I booted it up on the PS4 Pro and was thrust back into the main quest line where I had to go find Triss in Novigrad. I played a few hours a couple months back and got to the end of the Bloody Baron quest and put it down due to other games like God of War getting in the way.
The first thing I noticed was for a game people call gorgeous. The game sure is drab and brown. There's beautiful moments like when there's a big orange sunset, but for the majority of my experience I was looking at murky browns. Something is off about the graphics and I can't put my finger on it. Maybe it's the overabudance of low textures of the grass or lack of more brighter colors like there is in the Blood and Wine expansion (which I never got to yet). For a game that has Pro support I expected the game to look a bit better.
I can't speak on the console experience. On a high-end PC, the game is gorgeous. Even the beginning sequence, with the sun against the water around the cart that the griffon attacked, it immediately struck me as wonderful when I played the game two years ago.
That said, Horizon: Zero Dawn definitely makes TW3 graphically look bad, and that's even comparing the PS4 Pro to the high-end Witcher 3 experience on PC. HZD does have some issues with faces and facial animation but otherwise yes, it's the superior visual game; beautiful colors, well-done HDR, better enemy designs, much more variety, etc.
I decided to roam around on horseback for a while and forgot all about how awful Roach is to control. The horse freaks the hell out at any semblance of a hill or bridge. It was frustrating to get anywhere as Roach would constantly stop for no reason and lose all momentum. There were times that it was flat and easy to manuver terrain and Roach still wouldn't cooperate at times. Assassin's Creed Origins still has the best horse in my opinion. That horse has no problems jumping down cliffs and runs at max speed without you needing to hold buttons down. Not to mention the autorun on the path for Roach is horrendous. If there's any turn Roach will need to take he'll much rather abandon the path and run into a tree.
LOL my dude, you can't really praise Breath of the Wild and criticize Witcher's horseback riding. They are both terrible, though, I agree.
As I roamed around on horseback I noticed a number of glitches and odd quirks. There was a pack of wolves running through the air, groups of villagers would pop out of nowhere onto the road, and other general glitches I wouldn't expect after a game that has had so many patches. It feels almost like AC:Unity with the wonky townspeople
As I came across some minor activities to do like monster nests or hidden treasure, I realized two things. The combat sucks and the side activity is repetitive. First the combat. I was one of the people who never disliked the combat back in 2015 and thought it fine for the time. But now there's so many options like oils and random potions that I never once felt like using (playing on normal like I do for all games) and Geralt has noticeable delay on every action you want him to do. The combat is basically, smash square and then dodge roll, however animations take so long by the time you roll the monster and already hit you.
I didn't experience that with the glitches. For the most part The Witcher 3 was good, particularly for an open world game... I didn't have a bunch of showstopper bugs like I did in Fallout 4, for instance.
Combat, again, you can't praise Breath of the Wild and then shit on TW3's combat. They are both awful, for different reasons. TW3's combat
does suck, though. I can't deny that. The animations are lengthy and yet poor; like Geralt flails around a lot. It doesn't "feel" good and tight. And the difficulty in TW3, just as in TW2, is inverted- the beginning is tougher, the end becomes a cakewalk as you have many more tools to deal with monsters (and humans).
So I'm disappointed to see that one of my favorite games doesn't hold up as much as I wanted it to. Maybe Breath of the Wild spoiled me, but the game instantly feels aged which is not great for a game that's only 3 years old.
I disagree. To me, The Witcher 3 is still the best game this generation, and the best WRPG ever made. I do recognize its gameplay problems, and I personally was more invested in the game's story so I was able to overlook them when I played it.
For me, the game that really challenged TW3 was Horizon: Zero Dawn, and not Breath of the Wild. I think BotW was a charming game that brings great exploration and traversal to the table, but consider:
-nonexistent story and characters
-open world inadequately developed
-bad, shallow combat
-lack of dungeons
-lack of meaningful progression
-weapon durability is trash system
-awful UI
-dated visuals
Horizon has some flaws too, in that the game feels way too safe, but I'd put forth that it overall outclasses both The Witcher 3 and Zelda: Breath of the Wild as a complete (and consistent!) package- better combat than both other games, better visuals than both games, better traversal than TW3, better story/characters than BotW.
I'd still put The Witcher 3 over Horizon just because the story and impactful side quests made more of an impression on me at the time. I don't agree that the game has aged poorly. There have been open-world games which followed that improved on this or that, but I don't feel like the game has been fully passed-by, not really.
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