I see a lot of "Thoughts so far" reviews, so I figured I would go ahead and write one of the first proper post-completion ones. Not that I'm any kind of literary genius.
Let's start with the elephant in the room: The graphics.
Right. So most of you have probably heard of the graphics downgrade by now. A downgrade which (to my knowledge) still isn't admitted by CDPR. Fact of the matter: The game simply doesn't look like the shots from 2013 which were supposed to simulate gameplay footage. And it's a shame too because those shots were amazing.
I've a pretty good setup, so I played the game on the ultra settings without any problems, and while you can nitpick here and there, zoom in and point at a polygon like you found Holger, there's no denying that the game remains beautiful in spite of the downgrade. It's masterfully sculpted.
The game was advertised as open-world, which it kinda is. Kinda isn't. The Elder Scrolls series are classic open-world games. The Wild Hunt isn't quite like that. CDPR have instead taken the route Bioware did with Dragon Age: Inquisition, but made it tons better. And honestly, this is what works for the game.
I see people complaining about it, saying that it isn't open-world but just huge empty areas filled with the occasional monster den --Which it isn't by the way-- But what wouldn't it have been if you had to ride from Kaer Morhen to Novigrad, or manually sail your dingy to The Skellige Isles? Not only would it take you a full week of playing Boat Simulator to the get there, but the game would have to be 50 times bigger, it would be stretched painfully thin on content and the release would've been pushed to 2035.
I mean, you wouldn't say WoW isn't open-world simply because you don't manually sail or fly from the Eastern Kingdoms to Kalimdor or Northrend. So yeah, don't worry about it. There's plenty of optional content to fill the areas, and enough important-feeling sidequests that you aren't forced into sniffing out witcher contracts to reach a level where you can progress the story.
As for the kind of content we're presented with, there is one important thing you have to keep in mind: The setting.
You're a witcher. You basically live on the road, hand to mouth, same as you've done the past 80 years or so. Geralt is dirt poor according to lore. Yes, some of the content is relatively uninteresting seen-before monster slaying, but that's what Geralt does, so it actually makes sense. A lot more than the leader of an Inquisition and supposed Messiah of the Divine, walking around and slaughtering mountain rams to donate 10 loins of meat to a hunter, or finding a random elf womans wedding ring.
Thankfully though, this isn't the only type content CDPR has packed into the game, though admittedly most of it involves fighting or chosing the morals of Geralt. But what did you expect? Guy has two swords strapped to his back and has been genetically modified to kill things. Get with the setting guys.
At this point I should probably mention my 50 hours. There's many many more hours worth of content. At least 50 more. At one point I reached a turning point in the story, where I thought I would no longer be able to do side quests. Turns out that was only a temporary thing which terminted some specific quests though but by then I was like "Meh, story time". You'll know when you get there.
Another thing is that while you level pretty slowly in the beginning, you eventually level almost effortlessly. I felt that it took me a while to reach level 10 but Poof! suddenly I was level 18. I still had side quests that I didn't get around to doing which say "Recommended level: 12" only now it's grayed out. I think this means you don't get experience for it any longer, but it kinda felt like a disincentive to doing them, so in that regard I skipped quite a bit.
Gwent is the new dice poker, and while it isn't quite Magic: The Gathering it certainly beats the yatzy from the previous games. Investing time in it is completely optional, but pretty amusing. Most NPCs will beat the crap out of you in the beginning since it's difficult, if not impossible, to know a characters Gwent level prior to playing him/her.
It's a pretty enjoyable little game which requires some degree of strategy to beat opponents. It's a best of 3 format with a limited card poll, so losing can actually be a winning strategy if the opponent commits to many ressources to his victory.
The UI is a little strange. On one side you have the by-now standart categories of loot: Quest Items, Useables, Gear, Junk, etc., but it has a bit of it's own life. Tying food to your hotbar makes it euto-equip olives when you run out of dried fish. This is nice most of the time, except when it throws in a random edible quest item like Werewolf Meat. This might be because I botched the quest but I don't know so I'm scarred to eat it.
Pressing "I" to reach inventory conveniently skips the UI's main menu, but pressing escape then takes you to it, rather than back out to the game. When chatting with NPC's you also can't press escape to leave the conversation. Instead you have to click the number key which corresponds with that characters "Goodbye" dialogue option and then press space like a madman to skip actually uttering the word. I guess it's good for immersion, but it's a little annoying at times and feels very counter-intuitive.
As with the above mentioned example, the controls aren't quite as natural as I would've liked, and battle isn't always as fluent as you might hope. Throwing bombs always feels a little off, tugging your thumb into your palm to dodge with "Alt" takes a few hours to get used to, and I've yet to discover how to climb down cliffs and edges without taking a ton of fall damage or straight up dying, but overall they're pretty good once you get familiar with them.
Playing on the higher difficulties actually make battles difficult, which is a nice change of pace from most games.
Facing more than 3 opponents can very well result in you dying. Which is nice, but would be nicer if you had a quicksave button. Horse fighting is a thing, as shown in the trailer, but it's mostly to humour you. It's slightly exploitable since opponents pretty much are incapable of hitting you, while you get bonus damage (presumably from momentum). This is rather nifty when you encounter groups of enemies which you shouldn't quite be able to handle unless you invest a large amount of resources. Fighting is pretty enjoyable though, and you can slightly personalize you fighting style through choice of armour and whether you spec into witcher signs, bombs, crossbow, etc.
Crafting sadly didn't really appeal to me. There's an absolute overflow of materials everywhere, and eventually the only reason I really looted anything was because space (loot all) was easier to press than escape (exit). You'll have to loot a little from time to time to find the recipes for blade oils or potions, and find some sweet witcher gear diagrams, but you quite easily find good weapons so crafting them yourself really doesn't seem like something that was worth my time.
Conveniently, you only have to "invent" a type of bomb or potion, restocking it only requires any type of alcohol and a bit of meditation. Not sure how a mug of Temerian Rye turns into a Dragon's Dream bomb, but then again. I don't dabble in alchemy.
Thankfully, inventory space isn't really an issue. It can be upgraded a couple of times, and most crafting materials don't really weigh a thing. I think the main reason it feels stupid is because recent games have imposed a Gotta-Loot-It-All mentality on me. I might need need it! And if not then I can always sell it. I had so much monster blood in my inventory that it bordered on the ridiculous.
But that's actually not the intent of the game. You're supposed to loot sporadically, and then loot some more when there's something you want. The game sort of tries to hint this to you by saying that guards don't like stealing, and through the fact that it's relatively hard to actually sell all your stuff. Keep in mind that it's only guards who don't like it though. You can just remain out of view or walk into any peasants home and go maximum viking on their shit.
Sadly these subtle hints are countered by the fact that you find the diagrams and recipes through said looting.
The atmosphere of the game is spot on and very much in-tune with both the previous games and the books.
There will be occasional references to both of these, which are quite amusing. NPC banter isn't all too repetitive in my opinion. There's a few which stand out, like the occasional NPC who seems to be humming "Beach Boys- Barbara Ann" but most of it actually works very well as the idle background chatter it's supposed to be. You can stop up and listen to it (which can be both fun and informative from time to time), but it doesn't feel like 10 specific lines that are imposed on you at each corner and blasted out through your speakers.
The games also has plenty of small references to other things. I already mentioned the Beach Boys fan, and I have happened upon strumpets who may or may not be quoting Kiss. I also manage to find Tyrion Lannister though I won't tell you where. This is made slightly more amusing by the fact that Charles Dance provides the voice of Emperor Emhyr var Emreis.
The voice acting is likewise spot-on, and dialogue usually feels good rather than the drag you might experience in other games. By favorite moment was a specific conversation with Yennefer, where I had 4-5 of the classic info-mill dialogue options, one of which being a "You ok?" type. After 2 she pointed out that I hadn't asked her that first, and when I then got to it so was annoyed that she had to point out my lack of concern for her before I got around to asking. It was quite amusing and had me feel a little sorry for Geralt, who afterall was merely a victim of my gaming habits. These little things help a great deal in blowing life into the characters and the environment and supplements greatly to the games overall enjoyability.
The character models are also reasonably diverse. I dare say anyone with a modicum of personality or importance have unique textures and/or models (Tyrion had his own), but that being said, the game isn't without reasonable recycling. Keep in mind though, that according to lore, all the elder races are basically chinese in the eyes of the humans. They can't tell them apart. Figuratively speaking of course.
Lastly there's the story. Don't honestly know why I saved it for last, but I find it difficult to write about.
It's good. It's bit of a low note to end on, but that's really all there is to say about it. It's not amazingly complex, nor the most innovative story ever. Bits and pieces are predictable if you're a little experienced (i.e. read books, play games and movies with plots), but it does a pretty good job at creating a bond between you and the characters.
tl;dr: Why did you click my review if you didn't read it?
Feel free to comment if you have questions or simply disagree. Cheers.