In other news, I had taken a somewhat long break from this game due to Metal Gear Solid V and then Dragon's Dogma but, after beating DD on normal and being somewhat bored starting the game over on hard, I have returned to The Witcher 3, and I must say that I enjoy the combat of W3 far more than DD. I want to preface this by saying that I did enjoy what I played of DD and I'm making this comparison only because many have suggested that DD's combat is far superior but the main problem I had with it is that it's much simpler than W3. DD's combat against regular foes often boils down to spamming your charge attack as melee, your multi-arrow attack as ranged, or the appropriate elemental spell as a caster. Against the larger enemies, the combat can be reduced to whether you know the enemy's weaknesses or not and whether you have the corresponding abilities equipped. If you do, then the battle is basically over before it even begins since you will just end up stun locking them. Number of enemies doesn't even really matter that much either since almost every attack can hit multiple opponents.
In contrast, the combat of W3 varies tremendously with number of opponents. The way that you need to fight against 4+ opponents is markedly different than when you've chopped that number down due to how easily they can surround you and interrupt your actions. Positioning is actually important since you really need to see all of your opponents while maintaining room to dodge/roll. I actually missed Geralt's automatic leaping animations that closed distance for his swings in contrast to DD where (assuming that I wasn't just spamming a charging attack) I had to clunkily run right up to enemies to slash them. Finding ways to circumvent enemy strengths (like humans blocking everything, nekkers swarming, wolves dodging and running around, wraiths teleporting) was far more thought provoking than simply knowing what element or anatomical location enemies in DD were weak to. A lot of people here complained that enemies sometimes did not react to hits in W3: the same thing happens in DD against anything (except the weakest opponents) who often don't react unless you hit them a number of times or in a particularly soft location. Finally, a lot of the diverse abilities in DD are very niche, thus I didn't end up using many of them, whereas I basically use everything in W3 even as melee spec.
In summary, I found DD's combat too simple where the challenge is mostly in knowing where to strike and with what element. In contrast, W3 requires you to think about what tools to use for the situation based on enemy type, number of enemies, and arena size, and forces you to plan and commit to your actions since you can't immediately stop them.