The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt is pretty often considered one of the best RPGs available for the last-gen systems. It might even place in the top 10 of the best RPGs in general. It has an absolutely stellar story, some incredible questlines, and characters that the player can easily find themselves caring about.
That being said, according to a lot of fans of the franchise, The Witcher 3 might have some of the weakest combat in the series. It’s such a distraction for some people that they can’t delve into the 200+ hour game in any meaningful way. Let’s pull apart the combat and see if it’s really that immersion-breaking.
10 Do We Really Need All The Extras?
One of the things that are immediately apparent about the combat in The Witcher 3 is just how bloated it can be. This becomes obvious pretty much right from the start at Kaer Morhen, during the game’s tutorial section. There are signs to be used, oil, decoctions, bombs, and 2 different swords, all of which the game tells you you’ll need to take advantage of. In reality, those don’t really even come into play as necessities unless the player is on the highest difficulty.
9 Swords Aren’t Really Necessary Outside Of Looking Cool
While looking at Geralt or any other Witcher and seeing that they have two swords is pretty cool, it’s not exactly practical. It also isn’t very practical to carry swords on one’s back, despite what most media would tell you. It drastically reduces accessibility. This isn’t the main gripe though. The game tells us that monsters are weak to silver, which is why he has two swords in the first place. Are we expected to believe the humans in The Witcher are immune to silver and steel works better for some reason? A sword is a sword, and it’ll cut through a human well provided it’ll cut through a monster.
8 Combat Stance Time Is Kind Of Awful
Whenever Geralt approaches enemies, whether they be monsters or men, he instantly goes into a combat stance, and the camera angle changes, in addition to the music getting much tenser than it is when exploring.
This locks Geralt down to fight mode, meaning that he can’t run effectively and the player is all but doomed if it’s a fight they aren’t prepared for. Geralt also lacks the ability to jump completely when in battle stance, which means that he frequently gets stuck on the environment.
7 The Scaling Is Broken
There are multiple areas in the game that aren’t exactly out of the way, and even if the player has at that point completed pretty much everything they can but the main story before getting there, they’re in for trouble. One place that comes to mind is an abandoned village filled with Alghouls roughly 5 levels higher than Geralt. While it’s possible to take them out with the proper preparations, it’s likely that the player won’t have the necessary consumables considering this village is right next to the road on the way to another objective.
6 It Punishes (Or Rewards) Completionists
Depending on who the player is and how difficult they like a game to be, they might have some issues with the XP system present in The Witcher 3. The most glaring issue is the fact that there are monster hives, upgrades, and chests strewn all over the map that completionists will gravitate towards before advancing the main story. Doing so on all but the highest difficulty will make the rest of the game a breeze since Geralt ends up ludicrously over-leveled.
5 Is This Really The Best Time For A Snack?
This problem isn’t exactly Witcher specific, but it’s just as absurd in this game as it is in any other. Geralt heals and regains stamina not so much over time, but mostly as a result of eating food or drinking water, which then starts the process of restoring HP over a set amount of seconds.
For whatever reason, none of the NPC enemies seem to care when Geralt pulls out an entire piece of mutton, starts chowing down, and then jumps back into the fray as if no time had passed.
4 Geralt Kinda Jumps All Over The Place
This is perhaps the most glaring problem a lot of people have with The Witcher 3, and it’s that Geralt never stays still or goes where you want him to. Rather than just standing still, planting his feet, grounding himself, and then parrying and countering enemy attacks, Geralt flies all over the screen with no regard for what the player’s controller inputs, other than whether the attack is weak and fast or slow and stronger. The ability to use signs is the only thing that breaks up the monotony.
3 The Actual Attack Animations Are Determined By Enemy Position
Probably part of the reason that Geralt just pops everywhere he feels like when playing is that usually, both attack animations and targeting are based on enemy positions. If the player is going for an archer a bit of a way away but runs past another enemy, he’ll do a huge whirling spin attack and completely mess up the flow instead.
It’s like playing one of the WB Arkham franchise Batman games, without the reward of the flow-state the player gets into between comboing and countering.
2 The Crossbow Is Basically Useless
Pretty early in the game, (during the first boss, accompanied by Geralt’s mentor Vesemir), the player encounters a Griffin. During the fight with this massive lion/bird/lizard hybrid monster, Vesemir implores the player again and again to use the crossbow, a weapon that does little to no damage. The only reason to ever touch it is to damage flying enemies since Geralt has pretty much no other way to do that, but it’s honestly quicker just to wait for the enemy to land.
1 Enemy AI Isn’t Quite Where It Should Be
The enemy AI fluctuates between being entirely too good, and absolutely awful. It’s not just the AI either. There have been multiple reports of NPC enemies (specifically humans) giving no indication that they’ve been hit or countered, completely throwing off the rhythm of the fight. Aside from that problem, the AI also gets stuck on things constantly, and parry timing doesn’t actually line up with any visual cues most of the time.
NEXT: 10 Things That Make No Sense In The Witcher 3
