Gadgetory

The Witcher 3 has been out for almost a week now and I've been playing with every moment I've had available and to put it bluntly I love this game what's up Internet Kevin here now I've logged about 40 hours in the game so far I've done most of the main quest and a lot of side quests and there is still so much more I need to do the amount of content this game has to offer is absolutely staggering and while I still want to finish the main story before I give you guys my final thoughts I thought I'd let you guys know what I think of it after this past week so far first off a quick primer for those of you that are not familiar with The Witcher series the whole thing revolves around the character Geralt of Rivia someone who underwent a number of mutations and intense training in order to become an expert monster slayer also known as a Witcher the games follow your exploits through hunting monsters and tinkerer brew and personal problems while navigating a lot of politics that you necessarily don't care about and having to live through a number of wards now the first game in the series had its strengths but was a little rough around the edges and the second one was pretty much a major upgrade in most areas but the two things that made both games stand out was their emphasis on monster hunting and interesting but also difficult choices monster hunting because it's just a little more complex than simply hit it with your sword till it dies that might work on lower difficulties but higher up you're going to want to do a little more prep work so the games have given you ways to prep and figure out how to best approach an enemy by figuring out how to make a certain oil that deals more damage against them or figure out what kind of bombs or spells they're weak against it creates this feeling that monsters are more interesting than just another enemy you have to hit with a weapon and helps to make them stand out a lot more as for complex choices well the games have never really been about simple good or bad mentalities it's not something like do you want to take the good guy route or the badass route instead it's gonna be situations where you have to weigh what you think is the better option something might give you a short-term good over a long-term one one might save many people at the expense of sacrificing one other person that is more important to you so it actually gives you interesting moral dilemmas and very few of them ever have straight-up good outcomes usually no matter what choice you make there's going to be some kind of downside and consequence you're going to have to live with and oftentimes these consequences won't even be immediately obvious you'll make one decision and after several hours of gameplay find out the consequences of your now both of these aspects make a return in The Witcher 3 but a whole lot else has changed some of it for the better and some of it is just simply different but still good in its own way and a lot of this is due to two major changes they want to make for this game first off making it just a little more accessible for other players and second opening the world up the first two games were extremely linear with a few side quests here and there whereas The Witcher 3 consists of large open areas that you can freely explore aside from pursuing the main quest now as I said monster hunting and hard choices are both really important mechanics to this series and they did a great job of bringing them over to three but everywhere else that has seen a change I really personally like for the better first off I think the game has done a much better job with its pacing you could argue that witcher 2 had a much stronger start anymore kind of epic feeling opening but it was also extremely overwhelming for someone that wasn't familiar with the witcher lore already they're throwing a lot of hard terms that you left and right Witcher 3 on the other hand chooses to take a slower approach it's not as urgent feeling but it gives you time to learn about the setting who the other characters are what gerelds backstory is and there are several moments in the game where clearly some time has taken in dialogue to help explain events from past games and books and how they're relevant to the witcher 3 storyline now this is of course one of the consequences of trying to move a very linear game style over to one that's free roam you lose a lot of the sense of urgency when players have the ability to choose to just run around to do whatever they want and oftentimes it can make the story feel a little slow but I think they did a really good job pacing in which or three with how the main quests relate to what you're doing a lot of it just has to do with investigation and it helps that a lot of the side quests are extremely flavorful most of which are divided either into secondary quests that explore other aspects of story or have their own little mini plot arc or witching quests which focus on hunting down specific monsters figuring out what you're dealing with and prepping to take them down CD Projekt RED did an immensely great job with side quest in this game there are a handful that are still just simply busy work but a lot of them each have their own little flavor and stand out as having their own interesting plot rather than just being a random fetch quest to get a little extra money or more experience now one thing in particular about secondary quests I really want to note that I think was a really nice touch for a role-playing perspective in this game is that the main quest you're gonna get involved in a whole lot of side plots they're gonna meet new characters find out their problems and end up helping them out a little bit along the way before moving on and doing what you need to do next to the main quest the thing is you don't always fully resolve their problems and so once you're done with their part of the main quest it becomes a secondary option to actually resolve their issues or just stop dealing with them entirely and move on to the next segment of the main story or just simply witching quests basically choosing to not involve yourself with anyone outside of what's absolutely necessary so while the move to an open world does certainly slow the pacing down a little bit and can make the game not feel as epic in context as past games did I think they did an excellent job of balancing out an important feeling main quest but still having a lot of interesting stuff to do during side quests or free roam now the other big change as I said earlier is the fact that this game aims to streamline a lot of the mechanics from past games most notably the way alchemy is handled in previous games whenever you wanted to make a potion that was useful or a bomb you had to find all the ingredients and craft it every single time which was really cool and great for immersion and it probably is mechanic that some people are going to prefer but at the same time it was also really tedious especially when you're up against certain monster types again and again what Witcher 3 does instead is you have to initially craft an object in the first place which can sometimes require you to find really hard to find ingredients but once you craft it once it just gets restocked to every time you take a rest as long as you have some kind of special item in your inventory usually really strong alcohol this makes it so that while you do have to go out of your way sometimes to find the right ingredients to craft something you haven't used before or make an improved version of it once you've done it the one time you're set for any other situation where you have to run into that kind of enemy you just have to rest beforehand if you've run out of supplies the game has also reworked the skill system in an interesting way where you have to equip so many skills at once and you're limited based on your level so you can unlock a lot of different abilities quickly if you get ability points fast but you're not gonna be able to use them simultaneously not only that but they're paired off into separate little groups we're grouping together the same types of skills can lead to special benefits when you equip mutagens it's a nice spin I think on the whole idea of prep work because especially later in the game once you start getting more skills or you getting more than you can possibly out all at once well you can choose which ones you think are most relevant when you're going up against a certain type of enemy now of course all of these mechanics are simply background for the game's combat system which is about as fast as witcher two's but a hell of a lot smoother now first glance it's going to be very much the same thing you have fast and strong attacks with two different sword types you can parry enemy attacks do counter attacks dodge roll and access to a few spells to help you out but what makes things a little different in this one is that you now also have a long ranged option with a hand crossbow to take on flying enemies and all of the game spells now have an alternate casting form you can unlock they give you a lot more options especially if you're a magic focused character one aspect that has changed them a little more on the fence about I think it's still works but I kind of like the other idea better is that in past games potions were sort of a before combat prep kind of thing they all lasted for a long amount of time but you can only have so many active at once this time around all potions really only lasts for about 30 seconds maybe to a minute some of them last longer but the utility effect like seeing in the dark but they just give you a temporary boost in your toxic meter which slowly constantly replenishes so you can drink multiple potions back-to-back rather than just drinking a couple that last you several minutes at a time it makes the pacing of the game a lot faster but it also makes using potions a little more annoying because you can only equip two at a time so if you want to use two effects but then switch over to a third one well then you need to pause open up your inventory menu and equip one somewhere else outside of that one problem though needing to juggle potions everything else is pretty easily accessible you can quickly switch between what active items are bombs you want to use spells are easy to switch between and combat as a whole tends to be really fast and very fluid as long as you don't find yourself having to use more than two different potion types at a time now all these mechanics separately make for a really strong core experience but the real icing on the cake is that there is just so much content to go through in this game as I said earlier I'm through most of the main plot and I'm a little over leveled for it because I've done so many side quests but there are so many more that I've just outright ignored because I just didn't need to do them if all you want to do is tackle the main quest you really only have to do a few here and there but if you're a completionist there is a huge amount of content this game has to offer and the great thing is a lot of it is still really interesting very few of them are bland and the ones that kind of seem bland at first after times have really interesting backstory tidbits as long as you're paying attention and reading all the different notes and things that you find now I have to admit I was a little skeptical at first when CD Projekt RED was saying that this game could take as long as 200 hours for some people and I still think that is a little on the high end but something that some people could definitely experience but on average it could easily take most people at least a hundred to 120 hours for a single playthrough and the fact the matter is that even with that much content and how long it can take I already feel willing to do a second playthrough at some point just to try different choices and see how thing is the game pan out differently which is a great sign considering how much content there is usually there's some kind of worry about oh I don't want to have to go through all this over again it's gonna take so long no not feeling that worried at all with this because for me at least the experience has been nothing but constant joy now of course the game does have a few rough edges worth noting as a lot of people have pointed out it doesn't look quite as beautiful as it was shown a couple III s ago but it's still really damn pretty and it runs extremely well and stable especially after the latest patch other than that one other issue is the game does have the occasional odd choicefor AI enemies occasionally have weird tactics they'll walk up to you at a certain distance and then just stand there not doing anything also when you summon your horse occasionally it'll spawn in a place that's really not smart and look at stuck in some trees where you can't mount it you end up having to run in a different direction for a little while and then spawn it again hoping that it'll be in a better place that you can actually reach those gripes though in comparison to everything else this game has to offer do pretty much nothing to sour the rest of the experience because for me at least this game has been nothing but fantastic now to be fair like I said earlier I haven't actually finished the main story just yet so it is possible that I could do that and then get pissed off at the ending and have a whole lot of other things ruined for me as a result but at this rate and this pacing and after 40 hours of playing it that seems pretty unlikely I'd say it's pretty safe to say that at worst I could go from absolutely loving this game - loving it not quite as much so those are my thoughts in The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt after having played it for the past week I will be doing another video just kind of update you guys after I finish the game to let you know if any of this stuff has changed or by final thoughts on the store other than that though if you already want to grab the game I do have it linked down below if you enjoyed this video make sure hit that thumbs up button to let me know as well as subscribe and follow me on Twitter I'll be seeing you guys soon with more content but until then I'm Kevin Kenson and I'll see you guys later