My experience with this series:

- The Witcher 1 I saw as a solid 8/10 game, actually played it twice.

- The Witcher 2 I was excited to play but it was a big wtf from the very beginning - they went for Hollywood style, I thought it looked really stupid, but the biggest drawback was the chaotic combat, and the messy inventory. I played maybe one hour.

- The Witcher 3 there was something in those first dialogue cutscenes that made them so boring, I can't explain it but I was immediately turned off. Played maybe 15 min after that intro.

That's a problem I've had with a lot of games since playing BotW. Just climb over it! It's three feet high!

Another problem I had with Witcher 3 was the arbitrary gating with levels. I made the mistake of trying to explore on Roach just outside the starting town after the pub scenes, and I was attacked by Level 15 skeletons in a graveyard not far from town and destroyed. As far as I can tell, the only way to stand a chance is just to level up so they don't do as much damage. It made me not want to explore at all.

What? .... I've played that first region tons of times. That's literally the only area that has enemies of a way higher level than you, and it's because they're guarding treasure. By the time you are ready to leave that area, you should be able to easily kill them in the graveyard.

I mean, the Witcher's combat is never easy but it's not "arbitrary level gating", at least not from the 30+ hours I played. It just sounds like you literally tried one time to branch out and said nope, which is fine but ... 

Accept it. You’re strange and picky and search another game you might like. How about Doku Doki Literature Club?!

The enemies I found in the swamp on my way to deliver the griffin head were also much higher leveled than me, though not as bad as in the graveyard. I'll admit it may be possible I just happened to wander into the worst possible areas which wrongfully gave the impression that was the whole game, but it's bad game design regardless if that's even possible. I absolutely despised the clunky combat and broken controls anyway, so I had no desire to play anymore. Fighting the griffin was a nightmare.

Some quick responses.

- No, the OP is not satire. I´m really pissed off and took me months of frustration to admit it. I really tried to enjoy the game.

- ME and FO/TES recycled voices and models: I don´t know exactly why it didn´t bother me on those games but it made unbearable on TW3. I have a few theories.
Maybe, the game reached the Uncanny Valley for me. Characters model are really good, but not there yet. It is confusing to remember who is who.
Every Salarian had the same voice, however, everyone had a different colour and some distinct feature. It was also a game with 5 or more very distinct races. And ME wasn´t a real open world, one could enjoy each quest with time.
In Bethesda games side quests are mostly barebones, you don´t need to waste hours only to save a settlement or repair a water-cleaning facility. You don´t need to go to a long conversation with a miserable peasant. You can explore an area at your pleasure.
Or, maybe I´m getting older.

I´m a fan of the Soul series. I can dig into an RPG that has a cryptic lore and cynical characters. But combat in Dark Souls, and the sense of dread made me advance into the game and explore the world.

I agree with someone here wrote: there are times TW3 seems to try to emulate a GTA game or RDR. I would say more, TW3 seems to try to emulate a half dozen of games, like Assassins Creed, TES, Dark Souls, ME...

Yes, the PC and Tablet version. And I liked a lot.

The in game version, on the other hand, was completely broken.

Hey, I take no issue with critique or that people like different games, my main gripe was that the main points for deduction were the very ones where TW3 is objectively miles ahead of the competition, and where it has gotten the bulk of its praise from. Its main issue is that it's not very approachable in the gameplay, combat is difficult and requires timing and actual player skill and questlines and lore requires one to actually enjoy the mythology and setting, which many don't. It's a weird fantasy setting where elves are bums and scoundrels and farmers curse and complain loudly. It's a very unconventional fantasy setting, as is.

Skyrim's greatest strength is how approachable it is, you can sit down and figure it out in 15-20 minutes on your own, and the story is easily digestible, mostly because it doesn't exist. For me, Skyrim is close to worthless without a slew of mods installed though, mostly ones that fix the dreary combat, add some much needed variation and some plain, old common sense to the world.

Skyrim's greatest weakness is that it's a fairly dumb RPG, they simplified almost every single mechanic and the amount of work they put into the characters seems on the extremely low side. For me, TW3 was more or less the opposite of the OP (which is fine, by the way); it showed how shallow and lacking games like Mass Effect, Skyrim and Fallout 3, NV and 4 are in many respects.

Honestly though, I really do understand people having problems liking TW3, it's not really like most other WRPG's, which is a good thing for me, but not for everyone. I also have complaints about it, but they're mostly overshadowed by how amazing I think the overall package is.

It honestly just sounds like you don't understand the combat, and I mean that with sincerity, because I absolutely hate those kind of "u just suck get good scrub" replies. I mean, the levels of the enemies do matter but something 3-6 or so levels above you isn't going to be that much of a challenge(I'm trying really hard to remember like, how many levels above you a monster had to be in order for it to be really difficult to fight). I have a bad condition of constantly replaying the opening of games a lot. I also really suck at games. So I'm not trying to say this from an elitist perspective, but it really isn't that difficult. You might die once or twice but the Witcher isn't about easy combat necessarily. You shouldn't get discouraged from dying once because in most cases it just means you should have pressed the dodge button or had a different spell equipped. 

In one of the earliest times I restarted the Witcher, I decided to do every sidequest and mission available at the beginning of the game before activating world traversal. The starting area was really really easy, even though most of it I hadn't explored before. You can even tell what quests CD Projekt Red wanted to naturally integrate into the player's journey, like the Swamp quest which literally is right off the road and just involves you spending two minutes going into a Swamp. 

" I'll admit it may be possible I just happened to wander into the worst possible areas which wrongfully gave the impression that was the whole game, but it's bad game design regardless if that's even possible. "

This happened to a pretty well-known reviewer while playing Breath of the Wild. He went to an area behind  the starting plateau I believe, and he died numerous times. He actually learned the enemies attack patterns, but because of weapon degradation he couldn't kill off the enemy without losing all his weapons. This makes it even worse than your Witcher example. So is Breath of the Wild a badly designed game? 

I don't even think this makes much sense in the context of an open world game. An open world game should have depth in it. It's a living, breathing world that you can traverse. The game didn't make you go there, you did. You can just keep riding away if you don't want to fight, and the wraith literally disappears for a few seconds after an engagement begins so it's easy to get away. If all of the open world was tailor made to make every engagement exactly your level or gratifying, it wouldn't feel like an open world. Now if every corner was filled with enemies 70 levels higher than you, that might be an issue *cough cough Xenoblade 2 cough cough*  but that's just not true. 

In fact there's a series that gets a lot of acclaim for it's world building based on enemy placement, called Gothic. Personally I've never played it, so maybe vivister will come in here and show me my place or something, but a big part of it's appeal is that if you go down the wrong path and don't come equipped your fucked. It makes it feel like an actual world. But hell, that's such an extreme example, The Witcher 3 isn't even nearly that bad, or hard. 

I know that's a pretty long winded reply but i'm not like a Witcher apologist or anything. Honestly I never got around to finishing the game, I'd always get to a certain point and be turned off. I just wanted to add my own two cents in, you don't have to agree. 

My most dissappointing game of the gen. Went in super excited, played about 15 hours, and couldn't go any further. My biggest problem was the gameplay. To me, everything felt like a chore, and I just don't feel like coming home from work to do more work, or hoping on the Vita to Remote Play to just to do more work.