Carson Moore

This game was a true misery to play. Bethesda can't make a functional game to save their lives.

This game is universally praised as a masterpiece, but I couldn't disagree more. This game was fun, a good time-waster, but seriously flawed. First of all, the actual gameplay is god awful. Geralt controls like he's a drunken mess; trying to accurately investigate things is impossible because his legs have a mind of their own, the combat is clunky and boring, and the horse controls are somehow worse than Skyrim's. Furthermore, the game was incredibly buggy: the game crashed constantly, npcs wouldn't be interactable, quests would bug out, npcs wouldn't follow their scripts, etc. I played this game in August of 2020, and I frankly can't believe the state this game is still in. I've played Bethesda games that were more polished than this. The only decent gameplay is when you can play as Ciri, but those moments are sadly both rare and very brief. That being said, the story writing and lore are good, for the most part. Characters are well written and multi-faceted, and the game does a good job immersing you in the story. My biggest gripe here is the decision making element. The game often asks the player to make decisions based on too little information, which often leads to unintended consequences (usually very bad ones). There are multiple endings, but there's no indication as to what in-game events can lead to different endings, so it's all too easy to be screwed over, at which point the only soul-crushing option you have is to reload a save from 20+ hours ago (assuming you have one). My issue is that the game could do a much better job at giving the player more information to make an informed decision, but instead it forces the player to choose between A and B without knowing enough about either of them. Overall, decent game, quite flawed though and certainly not goty material. I'd give it a 7/10.

They cut over half the national dex, the new pokemon mostly look terrible, and the online is the worst its ever been. Much like Sun and Moon the game clutches your hand all the way through without ever letting up, and for a game with as many long, drawn cutscenes as this you would think they would bother to hire voice actors, especially since its the first mainline series game to be released on a home console. Hopefully nintendo can get their ideas of technical innovation out of 2009, because thats when this game would have been acceptable. Overall, it comes off as lazy and uninspired. 3/10