Gaming

Having completed all three Dragon Age games and just about all three Witcher games (still chewing on Witcher 3) I think the differences in their third installments are quite large.

I really enjoyed Inquisition - I enjoyed the large scope of the world and many things to do. I really didn't care for the combat to be honest. I felt it was quite one dimensional especially while playing as a mage. The latter combat quickly became button mash, heal, back to button mash until the monster(s) die. I felt the strongest part of Inquisition was the character interaction and overall story.

The Witcher 3's world is at least as big, if not bigger, than Inquisition. It also is more populated - there are dozens of towns and inns and distractions along the way. Every piece of dialog is voiced, and exceptionally well with a few exceptions. An interaction with a character in the middle of nowhere can turn into a 10 minute fully in-game cinematic interaction with decisions to be made and usually some sort of twist and or moral ambiguity to it. The game is chalk full of this kind of thing, witch (hehe) I really love. The combat is crisp and has a lot of variety to it. You have a quick attack and a strong attack, a block and a parry. You also can hit the left bumper and bring up your 5 Witcher spells that you can toggle through (you can also toggle while holding the block button and using the D-pad to quickly switch between them). They are basically a protective ring that slows enemies and bothers the supernatural, a shield that absorbs some damage when hit, a fire ball spray that melts armor, a mind control spell (also effective in certain dialog trees) and finally a force push type spell that pushes enemies and blows out fire etc. All five of these can be upgraded and eventually can evolve into some pretty powerful tools. You also have two swords, one for men and beasts and one for monsters. There are literally dozens of different swords of each type that you can buy, find or craft.

If you've played a Witcher game before you will be familiar with what I just mentioned. If you have not, another great thing about the game is the depth of lore. The bestiary is really fantastic. Every monster gets added to your bestiary and the explanations of how these monsters work and how they come to be is really interesting stuff. This can be attributed to the fact that the Witcher is based on a series of books. There is no shortage of well thought out stuff here.

The graphics are an improvement over Inquisition (played both on PS4). The game does suffer from some mild texture pop at times though. Your eyes will likely be pleased by the character models and interactions - again this is where both games shine but I feel the Witcher does it much better.

It also has one of the best in game games in all of video gaming. Gwent is a card game, made up of unique cards that can be bought, found or won by besting certain players of Gwent throughout the world. There are character cards that fall into front line combat, archer or siege combat. Then there are weather effect cards that nerf said front line, archer and siege. Powerful special hero cards that are unaffected by weather and certain special cards that buff your cards or destroy enemy cards or allow you to draw more cards etc. It is really deep and fun and rounds of Gwent don't take very long.

I think I've covered just about everything but if you have any more questions I'll be happy to answer.

Bottom line (or if you prefer your internet lingo TL R = get the Witcher 3, you'll be very happy)

The ONLY caveat is if you have trouble with the use of the C word F Bombs and mature subject matter like Rape and infant mortality (just to name a few) you may want to pass on the game.