What can I say that already hasn't already been said;
- hands-down the most immersive, rich environment of any RPG I've ever played.
- How well woven the plot and sub-plots are with each other is mind-boggling, as seemingly trival choices early in the game can impact later interactions
- The lore is well documented and again shows how much care the developer has taken to interweave seemingly unconnected items such as an artifact or book found in an abandoned village to the villagers you overhear as you ride by talking about a local legend.
- Holy crap the environment is huge
- Little details such as Aard affecting the trees or water in its area effect add to the overall experience
- Graphically its beautiful
- Character development and personalities is generally well done, though I was a bit disappointed on the lack of interaction with 'main' characters after their plotlines were complete, such as Zoltan and Dandelion. It would have been nice if they continued to react to Geralt's actions or at least allow some dialogue regarding it. It felt like they were taken out of the story arc rather abruptly, granted this is a minor point of contention.
- The amount of content at times can be overwhelming with the horde of ? showing up on the map. For a completionist I imagine running/sailing all over gods creation to find out what each one was; only to find an equipment cache would be frustrating. I found myself losing interest in the discovery aspect of the game when I was in Skellige due to the shear volume of 'smuggler's caches' that you could only get to by sailing to the area...which for the most part was uninteresting and slow.
- While I didn't come across the level bugginess and lag some people talk about, I did find that there was clipping and some minor glitches mostly in the latter stages of the game.
- Combat....it has been and still is the one aspect of the Witcher series that I find most lacking. No its not game breaking as some people contend in my opinion, but it is frustrating and clunky, The slow response times and broken flow in combat make it frustrating to say the least, fast attack whirlwind is the perfect example of this. I would find Geralt launching into it even repeatedly even though i hadn't continued to press the attack, then he would go pirouetting off in a straight line while his enemy was off to the side and in somecases would get a free hit since the sequence was slow to stop.

Having said that even though the combat system is weak, the overall game itself is amazing. I personally found the Witcher 3 to be a beautiful and immersive grand adventure of the highest caliber and would highly recommend it to any RPG fan. 9.5/10

I have to be honest, as an older gamer (and father of teenage girls) and knowing this was a story rich game I assumed I wouldn't be able to invest in the teenage characters but thankfully I was very wrong. While I didn't look at it from the same perspective as a younger player; the writing was so compelling that the story definitely drew me in and I cared for the outcomes of the choices I made.

First off what an absolutely amazing soundtrack, even if it isn't your style of music it definitely fits the story to a tee. The way the subtle guitar tones play in the background as visual cutscenes playout, the soft songs playing as a casual opening of a episode start etc. all create such great atmosphere and ambience.

The puzzle mechanics that utilize Max's abilities to push forward story choices and the narrative itself was refreshingly creative and new albeit not overly challenging. The way they were intertwined with the dialogue choices and how that itself affected the character development of those you were interacting with was brilliantly done.

It was a beautiful, emotional story that draws you into the world of Arcadia Bay and really fleshes out the characters, each having depth and multiple aspects to their personalities making them interesting and engaging. The peaks and valleys (I'm trying to make this spoiler free as possible) in the plot makes for a riveting adventure.

The writing is cringy at times but frankly they are teenage hipsters so I really don't think that its off brand tbh. The only thing I found mildly annoying was the off-sync speech (at times) and occasionally I felt that some of the voice actors missed their mark...but again I might be just too old to get it :)

Overall, great story, much feels and hella good soundtrack (yes I did that on purpose). 9.5/10