Finally got to play this after a long time. I definitely don't think this is the "best game ever made" (Bloodborne is the better game that released in 2015) but there is a tremendous amount of good stuff here. Most quests feel carefully crafted to provide, at the very least, some semblance of choice and even the most minor characters you meet get a little characterization, and that makes the game much more engaging and the world feel much more real. My favorite part of the game was by far the Witcher contracts, as tracking down monsters and fighting them using the appropriate oils/signs to take advantage of their weaknesses got me (as the player) in the same mindset as Geralt. However I will add that this started to wear off towards the end of the game as contracts started having the same monsters I had fought previously, but this was not enough the spoil the experience for me. One thing that started to wear on me was that the game seemed to really lean in on having tough choices you make in quests backfire on you in a series of "Gotcha!" moments, the most egregious one being the end of the Reason of State questline, which resulted in getting an ending I really didn't like.

My biggest criticism of the game is that it feels poorly paced, I played on a higher difficultly and for most of the early game (Velen/Novigrad) stuck rigidly to the signposted level requirements for quests, but after a I had completed the Novigrad main questline I was WAY over leveled for Skellige and remained so for the rest of the game (making the main quest a breeze in which I never died again), making me wonder I the designers had intended for players to constantly go back and forth between Skellige and Novigrad completing quests depending on their level.

Overall, W3 is full of wonderfully crafted stories and characters, and I enjoyed playing as Geralt, the monster hunter, most of all. I'm definitely going to play the rest of the series, but probably not for a long time so I can player the entire trilogy in one setting.