Witcher 3; would I like it?

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

#3. Is the combat still super clunky and the potion system dumb? So for reference for what I didn't like...I felt like it took Geralt a year to do anything in a fight he was so slow. I would generally lose a decent chunk of health because it felt like it took seconds between when I told him to swing and when he swung his damn sword. The tips I was told to help in fights was to roll around like a God Damn bouncy ball the entire fight, which felt less like "Bad Ass Warrior" and more like "Bowling Ball just hoping it goes well".

I didn't find the gameplay to be good, I would've had a more enjoyable time watching a LP sadly, and I hate watching LPs. I like everything but the gameplay. The combat is like a mismatch of Souls and Arkham combat. The main problem is that combat was designed with humanoid enemies in mind instead of monsters and witchers are monster slayers. The monster fights that should be the highlights of the game, fall very flat IMO. Comparing something like the griffin fight to Dragon's Dogma is a night and day difference. It's clear CDPR doesn't really know how to do action combat either as the hitboxes aren't very good and there's no i-frames either. You can get a dodge skill that makes the ENTIRE dodge animation nothing but i-frames, which is pretty broken. There's a lot that breaks the combat, just quen and axii alone (not upgraded) make the combat joke easy. I played on whatever the Hard mode is and you can go up to just about any monster and just hack away at them without worrying about dodging or blocking with the proper oil applied and potion drunk. So playing as an actual witcher makes combat far too easy, and I didn't even have any alchemy skills either.

The crafting and looting is just busywork too. You don't need money to buy anything because you'll find something better than you just bought very quickly. And, you'll want pick a "school" of gear to use and that's it because it takes so much inventory management out of the equation. For example, I used the cat school gear. Then every 5 levels or so, you merely upgrade your say feline sword +1 to feline sword +2 and thus you no longer care about looting or inventory management whatsoever.

 

[Athennesi]

Some of you may remember me as the guy who heard great things about The Witcher 2, played it for about ten hours, and got so frustrated with how clunky the combat was and how I didn't have any clue what was going on that I quit (Also, damn, you have one hell of a memory! How in the world did you remember that?). I have now continued to hear great things about The Witcher 3 and my curiosity is finally breaking me down to play it.

So the long story short is that one of my major complaints (What the fuck is going on in the story?!?!) is taken care of as you need no real knowledge of the series to play W3. I have W3 ready to go but haven't actually played it but I see the Season Pass is on sale.

So a few questions for you Witcher peeps...

#1. Can you play the story knowing minimal about the previous stories? I basically know Geralt is a Witcher, which are barely tolerated by society for their monster killing abilities, the black haired lady and the red haired lady is/was his lady friends of the sexy fun kind, and that's about it.

#2. Is the DLC incorporated into the world, similar to how Fallout does it where they are just quests out there for you to find or are they just their own things you click on when you're ready to play outside of the main story like Dragon Age Awakening?

#3. Is the combat still super clunky and the potion system dumb? So for reference for what I didn't like...I felt like it took Geralt a year to do anything in a fight he was so slow. I would generally lose a decent chunk of health because it felt like it took seconds between when I told him to swing and when he swung his damn sword. The tips I was told to help in fights was to roll around like a God Damn bouncy ball the entire fight, which felt less like "Bad Ass Warrior" and more like "Bowling Ball just hoping it goes well".

The potion system I hated too because it seemed stacked against you where you had to know what you were going to be fighting in order to use the right potion and the only way you knew what you were going to be fighting is if you happened to know what was coming up or if you got yourself killed and had to reload.

So anyone want to help a gamer out here and answer my questions three?

#1 You can fairly easily jump in, but I'd recommend watching a recap on YT on series events about it. It is more tied to books history than games ( though second one plays role in the setting)
#2 Their own thing with some references. Second one serves as epilogue in it's own way. Both are probably the best DLC and Expansion ever released.
#3 They improved quite a bit from it, but it also has some lingering issues from second one. Roll is now a defensive measure to get out of trouble, instead you use dodge, side step or riposte for countering. Using signs and potions ( now in combat) is a lot more fluid with swordplay. Only issue I've had with a spin attack animation( too long for a light attack).
I liked it, but it seems to be divisive for a lot of people, I recommend watching Superbunnyhop's review on the game (and combat).

 

[Athennesi]

Comparing something like the griffin fight to Dragon's Dogma is a night and day difference.

Disagree on this the most...I found DD to flashy, but completely unengaging spectacle while you're whittling away at bloated enemy healthbars x 10. It's mostly spam of flashy abilities while enemies spend 90% of the time standing around doing nothing: the combat.
Hell, I ended up watching entire season of Westworld while playing it...DD combat is at it's for best for pulling killer gifs.
Even the highlight of the game, monster climbing is very poorly executed.

 

[Amaror]

#1. Can you play the story knowing minimal about the previous stories? I basically know Geralt is a Witcher, which are barely tolerated by society for their monster killing abilities, the black haired lady and the red haired lady is/was his lady friends of the sexy fun kind, and that's about it.

I played all the previous games through to the end and read the books, so I am not the best judge of this, but as far as I could tell they explain the basics very well throughout the story. They introduce their new and old characters well, but without dumping exposition on the player.

#2. Is the DLC incorporated into the world, similar to how Fallout does it where they are just quests out there for you to find or are they just their own things you click on when you're ready to play outside of the main story like Dragon Age Awakening?

It's incorporated if you want to. Both dlcs can be just played easily with the main game with Heart of Stone taking place in one of the maps of the main game, slightly expanded and Blood and Wine taking place largely in an entirely new Area you travel to. Both dlcs can also be started seperately from the main menu at which point you would get a generic Geralt to play the dlcs with at an apropriate level for them. I would recommend doing them with your character from the main game though, they incorporate a few of your choices very nicely.

#3. Is the combat still super clunky and the potion system dumb? So for reference for what I didn't like...I felt like it took Geralt a year to do anything in a fight he was so slow. I would generally lose a decent chunk of health because it felt like it took seconds between when I told him to swing and when he swung his damn sword. The tips I was told to help in fights was to roll around like a God Damn bouncy ball the entire fight, which felt less like "Bad Ass Warrior" and more like "Bowling Ball just hoping it goes well".

The potion system I hated too because it seemed stacked against you where you had to know what you were going to be fighting in order to use the right potion and the only way you knew what you were going to be fighting is if you happened to know what was coming up or if you got yourself killed and had to reload.

I for one think it's massively improved. I tolerated the combat in Witcher 2, but I actively enjoyed the combat in Witcher 3. It's no game-changer, like in Dark Souls were the combat system is the best part of the whole game, but it's reasonably enjoyable. It's easy to pick up, enjoyable to play and I never found myself getting bored or tired of it. Which is pretty impressive since I 100% the game doing every possible thing to do in the game including collectibles and everything. And if you want to it can also provide a good challenge in the harder difficulties, with decent options to improve your chances against enemies, like potions and oils.
Potions have also been massively improved. You only have to craft and upgrade them once and they will refill automatically from strong alcohol your carrying around when you pass some time meditating. You can also switch them out and drink them during combat instantly, so there's no pre-cognition required here this time.

Considering the dlc: Just get it, it's fantastic. For the 15 dollars or so it's costing right now, you get more content with higher quality than most full-price rpgs nowadays.

 

[Zhukov]

Some of you may remember me as the guy who heard great things about The Witcher 2, played it for about ten hours, and got so frustrated with how clunky the combat was and how I didn't have any clue what was going on that I quit (Also, damn, you have one hell of a memory! How in the world did you remember that?). I have now continued to hear great things about The Witcher 3 and my curiosity is finally breaking me down to play it.

I was decidedly lukewarm on TW3, but as someone who despised TW2 I still regard TW3 as a massive improvement.

It's a better game in literally every way.

#1. Can you play the story knowing minimal about the previous stories?

Yes.

The main story arc is almost completely detached from the previous games.

There are callbacks with some of the side stories and returning characters, but the game does a fine job of letting you know who people are and how they relate to Geralt.

#3. Is the combat still super clunky and the potion system dumb?

It's... adequate. Massive improvement on the second game, mostly in terms of better controls and common sense adjustments.

Basically boils down to pressing dodge when an enemy is attacking you and mashing attack when they aren't. It would have sustained a ten hour game nicely. Got rather tiresome doing it throughout a 50 hour game.

(Can't answer #2 as I haven't touched the DLC.)

If you've already got it then I'd say there's no reason not to give it a spin.

 

[Danbo Jambo]

I'm one of the rare people who much, MUCH prefered TW2 and it's branching paths to TW3.

Firstly I'd suggest replaying TW2 and giving it another go, choosing to side with the Elf when you get the choice. I found a lot of the same issues which you and others describe about TW2 for a good 10-15 hours, but once past that and starting afresh I found my favourite RPG EVER. So much depth and replayability, so many angles to view the story from, so many choices to make. Combat also gets way better once you've got upgrades & signs involved. Playing the game on Dark Mode on a second/third full playthrough is bliss.

TW3 is goodish, and I've not played the DLC's so can't comment on those, but.......it doesn't half drag and for me is boring in comparison. You spend far more time doing busywork and involved with more mundane elements than in TW2. They make monster hunting feel like everyday, mundane, 9-5 work and boy does it get tiresome.

Try both for more than 10 hours and see how you go, I can see why people like TW3 but I think it's vastly overated.

 

[meiam]

The combat is very clunky, no two way about it. When fight starts Geralt moves at crawl speed for some reason and when attacking his attack homes in on enemy but are incredibly inaccurate, you'll regularly miss attack, especially if the enemy is standing on a slightly lower or higher elevation. You can place potions and grenades in quick use menu, but there's only enough place for 2 (4?) of them so if you're planning on using them a lot you constantly have to open your menu (which takes 5+ seconds on PS4, dunno on other platform) to re equip new one. Potion are pretty uninspired, there just "do X, Y% better" so I'd generally not use them.

The gameplay is also very shallow and easily broken, you start with a magic so completely OP that you could easily kill the last boss on the highest difficulty at level 1 if you felt like spending 1 hour hacking away at the him. Played it on highest difficulty and would sometime comes across enemy so high in level that instead of displaying there actual level it just show a skull, I could still easily kill them, just use the OP magic and then dodge and attack, really simple (the enemy and quest level distribution is just weird, plenty of high level quest/enemy in low level area and vice versa). The enemy variety is also very poor and it doesn't really matters anyway since all can easily be dispatch by using the same tactics (dodge and attack) you're pretty much invincible when dodging (see comment about attack being inaccurate that hold for enemy too). Geralt attack don't drain stamina or anything like that and there's no combo, so you can keep attacking forever and attack always stun lock enemy, to counter this enemy will away automatically parry his attack after X number of attack you land on them, so once you figure out the number of attack (let's say 3) it become: attack attack attack dodge attack attack attack dodge, rinse and repeat till you win.

Customization is technically vast, but it's all just stats boost, there's essentially only one type of weapon; sword (there's like 3-4 axe scattered trough out the game but there quickly obsolete). All sword have the same moves, reach, attack speed and so on, there just cosmetic difference. You start the game with almost everything you'll finish the game with, so combat doesn't change over the game. If you want to play without the sword, well you can't really, Geralt can only cast one magic every like 5-10 second (there's a few magic that you can hold down to continuously cast, but you can't fully really on them) and like I mentioned previously, to use grenade you have to constantly open the menu. You can also use a crossbow, but here again all crossbow are the same, have low reload speed and aren't very interesting.

You don't play TW3 for combat, you play it for writing and graphics (or just watch a LP, it's free). The environment is fairly limited (forest, swamp, mountain, beach, sea, city, sewer, ancient ruins, ancient elven ruins and snowy plains) but what there is looks very good and the writing is some of the best in gaming. But there's not really any real plot for most of the game, essentially the game is just a bunch of unrelated quest and occasionally the game remember that you have one big over arcing plot. There's literally a point in the game where you have to rescue someone so they can help you rescue someone so they can help you rescue someone so they can help you rescue someone, I'm not kidding. NPC model are sometime recycled for quest so there's a few point where it's hard to tell if what you're doing is part of one big quest or just two unrelated quest and while the quest writing is diverse what you actually do is very repetitive. One of the most common side quest are hunting quest, 80% proceed as such: Read bounty board, go to yellow ? mark on map, talk to NPC, go to yellow circle on map, activate witcher sense, follow red trail, loot quest item, go back to NPC, go to other yellow area, fight color swap version of enemy you already fought 10-100 times, go back to NPC, finish, they're glorified WoW quest chain is what I'm getting at.

But I didn't particularly enjoy the games (I'd give it a 6.5/10, above average but not by much) and everybody sings it's praise like it's the second coming, so maybe there's just something that didn't click with.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

What I have to say about your situation has probably been largely stated by others already. Like you though, I didn't enjoy the Witcher 2. I thought the combat was bad, the story confusing, and the game as a whole rather clunky.

The Witcher 3 is one of my favorite games ever and is definitely worth playing. The DLC is totally worth it and may be the best parts of the game.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Comparing something like the griffin fight to Dragon's Dogma is a night and day difference.

Disagree on this the most...I found DD to flashy, but completely unengaging spectacle while you're whittling away at bloated enemy healthbars x 10. It's mostly spam of flashy abilities while enemies spend 90% of the time standing around doing nothing: the combat.
Hell, I ended up watching entire season of Westworld while playing it...DD combat is at it's for best for pulling killer gifs.
Even the highlight of the game, monster climbing is very poorly executed.

I wouldn't say the healthbars were bloated if you came in at the right level but that's sorta every RPG. That's a problem across the board with tying damage to level, which really shouldn't be a thing (like Horizon for example). A good portion of how good a battle can be is tied to enemy attacks variety and animations. The creatures in Draong's Dogma feel like you're actually fighting those creatures because of the number of attacks and animations. And the fact that you can climb on them to get to weak spots makes it feel like you are legitimately beating it vs just hitting in the chin until the healthbar reaches 0 like almost every RPG. The fact that you can fly on a griffin or dragon is awesome. I was riding a dragon's head during a tornado one time. For the hydra, you can throw explosive barrels in its mouth and be eaten by it as well (it even takes a minute for it to swallow you). And the hydra freaking slithers around like a snake.

Witcher 3's griffin has maybe 3 different attacks, it's a boring fight partly due to that. And then such basic abilities like axii and quen totally make fights a joke. You don't even have to upgrade them either. Axii the griffin to stun, get in 3 hits or whatever, axii again to stun, get in 3 more hits, repeat again and again. It's just plain boring. It's clear CDPR doesn't know how to do action gameplay (hit boxes and i-frames are horrible) or even balance such simple abilities. How does something like quen (or axii) even get past the initial planning stages? Being invulnerable for one hit and then being able to reapply it right after is beyond broken. You have to vastly limit yourself to make the game anywhere near a challenge. Even in cut-scenes witcher signs are vastly OPed, there's a point where quen is used to block fireballs from a very powerful mage; witcher magic is not nearly that powerful.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Snip

I literally couldn't agree more.

 

[Athennesi]

Comparing something like the griffin fight to Dragon's Dogma is a night and day difference.

Disagree on this the most...I found DD to flashy, but completely unengaging spectacle while you're whittling away at bloated enemy healthbars x 10. It's mostly spam of flashy abilities while enemies spend 90% of the time standing around doing nothing: the combat.
Hell, I ended up watching entire season of Westworld while playing it...DD combat is at it's for best for pulling killer gifs.
Even the highlight of the game, monster climbing is very poorly executed.

I wouldn't say the healthbars were bloated if you came in at the right level but that's sorta every RPG. That's a problem across the board with tying damage to level, which really shouldn't be a thing (like Horizon for example). A good portion of how good a battle can be is tied to enemy attacks variety and animations. The creatures in Draong's Dogma feel like you're actually fighting those creatures because of the number of attacks and animations. And the fact that you can climb on them to get to weak spots makes it feel like you are legitimately beating it vs just hitting in the chin until the healthbar reaches 0 like almost every RPG. The fact that you can fly on a griffin or dragon is awesome. I was riding a dragon's head during a tornado one time. For the hydra, you can throw explosive barrels in its mouth and be eaten by it as well (it even takes a minute for it to swallow you). And the hydra freaking slithers around like a snake.

Witcher 3's griffin has maybe 3 different attacks, it's a boring fight partly due to that. And then such basic abilities like axii and quen totally make fights a joke. You don't even have to upgrade them either. Axii the griffin to stun, get in 3 hits or whatever, axii again to stun, get in 3 more hits, repeat again and again. It's just plain boring. It's clear CDPR doesn't know how to do action gameplay (hit boxes and i-frames are horrible) or even balance such simple abilities. How does something like quen (or axii) even get past the initial planning stages? Being invulnerable for one hit and then being able to reapply it right after is beyond broken. You have to vastly limit yourself to make the game anywhere near a challenge. Even in cut-scenes witcher signs are vastly OPed, there's a point where quen is used to block fireballs from a very powerful mage; witcher magic is not nearly that powerful.

That's honestly...complete nonsense. Witcher's Quen can be used as an exploit against less aggressive opponents, but that is by and large the least effective strategy that will take 10x longer than using anything else at your disposal.
In DD, there are a handful of game breaking abilities that are most effective all the time and require no skill of any kind. Sorcerer...summon tornado or meteor, for 15 sec while enemies stand around do nothing. Ranger: spam ten fold shot. Mystic Knight: hammer on magic cannon and obliterate everything. Everything else becomes obsolete: that is the easiest AND most effective "strategy".
And that is without even using items like mage periapt or exploding arrows, etc, which further completely break the game...Expansion game boss, dies literally in Seconds.
Plus restrictive use of skills makes experimentation completely void( unless you want to trail off to city back and forth, back and forth).
And you can freeze time and heal through inventory.
As for enemies, many like Death in Dogma have even LESS attacks...two, precisely. And there is no group coordination or aggro or any kind, they mostly wander around aimlessly and only attack whatever is near them. Some even literally WALK out of your attacks.
Plus the "awesome" climbing consists of press F when near at any given moment( while they completely ignore you), hold up to climb and button mash as long as you like( you can even restore stamina through inventory use at the same time, which counters any negatives).

 

[Trunkage]

I enjoyed Witcher 1 and 2. All 3 have different systems. Using grenades is far more beneficial than the previous. Since everyone is talking sugar, I'll talk about some parts of Witcher 3 that I dislike.

It is way too long. When you think it might be ending, the start a whole new area, and I think its one of the worst area in a video game. It made the ending a slog and wasted my time. I got the season pass and I haven't played it yet because its still too soon for me. I have never groaned in a game until I met that zone.

There is no real variety in the combat, and you tend to use the same tactics over and over as the enemies don't have enough variety. They have no weapon variety.

The turn your "love" into a raging a-hole. You do get a choice but the previous games built this person up only to ruin her.

The big bad has been played as this super army in the previous games but you defeat it with less than 15 people.

I liked the personal stuff from Witcher 3. They do some political intrigue but its a poor mans Witcher 2. I think that the motivations of character (with one notable exception) are more fleshed out and more realistic.

Don't get me wrong, still game of the year for that year.

 

[The Madman]

The turn your "love" into a raging a-hole. You do get a choice but the previous games built this person up only to ruin her.

Not sure what you mean by this one. Yennefer? Because while you might not like her she's portrayed pretty accurately in Witcher 3 as compared to the books.

Also Yennefer > Triss.

 

[Ravinoff]

Unlike...apparently everybody, I really enjoyed TW2 once I got past the lame opening, though right now I'm having some difficulty remembering anything besides the swamp kraken fight and kiting a horde of ghosts around during some ritual thing.

But despite trying twice, I just could not get into TW3. Maybe it's because I was trying to play with a keyboard and mouse (which worked fine for 2), but I found the movement horrible and lurchy, and the combat controls were absurd. Plus, somehow on the higher graphics settings, it makes even my rig (i7-6700K and GTX970) chug a bit.

 

[Trunkage]

The turn your "love" into a raging a-hole. You do get a choice but the previous games built this person up only to ruin her.

Not sure what you mean by this one. Yennefer? Because while you might not like her she's portrayed pretty accurately in Witcher 3 as compared to the books.

Also Yennefer > Triss.

Yeah, I meant Yennefer. In the first two games it seem like she was someone important but in Witcher 3 it turned out that she just uses/d everyone. I couldn't stand her. Id prefer to go stag than Yennefer

 

[The Madman]

Yeah, I meant Yennefer. In the first two games it seem like she was someone important but in Witcher 3 it turned out that she just uses/d everyone. I couldn't stand her. Id prefer to go stag than Yennefer

Yennefer is someone important; she's Geralts main love interest from the books and Ciri's adoptive mother. She's also manipulative, cold, and not necessarily the most friendly person. She does however still care deeply for both Geralt and Ciri and is, at her core, a genuinely good person. Yennefer and Geralt have long had a tumultuous relationship fuelled by the simple fact that neither are exactly social butterfly or very good at sharing their feelings, but that's also part of what has in the past drawn them to one another and what makes them an entertaining on/off again couple in the books and game.

Even so she's also an entirely optional romance in Witcher 3, so going stag isn't out of the question if you're so inclined.

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

That's honestly...complete nonsense. Witcher's Quen can be used as an exploit against less aggressive opponents, but that is by and large the least effective strategy that will take 10x longer than using anything else at your disposal.
In DD, there are a handful of game breaking abilities that are most effective all the time and require no skill of any kind. Sorcerer...summon tornado or meteor, for 15 sec while enemies stand around do nothing. Ranger: spam ten fold shot. Mystic Knight: hammer on magic cannon and obliterate everything. Everything else becomes obsolete: that is the easiest AND most effective "strategy".
And that is without even using items like mage periapt or exploding arrows, etc, which further completely break the game...Expansion game boss, dies literally in Seconds.
Plus restrictive use of skills makes experimentation completely void( unless you want to trail off to city back and forth, back and forth).
And you can freeze time and heal through inventory.
As for enemies, many like Death in Dogma have even LESS attacks...two, precisely. And there is no group coordination or aggro or any kind, they mostly wander around aimlessly and only attack whatever is near them. Some even literally WALK out of your attacks.
Plus the "awesome" climbing consists of press F when near at any given moment( while they completely ignore you), hold up to climb and button mash as long as you like( you can even restore stamina through inventory use at the same time, which counters any negatives).

What are you talking about? How would using Quen take 10x longer? You just have to reapply it when you get hit (which shouldn't be that often if you're decent at dodging). How is a button press here and there taking 10x longer? Not using quen was like 1st house-rule I made when I started playing the game and realized how broken it was. Then, I reach that time where I just wanted to just finish the game because I realized I'm just not enjoying the combat at all, and I would use quen occasionally to just avoid dying and re-doing fights. What's worse is that you don't even need to use quen (or axii) to be cheap, apply the right oil and drink the right potion, and you can basically just mash attack without worrying about even dodging (or using quen). For monster hunts at my level, I could just mash attack and win on the game's hard difficulty. Also, what are talking about with quen being the least effective strategy, have you seen some ridiculous OPed builds of the game on Youtube because quen is used quite a bit in those builds?

I realize Dragon's Dogma was no perfect game by any means but the combat was fun. In just about all RPGs, you become pretty overpowered towards the end with the right builds. And there's lots of RPGs where chugging health potions wins the day, even Demon's Souls had that. Almost every RPG (even DnD), you need to make house-rules to not break it.

Just look at the following griffin attacks in Dragon's Dogma, and the drakes have 13 different attacks. How can you say Witcher 3's griffin does anything like that?
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Griffin

 

[Athennesi]

That's honestly...complete nonsense. Witcher's Quen can be used as an exploit against less aggressive opponents, but that is by and large the least effective strategy that will take 10x longer than using anything else at your disposal.
In DD, there are a handful of game breaking abilities that are most effective all the time and require no skill of any kind. Sorcerer...summon tornado or meteor, for 15 sec while enemies stand around do nothing. Ranger: spam ten fold shot. Mystic Knight: hammer on magic cannon and obliterate everything. Everything else becomes obsolete: that is the easiest AND most effective "strategy".
And that is without even using items like mage periapt or exploding arrows, etc, which further completely break the game...Expansion game boss, dies literally in Seconds.
Plus restrictive use of skills makes experimentation completely void( unless you want to trail off to city back and forth, back and forth).
And you can freeze time and heal through inventory.
As for enemies, many like Death in Dogma have even LESS attacks...two, precisely. And there is no group coordination or aggro or any kind, they mostly wander around aimlessly and only attack whatever is near them. Some even literally WALK out of your attacks.
Plus the "awesome" climbing consists of press F when near at any given moment( while they completely ignore you), hold up to climb and button mash as long as you like( you can even restore stamina through inventory use at the same time, which counters any negatives).

What are you talking about? How would using Quen take 10x longer? You just have to reapply it when you get hit (which shouldn't be that often if you're decent at dodging). How is a button press here and there taking 10x longer? Not using quen was like 1st house-rule I made when I started playing the game and realized how broken it was. Then, I reach that time where I just wanted to just finish the game because I realized I'm just not enjoying the combat at all, and I would use quen occasionally to just avoid dying and re-doing fights. What's worse is that you don't even need to use quen (or axii) to be cheap, apply the right oil and drink the right potion, and you can basically just mash attack without worrying about even dodging (or using quen). For monster hunts at my level, I could just mash attack and win on the game's hard difficulty. Also, what are talking about with quen being the least effective strategy, have you seen some ridiculous OPed builds of the game on Youtube because quen is used quite a bit in those builds?

I realize Dragon's Dogma was no perfect game by any means but the combat was fun. In just about all RPGs, you become pretty overpowered towards the end with the right builds. And there's lots of RPGs where chugging health potions wins the day, even Demon's Souls had that. Almost every RPG (even DnD), you need to make house-rules to not break it.

Just look at the following griffin attacks in Dragon's Dogma, and the drakes have 13 different attacks. How can you say Witcher 3's griffin does anything like that?
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Griffin

Using everything else works ten times faster...it is more of a "safety net" than anything else. And no, if you played on the hardest difficulty: button mashing ( most of the time) is quick death against any decent opponent.
"And there's lots of RPGs where chugging health potions wins the day, even Demon's Souls had that. Almost every RPG (even DnD), you need to make house-rules to not break it."
Contradicting yourself much? Read what you wrote in the same post.
And you're cherry picking here: Griffin is one of the few creatures in DD with more than handful of attacks, there is a reason why it's the first thing DD fans mention, almost all of them have far less.
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Death
Also it has less than half of variety of enemies:
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Bestiary
http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher_3_monsters ( this is more than 3x than most rpg's out there)
And no, "fun" is no argument next to actual Facts:
Hardest boss with spam in Dogma in seconds, highest difficulty: https://youtu.be/YUQXgqL0MSU?t=40

 

[Phoenixmgs_v1legacy]

Using everything else works ten times faster...it is more of a "safety net" than anything else. And no, if you played on the hardest difficulty: button mashing ( most of the time) is quick death against any decent opponent.
"And there's lots of RPGs where chugging health potions wins the day, even Demon's Souls had that. Almost every RPG (even DnD), you need to make house-rules to not break it."
Contradicting yourself much? Read what you wrote in the same post.
And you're cherry picking here: Griffin is one of the few creatures in DD with more than handful of attacks, there is a reason why it's the first thing DD fans mention, almost all of them have far less.
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Death
Also it has less than half of variety of enemies:
http://dragonsdogma.wikia.com/wiki/Bestiary
http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher_3_monsters ( this is more than 3x than most rpg's out there)
And no, "fun" is no argument next to actual Facts:
Hardest boss with spam in Dogma in seconds, highest difficulty: https://youtu.be/YUQXgqL0MSU?t=40

So this "God Build" is 10x slower than the playing optimally?

Spoiler: Witcher 3 God Build

With any hunt, I literally just applied the right oil, chugged the right potion, and button mashed on the game's Hard difficulty. And, I had 0 points in alchemy.

What contradiction? I'm not saying those aren't flaws of DD but those flaws are common to the genre, even pen and paper RPGs too. Making house-rules to not be cheap is something you have to do in a lot of games, RPG or not. Needing to make house-rules for BASIC abilities that you have at the start of the game in Witcher 3 is much worse than most other games.

I haven't played any of the DLC of DD but any of the bigger beasts in vanilla DD have more attacks than any enemy in Witcher 3. Even the optional hydra is amazing in what it can do. Where's the cherry picking?

Lol, "fun" is an argument. There's wasn't one enemy in Witcher 3 that was fun to fight because 1) the enemies themselves and 2) the combat system was poorly designed. I'll take something like Nier Automata over Witcher 3, it doesn't have much depth but it's at least decently fun and satisfying. The Souls games (even though I'm not a big fan of them) have better combat. Nioh looks to be much much better in combat as well, it even has a Geralt look-a-like too. Horizon Zero Dawn has a much much better combat system too. There was nothing enjoyable about the gameplay of Witcher 3, even Geralt walking around was done poorly, the fact that they had to patch in "alternative" movement says it all. I like CDPR, but they really need to bring some people that can design and develop good gameplay.

 

[Cycloptomese]

I wouldn't recommend purchasing the season pass until you complete the main story. This game is incredibly long and by the time I got to the end, it had pretty much run it's course with me.

Don't get me wrong, the game is fantastic. Almost everything I didn't like about The Witcher 2 has been addressed, but make no mistake, you're going to need to commit to see it through.