Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: 9.7/10
As a fan of the Witcher franchise, I found The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt to be incredible, definitely the best game I've played in a while! The Witcher 3 is a mature and complex story about politics, prejudice and relationships. It follows Geralt of Rivia, A mutated monster hunter, through his adventures in finding his long lost lover Yennefer, and adopted daughter Ciri, which are all characters mentioned throughout the witcher 1 and 2.
The visuals of the Witcher 3 are rather breath taking, not the best of visuals but definitely impressive! The soundtrack is something that I, in particular, really enjoyed. It had a celtic-theme but still had an epic feel, just listen to some of these songs:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J8J9HXcOxrs The story was phenomenal and one of the games best points. Choices you make in the game have far reaching consequences, a choice I made in the very first chapter of the game impacted the events near the end of the game, things like this happen all the time. The story is also brutal, there is never really an "easy" way out and you are faced with many ethically challenging situations and you have to sit back and watch the dreadful consequences of each of your actions. The characters are interesting, though there are so many characters with long and complicated names its easy to forget whose who. The war between the Nilfgaurdians and the Redanians is interesting, but you may have to do some research to fully understand it. One of the games highest points was Geralts relationship with Ciri, certain scenes in the game put a smile on my face and made me really feel attached to these characters and made me feel their relationship was truly authentic. Monster designs are beautifully disgusting, my particular favourite design was that of the Crones of Crookback bog, with their unusual and unique design that made me both repulsed, confused and intrigued. There are many monsters that make you feel legitimately repulsed, such as the Botchling and pester, it's generally hard for a game to do that so I thought it was great. There are a few possible endings that exist in the game, I think I got the most interesting one, but there's an more-up beat one and a very depressing one, I won't go into detail here but all I'll say is be nice to Ciri.
Gameplay wise the witcher 3 has a similar premise to the witcher 2, combat is all about timing and mixing signs when appropriate. The signs have been changed somewhat however and some of them have been seriously nerfed, while others have been more powered. The Yrden sign is now basically completely useless and only really useful for fighting certain types of wraiths, the alternate sign mode is much more useful but still doesn't have the same impact as the Yrden sign in the Witcher 2. Axii has become a lot more stronger, Axii instantly stuns any opponent now which makes most one-on-one battle trivially easy, and I was playing on the hard difficulty. The Axii's alternate mode is the same as Witcher 2's default Axii except now characters who are puppeted seem to do much more damage, I found myself not even happening to use any weapons and just have the guy I puppeted kill everyone else. Quen is the same as the witcher 2 but oddly has a different more subtle effect, the effect to know that you are shielded is so subtle that a lot of the times I thought I was shielded when I wasn't! I felt that was a quite a negative thing with the new Quen sign. Most of the combat outside of that is the same, with the exception that you can now meditate to replenish oils and potions and you can apply them in battle, a much needed addition of the game.
So altogether, fantastic games, very small hiccups are dwarfed by the major accomplishments. I had more fun playing this than skyrim, even though skyrim may have more content.
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