we decapitate our assailants who knew perfectly well what our profession was, and the two women whinge in terror and the barmaid, whose life we saved as well as her cousin’s, ungratefully bans us from the tavern. Because we endeavored to save her life and defend ourselves from bandits.

No matter how much you try to be the better man and help others in need, they will always go out of their way to defacate on your head for your effort. Even Geralt’s lover is guilty of this, Yennifer is a horrible woman. She’s abusive, manipulative, tempermental, hell give her a penis and put her in a wifebeater and she’d be an actual wife beater. She makes zero effort to actively find Geralt and when she finally does, refuses to even embrace him because he’s covered in blood from the afformentioned fight. Even though she’s a bloody sorceress and could just conjure herself new clothes with the wave of her hand.


Gary o’ Riverpool himself is a massive Gary Stu. White-haired pretty boy? Check. Hated and misunderstood by the populous? Check. Special abilities obtained during a harsh past of loss, hardship and rigorous training? Check. Fights literal mosters for a living? Check. Always gets the girl(s)? Check. Has a personality that consists of a deep gravely voice and facial expression set on permanent scowl? Double check. Geraldisimo Magnifico is the textbook definition of a Gary Stu, he’s the same kind of character you’ll find nine times out of ten reading terrible teenage anime fanfiction.

I could go on and on about flaws in the story, but we’d actually be here for hours if I did, so I won’t. Honestly, it’s actually pretty bad. If I wasn’t actively questioning the logic of what was going on I was just generally frigging miserable because the world and the characters were all miserable. Even the game’s main playspace is a sprawling coastal marsh that is the epitomy of miserable, and you’re stuck here for the majority of the game because the next zone isn’t available for you until level sixteen. I need my chamomile tea.


Who else is planning to spend a lovely holiday in this beutiful location?

The Gameplay



Outside of combat, The Witcher 3 sees Gelato di Ravioli mostly trapsing across a vast marsh full of dead soldiers and things that eat dead soldiers. The minimap is covered in little question marks that usually represent this game’s equivalent of Skyrim’s standing stones, a monster nest you need to destroy, or a chest of loot that more often than not contains little more than some moth balls, a dusty old book and an even dustier old sword that’s about fifteen levels lower than the mastercrafted one you just made five minutes ago.


Exploration and loot in this game is about as rewarding as rummaging through an empty trashcan, sure you might eventually find something useful or interesting, but you’re better off just buying what you need at the local vendor and avoiding the diseased raccoons.

Combat mostly consists of fast and strong sword attacks, five magical ‘signs’ that mostly exist to buff Geraldo del Rivera or debuff enemies to make killing them with the swords easier, and oils made with alchemy so Gary can lube up his sword for extra damage against a particular enemy. Yes, that is a double entendre. Brewing potions with alchemy mostly just creates cough syrup for Gerudo da Firenze so he doesn’t catch pneumonia in the windy climate of the nebulous generic marshlands he spends two quarters of the game in. It’s all your typical standard open-world action-adventure RPG-lite fanfare, if you’ve played a Ubisoft game in the past decade you know what you’re getting.


Damn you’re ugly!

There’s also a crossbow for enemies that fly or attack underwater, but is otherwise pointless and impossible to aim without aim assist. And finally there’s Gilberto du Revere’s trusty steed Roach (who is in fact not a roach but a horse), who despite succeeding horses in games half a decade older like Skyrim, Read Dead Redemption and Assassin’s Creed Brotherhood, controls like a geriatric mule with Tourettes.


Dialogue in the game is nothing special, it rarely consists of anything more than an aption for the plot, an option to play gwent, an option to trade if speaking with a trader, and a goodbye option. If plot dialogues have more than one choice, more often than not it leads to the same miserable grimdark conclusion and just changes how Garufalo de Riventino reaches that miserable grimdark conclusion.

Sound and Music



Sound quality is... great. Yeah, no one can really complain on sound design here. Music is also great, but, there aren’t enough tracks to avoid mind-jellying repetition. I can’t count how many times I entered combat only to hear the swelling ‘lei lei lei’ from Silver for Monsters yet again, a song that sounds more like belly dancers in the middle of a major earthquake than anything else to me. I’ve heard that bloody track so many times now it gives me a headache just remembering it.


Quests



Ser Witcherton III: Hunts Gone Wild has some of the most tedious, obnoxious, repetitious quests in any game I’ve ever played. Aside from the infamous ‘frying pan quest’ which I won’t go into detail here because you’ve already heard someone complain about it, most quests in the game see Garfunkel der Revelade use his wibbly-wobbly witcher senses (i.e. eagle vision, detective mode, second sight, etcetera) to track down a monster and kill it, or track down a person and bring them to justice. Usually by penetrating them with his freshly-lubed sword.


What, you thought I was joking about a fetch quest for a frying pan? I wish I was... I need more tea.

Accept quest, track down thing, fight thing, turn in quest. Wash, rinse and repeat. Gerfuffle Rivendale’s reward for his time? Ten dollars in change. Not even joking about that, ten gold coins, or twenty if you had the option to extort the poor peasant hiring you beforehand using Gary’s debonaire demeanor and ruggish good looks.


Conclusion



The Witchery Tree: Where’s Waldo is hardly the second coming. It’s a painfully average medieval romp through mostly a miserable marsh and some other places. Many people laud CD Projekt Red for their continued support of the game via free DLCs and patches, even though other game devs get reprimanded for doing the exact same things. CD Projekt Red released beard and hair customization for Gary for no cost even though it could just as easily have been in the game at launch? Literally the messiah, take all our money! Hello Games spends over a year patching and adding on to No Man’s Sky? SEAN LIED! BURN THE WITCH. It’s nothing more than the ridiculous double standards and rampant hyperbole of which gamer cuture consists.


In reality, the game is a competent yet heavily flawed action adventure game for which I sincerely believe the infinite praise is wholly unjustified. It’s perfectly fine if you enjoy the game, I enjoyed No Man’s Sky, Dragon Age II and various other games people despised with seeting hatred. But let’s stop pretending the games we enjoy are flawless representations of art, they’re not, no matter how good they actually are. There’s always room for improvement, and the only way games will actually improve is if we acknowledge both positives and negatives.