Riding ‘Roach’ around works from a gameplay perspective by it’s never fun. Especially as this combines with the tracking and detective vision parts, which are probably the second worst aspect of the game. There’s far too much of it and far too much of it is very similar. But The Witcher 3 is clunky and slow, with poor feedback. There have been many great games with third person sword combat and magic so, unlike with Skyrim, there’s no question that it can be done. That may seem a bit hypocritical given that it’s not great in Skyrim either, but not only is first person melee combat largely impossible to get right but while it’s a bit hollow Skyrim’s combat works as intended and never gets too boring or in the way of what you’re doing, unlike The Witcher 3. The more obvious problem with The Witcher 3 is that the combat is really bad. I do not want to be playing as someone else, especially someone I don’t really like, for 60 hours in a game that otherwise is supposed to be all about freedom and making your own choices. I think it’s a mistake to play as a named character in an open world game, unless that character says little or nothing themselves – as in Zelda and Far Cry (except the new one, I think?). I don’t particularly like him or his voiceover and I don’t want to play as him for such a long game.
In thinking about why it is the game never clicked with me one of the central problems is Geralt.
