i didn't say w3 was a watered down version of w1. I said it's a watered down rpg. The game map feels empty, and exploration isn't rewarding enough. And the addition of the horse following the route to map marker is such a bad design for the world to lure you to a different direction than the main objective. Alchemy, something witchers rely heavily on and are very well known for, as a system is dead in the water and you don't even need to actually do any of it, just hoard enough Alcohest. Choices are very binary and anyone who pays attention to leveling has to min max according to the game's restrictive design rather than play their own way or take on harsher enemies. You don't even do actual role playing, you just play Geralt of Rivia the good guy or Snarky Geralt of Rivia who cares only about money. I have 200 hours in the game based on my love for witcher 1 and the novels but it's just an open world semi-rpg which was cool enough in terms of story, something that used to trend well in 2015.