This review does not contain any spoilers for any major events in the game

The Story of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt starts where The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings left of. The story itself is loosely based on the books by Andrzej Sapkowski. So the game has a lot of additional lore and history to go on unlike many other games where the story lacks history and background. There are some nods and hints to this in the game but not enough to where you would not understand a major point in the game if you have not read the books. The books are more like a guidelines than something the games follows extremely which is a good thing because it leaves the game with options unlike the books.
One of these being the many romance options in The Witcher 3. The biggest one of these being having to chose between Triss Merigold and Yennefer of Vengerberg. This choice has left many fans arguing between which of the two sorceresses to choose. This is a testament to how good the story of The Witcher 3 really is. Unlike the books there are many choices throughout the game which the player gets to make. That is one of the fantastic things about the Witcher 3. It really immerses you in the story and you feel like you truly are making the story itself unlike some other games which only give you the illusion of choice.

Speaking of stunning visuals the graphics of The Witcher 3 are gorgeous. Beautiful landscapes and even though the game is a couple of years old it looks better than most games that have come out to this day. Now a lot of people say that graphics aren't everything and while that may be true that does not mean that you should skip out on amazing graphics. This game is one of the most visually stunning and that really helps with the immersion. Even on lower settings this game still looks amazing.
When speaking of graphics we of course have to mention performance and this game is amazing at that. I tried it out on my school laptop that is in no way meant for gaming and turned down every setting possible and the game still looked amazing and I even got around 40-50fps. For a laptop WITHOUT a graphics card that is amazing. My own gaming pc handles this game amazingly at ultra with many mods installed of course but that is to be expected for a pc with very high end hardware.

The soundtrack of The Witcher 3 is to this day one of the best soundtracks of any media whatsoever. It’s fits perfectly with what you are doing and comes on at the right times. When you are fighting monsters the music becomes epic and you feel like a true Witcher. When the romance cutscenes come on the music is mellow and relaxing and truly fits with the feel of the scenes.
My two favorites are the music in Hearts of Stones (Gaunter o’ dimms soundtrack) which is truly terrifying when combined with one of the best characters in gaming history (more on him later). And the music that plays when you are in Beauclair that makes you feel like a true hero. This music fits really well with the feel and atmosphere of Toussaint.

The gameplay of a game is what is most important to a lot of people in the gaming community and this game has good gameplay. The controls do not feel clunky and once you get used to it everything feels smooth. Some people do not think that the fighting is amazing but from what I have played I thought that the fighting was fine. Everyone has their preferences so there are mods that change the way the fighting feels and because of that the gameplay is good for those people as well but more on mods later.

Hearts of stone:
Hearts of stone is the smaller of the DLC and takes place in Velen and Novigrad. (Locations that you could already visit without the DLC). Because of this I believe that a lot of people take this DLC for granted and that it is very underrated. In this DLC we get introduced to one of my favorite characters of all time: Gaunter o’ dimm. This man can be truly terrifying at times and that combined with his amazing soundtrack that I wrote about before. This moment in particular was one of my favorite. Some children casually singing his theme. In this DLC you also meet a character from the first Witcher game. I will not spoil who that is but she is a very beloved character and it is a nice way to show appreciation towards fans who played the first game. You do not need to worry if you have not played the first Witcher game as that is not required to understanding the plot or story. In this DLC you will also have a chance of getting the viper Witcher gear which is one of the best looking armor sets in my opinion. So I believe that this DLC is totally worth it for only 10€.

Blood and wine:
Blood and wine is the bigger of the DLC’s and let’s you visit a completely new area. The Duchy of Toussaint. It has an amazing atmosphere and reminds me a bit of France. This DLC is in my opinion the best DLC of all time and was even awarded; The Game Award for Best Role Playing Game. Yes a DLC got the award for best RPG game and that is totally deserved. The story is amazing, the visuals are mind blowing the soundtrack as said before is truly a work of art. I could sing of your praises all day long but you need to play it in order to truly experience what I am talking about. It also gives an incredible ending to The Witcher 3.

After reading this review you might think that I am some Witcher 3 fanboy that can't see any flaws with the game but that is not true. No game is perfect and even a great game like the Witcher 3 has it’s flaws.

A minor gripe of mine in regards to the Witcher 3 is that at times it feels like the game is pushing you to picking Yen instead of Triss. I know that this is an extremely sensitive topic and can be where the Witcher community shows its ugly side but I feel like the choices should be more balanced although a lot of the Witcher 3 community thinks that there should not even be a choice at all. I understand that I am in the minority when I say that I picked Triss over Yen but I still feel like the choice should be more equal as they are both toxic towards Geralt in the books to be honest and their portrayal in the games is not at all reflective of their book counterparts. 

However biggest flaw of the game is without a doubt the fact that some major characters from The Witcher 2 do not make it into the Witcher 3. Characters like for example Saskia and Iorveth are amazing and some of the best characters in the entire trilogy but they are nowhere to be seen in the third installment. While the game does make references to a lot of events and characters in the Witcher 2 I feel like it could have done a lot more in this aspect of the game. The game feels in some ways a bit insulting towards players of the previous installment by not including Iorveth or Saskia anywhere in the game. Even a single quest or DLC would have been enough for the hardcore fans of the franchise to feel appreciated.

Truthfully this game does not have that many flaws and that is not just as someone who loves the games. I’ve seen people who give negative reviews on the witcher 3 and could still not find any good reasons not to like the game.

My final rating of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is: 10/10.

This review does not contain any spoilers for any major events in the game

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings has a great story with a amazing plot. It's plot is based on the fantasy novel series by Andrzej Sapkowski and while the Witcher 2 obviously draws a lot of its inspiration from the book novels it does also deviate a lot from them, which is a very good choice according to me since video games are a different medium of storytelling and therefore the story needs to adapt to the medium it's being told in. The creators of the game are also amazing at storytelling so the Witcher 2 does not suffer in terms of plot because of the fact that it does not follow Sapkowski's novels to a T.
The story has two main "paths” that are completely different to each other. These paths depend on whether you the player decide to side with Iorveth or Vernon Roche meaning that you will have to play the game twice in order to fully experience the Witcher 2. This helps with the amount of hours you play the game and will justify your purchase even more.
The game also has multiple different endings based on your decisions and your choices in the game do actually matter which is great. The decisions you make in the Witcher 2 also can impact your Witcher 3 experience should you decide to import your Witcher 2 save to The Witcher 3.

The gameplay of the Witcher 2 takes a lot of getting used to and is very clunky compared to its successor The Witcher 3 but that is to be expected for a game from 2011. The game is however close to unplayable with a controller but is better with mouse and keyboard. The quests themselves can vary from great to boring and the game does have some very confusing map design. Whilst on the topic of the map the minimap can be extremely buggy and not even work at all at times.
The game is also close to unplayable at times without video walkthroughs and mundane tasks in quests that should take a couple of minutes can take far longer because of the fact that the game does a poor job explaining what you should do or where you should go. It seems that a lot of people that have played the Witcher 2 agree with this sentiment since many of the comments on video tutorials for quests are talking about the entire game or certain quests being very frustrating.
But when you get used to the quirks of the Witcher 2 and learn how to do the quests properly the gameplay can be very good and therefore I believe that the game is far superior on a second playthrough.

The graphics are great for it’s time but do feel a bit outdated for the current decade. It’s hard to imagine but this game was made almost 10 years ago and therefore it makes sense that the graphics feel a bit old but the graphics are not as bad as other games from this time. I believe that with a couple of mods you can get this game to look stunning and performance was actually better than I thought it would be for a old game.

This is where the game truly shines. The Witcher 2 has one of the greatest soundtracks in video game history. It’s epic and fits the games theme and aesthetics perfectly and while the game does not have as great of theming as The Witcher 3 it is really an amazing soundtrack. The main theme is absolutely incredible and gives me goosebumps every time I start the game.
By theming I mean that the game does not have different enough soundtracks for locations and events like The Witcher 3 for example. In the Witcher 3 the music of Toussaint sounds very different from the music of White orchard. And the music for events like fighting monsters sounds different to when you fight certain people.

As you can read from the gameplay section the game has quite a lot of gameplay flaws. The is also very dialogue heavy at times with certain characters having subpar voice acting. The game does also have certain map and minimap bugs and some characters feeling emotionless in their expressions but since this a game from 2011 that is almost to be expected. A lot of the games flaws are honestly down to the game being quite old.

While the game does have its flaws if you can get past them this is an incredible and charming game that you will most likely fall in love with by the end of your second playthrough. It has amazing characters and a very good story to tell

My final rating of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings would have been 6/10 after my first playthrough but after playing the game more times than I can count I have gotten used to it’s flaws and quirks and learned to play around and with them so therefor I will be giving the game a solid 8.5/10.