Unpopular opinion: I liked the characters and lore a lot, but I found that the sloppy controls and sluggish movement made the world frustrating to interact with, and most of the encounters were so repetitive that I was bored before long. I ended up switching to easy mode so I could finish the story without having to spend much time on the tedious gameplay.
IMHO, if you were to rush through W3 in story mode and skip the side quests, just to get the background before playing W4, I don't think you'd be missing much.
I have only played a few hours, but I recall what I thought was a side quest involving pigs, which was a great quest. Are you suggesting that memorable side quests are infrequent and can/should be skipped?
I actually found the side quests' writing pretty good, and indeed, sometimes even memorable. Unfortunately, most of those quests share a handful of nearly identical tasks, so the good writing started to feel like little more than window dressing before long.
The map encounters were worse, though: Lots of question marks telling me exactly where to go meant there was nearly no real exploration to be had in this open world, and arriving at them led to the same copypasta events over and over again. If you happen to enjoy those events enough that you can't get enough of them, then that's great, but I was bored after the first dozen or so. (Skyrim was far better in this department.)
I remember liking a lot of the main quests, and the characters, and the story, and the world building. It's just that the bulk of the gameplay felt like filler content, with forgettable combat and awkward controls. (I swear, Geralt, if you plod forward one more time when I pull back on the stick, or let one more candle get in the way when I try to interact with something useful, I'm gonna smack you.)
I hope Witcher 4 maintains (or even improves upon) the writing quality of its predecessor, and adds responsive controls and interesting gameplay beyond the main plot points.
Unpopular opinion: I liked the characters and lore a lot, but I found that the sloppy controls and sluggish movement made the world frustrating to interact with, and most of the encounters were so repetitive that I was bored before long. I ended up switching to easy mode so I could finish the story without having to spend much time on the tedious gameplay.
IMHO, if you were to rush through W3 in story mode and skip the side quests, just to get the background before playing W4, I don't think you'd be missing much.
I have only played a few hours, but I recall what I thought was a side quest involving pigs, which was a great quest. Are you suggesting that memorable side quests are infrequent and can/should be skipped?
I actually found the side quests' writing pretty good, and indeed, sometimes even memorable. Unfortunately, most of those quests share a handful of nearly identical tasks, so the good writing started to feel like little more than window dressing before long.
The map encounters were worse, though: Lots of question marks telling me exactly where to go meant there was nearly no real exploration to be had in this open world, and arriving at them led to the same copypasta events over and over again. If you happen to enjoy those events enough that you can't get enough of them, then that's great, but I was bored after the first dozen or so. (Skyrim was far better in this department.)
I remember liking a lot of the main quests, and the characters, and the story, and the world building. It's just that the bulk of the gameplay felt like filler content, with forgettable combat and awkward controls. (I swear, Geralt, if you plod forward one more time when I pull back on the stick, or let one more candle get in the way when I try to interact with something useful, I'm gonna smack you.)
I hope Witcher 4 maintains (or even improves upon) the writing quality of its predecessor, and adds responsive controls and interesting gameplay beyond the main plot points.