You must be incredibly Jaded to not get emotionally engaged with the games side quests and Witcher contracts. The Barron quest alone which spans from about 10 hours in until 30 hours in depending how you tackle it and what other stuff you do in-between is heart-rending and incredibly interesting with such nuance and it's not even the best quests in the game. The way all three major early quest goals are intertwined in a way, something I'd hope you would have experienced in 20 hours to some degree, is pehnonmmenal. The quests still come back into play later in the game. All the small content though, which feels just as part of the game as the main story line is still unprecedented with the quality not degrading to the smallest of side quests or Witcher Job often leading to fantastically told stories. It's only bested by Divinity OS 2 and I'd assume Baldurs Gate 3 which I haven't played but no other action RPG has even come close. Ubisoft tried with the Ass Creed series imitation but failed miserably because they left zero sign of TLC or much care at all.

Well it had that feeling of scope when it released, really felt like you were going on a journey in a massive world. It's easy to say it sucks now but harder to grab a time machine and make an argument for why it sucked back then. There's reason it sold so much though and it's not nostalgia or member berries. I do agree though, I tried to play it recently and was shocked to find it's not the game I remember playing. Something changed in the games industry in the time since release that has made it look pitiful in current decade, I'd say Morrowind and Oblivion held up better. 

The emotional side of W3 is great, the problem is the janky/boring battle system.  

Never really got to understand why this game is so praised. The RPG elements lack depth, which is the reason why I don't like much of its combat. It would be ok if the combat was challenging and tight... it's not. It's as basic as you can get

So we have a great exploration game with very nice side quests and interesting plotlines that allows you to interact to the world at your pace. This alone make this a 8/10 game in my book, but hardly enough to put it among the best games ever released

I'm on an edge to say it's because it's a game with lots of quality content... like REALLY. It was a truly well polished and expansive open world game with not much filler in it, most of open world games just put a lot of fandom and silly side quests to bloat the game (I'm talking about you Horizon). Here you have many hours of an actual story, so guess people like to have a 100h+ campaign that don't feel like a drag

It's not boring on death march difficulty. The game has many other aspects to it around the combat but also outside of the combat, as I've mentioned above. You aren't fighting your way through the game, the game focuses on investigations far more than it does on fighting for example. Puzzles and mechanics are far more prevelant in dungeons than fight to fight. Such a small aspect of the game to write the whole thing off, akin to writing off Fallout cause the shooting mechanics are clunky or Divinity cause the battles can last an hour. If this is how you feel the genre just isn't for you. 

Ciri

Exactly. There is zero degradation in quality or design from the main quests to the smallest quests. In fact some of the Witcher contracts which are completely optional as with most of the content in the game have the best stories.

But people are forgetting the investigation aspects to the game, the puzzles and mechanics along with way along with the light choice based content. We don't play games like this for combat, no one plays Fallout or Skyrim for combat. They pay for questing, exploration and so on, TW3 does it better than all else and does the combat a damn sight better too. Skyrim is as basic as you can get. 

Ah, She's wonderful. Pretty much the most OP character in video games too, Would love to play a game where she goes world hopping, they could do so much with it, get away from the basic lore and even bring Ciri into modern worlds as she mentioned spending six months in one. 

Another thing that makes it so great is you can't go teleporting around with fast travel, you end up inclined to travel to a location since you have to go find a sign post and reserve fast travel for long journeys.

I just think games like Dragon's Dogma, Elden Ring, Forbidden West and GoT have much better battle systems.  I'm not writing W3 off, I just think it isn't a 10/10.  It is more like a 8/10.  Good game, but nowhere near as good as people make it out to be, IMO.