On par with Last of us 2 as my favourite game of all time.
Also possibly the best DLC of all time with Blood and Wine.
K1llsw1tch82
I wish I could get to play this game for the very first time again!
RetroSwamp
OHHH GOD. WE’RE GETTING OLD.
PrettyAwesomeGuy
Steam sale has wild hunt for like 3.99. If you’ve never played it, first of all f you. Second, congrats and I’m very jealous.
AhegaoSaveLives
One of the greatest games ever.
VanceVanhite
Where’s Vesemir 🙂
BabylonianWeeb
Thank you, Poland 🇵🇱 ❤️
Irishman283
Damn. I was 15. Remember that day.
ChewiesLipstickWilly
Shame it flopped and is one of the worst games ever mad *sniffs more glue *
Jaxxlack
I never get bored of playing or listening to the music.. i tell people who haven’t played it to just look up its award list… I mean.. why wouldn’t you play It?!
Additional-Dish305
Oh shit, that’s today? I thought Witcher 3 was released on May 19th
AgitatedFly1182
Still on my Steam wishlist… I really gotta get around to this game.
Canisa
I’m gonna get around to playing it some day, I swear!
ismaelgokufox
And history was made. One of the best games in history.
Former-Fix4842
Still my favorite game to this day. I remember bursting out and laughing tears of joy when Ciri sheathed her sword before the credits rolled. Then came the (imo) best storyline I’ve ever experienced in a game with the Hearts of Stone expansion, followed up by Blood & Wine. Needless to say, I don’t think it will ever be topped for me.
Although Witcher 4 looks really promising, so here’s hoping.
Tosamnu
I dont really like the gameplay on this one. Might have been wrong. Need to replay it.
falcon_4_eva
This was my favorite game, then Cyberpunk 2077 came out and that’s now my favorite game. What can I say, I love me some CD Projekt Red.
Abraxas_Templar
A masterpiece.
MattiasCrowe
And nobody ever made a game since
Nastra
fuck…
Coolpainting25
I see this is $15 on switch rn. I’m gonna download it and play it on my Switch 2 once I get it 😀 never played it or any games like it before. Hopefully I enjoy it.
Closest would be Breath of the Wild or Tears if that counts.
DigitalAscension
Halfway to being retro
NoVictory7153
Holy shit, this reminds me, I need to finish it..
Au_Fraser
Aaaand my knees aching just got a bit worse
h0v3rb1k3s
Couldn’t beat the possessed infant dude so I quit.
I really couldn’t get into this game.
graymalkin2
On this day, I finally bought it
speviye
I just finished this game a couple days ago and got the bad ending lol. I was so upset at myself that I couldn’t get myself to open it back up and try and get the other endings
davetronred
I’m doing a replay of it now, it’s the only witcher game I’ve played and I started thinking “Why would anyone romance Yen, she’s such a terrible person?”
My online research has yielded that apparently in the books (and to a lesser extent the first 2 games) Yen’s motivations and desires are contextualized better, so her actions and demeanor are better justified.
…But I don’t have that, so to me she’s just a mean-spirited, frigid narcissist.
CrazyDude10528
this is a game I really wish I could get into, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t.
It feels so janky to play, that it just kills the whole experience for me.
Maybe one day it’ll click for me finally.
AscendedViking7
Oh man, The Witcher 3.
I should’ve loved that one, it was right up my alley.
I *looooooove* medieval fantasy in general, some of my favorite games ever made are Dark Souls 1 & 3, Divinity Original Sin 2, Skyrim, Dragon’s Dogma, Dark Messiah, Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Blasphemous and Baldur’s Gate 3. Hell, I love KCD1 & 2 with all my heart, it’s why I’m in this sub in the first place.
I love everything about TW3 in terms of atmosphere, artstyle and music.
I consider the soundtrack to be among the best ever made.
Hearts of Stone was easily the best part of the game, the storytelling was freaking excellent there.
So why didn’t I love it?
Everything in the game mechanically *fucking SUCKS.*
That combat, man.
It’s *outrageously* terrible.
Very simple too.
Lack of variety in The Witcher 3’s combat is only part of the reason why it feels so bad.
Normally, if a game has simple combat, it would be polished in a way that feel makes that combat system feel more fluid than combat systems that prioritize variety over fluidity, right?
As an example:
Dark Souls took advantage of this. It doesn’t have the best combat variety out there and it’s pretty simple, but it feels really nice and weighty.
The Witcher 3’s combat doesn’t take advantage of having little combat variety it has in favor of polish like Dark Souls does.
It’s like CDPR didn’t even try to polish it, despite what little you could do with TW3’s combat.
The janky combat animations are still present.
The combat flow isn’t what it should’ve been due to how slow Geralt moves in his combat pose and just how prominent animation lock is.
There’s a lot of broken hitboxes that make dodging feel pointless and is likely the reason why Quen is so overtuned. Quen is a band-aid for this.
An example of the hitboxes. This has happened to me hundreds of times during my playthrough, and it still happens to this day.
The crossbow is very unresponsive and misfires all the time.
The health bars of enemies are generally really spongey.
The fact that the heavy attack does *marginally* more damage than the light attack, is way too slow to use for the amount of damage it does and literally has no benefit to use it over light attack.
Some attacks don’t land because the attacks that Geralt uses are entirely decided by how far away he is from an enemy and some of the attacks that he ends up using aren’t designed with this in mind or have way too small hitboxes to be viable (damn backwards poke attack), as opposed to what Dark Souls does:
In Dark Souls, every weapon has a specific combo and *nothing* but that combo. When you press attack, it *only* progresses through that combo.
In Dark Souls, the first attack is always the same.
The second attack is always the same.
The third attack is always the same.
The heavy attack is always the same.
Parrying is always the same.
Weapon arts are always the same.
The player decides when to use them regardless of distance. It’s entirely up to the player to maximize their combat potential.
It’s very reliable compared to the weird distance based attack system that TW3 has, which more often than not makes you attack the enemy right next to the enemy you want to attack.
It is not uncommon for Geralt to choose to spin around for like a full second before he swings his sword and instantly die mid-spin from an enemy, instead of just simply swinging his sword in half the time it takes to spin around.
In Dark Souls, you can predict enemy attacks and act accordingly without worrying about bullshit that is happening beyond your own control.
In The Witcher 3, you can predict enemy attacks as well, but the whole time you are *praying* that Geralt doesn’t do something completely stupid and that the janky hitboxes don’t screw you over.
That’s another thing The Witcher 3’s combat lacks: consistency.
And say what you want about Skyrim’s combat (only bringing up Skyrim because it’s the game most brought up when someone criticizes TW3’s combat in a desperate attempt of whataboutism):
It is at least consistent.
The only thing you need to account for in Skyrim’s combat is range.
Every single attack can be reliably used unlike The Witcher 3’s most basic attacks and the game gives you many options to circumvent the aspects you don’t like.
The Witcher 3 doesn’t have that luxury.
And, no, before anyone mentions it, Deathmarch doesn’t fix the combat, contrary to belief in The Witcher 3’s community.
Absolutely nothing that I mentioned above gets fixed.
It only makes the combat feel *worse* because all it does is turn enemies into health sponges and increases their damage against you.
Since the game has such atrocious hitboxes in the first place, that is a *major* no-no, and again, is probably the reason why Quen is so broken in the first place.
The end result is a pathetically simple, sluggish, and inconsistant combat system that really wasn’t competently made on a technical or mechanical level.
It’s actually the worst combat system from a AAA studio I have interacted with in over 17+ years.
I suppose the reason why the reason the combat is as bad as it is because CDPR has never bothered to hire combat designers or anything before Cyberpunk 2077.
Until Cyberpunk, they just winged it and didn’t ever put any effort into making a good combat system.
CDPR probably made an underpaid, overworked, and inexperienced employee design TW3’s combat on the budget of a McDonald’s happy meal, the poor guy.
That same guy is currently working on the new Fable’s combat system.
I don’t know if I should feel terrified or feel happy for him.
They better give him an actual budget this time, holy hell.
In other news, the same combat designer who worked on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Horizon Forbidden West is working om The Witcher 4’s combat system, so CDPR clearly learned from their experience with Cyberpunk 2077.
They clearly disagree that TW3’s combat system was good, *they themselves admitted they only did the bare minimum for TW3’s combat* because they were entirely focused on everything else.
They are definitely looking to correct that with The Witcher 4.
And don’t even get me started on the horseback riding, that’s another topic entirely.
I *loathe* Roach with every *damn* *fiber* of my very being.
##TL;DR:
The Witcher 3 felt like *the* perfect game for me in nearly every single aspect.
But mechanically, it was *awful.*
Fucking repugnant. Downright unacceptable.
Couldn’t ever like the game because of it.
I really, really, *really* wanted to love this game, man.
Sorry for the rant.
guilhermefdias
Still the game of my life, so far. All these years later.
General_Drama_2390
It crazy how much has changed since then…. honestly, I couldn’t have seen this is where I’d be right now.
Hope life is great for all of you out there. It was one of the best games of all time in my books.
35 Comments
Has it really been 10 years already?
One of my favorite games ever
The only single player game that i played twice
On par with Last of us 2 as my favourite game of all time.
Also possibly the best DLC of all time with Blood and Wine.
I wish I could get to play this game for the very first time again!
OHHH GOD. WE’RE GETTING OLD.
Steam sale has wild hunt for like 3.99. If you’ve never played it, first of all f you. Second, congrats and I’m very jealous.
One of the greatest games ever.
Where’s Vesemir 🙂
Thank you, Poland 🇵🇱 ❤️
Damn. I was 15. Remember that day.
Shame it flopped and is one of the worst games ever mad *sniffs more glue *
I never get bored of playing or listening to the music.. i tell people who haven’t played it to just look up its award list… I mean.. why wouldn’t you play It?!
Oh shit, that’s today? I thought Witcher 3 was released on May 19th
Still on my Steam wishlist… I really gotta get around to this game.
I’m gonna get around to playing it some day, I swear!
And history was made. One of the best games in history.
Still my favorite game to this day. I remember bursting out and laughing tears of joy when Ciri sheathed her sword before the credits rolled. Then came the (imo) best storyline I’ve ever experienced in a game with the Hearts of Stone expansion, followed up by Blood & Wine. Needless to say, I don’t think it will ever be topped for me.
Although Witcher 4 looks really promising, so here’s hoping.
I dont really like the gameplay on this one. Might have been wrong. Need to replay it.
This was my favorite game, then Cyberpunk 2077 came out and that’s now my favorite game. What can I say, I love me some CD Projekt Red.
A masterpiece.
And nobody ever made a game since
fuck…
I see this is $15 on switch rn. I’m gonna download it and play it on my Switch 2 once I get it 😀 never played it or any games like it before. Hopefully I enjoy it.
Closest would be Breath of the Wild or Tears if that counts.
Halfway to being retro
Holy shit, this reminds me, I need to finish it..
Aaaand my knees aching just got a bit worse
Couldn’t beat the possessed infant dude so I quit.
I really couldn’t get into this game.
On this day, I finally bought it
I just finished this game a couple days ago and got the bad ending lol. I was so upset at myself that I couldn’t get myself to open it back up and try and get the other endings
I’m doing a replay of it now, it’s the only witcher game I’ve played and I started thinking “Why would anyone romance Yen, she’s such a terrible person?”
My online research has yielded that apparently in the books (and to a lesser extent the first 2 games) Yen’s motivations and desires are contextualized better, so her actions and demeanor are better justified.
…But I don’t have that, so to me she’s just a mean-spirited, frigid narcissist.
this is a game I really wish I could get into, but no matter how hard I try, I just can’t.
It feels so janky to play, that it just kills the whole experience for me.
Maybe one day it’ll click for me finally.
Oh man, The Witcher 3.
I should’ve loved that one, it was right up my alley.
I *looooooove* medieval fantasy in general, some of my favorite games ever made are Dark Souls 1 & 3, Divinity Original Sin 2, Skyrim, Dragon’s Dogma, Dark Messiah, Elden Ring, Breath of the Wild, Blasphemous and Baldur’s Gate 3. Hell, I love KCD1 & 2 with all my heart, it’s why I’m in this sub in the first place.
I love everything about TW3 in terms of atmosphere, artstyle and music.
I consider the soundtrack to be among the best ever made.
Hearts of Stone was easily the best part of the game, the storytelling was freaking excellent there.
So why didn’t I love it?
Everything in the game mechanically *fucking SUCKS.*
That combat, man.
It’s *outrageously* terrible.
Very simple too.
Lack of variety in The Witcher 3’s combat is only part of the reason why it feels so bad.
Normally, if a game has simple combat, it would be polished in a way that feel makes that combat system feel more fluid than combat systems that prioritize variety over fluidity, right?
As an example:
Dark Souls took advantage of this. It doesn’t have the best combat variety out there and it’s pretty simple, but it feels really nice and weighty.
The Witcher 3’s combat doesn’t take advantage of having little combat variety it has in favor of polish like Dark Souls does.
It’s like CDPR didn’t even try to polish it, despite what little you could do with TW3’s combat.
The janky combat animations are still present.
The combat flow isn’t what it should’ve been due to how slow Geralt moves in his combat pose and just how prominent animation lock is.
There’s a lot of broken hitboxes that make dodging feel pointless and is likely the reason why Quen is so overtuned. Quen is a band-aid for this.
https://youtu.be/jsCWy5wUs04
An example of the hitboxes. This has happened to me hundreds of times during my playthrough, and it still happens to this day.
The crossbow is very unresponsive and misfires all the time.
The health bars of enemies are generally really spongey.
The fact that the heavy attack does *marginally* more damage than the light attack, is way too slow to use for the amount of damage it does and literally has no benefit to use it over light attack.
Some attacks don’t land because the attacks that Geralt uses are entirely decided by how far away he is from an enemy and some of the attacks that he ends up using aren’t designed with this in mind or have way too small hitboxes to be viable (damn backwards poke attack), as opposed to what Dark Souls does:
In Dark Souls, every weapon has a specific combo and *nothing* but that combo. When you press attack, it *only* progresses through that combo.
In Dark Souls, the first attack is always the same.
The second attack is always the same.
The third attack is always the same.
The heavy attack is always the same.
Parrying is always the same.
Weapon arts are always the same.
The player decides when to use them regardless of distance. It’s entirely up to the player to maximize their combat potential.
It’s very reliable compared to the weird distance based attack system that TW3 has, which more often than not makes you attack the enemy right next to the enemy you want to attack.
It is not uncommon for Geralt to choose to spin around for like a full second before he swings his sword and instantly die mid-spin from an enemy, instead of just simply swinging his sword in half the time it takes to spin around.
In Dark Souls, you can predict enemy attacks and act accordingly without worrying about bullshit that is happening beyond your own control.
In The Witcher 3, you can predict enemy attacks as well, but the whole time you are *praying* that Geralt doesn’t do something completely stupid and that the janky hitboxes don’t screw you over.
That’s another thing The Witcher 3’s combat lacks: consistency.
And say what you want about Skyrim’s combat (only bringing up Skyrim because it’s the game most brought up when someone criticizes TW3’s combat in a desperate attempt of whataboutism):
It is at least consistent.
The only thing you need to account for in Skyrim’s combat is range.
Every single attack can be reliably used unlike The Witcher 3’s most basic attacks and the game gives you many options to circumvent the aspects you don’t like.
The Witcher 3 doesn’t have that luxury.
And, no, before anyone mentions it, Deathmarch doesn’t fix the combat, contrary to belief in The Witcher 3’s community.
Absolutely nothing that I mentioned above gets fixed.
It only makes the combat feel *worse* because all it does is turn enemies into health sponges and increases their damage against you.
Since the game has such atrocious hitboxes in the first place, that is a *major* no-no, and again, is probably the reason why Quen is so broken in the first place.
The end result is a pathetically simple, sluggish, and inconsistant combat system that really wasn’t competently made on a technical or mechanical level.
It’s actually the worst combat system from a AAA studio I have interacted with in over 17+ years.
I suppose the reason why the reason the combat is as bad as it is because CDPR has never bothered to hire combat designers or anything before Cyberpunk 2077.
Until Cyberpunk, they just winged it and didn’t ever put any effort into making a good combat system.
It has always been an afterthought to them.
https://www.vg247.com/cyberpunk-2077-combat-designers
CDPR probably made an underpaid, overworked, and inexperienced employee design TW3’s combat on the budget of a McDonald’s happy meal, the poor guy.
That same guy is currently working on the new Fable’s combat system.
I don’t know if I should feel terrified or feel happy for him.
They better give him an actual budget this time, holy hell.
In other news, the same combat designer who worked on Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance and Horizon Forbidden West is working om The Witcher 4’s combat system, so CDPR clearly learned from their experience with Cyberpunk 2077.
They clearly disagree that TW3’s combat system was good, *they themselves admitted they only did the bare minimum for TW3’s combat* because they were entirely focused on everything else.
They are definitely looking to correct that with The Witcher 4.
And don’t even get me started on the horseback riding, that’s another topic entirely.
I *loathe* Roach with every *damn* *fiber* of my very being.
##TL;DR:
The Witcher 3 felt like *the* perfect game for me in nearly every single aspect.
But mechanically, it was *awful.*
Fucking repugnant. Downright unacceptable.
Couldn’t ever like the game because of it.
I really, really, *really* wanted to love this game, man.
Sorry for the rant.
Still the game of my life, so far. All these years later.
It crazy how much has changed since then…. honestly, I couldn’t have seen this is where I’d be right now.
Hope life is great for all of you out there. It was one of the best games of all time in my books.