Well, that depends on what you consider a proper female topic?
Cerys was done pretty well, and you get to know a lot about her if you choose to help her. Yen's romance quest was done really well, and so did Triss one. Philippa had a much more prominent role in Witcher 2, but she was OK in 3. I thought Cantarella was pretty interesting and unexpected bonus. Lodge was a disappointment, mostly due to no screen time. Baron's wife, Anna, was a great character.
Indeed it does.
But I don't consider "screen time" a female topic. Just because a game features a lot of female characters doesn't mean that it also features female topics. Like I said, imo the whole issue of motherhood is (naturally) an exclusively female topic that is hardly ever featured in any video game at all. Same is true for basically all forms of female sexuality. It's always a male-centric (and often also pretty immature) view on such topics, if at all.
Edit: I forgot to mention Keira, she was a rather beautifully portrayed window into a soul of lonely, scared and desperate female, and we've been given an opportunity to help her on multiple levels. I really liked that. Helping her felt like being nice to women in general.
On which levels do we help her? Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see it. Keira is basically among the best female characters in the game (better than Ciri!), but maybe I missed something here.
I guess we wouldn't be having this conversation if they did Ciri's character closer to the books, and Ciri and Yen relationship. Sadly no side character can make up for it.
Indeed. But I would go further than that. We wouldn't hae this conversation if they didn't cut the whole motherhood topic from the game. And I don't only talk about Yennefer but also about Ciri. Giving life is the opposite of dying. It's the forever way of life and death. And from a mythological point of view, it's the motherly part that is responsible for giving life. In all natural religions and cults the female is worshipped as symbol of life and rebirth. Motherhood and the sphere of females is a basic and fundamental topic of every major human myth. It's a central topic of the human development and progress of the individual, getting to terms with the matters of life and death and getting to terms with your parents and later your kids. A story that almost completely neglects the sphere of motherhood neglects the chance to give new life. It's basically a story just about death and decay, about killing and being killed. Sapkowski's novels didn't work like that at all. Motherhood and all the symbols of feminism (in the traditional sense of the word) play a major role in his work. Without that the famous "Something ends, something begins" doesn't work, at least not to its full extend. What the games completely fail to see is the deeper mythological sense and structure of the Witcher world in the novels. Ciri's journey isn't just to overcome obstacles and to flee her enemies and finally get free of them. It's as well a journey about her role as female in this world and whether she 's ready to renew the circle of life. In that, she's inseperably connected with Yennefer who has the very same topic on a different level. If you read between the lines pretty every major topic in the Witcher novels is about questions of motherhood, fatherhood, the ability to create new life and the question of how you progress as a human being in the circle of life. It's not just about "death and politics". Witcher is NOT grimdark. Not at all.
The big tragedy in the TW3 is that it fails to see what the Witcher novels and Ciri's and Yen's (and even Geralt's) characters were all about. The end is the best proof for it. Ending the White Frost is an extremely superficial achievement that has no symbolism at all in the circle of life. If we think about the way the White Frost was described in the books, it' was a prophecy of a time in which people will suffer (symbol for getting old and sick), die (symbol of death) before the whole world and humanity will rise again (symbol of rebirth and life). By basically "beating the White Frost" Ciri just cuts the whole thing short but she refuses the world to get reborn again, in both a literal and symbolic way. And Ciri's still "dead". She "failed" (again, seen as symbolism) in her role as female since she basically acted like a traditional male hero. It's kind of weird that we tend to see females who act very much like males as greatest heroes. Best example is probably Jean D'Arc, a female who took the role of the warrior and died at the stake without ever being mother and giving life before. She's just a "male in a female body", so to say. We live in a completely male-centric world. Every major mono-theistic religion is completely male-focused, especially in Europa, North America and the Middle East. And it shows. Compare that to the way for example South America performs Christianity or whole natural tribes perform their primal rituals and religions. It has a much bigger focus on the female sphere. In South America, Maria, the mother, is basically just as important as Jesus himself. In primal religions it's the mother and the motherly god who has the secret of life and therefore the biggest power. In the big mono-theistic religions sex and human reproduction is seen as a "dirty" thing, especially if it's done by females out of the reach of male control. It's basically the attempt to eradicate the power of the female scene. So the western culture is much more "death driven" than "life driven", trying to establish the cold, lifeless dominance of the male sphere, at least during several centuries in the middle ages. The female power was driven to the private sphere. And that basically still shows in our own modern western mindsets todays. It's the basis of our cultural and societal understanding and the only time that this mindset is broken up is in myths and legends of old. Sapkowski re-created them faithfully, re-established the old circle of life with the mother and the female being at its center. "Something begins, something ends" is the formula of life and death and one cannot work without the other. Life cannot work without sexuality, without the thematization of motherhood and the female sphere. Sapkowski knew that. It's amazing how much of the old mythological structure is resembled in his novels. It follows the ancient mythological archetypes in almost every possible way, transcending the process of life from birth to death to rebirth and all the stages of the mythological hero. I guarantee you, with deep knowlege of mythology and the tradiitional hero's journey you'll read the Witcher novels with a completely new understanding.
To cut it short though, I'm just disappointed how "profane" the narrative in TW3 is in comparison. It has basically no symbolism at all and all sexuality and the whole sphere of giving life and motherhood is completely absent in the game. It's not only that the relationship between Ciri and Yen isn't shown "properly" or that Ciri doesn't call her "mother" at least once. It's about the whole lack of all these topics for every major female character in the game. All they care about is basically the same as everybody else cares: overcoming enemies and kill stuff. Getting power and control and becoming the master of death. It even shows in the way sexuality is featured in the game: basically just the act of doing it itself, but not for giving life, but only for fun and without any deeper meaning behind it or any ambigious feelings and emotions involved (sleeping with Geralt was always both sad and joyful for Yen, just as an example). I don't know about you but I AM diasappointed about that because it fails to recreate a huge deal of what the Witcher saga was all about from the beginning, especially about everything related to Ciri and Yen.
Edit: This is also the reason why I think that TW3 cannot be "saved". It's very narrative concept is deeply flawed. It's basically "just another" male power fantasy that happens to feature characters that look like female beings. It's a great male power fantasy, sure, but it's not more than that. It's not what I hoped CDPR would be capable of and it's definitely not what the literary basic offers in terms of narrative topics and storytelling depth. So don't crucify me, I don't think "low" of CDPR, especially not compared to most other video game companies, but I do think that they failed to either fully understand the Witcher novels or that they willinly decided to turn them into a "profane" male power fantasy which they were never meant to be in the first place...
Sorry for the long post, but I didn't know how to make it shorter... 
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That's the thing. It's kinda hard to translate it "literally". I suppose "homely child" could do the trick, that would mean simple or common, lacking elegance and/or refinement. More in a frisky way rather than malicious. Ugly one sounds
too derisive and doesn't fit the purpose at all imo.
Yen's "reasoning" behind that nickname was awaking the "hunger for improvement" in Ciri, which is crucial
in magic training. Ugly one doesn't do the job tbh.
Thank you very much for the explanation. So I was wrong and I interpreted too much into the German translation. I always thought there was a deeper meaning behind that nickname, beyond Yen's "envy". But I agree that the English translation isn't really fitting either...
