Recent reviews by Yeedster

The Best RPG I've played (thus far)

The acclaims of the Witcher 3 are easy to find around the web. I don't believe objectively my review will be any different. What I will review is my personal experience with the gameplay, storyline, and action that this game has provided me.

Gameplay
The Open World style of The Witcher 3 will be very familiar to anyone who has played Skyrim. There are waypoints and areas of discovery that one can enjoy in the 3 major areas that the The Witcher provides. The skill tree elements this game combine Combat, Magic, and Alchemy limiting the total number of abilities you can have on your character to 12. Although I wish this number was a bit higher it allowed fine tuning of a character to allow it to best fit a player's desires.

Storyline
Coming from The Witcher 2 I had very high expectations regarding the storyline. The familiar cast of characters return and I'm always impressed by how difficult choices are for the player. A clear line between good and evil is not always apparent and sometimes it is up to the player to determine another NPC's fate based on circumstantial evidence. The main storyline will always be about the quest to find Ciri but the secondary quests are were the game truly shines. There's a lot of character development as well as story progression which will tie into the main narrative the further the game progresses. The ending of the game will be a composite of all the choices the player has made. As of this review there are 36 possible endings (including interim endings).

Action
The heart of a game of this genre really needs to have a good combat mechanic. The whitcher 3 has a much simpler combat mechanic than the Witcher 2 (at least to my memory). Given that a player has explored and gathered enough equipment the combat is not painfully hard but it will grief any player which thinks that levels matter when getting swarmed by a small number of minions. Timing is everything as an opening on the player can be comboed into near death situations. Fighting large groups of monsters or humans is always the trickiest part of this game and requires a good juggle between kiting and using AoE mechanics. I played this game 70% combat, 20% magic and 10% alchemy for reference.


Conclusion
In all this game is best enjoyed for the long run. If you enjoy the story as much as I do make sure you get that 50+ hour mark in to really absorb the secondary quests and reflect on the decisions you made. If you're more of an action junkie I suggest trying all the Witcher Contracts as they always lead to unique monsters and environments which will be challenging (until your gear becomes ridiculously strong).


I will warn that there are some very graphic scenes involving violence that not all players will enjoy.