As someone who's read all the books and played all the games this is a far cry from what I was hoping for. Got a bad vibe already from the trailers and sadly the released show isn't any better. Strange camera angles and cutting, painfully overacted and overemotional. Some surroundings and pieces obviously stolen from GoT. Overall messy plot and introduction of locations and characters.

The way to introduce this series would have been to have Geralt riding alone in a bleak wilderness and forest, camping, hunting, cooking, accepting a contract from some small village, tracking, preparing potions and at the end of a the first episode take down some kind of great beast. The end. Very few words spoken. That would have been a great introduction to the world. A slow and suspenseful introduction similar to what we got in GoT episode 1 and a feeling somewhat similar to The Revenant.

The world of the Witcher isn't suppose to be overfilled with emotion or politics, it's supposed to be bleak, cynical, harsh, brutal and stoic. But then with occasional glimpses of hope, beauty and right vs wrong. There is politics and kings in the witcher universe but the focus is supposed to be on the struggle of the everyday man and everyday life. The feeling of the Witcher Universe is supposed to be much more "The Hound and Arya on the road" rather than "Cersei at court" if you catch my drift.

But instead we jump straight into lots of politics and some characters are introduced way to fast, no one cares about things when they're introduced this quickly. Maybe towards the middle, or the end of, the first season would have been the time to introduce politics and royalty.

The way I see it there's basically no way to salvage this train wreck, completely new writing, actors and director would be needed. Cavill is decent, but then I was never his biggest fan. He's nearly always "decent", never stellar imho. even if we imagine that this isn't in the Witcher universe this is objectively speaking at best a 7/10 show.