5/5 ★ – kubachowicki_'s review of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Complete Edition.

Perfect game. My new favourite game by quite a long way. Wow, what an experience, especially for someone who was already a Witcher fan before playing the games. The graphics are absolutely remarkable, especially on the Complete Edition PS5 version. This is very easily one of the most beautiful looking games ever made. The score in this game is marvellous, not just the main theme, but also in game score that changes depending on your location and scenario. The level of detail to every quest is astonishing and that’s what makes this game so amazing. The dialogue options add so much depth to each conversation, white dialogue to learn more details regarding the quest, or just extra lore, and yellow dialogue to proceed with the quest, usually resulting in different outcomes depending on your choices. Something that may seem like a small decision, might end up having an effect later on in the most unexpected ways. This also adds so much replay value to the game. The story is just perfect. The way this game manages to connect everything together is remarkable. The structure of the story across a prologue and 3 acts works perfectly well. The character developments and relationships are just perfect in every way imaginable. No game has ever made me feel such an emotional connection to its characters as this. Also being able to play as both Geralt and Ciri at different points in the story adds even more fun to the mix. The fast travelling is so swift in comparison to other games, it’s almost instantaneous, but more often than not, unless you have to travel a crazy amount you’ll usually just end up running or riding to your objectives purely because of how beautiful the world of the Continent is and also how much fun it is to explore and relax with the background score. A very minor addition, but I love how when you load up a save while still during the main story, the game gives you a quick narrated recap video of what recently happened when you last played. The secondary quests, Witcher contracts and treasure hunts are all very interesting and give you a reason to carry on playing and exploring the Continent. Gwent is also another really fun additional bit of side content. Sometimes missable trophies can be frustrating, but with how detailed this game is, they actually add an extra bit of detail and force you to do some of the extras during quests. The only three criticisms I have are that the stash can become VERY laggy when putting lots of items into it, and that the inventory sections for alchemy and junk can be a little frustrating to navigate purely because of how many things you pick up without even realising while playing. The other one is cut off points for certain secondary quests. A lot of the secondary quests are either connected or have a cut off point when you reach a certain point in the main story, which actually forces you to complete secondary quests while playing the main story, especially the ones with characters who are part of the main story. This is okay if the cut off point is a main quest but can become frustrating if the cut off point is another secondary quest as sometimes you’re not even aware of it as you haven’t even triggered the quest yet and it randomly fails or becomes unavailable.