In The Witcher 3 Wild Hunt, patience is key to total enjoyment.

I played Witcher 3 Wild Hunt on the PS4. I never completed the game. I loved the game, but for some reason, I have never had the energy or the drive to complete the game. I would start the game with great enthusiasm, but that enthusiasm fades away the longer I play. I restarted the game the second time several months later, starting from the very beginning, but that effort failed as well.

Now that I have a gaming rig, I impulsively set out to buy Witcher 3 Wild Hunt on Steam. It was a waste of money, especially when I have the exact same copy on the PS4, and it gives gamers the almost exact experience regardless of whether you play on the PC or the PS4. I literally had 2 copies of the same game.

But I went on with it and bought the PC version. As a consolation, I bought it when it was on sale, so at least there is some reason to justify purchasing the game a second time round, however weak that reason is.

So I fired up the game but before actually starting, I told myself explicitly; I am going to complete the game no matter what, do all side missions as I possibly can and I am going to take my time doing it. That last part of the statement was important. I never knew how important it is in contributing to the overall positive experience of playing Witcher 3. Taking my time playing the game, being patient, listening to every dialogue from the beginning to the end, without skipping and reading all letters, books and mission briefs. If I am going to take 10 hours to complete a string of missions from one storyline, so be it.

And what a difference does that make! For the first time in my life of playing The Witcher 3, I actually enjoyed the game by orders of magnitude. I finally understood the feeling of total immersion in the Witcher 3 universe. Apart from the superior graphics on the PC versus the console (which I must admit is a contributing factor in giving me a better gaming experience, because, let’s face it, playing Witcher 3 at ultra settings, everything looks so so pretty), being patient with the game pays great dividends. You appreciate the story being told in the game. You become more emotionally attached to the characters in the game, you understood their intentions, back stories and predicaments. The NPCs personality became three dimensional and for the first time I fully appreciated the amount of effort put up by the developers, designers, writers and voice actors in making the world of Witcher 3 fully immersive, rich and dynamic. No longer have I read ahead of the dialogue and skipping it. I understood more fully the missions, and tasks at hand and most importantly, the consequences of my actions while playing Witcher 3.

I am pretty confident that I would clock at more than 200 hours in this game and I am very excited to complete Witcher 3 from the beginning to the end, and to top it off, even clear the DLCs that have been released since then. The DLCs add hours upon hours to the core game and I am going to conquer them all.