I have been looking forward to this since I read the books for the first time, which is about 10 years ago, but I left disappointed.

I loved the beginning, great music, they nailed the tone, decent action, kikimoras design was very nice. The battle in Blaviken was great, single cut, wide camera angle, the choreography was great. You don see that very often. Its nice they wanted to make few short stories as well, but it seems they were afraid of how the general audience will respond to them, since they have nothing to do with main story, so they just crammed talks about destiny and that someone is waiting for Geralt. The whole destiny thing was so forced and illogical. Sign of a good story: dont talk about it, show it.

Cavill as Geralt is amazing, honestly I think he carries the whole show, but hes not really a Geralt. Its not Cavills fault, its the writers fault, he is very one dimensional. Ciri and Yennefer are great as well. Good casting, actors are doing great job, nice costumes. From the supporting cast almost no one fits the description in books and overal casting and atmosphere is ruined by forced diversity. Dryads are made very poorly and elves look horrible. There is nothing elvish about them. Elf is for Netflix just human with pointy ears. Same thing with Dwarfs. Almost zero effort, zero thought.

When it comes to story there isnt as much as you would expect that has in common with books. The backbone of the story is the same, but there is a lot of made up, left out or changed stuff. I would not care if they are making stuff up or they are changing some stuff, as long as they make sense, if they improve the story and if those changes are not lore-breaking. Literally none of the changes improved the story and most of them doesnt even make sense and couple of them are even lore-breaking. Literally none of the short stories is made as well as it could have been nor as well as it deserves.

Soundtrack is great, but it sounds like they are just trying to copy the soundtrack from the third game and it is not as good, but still very very nice. I loved the opening song, Linked by destiny and I loved 'Toss a Coin for your Witcher', that was great, simple and memorable and its one of those song that just sticks with you.

If I imagine I know nothing about the world and characters it seems its very chaotic. Yes it was the same way in the books, but thats one of the things I dont like about them and for TV purposes it could be better. A simple title with location name would be great, Perhaps even with a year, so the new guys have idea about place and time. Also this show is called the Witcher, and it does almost no explaining who Witchers are. Nothing about their swords, medallion, signs, codex, potions and their abilities.

This is adaptation that does its own thing and doesnt even tries to follow the books very much. Considering their talks about how they are trying to honor the books and how much they love them it seems very weird to me. Despite that most people still like it. Why? I think because vast majority dont know anything about the world, about the characters and the story. They didnt read the books, perhaps they played the games at most. They dont realize how much potential it had and how much better this could have been. Because the base of the story is there and its great, because of Cavill, action and nudity. Because its a new fantasy world, that despite its average adaptation it still feels fresh and original. They had the opportunity to create a legend, on which people would be remembering how they are remembering Lord of the Rings. Instead this is just a some kind of extract of the Witcher with lots of their own ingredients that does it no good and most people dont even realize it.