“Excellence abounds at every turn in this open-world role-playing game,” writes Kevin VanOrd about The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt at GameSpot. VanOrd, who spent 9 days and 100 hours exploring the Witcher worlds at Novigrad and the isles of Skellige, gave The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt a 10 rating. (Importantly, for those in the Geralt’s law “PC is superior” camp, VanOrd played Witcher on PS4.) He delivered a 2,300 word essay on his experience bursting with praise and superlatives. The Witcher 3 is “captivating,” “sumptuous,” “inspiring,” and “always in a crescendo.” VanOrd says ultimately that The Witcher 3 trumps The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, getting “more personal.”
Less exalting but also impressed is Vincent Ingenito, IGN’s “foremost fighting game nerd.” Ingenito regrets that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s “fetch-quest-heavy” main story “overstays its welcome” and that its plot isn’t “terribly interesting.” Still Ingenito puts The Witcher 3 on a plane “few other RPGs inhabit.” Especially since the real-time combat totally rises above what the Witcher series has seen so far. This world is immersive and exhausting, so be warned. Even VanOrd was happy to take his break (see below).
As much as I adore The Witcher 3, it is nice to step away from games after spending 9 days playing the same one and absorb some research.
— Kevin VanOrd (@fiddlecub) May 13, 2015