well I like the new benchmark that if you want to cross a river and there is not a way to cross with your horse nearby, you can leave the horse where you are, cross it alone and then call your hourse which will be at your side using goku instant transmision technique in 2 seconds.

As for these 3 points:

1. Nope, they look posessed at times to me. It's nice that everything moves though.
2. Hit and miss, it can get so dark when it rains I usually meditate until it's sunny again.
3. The world is made very well, no complaints there. Although I have not been to any city yet. Real world nah, still a long way to go.

I hope more open world games will spend the effort to design great characters and well written quests.
However I also hope they will spend more effort on the actual game play and user experience as well.

What I really hope is that they'll get rid of the reliance on a minimap. Directions that are good enough to follow by landmarks. No more filler, play something else besides the standard kleptomaniac mass murderer for hire, more freedom in solving quests instead of a few binary dialog choices after following a narrow A,B,C checkpoint path.

xenoblade x bigger than gta+witcher 3(not open world) , and only has one loading area (blade home for internet , co op ) + vertical traverse

That's my main gripe with game - if you turn off minimap and pointers, dialog and directions are just not good enough to know where to go and what to do - this is what Pirahna Bytes does great, and even not so stellar games like Risen 2/3 have better quest/map handling than W3.

But then again, I'm thinking they were trying to make this as mainstream friendly as possible and in the proccess they've somewhat ruined the game for those who don't want to play it with all the hand-holding aids.

It is impressive but like someone said it is getting held back by not having water physics. :P

I tried playing without the mini map for a while. It was do-able in White Orchard since it's only a small area, yet I messed up the side quests by finding things out of order. It might be possible too in Velen if you had a compass (after checking directions on the world map). Without the mini map you easily get turned around, so you have to open the slow world map all the time.
Anyway the game uses "Search the yellow circle for clues" gimmick far too often. Without the mini map you often don't have a clue where to look. It's a shame though, all that lovely scenery and you're pretty much navigating a triangle on a 2D map half the time.

Despite all the short comings it's still very enjoyable. However again tonight more problems. I got stuck in a falling animation in a cave, couldn't get out of the scenery, had to reload. (could not save either) I tried climbing up high to enjoy the view, invisible walls prevented me.
Simply running past low level enemies is a no go, he keeps turning around to face them automatically. I guess I need to practice steering the horse.
More enemies stuck on the scenery, and a group mysteriously dying, maybe due to fall damage, lemmings walking off a ledge.
Talking of fall damage, I'm glad I had the +500 vitality upgrade as after I climbed up a ladder there was no way down due to an unavigable ledge at the top of the ladder. Walking off left me with a sliver of health. Yet jumping of a high tower in shallow water, no damage at all.

And that underwater swimming ugh. Is there a way to fight things under water? Those drowners don't hurt me much anymore, yet they keep pulling me off course. Why can't he use a sword or kick at least.

I've quit exploration for now, back to the baron quest to what the game is good at, talking :)


It's a very rough diamond. Even extremely basic things are missing, like remembering the last thing you were on in the menus. Very annoying when you're trying to make something and have to switch between shop and craft/alchemy menu.

Hmm... I suspect the people complaining about the combat are playing on consoles. I'm playing on PC and I only have minor gripes with the combat so far.

As for the world, whilst it has some nice touches, I'm not sure I count it as an open-world game, more semi-open considering you still have separate areas defined on the map (so more like Dragon Age Inquisition). It still doesn't push the sheer number of interactive/usable objects that an Elder Scrolls game does for instance. Loving the game so far though.

Sadly not even on my radar as games like Skyrim, Fallout 3 and now GTA V I always play in first person mode which I find far more immersive and enjoyable. Just can't get on with third person view at all except for Zelda where I have to. I honestly believe some of GTA V's huge sales was down to providing a first person mode for xbone, ps4 and pc. It brought in many more players who prefered the fps view.

Yeah, I've tried playing without minimap and pointers on map, and quickly realised, while in theory possible, it would be exercise in machohism, since the game was obvisouly not made to be played like that - which is really shame, they should've put bit more time in quest directions and reviewing quest dialog (again, something that PB does great to enable you to play without any additional help tools)

For some reason, I've always thought you were more of a PC gamer and that you'll play this in PC- honestly, I have no problems with handling either Geralt or Roach with kb/m, and I almost never turn lock on - and horse fighting is so much fun, if you handle properly his fear level you can take on enemies you're still not even supposed to engage, specially if you use sprint since it deals even more damage.

Though, tbh, when Geralt is in run mode he does behave bit wierd when stopping - I prefer to walk and use sprint, it feels much better.

Yeah, swimming can be finicky at times, though I yet have to die due to being stuck somewhere underwater. As for underwater fight, use crossbow, they die at once.

No Scoobes, I'm also playing The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt on PC, but still find its combat poor. There is nothing particularly wrong with the combat, as its pretty fair, but this game doesn't have the visceral, fluid and interesting combat that is there in many other games. The combat just seems to be an afterthought, which brings down the experience a lot.

But the game as a whole is incredible, probably the best game that has released since the launch of the two new consoles. I'm really enjoying the game at 60fps with high settings ;)