The review seems to be saying that the gameplay isn't fun after a while (a lot of reviews are saying that the gameplay is repetitive). And they probably praise "walking simulators" for actually working to improve the one area (storytelling) that video games as a whole haven't made any great strides in. Video games have centuries of books and poems and decades of television and movies as guides on how to tell complex stories but we're only just now beginning to see improvements in storytelling methods.
Of course, not every game needs to tell a serious and complex story but even some of the best tv and movie comedies manage to tell cohesive stories with rounded characters as well as making people laugh. We should ask for the same thing from video games; fun gameplay and cohesive narrative.
"enraged into singlehandedly murdering dozens of people because the glass of water they served him was dirty."
Major correction. That wasn't rage Herr Starr showed but cold blooded calculation. The dirty glass of water inspired the later story that the pig floated because of something in the water. He killed them so that no one could contradict the story.
Apples and oranges. If you want to romance her, make a female Ryder and do it. You get pretty much the same dialogue as male Ryder and can make your own femRyder instead of using the default. Sounds like you just don't want to play as femRyder and/or have a problem with same sex pairings. Why do I suggest this? Because your reasoning is dumb (They both literally get the same option to talk about religion with Suvi and only default femRyder has the bad facial animations you're talking about).
If it's a good movie or show, there is no way you can catch all of the subtle nuances in one viewing. Re-watching it from a new perspective whether due to experience or time, usually adds to the experience. If you were talking about a movie like Transformers or a show like The Strain, then yeah , re-watching would be counterproductive.
Kind of related but binge watching Netflix has emphasized for me how bloated American tv seasons typically are. I'm still only in season 2 of Agents of Shield because I can't imagine that they actually needed all 20 of the episodes left for that season to tell the story they wanted to tell. I managed to make it through three seasons of the X-Files before I had to look up recommendations of which episodes were x-files, which were interesting side cases and which could be safely skipped. I get why the seasons tend to be so long but it has made me more selective when it comes to choosing which new show to watch.
@Myron117: Have you played Mass Effect: Andromeda? It's like that in almost every way (New Frontier has Andromeda beat in terms of character models but Andromeda has better character development than New Frontier). Both have interesting premises but neither are as effective as they could or should have been in delivering on these premises.
@Daian: Sensuality is literally one of the things that defines most sorceresses outside Nilfgaard and compared to someone like Philippa, Triss is actually pretty tame. As for maturity, I'm pretty sure Triss in the books is portrayed as being like a sister to Ciri and as still having a girlish crush on Geralt so you might be exaggerating her maturity. Emma Stone could work. ScarJo is way too sensual and too old to play Ciri.
Caduceus89's comments