priya20 reviewed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

Everyone agrees the writing is extraordinary and everyone quietly agrees the combat is bad, and I want to be specific about why, because 'floaty' isn't a diagnosis.

The problem is that Geralt's attacks commit him to an animation with a fixed traversal component. You don't swing where you're standing, you swing toward where the game thinks the enemy is, which means positioning — the actual skill in any melee system — is repeatedly taken out of your hands. Add a dodge with generous i-frames and a roll that covers absurd distance, and the optimal play against almost everything is roll-roll-hit, forever. The signs are largely decorative outside of Quen, which is mandatory, and Igni, which is better than everything else.

Death March doesn't fix it. It just makes the same shallow loop less forgiving.

An A, carried entirely by the writing. If the combat were merely average this would be untouchable.