“Good” game?

I'm 100% sure that every player on this planet one said: "Wow, this is the best game I played" But every player has a different point of view, and it's attached to the factors to make a good or bad game...

"The most complete game"

There are a lot of games to do their work perfectly. The feel of survival, terror, action, adventure, combat, difficulty, and lot of more. But, fails to achieve the balance or the quality standard with another factor, giving a sensation of "50-50" or a bittersweet feeling.

Do an excellent work at one factor, and a bad or similar at other factors, It's something to discuss...

In my opinion, a good game, or a masterpiece, for example, Is the one that obtains the highest quality balance between all factors, and those factors are:

-Gameplay

-Story

-Content-Future content

-Graphics

I’ll add a few secondary factors, but I repeat, in my opinion, those are the ones that makes the big difference.

It's extremely difficult to reach a good balance between these, but there's one game to puts this example to practice. The Witcher 3...

**The Witcher 3 (2015)**
The game of the polish company CD Projekt Red it's the perfect example of balance. Even in 2021, this game it's the only story mode between the 100 most played games on Steam. This achievement speaks on his own...

Let's talk about the Gameplay.

When you play single-player games, it's common to complete the story once, twice, or even if you enjoyed the game a lot, thrice… When you always have the same ending, the same mechanics, the same combat, the same story and the same everything, you lose the surprise factor, because you already played that story, you know exactly how to play, where to go to obtain that legendary object or kill that strong enemy to level up your character, or how the story ends and what you need to achieve that again and again and again…

In The Witcher 3 nothing it's like I said before, between romances, relations with your friends, and enemies and just the main finale of the story, you have around 36 possible endings, so... probably you will not have the same experience twice.

Also, the game doesn't give you the amount of necessary XP to unlock all your skills in one run, forcing you to play again if you want to get these abilities that you have not been able to unlock before, by consequence forcing you to explore again, and maybe deeper, and maybe try different things from the past run of the game. And trust me, there are a lot of different skills to unlock and many secrets to discover…

Talking about core mechanics, when you play for the first time, mostly in 2024 (because it's a 2015 game) you will notice that it's not the smoothest experience of PvE combat of all time, sometimes the combat and the abilities feel clunky and slow, like I said, you probably will notice the years difference if you put in comparison with actual games. But what makes the game (main mechanics and combat) fun and complex is that you need to know exactly which objects, swords, tactics, defences, attacks, counterattacks, buffs and debuffs, everything, if you want to succeed against a simple enemy. Simple mechanics with deep customization, a lot of possibilities…

Story and Narrative

First of all, you DON'T need to play The Witcher 1 and 2 to know about the world of The Witcher 3. The game introduces you slowly via flashbacks or principal and secondary missions into the different main characters and their story, this works even with the villains or the less important character of the game.

It's your own decision to explore more the lore of the game and its characters, their stories, where they live, their families, and their intentions, since the beginning you feel completely immersed in the worldbuilding and everything it’s your decision, and if you want to uncover those mysteries, the game rewards you doing it extremely good via main and secondary quests, or event without quests, just exploring the surroundings of a simple town (level design storytelling)

The main story has a lot of plot twists that you don’t see them coming. Every character (not only the main characters) has her own story and her purposes and a key role in the story and the way that CD Projekt introduces these characters and their influences to the story it's outstanding.

The perfect balance and introduction to the story of moments of terror, action, romance, epic and sad moments, all in a natural and proper way.

Bonus track… The OST

Also, it’s an important factor to make the player feel the necessary immersion in key moments of the story or even in a simple combat to give to the player that extra feeling of epicness for example. And in TW3 there are a lot of phenomenal fantasy-medieval themes of any kind.

When you hear them for the first time, they will be imprinted in your memory forever. I'll invite you to hear "Swords of Destiny"

Future Content

Hearts of Stone, Blood and Wine... Two of the most famous and acclaimed DLCs of all time. Every DLC has a duration almost similar to a main game 20-40 hours, depending on your game style. Even some players said that every main story of those DLC are better than the actual main story of the base game.

An important factor, keep a single-player-focused story game updated with true quality lore content and new adventures to feel the game is still alive even years of its release date.

Graphics

There's a simple and logical point, the game was made in 2015 and at that time it was one of the games with better graphics. The technology advances so fast and the gaming industry within, but...

Still, in 2024 The Witcher 3 can stand a chance on comparatives against a few next gen open world games, in this case, AC Valhalla.

It's not the fact to which game has the better graphics, the fact is The Witcher manages to keep the distance close to some current graphics

Recap...

If you put together all these ingredients together, and look at them, you can see a very complete and balanced game in all aspects of development.

Because this game probably it's not the best at one factor, but it's extremely good at all the factors, and this is more important than doing a job half done.

Remember, this is not a review or something like that, it's just my point of view and a little way to show my love for my favourite game :)