It’s not without its faults and I’m on the fence whether a more structured hub & spoke model is superior for story continuity (Witcher 2) but this is pretty remarkable. Off quests it behaves almost like Guild Wars 2 with fun area discovery for farming. That gets old after a while and it’s a ticket for game imbalance but even at level 7 there were a few deaths in my level 5 main questing. That I’m happy about. I hope the world stays threatening. If I have to I’ll amp the difficulty in the long run
I highly recommend forgetting all the non-quest stuff - as it's neither rewarding in terms of progression nor exploration. Well, I certainly didn't think so. Except for a few cases of Witcher gear "hunts" - which were neat.
But pretty much every quest is interesting and worth doing in terms of the story.
That said, I personally experienced HEAVY dialogue fatigue after around 100 hours or so. I particularly despised the Novigrad Dandelion section of the game - which was just dreadfully dull throughout - apart from a neat singing sequence.
I guess it depends on personal preferences - but I really don't think TW3 is a good fit for the "OCD" approach of clearing everything. Way, way too much filler for that.
TW2 was much tighter and focused on delivering what it was really good at. For some odd reason, I also found combat better and with a tighter balance.
Again, though, that was on vanilla "hard". I have no idea what people are talking about when they say TW2 combat was easy on that setting. Certainly wasn't easy to me - and I'm pretty good at combat in RPGs.
TW3 on "Death March" becomes way too easy way too soon. You struggle a little in the beginning - because of the ridiculous damage mobs deal versus a pathetic amount of HP you have as a player. But once you get into the groove and use the right spells for the right encounter - it's very easy. Much easier than TW2 ever was on the higher settings.
IMO, obviously.