Late to the party (yuge backlog and all that), I’ve finally finished Witcher 3 base game.
And what a game.
Good:
The father/daughter relationship is the best part. I got the “best” or “2nd best” ending (Ciri survived and will be empress). It would be a waste of Ciri’s talent to be a simple witcher, so of course my Geralt brought her to her biological father to prepare her for her life after the Wild Hunt.
The thing about letting your daughter choosing her own path is very very liberal/western. Some other culture may think it is perfectly fair for the father to dictate what his daughter can do (fair in the sense that when the time comes Ciri will be equally entitled to dictate what her son or daughter will do.)
The main story about the Wild Hunt is a bit meh. End of the world and the struggle that entails? AGAIN? All the politics bores me because I have no stake one way or another. And there is another semi-viking culture focused on pillaging. What a surprise. But the racism allegory and the father/daughter narrative made the story bearable.
The open world, especially the urban area, is far more realistic than Skyrim. It is basically impossible to imagine e.g. Whiterun in Skyrim is a city, with so few people around, but the cities in Witcher 3 just looked right. And the colour palette of the world is beautiful, as beautiful as Skyrim. And the contract system gives you lots and lots of things to do.
Bad
All the question marks around the map is a drag. It took away the wonder of wandering. Don’t tell me there are stuff to explore! Let me find them at my own leisure. Skyrim or Fallout 4 is much better in that regard.
And the voice acting is below par. In terms of graphics, art direction, and gameplay it is great, but I feel like the voice acting and direction could be so much better. The accent for one is all over the place. In Dragon Age they have this nice mirroring with the real world. People from Orlai speak English with a French accent. Dwarves have American accent. People in the east and north have BBC accent. And so on. Here with Witcher 3 only Nilfgaardian sounds distinctively German, others are all over the place. Triss and Dandelion are especially dire IMO. Many of the lesser NPCs sound almost indistinguishable from one another.
Nudity/Flesh:
Special mention to all the gratuitous breasts and a lack of any dick shot. Keira is the worst, Yennefer is the best/most tasteful. Even Ciri showed a bit too much flesh. She certainly doesn’t dress like someone prepared to do physical fighting wearing NO armour.
Now on to DLCs.
PS: Gwent. Can’t get enough of that.