What do you make of the combat quality in Witcher 3? Great or overrated?

[Ferdinand]

I've spent over 120 hours total playing Witcher 3, and I feel like the devs did pretty poor with the combat quality.

In the beginning, it looked like it was something good, but after about 30 hours, I realised that the fights were kinda the same at every point. The bandits, wolves, ghousl... they gather around you, roll around a couple of times, and push the attack button to destroy them. The enemies didn't have that big fighting aura like in other similar games that I've played.

Don't get me wrong, the game is fantastic. It has a good story that made me keep playing, but I just felt the combat was not that great, maybe good to an extent, but I think an improvement is needed.

What are your opinions about it? Was it great for you, or do you think they should have done better?

 

[Oliver]

Ferdinand's point is fair to a degree. The combat has depth on paper — the signs, oils, decoctions — but the game rarely forces you to engage with it properly. You can coast through most of it button-mashing and occasionally drinking a swallow potion. That said, I'd argue the combat was always supposed to be secondary. The real craft is in the writing and the world design, both of which are exceptional. Skellige in particular felt like a place with its own internal logic that existed before Geralt arrived and would carry on without him. So yes, the combat is the weakest part of the package. It's a game that succeeds enormously despite that, which is probably the honest answer.

 

[Jake]

I've done three playthroughs now and the combat never really bothered me. You can tell the writing is where all the love went. The combat is fine — gets the job done, doesn't get in the way. If you're still playing at hour 30 you've already seen the good stuff anyway.

 

[Tyler]

Witcher 3 combat is mediocre and that's fine. The game is not asking you to care about the combat. You're there for Skellige and Bloody Baron and the writing. Anyone who drops it because the swordfighting feels clunky is genuinely missing the point.

 

[Lukas]

The more interesting question is whether the combat's shallowness is a failure of design or a deliberate trade-off. Oliver's point about the oils and decoctions is accurate — the system exists, it's just never demanded of you in any meaningful way. From a design perspective, that's arguably a choice: keep the barrier low, don't punish people who are here for the story. Whether that's the right call depends on what you think the game is trying to be. Most players seem fine with it.

 

[Ferdinand]

I've done three playthroughs now and the combat never really bothered me. You can tell the writing is where all the love went. The combat is fine — gets the job done, doesn't get in the way. If you're still playing at hour 30 you've already seen the good stuff anyway.

Oh well, the combat is never a big selling point for the game. I guess it was the story that made more players get involved with the game, but I was thinking it would have been better if they gave more attention to the combat or that didn't bother you?