I checked the reviews of this show before watching to make sure it was even worth it, and the ones I read were mostly positive. A lot of them were actually 9 or 10 star reviews claiming this to be the best show of the year, a masterpiece, etc. And so I watched and came to this conclusion: The Witcher audience of the IMDb community let me down. Now, there are aspects of the show that deserve some recognition. Henry Cavill as Geralt of Rivia is an excellent choice. I've never played the game, but from what I've been told he embodies the main character to a great extent. Even setting that point aside, he's still a good Geralt. You don't have to be a fan of the game to pick up on that. The young actress who plays Ciri is very believable and has her shining moments. In short, they nailed casting for 2/3 main characters (more on this later). Secondly, the production is done well. When I say this I mean the locations, resources, wardrobe, and such. The soundtrack has its moments too. It's hard to complain considering that the music fits the show. These are all good things. Now onto the bad... Episode one is missing a big part of what should've been apart of the foundation for the story. World building. There was absolutely none of it, and it's a wonder how they forgot to do it. Maybe they thought it was unnecessary because it originated from a game? Still, there's no excuse. The game origin is an even bigger reason to put the effort into making the world believable. There were a lot of heavy magical concepts and prophecies dumped on the audience first ep that were obviously meant to set up foreshadowing or even have a higher meaning to come. World building definitely would've brought a greater sense of relevancy to those moments, but because the world is half baked who really cares? Next issue is the script. Not the worst but a good script is a must for a show in this genre to be taken seriously. A show also needs to have good writing. The dialogue was meh but the overall general sense of direction and pacing for the show was messy. And not in a good way. The plot is a good idea (technically the game developers and book authors get creds for this) - but how it was drawn out was disappointing. A lot of that may have to do with directing as well. A great deal of the scenes were simply weird to watch and this was also not a good thing. The actors didn't help either. The actress who plays Yennifer is OK. But OK is not okay when you are a main character along side two other main characters who surpass you by a great deal. She simply wasn't that believable especially in the phase two of her characterization (you'll know what this means if you watch). Everyone besides the other main two actors that which were already stated were mediocre or not right for the part. When reading this it sounds like the show is horrible, so I just want to state that it is far from it. It's entertaining for sure, but it's definitely not the powerhouse show that it's being made out to be. Not even close. There's a reason that a show like Game of Thrones or a movie like the Lord of the Rings is a genre favorite. They make sure they show up for the bare necessities early on and they do a damn good job of it. Hell, they do such a great job of it in those productions that if anything outside of the basics misses the mark later on it's forgivable. Not the case for this show. Either they clean it up or the upcoming seasons will reveal the hollowness that so many have overlooked (still not sure how this happened btw).