> It feels artificial, especially when practically every media outlet has the same vitriolic tone.
I can tell you why I'm annoyed: I was a big CDPR fan, I loved all three of the (core) Witcher games, so I was hoping something to a similar level of quality. The fact that it wasn't isn't the problem though (especially bugs, which can be fixed), the problem is the CEO's lied, not just to us the customers, but also to their shareholders. They said a year ago that the game could be played from start to finish, but its now come out that devs are saying that was a downright lie. Shortly before release, they said that the game "performs better than expected" on base PS4/Xbox, which was also an outright lie.
I'm angry at the lies.
The game itself has problems: the AI is nonexistent (GTA 3 from 2001 had better car driving AI!), its buggy with regular crashes, physics glitches, audio glitches, quest-breaking bugs. The shooting is not terrible, but its nothing special. The hacking is just a menu with zero depth. Many missions are just "go kill the people" mundane affairs (sad compared to how great The Witcher 3's side quests were). There are characters that get built up and then you never hear from them again. Some characters quest lines feel very short. Few decisions have a lasting impact and the endings are almost all chosen through a selection in the last mission segment (very few prior decisions have any impact on it).
But with that said, the game isn't bad (bugs aside). The music is amazing, the voice acting is great, I found the characters likable, the attention to detail in some areas is fantastic (visiting peoples graves for example) and overall the main quests, especially the ones that were more talking to people than shooting, were really good. I legit felt heart broken at certain phone messages towards the end, they hit me right in the feels.
So its a flawed game with some great ideas and some good content. I feel that if they'd had another year of development time, it would have been an amazing game, but management rushed it out instead.
If I ignore the technical issues and judge the game purely on story, content, gameplay, then I'd give it a 7 to 7.5/10 (with technical problems I'd give it 3/10)
I've played it through once (and reloaded right before the end to see a second ending) and I don't regret buying it, I got my moneys worth. However, its nowhere near the hype their marketing promised and its nowhere near the quality that The Witcher 3 was.