I really wasn't impressed with the first Witcher game; a general thirteen-year-old-trying-to-sound-tough maturity level and lackluster design overall took me out of it pretty quickly. The third game in the series at least makes some significant improvements, adding considerable polish to the combat and attempting to give the player more to do with numerous side-quests (that don't all lead to cheap smut, surprisingly), an in-depth crafting system, banter as well as a less grating, though still very sex-heavy and profanity-laced, tone to the dialog on the whole. It still hits all the same sour notes that turned me off to other modern RPGs like Mass Effect, though - overly simplistic and hand-holdy design despite describing itself as "open-world" and near-constant scenes of dull/inane exposition between characters you get zero context or buildup for beforehand and therefore have no reason to actually care about; not to mention Geralt's constant smug speechifying just to give the illusion this game is taking some kind of moral stance when it really isn't.
The boredom is only compounded by the stock gameplay that consists largely of endless tedious material farming, monotonous combat, buggy collision detection (getting my horse snagged on things was an all-too-common occurrence. And since the game auto-saves with no opportunity to make manual ones, I was out of luck if that cost me a mission), and overall game design that requires no mental engagement whatsoever. Quests consist almost entirely of wandering from one map marker to the next, and there's never any decent puzzles and rarely any problem-solving more involved than "kill scripted monster" or "push button when prompted". Not to mention it flatly spells out for you what choices will change the narrative later, which immediately ruins any feeling of gravitas; or at least, it would if it ever allowed you to form an organic bond with any of the disposable cardboard-cutouts who milk every drop of pathos they can out of their one throwaway scene each. Gee, another character I've never met before and will never hear about again (save maybe in one throwaway line of dialog long after I've forgotten about this dumb side-story) is subject to trite fantasy racism/sexism/classism/homophobia and I can side with them or their oppressor because CDPR is too cowardly to commit to a message for fear of harming sales; rinse and repeat ad infinitum. And this is supposed to quality as intelligent storytelling; yeah, right.
The whole Witcher 3 experience just feels cynical and manipulative, like the devs are covering for their tedious, sterile game design by forcing in all the paper-thin emotional weight they can so they and their trained attack-dog fanboys can easily write off all criticism, related or not, as the words of a homophobic sociopath nazi (or a godless filthy hippie commie socialist lib; it's generic and cowardly enough to let bigots of all stripes project their personal bugaboos into it) and give pen-for-hire gaming rags easy fuel for their glowing reviews and meaningless award shows. Not because CDPR's devs have any genuine attachment to the content they're selling, but because they want to make back all that money they earned selling other people's much better games on GOG to that was spent on ad space (the true determinant of any game's Metacritic score), earn little gold statues for their CEO to cram up his ass and, most importantly, rack up enough millions of sales to earn their conditional Christmas bonuses. Witcher 3 is a graphically gorgeous title, but with such shallow, monotonous gameplay, a stock dark fantasy setting, a cast and narrative that put no new spins on any of their already-ancient tropes, nearly all of the characterization and lore relegated to flat exposition in dry articles in an in-game wiki you have to bring the whole game to a dead stop to read, and an active contempt for the intelligence of its audience, it's painfully clear that this is all just a cynical confidence trick, not a fresh gaming experience that needs to be played or a poignant story that needed to be told.
If you want gameplay that consists of more than watching a boring character run from dot to dot for 150 hours and a narrative where the characterizations and storytelling come from a place of genuine passion and don't just feel like some committee of shysters trying to Pavlov cheap reactions out of you, there's dozens of better games to play; but to name just one: NieR. Yoko Taro is also confident enough with his style that he allows his settings, themes and characters to speak for themselves and he doesn't have to bring the gameplay to a screeching halt every two minutes to beat you over the head yet again with how ADULT and MEANINGFUL and IMPORTANT his work is until you start saying so too just to make the abuse stop.
Publisher: CD Projekt
Released: 2015
Platforms: PC, Playstation 4, XBox One, Switch