So right away, my quest to clear my eternal backlog hit a massive setback. See, the way that I organized my backlog was purely vibes based, assigning games a number between 1 and 10 based on how much I wanted to play them at that moment, and Witcher 3 was the only one with a 9, because I'd played it before up to Skellige, and I really loved the vibes, and particularly the stuff that happens in Velen.
That said, Witcher 3 is an absolutely massive game, and I played for a few days before getting exhausted by it and putting back down for three months. This was not a great start for clearing my backlog. I wasn't playing other games from it in the meantime, and the game being Unfinished was always at the back of my mind during the months that I just didn't touch it, which did sadly lead to me kind of rushing through the ending (and getting a pretty terrible ending in the process, though I'm not unhappy about that tbh)
Now as for what I actually thought about the game?
(Spoilers for Witcher 3 ahead)
It's pretty good!
I mentioned that I burned out on the game for a while before, and full disclosure, I did partially bring it on myself with a couple of rules I enforced for myself. First, I disabled the mini-map entirely, and second, I made Geralt walk everywhere when not actively in combat, because I think the idea of Geralt lightly jogging around the world is a bit silly. That man is just not a jogger, no matter how badly he wants to find Ciri.
This meant that i was moving quite slowly through the world, but that was absolutely intended. For me, the biggest draw of this game is the world itself and how alive and vaguely hostile it manages to feel. As I walked through fields of tall grass, surrounded by dark patches of forest, leaves blowing in the wind, and grey clouds on the horizon, I felt immersed in a way that games don't often get me to feel.
I really like Velen, and think it's easily the strongest section of the game (I have not played the DLC yet). The vibes of the swamp are just perfect, and I love the Ladies of the Wood, they're just these perfectly monstrous folk horror entities. Also a massive fan of the Bloody Baron and the botchling quest, as well as the way the main threads of the region all converged into the confrontation at the orphanage.
I could honestly talk for an age about how much I enjoy Velen, but there was still the rest of the game ahead of me after I finished there, and this is roughly where I burned out on the game for three months. When I came back, I was determined to hit the credits on this game so I could move on, which, as mentioned, did lead me to rush, and somewhat negatively impacted the experience.
Novigrad was decent, frequently even good! But it was a far cry from the environments and threatening air of Velen, and I ended up largely just sticking to the critical path, instead of clearing out side quests like I had done in Velen and White Orchard. That's not to say it was completely without danger, because oh man is the Church of the Eternal Fire (and the witch hunters) a whole thing.
Skellige managed to get the air of mystery and magic back, but I don't really have anything more to say about it other than I think Velen did it better and also I do not like the sail boat mechanics in this game. Feeling pretty fatigued with the game by this point, I ignored all the side content, and went straight into the point of no return quest at the earliest available opportunity.
This automatically failed all the quests I hadn't done, which lead to a pretty bleak ending for just about everyone involved (except Ciri), but like I mentioned way up there, I didn't really mind that and was pretty satisfied with the endings as an explicit consequence of not helping people who needed it.
Overall, I think the game is quite good even if it broke the limits of my patience, and am looking forward to playing the DLC, eventually.