Played all games, read all books, big Witcher fan. Season 1 of the show was flawed adaptation but still and adaptation. The music, the cinematography, and even most of the acting was good. Story changes in most cases added upon existing material and enriched it. It was a really promising start to something great if some positive changes were added. Unfortunately, after episode 1 of season 2 it all went downhill fast. Source material was almost completely ignored in season 2 and what replaced it was juvenile writing. Even if budget was obviously bigger, production quality outside of monsters was worse, and in patches even extremely poor.

In comes first 5 episodes of season 3 and things haven't gotten better in almost anything. If I can say anything good about season 3 it's that at least it tries to stay faithful to source material when it comes to main plot of the season. But there are still changes even there and they are all worse than what is written in the books. Outside of very clumsy road to conclusion about main big mystery of season 3 everything else around it is just terribly written and thought through. Show throws so many subplots in a very disjointed way that you fast lose tracks or interest in any of it. And most seem like pointless filler because if you trim it down, very little things happen of any importance and a lot of time is wasted on forgettable boring stuff.

And in regard to that, worst thing about season 3 is completely pointless "romance" subplot of Jaskier and an attempt to make him 4th main character. It's there just as brownie points for woke crowd and is completely unnecessary even in that regard because show is already full of stuff like that so there was no need to destroy an establish character. Forced attempt to make him more than he is (like Vesimir in season 2) makes him for the first time annoying (bad dialogue written for the actor doesn't help).

There are small patches of content that is almost good, mostly scenes from the books, but they are just thrown in between poorly written new content and are out of context because of it. The entire "flavor" of the show is very juvenile and kids friendly mixed with hard core GOT type of gore here and there.

Production quality and money spent seems to keep going down from season to season. If more money was spent on monsters in season 2, here this is clearly not the case and cinematography is extremely lower than in Season 1. Season 1 was an absolute peak of this show and even the show itself acknowledges this by constant self-referencing back to season 1 (same as it was done in season 2). Music is again forgettable like in season 2 (because extraordinary composer of music for season 1 was replaced after it). There are also places where they could make something good but always failed to deliver, a lot of missed opportunities (new rival bard is a good example).

Because Henry is leaving after this season, I think the show is doomed. I'm certainly not going to watch past this season. Because there is no point. His charisma is only thing that is still somehow pulling this bad show above the water, even barley. There are some other fine actors (I think Yen actress is doing best with what she has) but it's not enough to absorb complete trash of bad writing and dialogue when you don't have Henry as the Witcher.