The Witcher books aren't good either

A common take I tend to see is that The Witcher show should have followed the books more closely to be good, which I don't necessarily think is true. The novels (specifically the Ciri saga) are a textbook example of epic and longer ≠ good because they really meander a lot. The plot is dragged out, main characters vanish for books or half a book at at time, and it sometimes feels very random what major events will be depicted on-page or left to a side-paragraph in a later volume to be referred to. Geralt especially doesn't really accomplish much and is basically jerked around by the plot in the last three books. Doesn't help that the ending feels like it was purely written to subvert fantasy storytelling tropes so it feels rather unsatisfying and anti-climactic in the ending.

I'd actually compare The Witcher to the X-Files or Reacher in that it's at its best when they're just stand-alone/smaller-scale stories about Geralt being hired to kill a monster or accomplish something only to get into a misadventure. This applies to the games and show too, the sidequests and expansions Heart of Stone/Blood & Wine were more engaging than the main quest with the Wild Hunt and Wild Frost. My favorite episodes in the show were the ones just about Geralt and Jaskier on their own together.

So the issue with the Netflix adaptation isn't necessarily that they made big changes but rather that the execution was just subpar. S2 is the perfect example of this because the novel it's adapting, Blood of Elves, feels like a dragged out prologue section where not a lot happens so adding more stuff to fill in the downtime wasn't a bad idea. The real issue is that the original content they did add was just as meandering and aimless as the source material so it ends up being pointless anyway.

What they should have done was condense the Witcher books (which were already short by epic fantasy standards) because the whole story could be easily covered in four seasons (adapting two books per season). The source material is carried by the characters and fun dialogue but it's hard to ignore the feeling that this could have been a stronger, tighter trilogy with some firmer editing which is what the Netflix adaptation could have provided but of course it didn't so it sucked ass. But I don't agree that copying the books 1:1 would have automatically improved the show, like the games were good because CD Projekt just took the characters and wrote their own original stories with them.