Witcher 3 - Review @ Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Another favorable review for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. This time Richard Cobbet of Rock, Paper, Shotgun praises the game. A snippet:

I could talk for hours about all the great bits I found. Geralt’s awful sense of humour, where every joke falls flat until he meets Yennifer and the two end up having a pun-war about werewolves. The many weird and wonderful characters, important and throwaway. The Bloody Baron storyline that takes on some savagely heavy themes with surprising skill, not forgiving the unforgivable, but still finding a degree of sympathy. The way that the combat, while seemingly simple and clumsy at the start, grows with you over the game to become something of a ballet by the end, as well as the options to approach things more tactically by gathering various oils and potions in advance – though to be honest, I came to wish that this was more core to the game, rather than it always offering the out of just earning a few more levels and button-mashing away. You shouldn’t be able to out-level something like a werewolf or an ancient god, and being able to feels like a betrayal.

(...)

Not a single one of those things, nor all of them put together in one great big failblob manages to tarnish what a wonderful time I had with The Witcher 3. None of it stopped it being one of the most exciting, varied, warmest, funniest RPGs that I’ve ever played, where I wanted to do every mission that came along just to see what it wanted. None of them, nor even the fact that by the end I was getting desperate to finish the damn thing, stopped me being sad when it was over and thrilled to know that there are two big expansions coming. I absolutely adored The Witcher 3. I wish I could wipe my memory and play it again from the start with more time, and no memory of what was coming. But maybe a Post-It note to say ‘increase the difficulty a bit, you wuss.’

Rating: (flawed) Masterpiece