Both great games as well. You shoudn't let other talk you out of The Witcher 3, it and its expansions are among my top 3 games ever only rivalled by TLOU and RDR.

Just saying.

Thank you so much, this is so true. People who played TW1 will understand. Witcher combat was always like that. It somehow seems as if most people complaining didn't even finish the tutorial in TW3.

I actually prefer the combat in Witcher 1 over the next 2 games. Witcher 3's combat isn't all that good, but it's writing and world-building are probably the best of any videogame to date. Having read the entire book series the games are based on since beating Blood and Wine I can say that the games capture the spirit of the novels very well.

I'm on my NG+ now, Deathmarch run for the platinum...and doing every single sidequest and POI on the map that I've already done the previous playthrough.

I love little bits of follow up quests that just take a few minutes but complete a bit of the story in a way that I do not expect. I tell some peasant to start burning bodies taken by the plague or he'll get sick and later on run into him in some remote part of the world, sick of the plague because he didn't listen to me.
I heal some girl by giving her a risky potion of mine, and her boyfriend tells me later on that she's alive but vegetative, which is an awesome way of building a persistent, believable world.
I find an old couple somewhere in the woods and they're perfectly well and happy, thriving. I explore their home and discover they're cannibals preying on the lost and weary.

It's all so engrossing and absorbing.

I got bored of Skyrim in the first ten hours and I gave that game so many chances. I played it on the PS3, played it on PC, modded it, retried it on the PS4. It feels as if I need to dig out my fun from the Elder Scrolls games, piece by piece. Same for Fallout 4, even if I did enjoy Fallout 3 previously.
I got bored with Dragon Age: Inquisition in just a few hours, even if I did enjoy Origins in the past.

The Witcher 3 is the first Witcher game that I've fully enjoyed of the series, and the first RPG that I feel so engrossed in since Gothic 2.

There's, of course, no accounting for taste in this. Yours is just...bad, I guess.

(The above is a joke, of course).

Fluidity has nothing to do with it. It is mechanically shallow as a puddle. If you want to talk about fluid combat Assassin's Creed 3 has fluid combat but it lacks any depth. There aren't any deep combos and all the weapons feel very similar. Its no hack n slash and its no Souls either, just your average Western game combat that looks good but plays dull.

That doesn't give the combat any depth. Its pretty obvious anyways.

Exactly...that's what made the Witcher games always so engrossing. They where the first were your actions have actual consequences, sometimes severe ones, which you find out many hours later sometimes. Huge example being the Red Baron quest line, one of the best quest lines in RPG history imho. I had to replay hours of the game because I couldn't cope with the consequences of my decision. 

The Witcher, unlike most other "western RPGs" doesn't paint a black and white picture, good and evil, it shows, like reality, there is mostly a grey area and what is right or wrong always depends on the perspective.

One of the reasons why I like this series more than most other games on the market. 

You're supposed to constantly combine your right sword styles, which are differing from enemy type to enemy type, with your witcher powers, potions, bombs and oils and grind stones. If your playing the game on harder difficulties you will need to think and act very tactically. 

Exactly.
And yes, some quests lead nowhere once you finish them, but that's what makes them great. Worldbuilding is supposed to feel natural and seamless, and you just discover little by little how the world works, how the people live, how the nobility live, how the nonhumans are treated. It feels great to just slip under the waters of the story and enjoy the mood.

Also, after my first playthrough on Normal I was a bit disappointed about how overpowered I felt by the middle of the game. Just doing random POIs on the map got me so overleveled that I simply couldn't find a challenge anymore.
Now, on NG+ Deathmarch I run from a pack of wolves as if the whole of the Wild Hunt is chasing me through Hell and back. Even a simple bandit encounter feels great when I know I can get swarmed easily so I need to move, use my bombs, use my potions, use my oils at all times.

Sure, the mechanics of the game aren't terribly complex, but I fail to see how a more  indepth fighting system would have improved the game significantly. There's Kingdom Come on the horizon for those people that prefer their RPGs on the technical challenging side, but that doesn't seem to be for me.
Also, I'm back in Witcher after a long stay in Dark Souls 3 and a replay of Bloodborne...and I'm still enjoying the combat. I find it strange that so many people seem to have trouble with it.

Yet, I find TW2 to be better game - being more linear, it was way more focused and detailed. TW3 is too big for it's own good, lacks so many mechanisms that games 15 years before it had and being locked to one fairly predefined character (cause that's what Geralt is, no matter how many options you have) is never really beneficial for open world RPGs - I really wish for CDPR to do more generic D&D-esque game with the same engine, I honestly think it would be much better open-world experience.

But that said, making open-world action WRPG with good mechanisms and story is way, way more difficult. I love Gothics and Morrowind, but none of them comes close to something like Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines which, due to being quite linear, is much better in RPG mechanisms and story telling...not to mention best CRPGs that are vastly superior to them.

Oh, and for people bashing combat in Witcher 3 and then praising Souls - really? I mean really? I like Souls quite a bit, finished all 4 of them, but sorry, their combat is mediocre at best. As much as I don't like many things in TW3, combat is definitely not one of them - it's quite functional and satisfactory once you get to know how to properly combine signs, sword and bombs.

Well... i played the second and it dragged alot and the combat was repetitive.

I have 3 and the expansions, but i haven't played it yet.

It does not hold your hand though. It is traditional in that sense. I did notice a number of systems like crafting that had complexities to it. It's kind of like Skyrim where you have to look some things outside of the game.

But what i liked in 2 was the setting and characters, so i guess i disagree with that part.

I dont know if im losing my inner child, but I have it, on PC, played on 3 screens, special keyboard, high end mouse, and it got me bored. Didnt even finish the tutorial