The Witcher -- violence, sex, and alchemy as part of your daily balanced breakfast

And another thing, if you fuck a dryad, do you get splinters in your dilznick?

I mean, there's gotta be a million jokes you can make about "smelly bogs" and all that, but still...

i've never heard of this game... that video is really fucked up. is the whole game that, uhh, "adult"?

Nah, it's just from some polish gamedevs, who really wanted to take a crack at a dark rpg game.

it's kinda neat, so far.

the crashy crashy shit is annoying, tho

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/26579.html

bit more vid, gives you an idea of the vibe & the writing

Got an updated card, can play this now. Apparently, the gamedev house is released an "enhanced edition" in september, which boosts up a lot of shit and takes care of everything else.

Also, harkening back to anime fandom of the 90s, online fans of the game are sharing the original(?) polish voice-acting files, along with upgraded/rewritten subtitles. Can't be any worse than the half-assed English release so far.

I like this game, including the bits where you can gamble on and participate in bare-knuckle fights in taverns, like Philo Beddo.

Switching between polish and american language tracks, I find that the polish voice actors better represent the characters, but the language is too rough. Japanese would be fine, but I switched back to the american track, which is your standard mix of American and various English accents.

so this is pretty badasss~~~ killing some undead in the STRONG STYLE

lol my friend gave me the two books this is based on and instead of a synopsis or w/e the back is just like "inspiration for the critically acclaimed video game"

The way they're rolling out Witcher 2 is pretty awesome - you can preorder on gog, and if you buy in europe and pay 15 extra or whatever they give you a credit based on how much you overpaid compared to the us version

i got high and ordered this from amazon? i've never played it! i read exciting INTRICATE INTERCONNECTED PLOT STRANDS things. plus it was like $5.

'better than expected' is a shitty compliment but this was way more fun 2 play than i had anticpated it being

this is awesome -- had no idea the spirit of '97 was still alive. being able to switch between over-the-shoulder WoW mode and isometric planescape mode made me giddy. plus it is a noir! with a compelling shadowy morally tumultuous plot! a little lolzy with its dialogue sometimes, especially when it's being Adult (like, before the first hour of gameplay was up i'd had sex with a sorceress in fishnets who afterwards told me not to say goodbye because "you don't want to see a sorceress cry") but that's okay. i have the ENHANCED EDITION and it came with a MAP, i could hardly believe it, although it still just crammed like six discs on top of each other onto one plastic spindle. here's what's wrong with capitalism: as video games made more money, their packaging got worse.

also i am a big morrowind fan but this game's alchemy system is simultaneously deeper and easier. but then morrowind's alchemy system is admittedly no fun at all.

this game is better than most movies.

i feel like ill have to upgrade my pc just to play witcher 2 but gd do i want 2 play witcher 2

Stop that, stop that right now

I started playing the 1st one again and like it a lot more with 1) a faster computer and 2) the add-on where you can play it in its original russian with english subs. Fits the atmosphere of the game a lot better and makes the character seem that much more alien and weird. any option like that on witcher 2?

i think the original language is polish, isn't it? but i'm playing in russian too, because the english voice acting isn't great and i thought it might help my russian. the english subtitles leave a lot of things out, but i can only understand half of the excess.

anyway, this game should not be played in english because one of the things that makes it so great is how eastern european the world is. monsters like rusalki and koschei, orthodox-looking priests, lots of references to the secret police. "they wore long grey coats over their armor and thought they had fooled me," a girl in the game said to me in her apartment, "but i learned to spot their kind in university." later we had sex, of course.

Watched a bit of this last night. Very cool game. Definitely gotta watch it in Polish.

I played the original w/ Polish audio and I couldn't do so for too long. Something about the language and vocal direction made it way too harsh or coarse to listen to, and so I had to switch back to English. I wonder if Russian would go down smoother.

Being trying to play Witcher 2 but I just can't get into it. The story is ... convoluted. And sort of boring. Does it get any better?

I gave up pretty early. The gameplay seemed way too complicated to translate to console, and the English version of the dialog was pretty bad.

under 20 bucks for the 360 version. I went for it but am still heavily ensconced in tokyo jungle, xcom and dark souls, so....

Tried 2 again today. Not worth it. There are just too many game mechanics with the mutagens, oils, potions, skill tree, magic spells. The controls are difficult. The story/cut scenes take forever and makes no sense. Selling it.

I got distracted from this. I enjoy the universe and vibe of the game, so maybe I'll come back to over Christmas.

20 bucks?? i thought this was on the regularly-less-than-a-fiver stratum of videogames

i bought this. and played through the prologue on hard and then restarted and played through it on easy because i figured the combat was never going to be interesting or fun enough to warrant the extra investment in time.

hey somebody give me a good critical review of this plzzz

feel like i'd love a good technical non-dumb rpg but if this sucks i don't want to be disappointed

W1 or W2? Witcher 2 has been described by everybody as being far more playable

i loved witcher 1, didn't like the 360 version of witcher 2 (for technical reasons) but people love the pc version and i could see why.

it is dumb and grim and dark and grim.

witcher 2 takes awhile to get going. it has maybe the worst prologue i have ever seen. a ton of dialogue and random game mechanics that have nothing to do with the game. spends a lot more time on boring backstory then showing you how to play.

its good enough that i am still playing but

- quests that you can either google or spend 6 hours trying to solve are bullshit
- the target lock system of fighting makes fighting vs groups stupidly difficult
- no fast travel gets really old really fast i.e. you end up running the same path probably 20 times per "chapter".

if you like dragon age games, you'll probably be on its level.

hmm thx for the responses everybody but i think i'll pass

i'm kind of burned out on engrossing but mechanically/narratively frustrating rpgs (read: rpgs) right now

n e 1 played witcher 1 enhanced edition? i know i can't run 2 on my lolmacbook but apparently i meet the specs for 1. the one for mac is a wineskin which i didn't realize steam was in the habit of selling

ok

i loved witcher 1 for a while but never finished it. lots of hokey problems and i set the voice acting to russian so the performances wouldn't bother me as much, but if you're into classic late-90s rpgs (fallout, torment, etc) it's an acceptable substitute. i still love the corrupt decaying slavic fantasy world even if some of its Look! Racism! moments are heavyhanded, and i dig the idea of your being a professional monster-hunter in an age when the really dangerous monsters are less slavering-fangs-in-the-woods and more well-dressed-diplomats-at-parties. be sure to download the TITTIES PATCH (it does other things too, i guess): http://witcher.wikia.com/wiki/The_Witcher:_Enhanced_Edition_Director%27s_Cut

combat is diablo with one extra mechanic, so dumb fun until it isn't.

lol ( @ Y @ ) patch. did you play 2 at all

i did not.

looking upthread i found a post of mine that sums up why w1 was hard to resist for me:

"they wore long grey coats over their armor and thought they had fooled me," a girl said to me in her apartment, "but i learned to spot their kind in university." later we had sex, of course.

haha. i'm not sure whether that makes me want to play it more or less

Tried playing 1 in Polish, but the language was so harsh I didn't enjoy it. Didn't try Russian.

i might go back and try the polish trick.

what got me was, i put it in hard so the combat wasn't trivial, but it was not-trivial in such a boring way i wished i'd put it on easy so i could basically skip it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4A2bDHd-nUM

uh wait thats not even the trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XpcjUkG2FI4

$3.39 on steam

so witcher 1 sux. o well.

fiddly tactical gritty fantasy rpg seems like it wd be right up my alley but i couldn't get thru the tutorial areas of this. looks really labored and unenjoyable.

witcher 2 i mean

silly ass intro movie too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c0i88t0Kacs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xx8kQ4s5hCY

soon?

i think i'm going to skip this. Souls games have ruined me, i don't have the patience anymore for rpg conventions like "dialogue" (also endless quests/objectives, maps, etc).

holy shit @ this game tbh

there is an absurd amount of dialogue and very little combat compared to most of these games but the red dead-style 5am wilderness trekking with random little vignettes to stumble on seems to be the real star of the show

I got it yesterday and got as far as Charles Dance, between staring at moving foliage and sunsets

true, the video i watched was surprisingly reminiscent of Red Dead. would love a next-gen sequel to that.

speaking of Souls games, pretty sure the ol' Crestfallen Warrior turns up about 0:02 in to this

can u skip cutscenes in this

i've heard the controls suck like just walking around and picking up stuff is a pain in the ass

This thing is getting insanely good scores.

I tried to play Witcher 2 but couldn't get a handle on the controls.

This seems like a good deal btw

16 social media avatars you say?!?!?!?!?

i think i'm 10 hours in and still in the beginning area. a peasant walked by and said "welcome to our shithole." :D

this game is pretty much one of the greats, no time for the people inventing flimsy reasons to dislike it

c.70% of the people in the first act are from Birmingham

the bandits def sound like it

i got to charles dance. this game is hueg

http://i.imgur.com/a9ecRJQ.gifv

This game is great. In addition to everything noted elsewhere, how is it possible that I'm 10 hours into an open-world(ish) game and have yet to encounter a single side-mission that sucks/is boring/feels like a make-work project. Also, that trading-card minigame is so good--am I wrong that winning doesn't seem to give you any real reward in the overall game? It's like your character has a (super nerdy) hobby. And that sounds TERRIBLE but the card game itself is so good it seems like genius that they don't force you or even encourage you to play.

(I have been giggling at that goose gif for like 10 mins.)

the apparent confused pause as the goose overtakes him slays me)

Feel like the immersiveness of the world means they can get away with more missions that are set-piece clue-finding trails or rudimentary choose your own adventure things where you just talk to people or decide an outcome without dismembering anybody; in LA Noire that was pretty much the whole game but it's just a tool in the box here

Conversely, yesterday a small child lured me into an ambush by vengeful bandits, and I immediately hit one of them with one of those critical animations that grotesequely severs their head, shoulder and arm in one chunk, and I thought oh this is really pretty terrible behaviour

is anyone bothering to play this on one of the top two difficulties? After a particularly arduous escort mission I bumped it down to the highest difficulty where meditating will still restore your health, not fancying 70 more hours of having to fund, purchase and eat ten onions everytime I carelessly vault off a slightly too high balcony and lose half my health

do you have to saute the onions first or just eat them raw

No you can't sleep in a bed or cook raw food in this game although you can incinerate beehives with magic

i haven't quite figured out the card game. whats the penalty for losing, does the winner take your cards?? anyway it is cool that in this massive game is a pretty deep mini-game. also made me laugh when i was helping some guy one of the dialogue options was "game of gwent?". its like fuck your side-quest for the moment, play me!

had a guard call me "shiteater" and "you're paler than oaty shite"

i'm playing on blood & broken bones which is 2nd highest difficulty. hasn't been too bad so far, i think you still regen health in daytime or i just grabbed a perk that does that? i keep forgetting to buy food though which fucks me over occasionally

http://gfycat.com/BigPoshAsianwaterbuffalo

:D

I'm playing on second-hardest difficulty as well and the health thing hasn't much bothered me so far. I've never bought food once. You just use the vitality-regen buff and eat some dogmeat every once in awhile. I don't think I'd want the combat to be much easier than it is, though I wish there was a quicksave hotkey on ps4.

made me lol re: bandits

http://i.imgur.com/Jw72AwH.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3h8Al__RVU8

This game makes Skyrim look like such an unbelievable turd

The next Elder Scrolls game announcement is in danger of being on some all-new hotmail level of pitiful obsolete desperation

ha. i think they'll be ok. new ES game is likely a few years from being announced anyway.

i really want to play this, but no way do i have the time for it right now.

its a huge timesink but its great. if anything i hope this sends bethesda back to the drawing board on a lot of shit

I am a grown man and I will no longer accept loading screens when I go into a building

since no one else is playing this we can talk about quests right. princess goat made me lol, and this guy

http://i.ytimg.com/vi/pHWKTVwnOlo/maxresdefault.jpg

^^now that's what real video game writing looks like

I think I let that guy off too easily but I've been leaning towards merciless extermination lately after a really bad thing happened as a result of me being too nice to someone earlier

i convinced him to take the scraps then told the 2 dudes up above there's some ruins below that they should check out. i figure its on them to take out his punishment ;). i also aggro'd keira and killed her. almost reloaded a save to re-do it then decided i didn't care

I've been leaning towards merciless extermination lately after a really bad thing happened as a result of me being too nice to someone earlier

I just got past the part with the tree dude and for the first time in this game I had the chance to be merciful to somebody and didn't, since the whole situation had a real foreboding feel to it... I'm not reading any walkthroughs or hints in this game but I'm hoping you're referring to this?

this game is the best. I can't believe a) the size of it and b) the fact that you're continually running into baddies who so outmatch you that the game seems to expect you to come BACK to these gigantic continents long after you've beat all the story elements associated with them. Must be 300 hours long or some shit.

However I am already sick of picking daisies and notice that you can't really buy what you need AND refuse payment from deserving questgivers without being broke all the time.

this looks like what I'll be doing with my winter if i can't find more work.

antexit no, it was a much more minor sidequesty thing, a dude I decided to go easy on had murdered a load of refugees for their money later in the game and they all had heart-rendingly personal unsent letters to their loved ones strewn about etc

I did the same thing as you on the ancient tree one and prefer the overall outcome I got compared to what I heard the alternative was, although both have their...ups and downs

with how much I've been playing this that feels like a really ridiculously long time ago now, can't believe how much substantial-feeling stuff there is crammed into this and from what I can tell I'm about 60-70% of the way through the main quest

im super obsessed with this game rn

just one more quest [2hrs pass]... ok just one more

haha yesss

i got home from work at 3am on monday and was seriously considering trying to get some witcher action in before i went to sleep

also destroying the completionist in me with all these gd quests

yeah i'm not even close to visiting all the ?'s in velen and there's 2 enormous maps after that... rip life

I've been doing this too and I normally play games obsessively for ~20 hours then completely forget about them until their sequel's about to come out

i feel like the best and worst thing about this cd-room lookin' new millenium myst is that ive spent just as much time playing gwent as i have accomplishing story stuff

http://i.imgur.com/DHQeDCv.jpg

met a rock troll named trollolo XD

I rarely get into the card games and mini games within games but I'm enjoying Gwent. No penalty for losing, new cards to help you take down stronger opponents for winning...it's like pokemon, gotta catch em all. Someone plays a zero strength spy card on you and you suddenly must have that. How do you get it? Play every random person you come across and hope someone gives it to you.

I enjoyed the first area's story where one dialogue option makes all sorts of weird things go down, but I haven't been as interested in the second area yet. Still, worth my time after Dragon Age.

http://i.imgur.com/sG0IZ0Z.jpg

this game is fun, soliciting pro tips for maximum fun

Just wander round and soak the vibe up, if you need experience try to do quests before you're more than 5 levels above the recommended level

don't rush out of white orchard, there's lots of sidequesty stuff that teaches you the game ropes and gets you started, but it felt a bit weird going back there later to mop it up

kill the tree spirit

download the free haircut pack DLC, get the "elven rebel" style and a beard and hey presto, Geralt is Kevin Nash now

skellige > skyrim

i have a terrible compulsion to clear zones before moving on so i did everything i could in white orchard before leaving (except there's an "abandoned site" which is just a roadside shrine that i suspect monsters show up at based on time-of-day) and am now in velen.

this is much, much better than skyrim (which is a bad game) and much, much, much, much better than dragon age inquisition (which is a terrible game). i found the previous witchers to be fun but a little embarrassing writing-wise, this is a big step forward so far.

is the ios version any good? Looks like it's based on the card game aspect?

wha-a-a-a-a-at a Gwent ios game?!?!?!?!?

oh wait no it's a euro-style board game. that's not the same at all :(

keeping the leveling at pace with the main storyline is kind of tricky - my main complaint aside from graphic card glitches. i tried to skip all the crappy dandelion quests too but no luck -_-

also having to google and backtrack for formulas because you found the enhanced version but not the regular is lame.

Dandelion quests result in Dandelion gwent card dude, a bargain at twice the price

dandelion suuuucks. lambert is annoying too but at least has kind of an interesting backstory.

keep hearing npcs that sound like chris finch from the office uk but can't tell if its him. i know he did voice for ass creed pirates

I am a grown man and I will no longer accept loading screens when I go into a building
― Dadjokke (Sgt. Biscuits), Monday, June 8, 2015 12:12 PM

going in and out of caves seamlessly is still impressing the hell out of me every time. lol @ bethesda's "you've opened a door, we'll be back in a few" engine

sorry for the 101 post but what game is this similar to? i love games like stalker, saboteur, alien isolation, far cry, fallout 3, dishonored, etc. am i likely to get on with this? i keep seeing it billed as an rpg, which usually puts me off, but gameplay footage makes it seem more actionny.

Skyrim

yeah it depends what puts you off about rpgs. its not turn based but there are elves and magic and shit.

is the game as sexist as it looks

nah its more racist

its got the awkward nudity/sex + every female major character is supermodel with blonde hair or supermodel with black hair or supermodel with red hair

Uh hello what about the crones/hags

but srsly there's at least the plot with Jarl's daughter Certs or whatever her name is, which is about gender inequality pretty explicitly. And the Bloody Baron plot, which doesn't even give you the option of acting sympathetic to the guy for being a shitty husband and father. Aside from the fact that all your love interests are hot and most of the major female characters are up for grabs, which is pretty bad, and all the boobs, it's not so terrible imo, especially for a) a video game and b) a narrative in the fantasy genre. If the Bloody Baron thing turns out in an all-is-forgiven way don't tell me because i'm not there yet

Diving into this

me too. big init? fave moment so far; slaying that massive fuck off bear outside of town - still on level 1 so pretty satisfying

I'm digging the detective aspect that they built up for this. I always read how Sapkowski wrote Geralt as a hard-boiled noir-type detective in fantasy trappings, mixing in some Hammett & Spillane with Polish/Russian/Slavic folklore mythos, and the game includes that.

Finally finished this last night and after weeks of helping people out with their petty problems and not (often) milking them for extra cash, being humble in my (many) gwent victories and gracious in my (rare) defeats, only cheating on [selected love interest] a handful of times, chopping the legs off hundreds of possibly innocent people but otherwise being as supportive and decent as possible given the harshness of the times ... I get THE WORST OF ALL POSSIBLE ENDINGS.

I've since discovered it all hinged on a rash decision I made while not particularly paying attention and suddenly realizing there was a timer counting down on my response. RUDE.

i got whats considered the bad ending but decided the bleakness fit the game more than the other endings

http://i.imgur.com/84SeDYz.jpg

the new patch really ups the resolution

felt the card trading mechanic felt kinda shoehorned in tho

This game is officially exhausting. I wish there was an all-gwent version.

http://www.polygon.com/2015/6/13/8776301/play-gwent-without-the-witcher-3-using-this-mod

my copy of this just arrived.

does it come with 20-sided die?

Witcher 1 for 99p and Witcher 2 for £2 here - http://www.gog.com/promo/weekend_promo_halloween_monster_hunt_281015

Am nearing the end of the campaign, but mopping up all the landmarks and expansion content first. I enjoy how this game has deliberate comedy missions.

which difficulty level did you all go for? i changed it to the easiest one, i guess cos i am bad at games and this might help me to finish it. enjoying it so far. the game looks amazing. one gripe i have is that the tutorial instructions are in tiny text - it's like i need to get a chair in front of the couch to be able to read them.

Playing at normal, I think.

I found the medium one too easy and played at the second-hardest--which requires you to eat and drink to regain energy. There's always enough resources but it is a bit of a drag to do so. Otherwise I thought the difficulty was about right. Certainly there was never, ever a time I got stuck on a level/baddy who wasn't way above my class rating.

finally having the time to play this properly - it's pretty cool. i find the level of information is p crazy, like how am i supposed to remember the 100s of plants, potions, weapon materials, weapon upgrade grids etc etc, feels like more info than when you start a new job.

that said it does seem to give good tutorials/tips as you go along. the whole thing looks and feels amazing, all the weather changes and the nights.

anyone notice your horse sometimes doesn't come when you whistle?

yep Roach is always a bit lazy, keeps on with the grass chewing.

you don't need to remember all of those plants/potions etc by heart, just check the bestiary for what you need for specific monsters .... the game really does handhold you nicely into knowing how
to use all the systems. bit overwhelming at first, but i became comfortable with it pretty quick.

still only a third of the way through though! its huge! HUGE!

this is really good - very into it now. i guess it's common to find yourself lagging behind on the experience levels, i had to put the important stuff on hold and i'm now wandering back towards white orchard to do sidequests and get tooled up.

love this game so much. it's so big and has so much depth to it, but it's quite easy to just pick up and play for an hour or two.

i'm still quite early in the game but i still don't quite get the crafting stuff and alchemy. like i can see how it works, i think, but it seems to take forever to have all the ingredients to make a thing. then there are those scrolls that tell you how to build something - are they just basically a way to unlock buying that thing off a craftsman? feel like i've met one craftsman in the entire game so far.

Finally started this. I feel like it's taking forever to gain XP to level up.

yeah - same - i was touring around doing every tiny mission and i'm still not level 5 which the next main mission says i should be. now some of the side missions are a lot harder - a few are nearly impossible for my level.

i guess i just keep hitting those question marks and killing bandits. the other day there was one huge bandit camp near the dock type place that you need a special ticket to travel across - it took me a few goes but once i realised the key was to draw them out one by one, it was really good fun. you haven't lived till you've burned a horse to death then slit the throat of the rider as he falls off it. very efficient.

I think this and Fallout are my Gotys for the year

wow, this went from "jesus christ, this is complicated and pointless and these fucking fish men are killing me over and over what the fuck am i doing wrong how do i even equip a sword i don't even know what i'm doing" to "oh fuck it's three in the morning" REALLY FAST
just took my audience with the emperor and there's all kinds of storyline stuff that I'm completely missing but this totally scratches the ol' D&D itch

the depth of gameplay, complexity of fights, deep crafting system, a gazillion things to do and find, looting looting looting, xray specs, better than usual voice acting and writing, real sense of humor... it's pretty great and may stop me from going back to metal gear if i ever find my disc again
moving sucks

The sword stuff is still a bit confusing to me. Like - there are two types of sword and you can only have one of each equipped at a given time, right? And each one has uses in different situations? I'm not sure they ever explain this. Also, I never know which one is which in actual gameplay. And lastly, sometimes pressing square or triangle automatically swings a sword, like 19 times out of 20, but occasionally he'll just swing a punch and not draw a sword, while monsters beat me to a pulp.

The punching without drawing thing happens to me on occasion. There are some wonky control issues in the fighting but I'm finally getting over them.

The silver sword is for monsters, steel for humans.

I am enjoying the little stories though. I liked piecing together the gay nobleman's tragic tale and I wish there was more of it, which is saying something for this type of game.

yeah i like the way people often lie to you to get a thing done - then you can go back and murder them as punishment. i think i am playing this kind of lawful evil - i will help people who need help, i have sympathy for that, but any transgression or lie must be punished with death.

not my irl world view

anyone done the dlc yet, trying to decide if i should bother

i purchased and have not played it - helpful customer review

i ended up giving up on this with something like 30 hours invested because i felt slightly nagged by all the little incomplete items spotting my past so i ended up circling back trying to do everything which is a pretty bad strategy and also made the game sort of tedious. reading the last dozen or so posts i am very tempted to dive back in

based on those sorts of comments, i am clearing as i go. it's a tetch tedious but i imagine much better than coming back twenty levels later.

yeah, that's making me think i ought to doubleback to velen and clean things up before moving too much further along with the main storyline

I'm checking the Quests tab to see the suggested level and just hitting the ones I'm capable of, building up as I go along.

for me I ended up way way behind all quests by about the time of velen/bloody baron - I'm just about catching up now after doing almost every available mission in white orchard and other areas. And I mean just about, like still a level down.

from what i've read only white orchard really ~requires~ the completist approach to avoid being behind in the overall scheme of things, but idk, i'm only like lvl 12 i think?

right now i'm mostly concerned with how to allocate points in the skills tree in a way that isn't totally slapdash

like i got to velen and all the main missions needed level 5 or 6 and i was like level 2. had to go back and complete mission after mission, then even still i'm just about level 4 and a half.

my skillstree philosophy was to hammer it into two as long as i can equip two. my friend told me there's a potion you can get that allows you to rectify any mistakes, later on.

been away for a week for xmas and i'm surprised by how much i crave a 3/4 hour binge of this game.

starting to think this is one of the best games i've ever played. it starts to get very addictive once you start shooting up the levels more quickly - the range of ways to use your experience points is interesting - so far i mostly focused on improving my attacks with the sword and my igni (igni is my go-to sign).

also all the equipment and swag and stuff in dungeons is cool.

just did the mission with the curse on fyke island, thought the narrative was p cool.

got a bit of a fever, and spent the entire last night of attempted sleep with the gwent music looping in my head. wasn't too bad actually.

i can't get into gwent at all - that's the only part of this game i am not on board with. i assume i can progress without playing gwent. i played magic: the gathering back in the day and all, just a game like gwent within the game seems too deep inside for me, i spent about five mins playing it in that first inn and then quit and haven't touched it since.

i tried to go back and finish the gwent stuff at the end but i think you're meant to do it along the way from the beginning. i also suck at the suck at the horse racing shit.
the dlc is pretty good so far. seems to add quite a bit of side stuff along with the bigger story

lol typo

yeah I'm at level 14 and haven't done anything gwenty and wonder if it's worth doing at this point

just did the first horse racing mission in the ciri memory sequence and i won it straight away but it bothered me just for how redolent of other games it was, like just a stupid derivative and boring mission next to the fairly unpredictable quests i've done so far, hope there's not too much of that.

All the Ciri stuff that early in the game is just tutorial, right? The Bloody Baron episode is in retrospect the introductory chunk of what the game really is, narratively, passed just the movement/combat mechanics tutorials that is the White Forest.

I dug the DLC, since you encounter an interesting way to deliver narrative and demonstrate the doomed relationship thru memory and Impressionism.

Kinda highlighted the limited vocabulary of interaction we still have w.r.t. video games, since the control interface is still just button presses.

ah yeah, i guess that's true in theory but i ended up way behind on levels before the bloody baron, so i had to go back to white orchard, but then by the time i got to the bloody baron i actually was way ahead, i got kinda addicted to sidequests and i did all the fyke island stuff with keira metz which gives you loads of experience and a sex scene. though i ended up killing her soon afterwards.

so now i'm like level 9 or something, slaughtering everyone on the bloody baron quests - i guess it makes sense that it's teaching me hand to hand combat and stuff. i quite like the bloody baron storyline even if it's a bit too long. the botchling is pretty dark.

wait you killed keira metz??

yeah i honestly didn't mean to - it kinda escalated quickly i swear officer.

basically i followed her quests through and did the fyke island mission etc, then after the sex scene with her she cast a spell on me and ran back to fyke island. she robbed some notes from that creepy mage's lab and said she was bringing them to... the king whose name i've forgotten, a conversation followed in which geralt was telling her this meant certain death, it seemed very much based on the previous storylines, and he also told her not to do this as the notes could be extremely dangerous if the king sees them.

it went from the seeming possibility of a fight to the fight music initiating and she was dead within about three fast attacks and an igni. kinda weird.

like to me it seemed like my only choice was kill her or let her give the nuke to king radovid.

Same thing happened to me and I felt bad because I thought we had a real nice time on our sexy date? So I reloaded an old save and tried some other lines on her and she eventually went off to hang out in my dreary old home fortress.

Got real conflicted dealing with the crones and the whispering hillock.

currently deciding whether to help Dykstra kill a king.... i sort of love how his character arc works, they really put work into making him more 3 dimensional and his interplay with Geralt is top notch semi-homoerotic goodness

some of the decisions are tricky. how did you all navigate the fyke island stuff with the wraith? i fought her and then went and told her bf about it all - then he came back and kissed her, while she was a wraith, and died. p great that whole quest.

xpost

hmm thats a while ago! i'm not sure - i think i killed her, and that boyfriend ran off ashamed at what he'd done - has to live with the guilt etc.... just about to reach skellige and act 2 - but there's such a vast swathe of Velen still to cover, the completist in me might stick around for a while

ah really - i got an amazing cutscene where i brought him to her and she turned into this gross wraith and asked him to kiss her to remove the curse. and he kissed her and died, it was v touching.

I did the same. I think the crone one is basically that village and the Baron and his wife vs a bunch of orphans. I chose the former.

"crawl back under your rock"

it always makes me a little sad when geralt says out loud "looks like a storm" as he has nobody there to talk to :-( :-( :-(

Just a lonely guy, thinking about how it looks like a storm because of all the heavy rain and lightning there's been for the past four minutes

woah there roach

dlc is hard

game is p good at changing the atmosphere as you go through it - just got to oxenfurt after a lot of wandering south of midcopse (lots of bandit camps - bandit camps are definitely my favourite sidequest) - the music and atmosphere at oxenfurt is brilliant, and the way it looks.

agree that bandit camps are the most fun --- the parry/counter mechanic works a lot better with humans is part of it, i think

game is p good at changing the atmosphere as you go through it - just got to oxenfurt after a lot of wandering south of midcopse (lots of bandit camps - bandit camps are definitely my favourite sidequest) - the music and atmosphere at oxenfurt is brilliant, and the way it looks.

yeah, really like how Velen is all creepy scraping noises and sad violins and the whole region feeling like it's really base and sick and tragic

then you spend the whole big colourful capital city section with everyone dressed in bright colours and the most maddeningly infectious chirpy lute riff everywhere you go

agree that bandit camps are the most fun --- the parry/counter mechanic works a lot better with humans is part of it, i think

yeah there's more of a sense of carnage than i dunno, using a yrden to kill some irritating wraith.

btwi know it says blocking is for humans and dodging is for monsters, but mostly i dodge humans too, like my general tactic for big groups is a huge igni, preceded by an enhanced dragon's dream, if i have time - then i try to pick off anyone who got major burn damage. i dodge constantly and back off so it's just me vs one guy and i don't get surrounded. sometimes use mind control if the guy has a shield, but usually igni and quick attack does the job. i barely ever use strong attack or aard. i don't use block much either, dodge seems to work even better.

some of the midcopse bandit camps are cool, they had like 20 level three bandits instead of a few stronger ones - there are loads of new animations for killing people who are at a far lower level.

lol what have i become

i ended up abandoning fallout 35 hours in (i just didn't care anymore) and diving into this instead, mostly due to checking in on this thread on occasion and getting jealous. i'm level 4.5 or so, having just cleared out everything in white orchard (i think) and talked to the emperor.

the combat is great. i was awful at first because i was just mashing attacks and leaving myself open. now i'm learning how to hang back a little, and leveling up and getting better sign skills modifies things in a pleasing way as well. i know there's a stamina system of sorts during combat so that you have to occasionally recharge rather than attacking endlessly, but i can't seem to find the indicator on the HUD. it's almost better that way, though, because i find myself reacting intuitively and guessing at when i've recharged enough, rather than relying on an indicator to tell me i'm good to go.

the voice acting is so much better than fallout, too, although i really hate the Batman growl that most video game action heroes seem to use.

this game is stupid good and very addictive. always one more thing to do, one more element to finish the current storyline, one more quick run to get some food and water to prepare for a run at what might be a boss.

xpost but still, i'll take that over fallout's incredibly lame beaver cleaver voice for the main character

i wish i could delete the gwenty quest (gotta collect 'em all!) because i swore a sacred oath to never, ever play that game again.

Been kind of getting into Gwent the last few times I've played, actually.

once you have a few hero cards in your deck does gwent just become easy mode? or does it get more challenging

Oh by the way the Witcher 2 is free on xbox 360 at the moment, I won't link to it because it's different for different regions but it's searchable at xbox.com. Also playable on Xbox One via back compatibility. You'll need to grab it soon though, think it expires in a few days.

gwent tends to become more strategic once you have a few good cards unless you're playing the local inkeep or nonquest types in which case then, yes, very much easy mode.

I SIGNED UP FOR A GWENT TOURNAMENT NOT FISTS OF FURY AGHHHHHHHHG

one minor gripe would be that the story gets kinda tedious and overbearing somewhere from bloody baron to the novigrad and the missions finding dandelion. like some really long cut scenes and i was starting to feel like skipping them. i'm not sure finding ciri is that interesting a storyline.

how completist are you all being? i've done big clusters of question marks in some areas, but this game seems to be just vast - and like if i'm in the city where the missions advance the main quest, i'm more likely to keep pressing on with that.

have to say since i got advanced dragons dream and advanced grapeshot, and coupled these with a v levelled up igni, i am causing mayhem. like these gigantic mushroom cloud explosions and limbs fly everywhere. it's hilarious.

my problem is i'm too completionist, so if i see question marks i can't stop myself doing them... which means if i sit down for 3 hours, 2 hours of that will be side quests or just treasure hunt, and so i'm getting through main story VERY SLOWLY. I know some people have shot through the main story in 40-50 hours or so as they ignored the side quests etc... so its really down to what you as a person want to do!

but yes finding dandelion was a bit of a bore at points - but then it also had the stage play etc!
enjoying skellige much more now i've moved onto that.

these games would be way better with a silent character-created protagonist rather than reddit wish fulfillment sex having cool guy geralt.

^ a thousand times this; i feel very PUA sleazy picking the obvious sexytimes answer tree

lol true

though i suppose you could argue it's an attempt at reprogramming the users

"hmmmm... should i act like a total asshole to this woman or treat her human? i guess i'll treat her human"
three hours later
"holy shit everyone in this game wants to fuck me... i've got to start treating women human IRL i guess"

"also, i need to get rippling abs, learn magic and splurge on those catseye contacts"

i feel like the gamification of human interaction is the creepiest thing about those kinda dudes

sometimes geralt (and this game) surprise me with wit. not often i guess, and i'm damning with faint praise, but there's a p decent wit bubbling under in this game, relative to other games.

lol at the irish accents on skellige.

the graphics there are amazing.

This is a great game. For me (and not that I play many games) it combines the best aspects of Red Dead Redemption and the better Assassins Creed games.

I've not long reached Skellige, as well. Lovin it. Loving the vastness of the whole game. Like, when you get a new mission you go to the map to see where you have to go and you follow the yellow arrow, and you follow it and follow it and follow it, and it just scrolls for ages and it's like ho-ly fuck. I'm gonna be at something of a loss when I complete it all, tbh. lol.

I got overwhelmed by the size and stopped to play Arkham Knight.

yeah i took a lil time out from playing anything and found it a lot easier to jump back into arkham knight and shadows of mordor (which i still haven't really figured out) for a few quick punchups than heading straight back into the vastness of the witcher. excited too because i just sorted out a projector/screen setup and it's totally indulgent and awesome, this game looks fantastic at 120"

Some intense games of Gwent happening over here.

lambert, lambert, what a prick

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reQNMG1sMng

amaziing. that tune really gets the blood up for slaughtering some novigrad street gangs.

FINISHED. got a good ending. what a game!

witcher 3 is good

yes! have to get back into it. so fun to play stoned for hours on a wintery day .

Beat the actual game. Started on the DLC but haven't gotten very far. Total blast though.

i recently started on this too. i had tried the first one at the time and hated it so i mentally wrote the series off since. but i saw and got so many recommendations for 3 that i had to get it in the end and yeah it is exceptional. movement still nearly as clunky as i remember it from 1 tho.

i finished the tutorial area and just started on the next area. it's so huge, and i love that the side quests and stuff are well written and interesting. i haven't really delved into gwent at all. is it the kind of thing that gives advantages or just a bit of fun on the side? should i worry about it now or can i go back to it later?

Worry about it now because you'll need the special cards from certain characters (like the Baron) that will disappear and you'll never catch up with the quality level of cards NPCs have in Skellige or Novigrad.

it's also just fun. it's a p nicely designed game and quick to play a match

don't worry about the vastness, just enjoy the fact that even the smallest side quest is going to be pure quality, and there are hundreds of hours of enjoyment in that thing. I actually think the story of Hearts Of Stone is better than the base game, it really is wonderful....

due to this year of shittiness i've actually kept blood and wine back for as long as possible, first reason being so that i have a guaranteed excellent thing to enjoy in christmas holidays, and second reason being that i'm gonna be fucking sad when i have no more of this to play.

fuck gwent if it doesn't appeal, i never played it even once.

this is the best game.

well i played it once, but after that i never played it again.

must try the expansion packs, though i still haven't finished the original, i'm too addicted to randomly grinding my way around the question marks. there's nothing i love more than a huge bandit camp.

I love how the bandits never learn how dumb it is to attack you, even the last guy is always there confidently shouting abuse at you as you stride menacingly over the severed limbs of all his friends, deflecting crossbow bolts back at him

fuck gwent if it doesn't appeal, i never played it even once.

this is the best game.

― Bein' Sean Bean (LocalGarda), Thursday, November 17, 2016 4:40 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

cosign all of this

I love how the bandits never learn how dumb it is to attack you, even the last guy is always there confidently shouting abuse at you as you stride menacingly over the severed limbs of all his friends, deflecting crossbow bolts back at him

there's a lovely bandit beach down south somewhere, like about 100 of the fuckers around some boat. sort of like a club tropicana for bandits except instead of drinking in speedos you maim and burn them all with bombs and igni.

it's like south west as far as i recall.

I just finished Blood & Wine, which pretty much gives you a whole new game world to explore, which has the added bonus of being like a fever-dream version of 14th Century Provence

and i'm back.

i played a couple hours last night, bumped up to LVL6, and kept dying during the Bloody Baron mission where you have to keep the torches lit while the Pellar completes his spooky chants. i was getting to the point where i was saying "oh come on! come on!" in annoying little kid voice, out loud, after every loss, so i went to bed. in the cold light of the morning i realized that i probably should have adjusted my Sign skills so that they're more effective against Wraiths, who were just tearing me apart. Also I leveled up and didn't even take the time to pick a new skill or do anything else. Negronis. I had a few and it affected my decisionmaking. I'm sorry The Witcher III.

anyway i had a great time getting back into it after however long it had been since i moved on. this time i anticipate sticking with it a lot longer.

i tried to get into gwent when i re-engaged last night. i don't think it's going to happen. about 5 tutorial screens in i just kind of gave up. an hour later i mustered the will to challenge a shopkeeper to a game. i bet 2 crowns. 5 minutes later, still on the first screen, trying to figure out which faction and leader to go with i forfeited

spectre oil on your sword, and use yrden for the wraiths. that should speed it up!
from what i remember it's almost like a mandatory test that battle, in that it teaches you to look at the bestiary properly and use oils.

everyone mostly playing this on the default difficulty?

difficulty level for these kind of games depends on how much you are going to do side quest/extras. i figure they have to balance them for ppl going m/l straight thru the main quest with only occasional diversions. that means that if you do all of the extra stuff and get to the main quest last, also my approach, then you over-level. it is worth the initial extra challenge to crank the difficulty a level and have the game not be a cakewalk later imo.

been playing on normal and it's been pretty good but starting to get easy - thought about making it more difficult now (i'm at around lvl 10)

yeah, normal is pretty easy -- i think the kotaku guide recommended playing it on one level harder, saying that it got a little too easy in the late stages

phew - thanks jamiesummerz, that did the trick.

i was stuck in an incredibly annoying save situation where i somehow saved it about 2 seconds before the battle triggered, leaving me enough time to pause the game and adjust the loadout, skills, and repair my sword, but not enough time to save the game again afterward. as a result i had to do annoying inventory stuff every single time i died, which was like 15 times. on top of that, last night my ps4 installed a big upgrade to the game, and when i started it up this morning it had a handy mandatory tutorial for the inventory screen which i had to skip through every single time i reloaded.

but it's over. now i'm going to wander around and do some treasure hunting and alchemy and crafting and chill

i was stuck in an incredibly annoying save situation where i somehow saved it about 2 seconds before the battle triggered

similar situation compelled me to post this, the only time i ever got close to throwing the controller, swearing at the television in the middle of the night

I SIGNED UP FOR A GWENT TOURNAMENT NOT FISTS OF FURY AGHHHHHHHHG

― ﷽ (diamonddave85), Saturday, January 23, 2016 10:48 PM (nine months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

an invitation from keira metz

geralt and keira's journey to the elven mage's lair had forged a tight bond between them, the kind harrowing life-or-death experiences forge between soldiers at war or students during exam week. and so when it was all over keira invited geralt to stop by her hut sometimes, in a way that suggested she did mean for an afternoon of tea and crumpets.

i'm assuming this means she wants to play gwent. i'm afraid to go because i've only really played gwent once, and i had no idea what i was doing and didn't even finish.

ah, youth

Complete edition is $25 on Amazon today (I ordered it)

I started this last night and I'm kind of overwhelmed but after months of playing Fallout IV this looks (visually) SO MUCH BETTER

yeah when i started fallout iv that kinda ended it for me - it just looked so dead compared to the witcher.

as mentioned the sound is amazing too if you can hook it up to something nice.

i was also overwhelmed at first, and i was a bit confused by the story, having never played the previous entries in the series. but after about 4-5 hours it really settles into a satisfying groove that hasn't let up since. and geralt is a great videogame character. to continue the Fallout4 abuse, geralt is on a different level than the generic fallout character person with the terrible voice acting that you're forced to inhabit.

Fallout has some decent scenery but the character design is so ugly and primitive compared to something like this or Uncharted.

I read some background on the story and mythology of the first two games before playing. I'm more overwhelmed by gameplay stuff but I'm sure it will get more natural.

i never found the story stuff bothersome - i never played the other games. it kinda pieces it together.

the gameplay is definitely a bit intense at first, like all the tools and items etc feels a bit overwhelming but you can kinda ignore any parts that seem tedious. it's complex enough some of it, i mean for a videogame like that i play to escape from a world where i need to solve complicated problems.

i mean obv choose your own path but i funnelled most of my resources into igni and fast sword attacks and then kept upgrading bombs. there's a spell called dragon's breath that makes your bombs and igni cause these huge mushroom clouds, increasing in severity as you power up. just throwing this out there in case that appeals.

i'm still pretty early on, i think - LVL 14, and i've been wandering around doing novigrad-related quests for the past couple hours - but i still haven't really gotten into the crafting stuff yet. crafting, so far, seems like kind of a waste of time because the stuff i find out on quests are always better than even the best crafting option for my level. i'm guessing as crafting becomes more important toward the end game? kind of ditto with alchemy, although it least that's useful for creating enemy-specific potions and stuff.

yeah that's my experience of crafting too. if you grind around the place you end up finding way better weapons.

good to know! i won't waste too much time thinking about it now, then.

the only other issue i've had as i play through is just trying to figure out which quests to take on. i'm trying to take on the main quests when i'm relatively close to their recommended level so i don't end up overleveling and breezing through the main storyline. but as i take that approach, it ends up having a similar effect on the secondary quests - right now i have a bunch of LVL 7-10 quests that i haven't done, and now i'm way too leveled up for them to offer any satisfying challenge.

i dunno, it's not a big deal, and i'm still managing to fit in a lot of sidequests when i'm still close to the appropriate level, but i'm starting to get FOMO as i steer Roach around the landscape.

i think it's so big that that's maybe inevitable. i did go back and clean up a lot of quests even if i got like 1 xp for doing them because i was so far levelled up.

i still haven't finished the first game tho - i am like level 25 or maybe more but got sidetracked by question marks.

crafting is important for the witcher gear but pointless otherwise. alchemy is great tho, they did a terrific job making potions and oils etc easy to use and relevant. one of the big successes of the game vs the genre standard imo.

i am at level 20, and was out on skellige doing the main story and just decided to go back to velen and investigate question marks, and mop up some witcher contracts

being overpowered in some confrontations can be boring, but i'm using it as a way to try out different patterns of attack/parrying

haven't decided on a "build" really. yrden appeals to my sensibilities but igni seems most practical

for a while i was heavily relying on quen - before battle and during. but now i hit it before and then igni throughout. igni is crazy good esp against human opponents.

yeah it's the best - the mind control is v powerful too but mostly igni plus dragon breath plus bombs and you can take down anything.

might have said this already but one of the tips said to block against humans and dodge v monsters but i never found that to be true - dodge against everything imo.

cluster bombs and underpowered idiot bandits are a very fun combination in the late game ime

sold my copy of this after "finishing" - didn't bother with all the ?'s in the water. loved it but don't see coming back to replay it. an actual rpg witcher wd be dope

Still too caught up in Skyrim to give this the time it requires

so my geralt told triss he loved her bc a) i barely know anything about yenn and b) she's a hot redhead. i'm pretty fine w/ the decision but i do wonder how much story i'm going to miss out by foreclosing on yenn? the way he leaves triss makes it seem like his story with her is over for the game... so maybe that was a short-sighted decision on my part?

no

you won't get less of anything overall, just different.

Yeah but the Yenn love runs deep.

There's a good little moment on a mountain.

there'll be terrible pornography regardless, follow your heart/index finger

Yenn is a total bitch, Triss definitely the right choice. I had planned on Triss but i think the signposting of that specific moment where you have to tell her you love her maybe wasn't clear enough to me, so i missed it and ended up without either of them! ah well, i still got a great ending. being a good dad is far more important in the process of getting a good ending than who you end up seeing terrible porn of.

that almost imperceptible nod when you suggest a game of gwent #justwitcherthings

i'm in skellige and up to level 20 and i feel like the end of the game is rapidly approaching. i still have a bunch of quests i could backtrack to finish but probably won't... i out-leveled a ton of stuff, esp among the contracts. what level does this go upto? 30?

the levels at the end of the main story are around 32-34 i believe

omg i just realized cd projekt is the same company doing cyberpunk 2077

it's worth going back and doing contracts if you're bothered about potions and alchemy generally, the monsters you kill often supply useful ingredients

i'm in p much the exact same position as you, mordy, and i'm going back to sweep up contracts, even easy ones

this game rules. i need to practice fighting though bc my approach is still just mashing a bunch of buttons really fast.

i practiced fighting and alchemy and stuff too much and now the game is too easy even after raising the difficulty level. as great as the game is it really is lacking in the challenge department.

this game rules. i need to practice fighting though bc my approach is still just mashing a bunch of buttons really fast.

just keep jumping and fast attacking, occasionally weave like ali with o then thump someone with a strong attack, lots of fire and lots of bombs, it's easy. i kinda like that it's easy as i'm bad at games. i got a few new games recently but this thread made me come back to this one. lmao @ the scene where geralt and the two other witchers all get wasted in his house. i mean partly cos it's funny and partly cos it failed to be.

am i the only one who finds the voice acting for the two-line blurbs on the loading screen just kind of hilarious. the way he says "bloody baron" is just so bizarre.

yeah i don't mind it being easy, i don't put enough time into playing video games to get really good at them. most of my favorite games are ones that got criticized for being too easy.

I was so glad to be alone in the living room when the witcher fucks a sorceress on a fake unicorn

spent 5 minutes trying to figure out if yenn is an analogue for veronica does that make tris an analogue for betty or bc she's a redhead for cheryl blossom and then trying to figure out exactly what the semiotics of cheryl blossom was supposed to be anyway - this was a good distraction for the otherwise shameful unicorn sex scene

mordy those are 5 minutes you cant have back

I really enjoy this game but it is kinda easy-ish. I'm getting frustrated with the crafting too. I finally got my hands on a master armorer except I dont have recipes for anything decent at my level so its basically an empty victory.

More fetch quests then!

I've already lifted the difficulty once and it's still too eAsy thinking about taking it up to death march

braaaaag

esp if you're using the right oils and making use of the decoctions (there are some feats that apparently boost your toxicity tolerance which i feel like will just break the game entirely if i use -- i have like 3-4 pts i haven't even invested yet in skills). i also have the cat school armor which is great.

breaking up w/ yenn v. sad :(

finally finished this. i have a pretty big backlog of games to get to but that new game+ sure looks tempting. quite a remarkable game - one of the best RPGs i've ever played for sure.

has any one read any of the books or graphic novels? are they any good?

I've read (well, listened to), the short story prequels to the main saga and generally enjoyed them. I'm not a big fantasy reader though so take it with a grain of salt.

I dug the books, the couple first ones I read.

Took me forever to really get that the games were sequels of sorts to the books.

http://i.imgur.com/gra9w6e.jpg

terrifying

ha

i've been chilling in novigrad for the past week. just like solving mysteries and tracking people down. i love that there's a city that actually feels big and like a city within the even huger world.

After some so-so AAA games over the holidays, I fired up my post-Blood & Wine save and am just walking the earth, basically immortal, picking up all the question marks I left behind, finding it a surprisingly soothing way to not think about 2017.

are the add-ons worth picking up? the gameplay can be repetitive but I enjoy walkin around the world they created.

Yeah would recommend, the new area in Blood and Wine is a nice change, and both have some pretty great quests.

Hearts Of Stone story is better than Wild Hunt!

do you carry on as the same level etc in the expansions?

i only discovered the island in skellige called "an skellig" like two days ago, despite it having its own theme music and several really cool side quests. somehow i missed it. anyway finally finished this last night. don't read on if you don't want mild spoilers:

pretty good cinematic end sequences. thought the second last boss, the magician guy, was one of the few really difficult bosses in the game. the last boss was laughably easy, he barely hit me once. i was thinking last night i reckon i've died more in this game by falling off cliffs than during battle.

i also wondered if anyone else does the following:

1. being too lazy or not bothering to use roach, instead walking/running long distances to a marker, as the crow flies. mostly works, occasionally results in stupid routes over mountains and lots of scrabbling/jumping.
2. never using the parry/block action. i just dodge or roll always. i can't even remember how to parry.
3. putting all your experience into sword skills - like once i got a good igni and an okay quen/yrden there was so much experience left it just seemed like upgrading sword attack and defence made the most sense.
4. never fighting on horseback. can't be bothered/it's too easy on foot anyway to need to learn how to move roach in any non-frustrating way during a fight.

yes, you retain your level (and all upgrade, gear etc.) in the expansions, or you can assume a levelled-up version of Geralt if you want.

i also wondered if anyone else does the following:

yes to 1 + 4 for sure. parrying is useful when you're dealing w/ archers (and have the deflect skill) otherwise agree. 3 - a lot went into sword skills (and particularly quick sword -- does any one bother to use both quick & heavy? seemed unnecessary even at the second highest difficulty setting) but putting a little bit in alchemy basically turns the game into a cakewalk. + i say this as someone who doesn't really play the dark souls games bc they're hard enough that i get frustrated - but in general witcher 3 is just too easy. agree about the second to last boss and the final boss too.

i had all these plans to combine the highest level bear swords w/ the highest level cat armor but i didn't even bother getting everything fully upgraded by the end. maybe it makes more sense to do so on new game+.

i put like everything into igni and sword. and i use a lot of bombs which combined with igni is good.

i use strong attack a lot though, like when an enemy is stunned or you have a clear strike, strong attack is really good. also the heightened strong attack where he lifts the sword over his head, backwards, is ludicrously powerful. kinda hard to get a hit in with it but if you do it causes huge damage.

i'm the same - i know i'd give up dark souls after two minutes, i'm mostly okay with witcher 3 being easy but i think they could fix it a bit. like the exp level of bosses doesn't actually tally with difficulty sometimes, there's this one golem or fire elemental in one of the caves that took me longer than any other boss, and it was just level 28 or something when i was about 30. but most of the time i just tear into enemies without even blocking or dodging and they're dead in about two minutes.

humanoids are even easier, i mainly enjoy fighting them cos it's fun to dodge and taunt them. i think if the fighting wasn't so much fun and didn't have such good animations it'd be more frustrating, but it is a problem. like the game doesn't quite know how to balance itself towards the wide variety of skills you amass as it goes on.

xpost i keep finding i have the scrolls for the three highest things but not the most basic one, and hence can't craft it or brew it.

started blood and wine over the weekend, can't stop laughing. the accents and the music and the script. this game is all-time.

i can't complete the final detlaff fight in blood and wine at all. it's about 200 times harder than anything else in this game. i searched for how to do it etc, nothing helps.

maybe kick the difficulty level down a notch? i was looking for a chill vacation vibe by the time i got to b&w so i set it to easy mode. i think detlaff still kicked my ass a few times but i don't remember it being a grind (and i am not a particularly skilled fighter in this game)

lol i'm already on easy. like when he changes form he just fires bats and me and i die every time. i've considered going back to an old save then heading off for a while to level up and maybe get a few more effective potions, though i am a really high level already.

ha oh welp. maybe i was way over-leveled since i'd done everything i could do in the game by then or maybe i got lucky with my "hit random buttons in a sweaty panic" strat

he telegraphs his fire bat attack, it should just be a question of dodging out the way when he telegraphs it then closing in for some sword-thwacking IIIRC

seems to be really hard to dodge, probably a timing thing. glad this game is easy cos the load times when you die are so bad it's hard to have even three goes at a boss.

remember the quen shield that gives back health being pretty critical in surviving that part

http://gematsu.com/2017/03/gwent-witcher-card-game-ps4-technical-beta-begins-march-31

how long does the dlc take, roughly

i'm not enjoying blood and wine as much as the main game or as much as hearts of stone and i can't tell if it's because it's not as good or i'm just finally burning out on this game. the main story feels pretty grim and the side missions are all pretty dull. i do like toussaint though, it's very pretty.

i stopped partway thru b&w. i think for me it was part burn out but also it lost the sense of progression to keep pushing me along. i might try it again in a few months.

weird - i felt most addicted during blood and wine.

so far it feels less creative/weird than the rest of the game. nothing like going into the painting or the final battle against the mirror man in hearts of stone. a lot of straight-ahead fighting and running errands for people. but i'm probably not that far into blood and wine yet.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/05/17/netflix-to-produce-the-witcher-tv-series

cautiously optimistic

i hope it's just a lot of wandering around in the foothills gathering flowers and whistling for Roach

terrence malick's The Witcher

http://i.imgur.com/LuGknMf.png

LOL

otm

the first tv show ever to be shot entirely within a broom cupboard in an embassy building

hahaha

now you don't need to unlock the sex scenes

this was $25 for the game + both expansions on GOG yesterday and i just built a new gaming pc so i guess i'm finally going to play it. i avoided it before because skyrim burnt me out on this type of game but it's been long enough now i think, and being able to play it on high gfx settings should be a treat, i imagine.

fwiw witcher 3 >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> skyrim

yeah i loved skyrim but this is just so so much better

That's a big promise

idk i don't feel any compunction about that claim. witcher 3 eats skyrim's lunch. they're not even close to being on the same level.

i know!

xp

100% agree

One day I'll own something I can play this on and I definitely want to

skyrim ~feels~ a little more open in that you can design your character, choose to be a certain class w/accompanying storyline, etc, but witcher is so much more polished in every other respect (writing, acting, visuals, controls, etc) that yeah it's really not much of a comparison

stealth archer on Skyrim was cool, don't recall anything similar on Witcher 3

really curious what the next generation of games in this genre will look like, seems like witcher3 and zelda have sent everyone else back to the drawing board

i also agree that witcher is better than skyrim, and i loved skyrim. witcher has more personality and better writing and more variety.

stealth archer on Skyrim was cool, don't recall anything similar on Witcher 3

― badg, Thursday, May 25, 2017 11:56 AM (thirty-four minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i did miss this, as this is typically my favorite class

Only gave Witcher a cursory try but it seemed a bit more of a drag to get into than Skyrim, with all the alchemy and potion stuff. Ready to believe that there's an awesome game in there once you get past that but skyrim otoh hooked me from te get go

tbh my least favorite parts of both skyrim and witcher were the alchemy and potion and crafting stuff.

i love picking spells and weapons and upgrading equipment, but for some reason when it extends into keeping track of 60 different sets of recipes to make marginal upgrades to stats i just get overwhelmed and stare distantly and wistfully.

kinda like this, but with just a hint of hope

http://i.imgur.com/LuGknMf.png

Free public beta for online Gwent is live
https://www.gog.com/game/gwent_the_witcher_card_game

this was a good choice for breaking in the new pc, the environments look incredible

stealthing and sniping is how I always like my characters to live, have only played the first Witcher which I like just fine but it isn't a patch on any Elder Scrolls game and you totally have to tank along and the alchemy is a huuuuuuuge buzzkill

this is still fun 15 hours in though the combat kinda sucks relative to the rest of the package. i also haven't had much desire to dig into the crafting or alchemy systems, i've just been leveling up quick attack and the magic signs and playing it as a hack & slash

Also replaying this on PC rn

Still as beautiful as the day I married it

Is the Complete Edition worth getting over the vanilla (and $20!) version?

what's the price difference? the extra content is very good but the base game is already pretty huge

Looks like it's pretty easy to find CE (new) between $35 and $40.

i'd say if you have the hours to pour into it you can't go too wrong with the CE but i think the 2 expansions were priced at $10 and $20, so you're not going to be enormously punished if you hedge with just the base game

blood and wine is a pretty huge expansion and worth it if youre the type who doesn't burn out on RPGs 50 hours in

personally I ran out of steam before getting there

yeah i still haven't finished blood and wine. hearts of stone was good though.

I guess I'm really out of the loop because I've spent two marathon sessions on the game so far even though White Orchard is considered a prologue level. I've barely even scratched the surface of crafting, but that's probably because in still early in the game and I'm missing a lot of key ingredients.

And OMG Gwent, I can see myself easily sinking hours into it.

Will ILX revoke my Kool Kid's Club Kard if I say that the flood of ?s on the Velen map make me want to skip all those sidequests and get on with the main story?

I mean my god: https://witcher3map.com/v/#2/128.0/111.9

do not try to do every sidequest in witcher 3 you will die

velen is the largest area by far fwiw

i did everything, in the main game at least, and have no regrets

Roberto r u a ghost?

no comment

Regarding possible ways to die, I can think of worse ways than Witcher 3 sidequests.

it took me 2+ years to finish this game and I found myself forgetting the entire plot when I'd pick it back up..

I was a little disappointed after last night's session, because although I'm on the trail of the Bloody Baron's daughter, I did not open any areas with new Gwent players.

you should just get the gwent standalone game! i haven't played it but have heard it's pretty good

xp to jingles good grief

Bloody Baron: I'll never know what bloom would've been the favorite of my miscarried daughter, and the fault lies with me.
Geralt: Wanna play Gwent?
BB: LAY 'EM DOWN, PODNER.

Not sure I'm actually enjoying this now (level 14), might need to take a break.

Don't care for these characters much TBH.

I think that Geralt's general lack of affect may be why I'm connecting to him, but that doesn't explain why I'm not connecting with other, more colorful/expressive characters.

Is the story supposed to be good or merely good for an open-world RPG? I haven't been impressed, and I'm in Act II now.

the overall story did not strike me as a strength at the time and i can barely remember anything about it now. i don't think that the main storyline/plot is ever done well in open world games, and the smaller stories you discover (or sometimes create) as you go about the world are where narrative elements can actually shine.

What prompted me was actually a secondary quest, the one where you help the Irish viking princess help free a local chieftain from a demon tormenting him by...

SPOILERS BEGIN

... throwing his newborn infant into an oven -- basically, the demon needs to find a new host who genuinely has intense feelings of guilt, but the outlines of the plan were already described by Geralt so why would he feel real remorse?

yeah people mostly like it for all the weirdo side stories and world building. i never finished the main quest, same as all open world games

I finished it on accident

i find the story more amusing than necessarily good but it still has some sense of character to it and a consistency within its own world. some of the skeillige scenes were hilarious, as an irish person. the acting and the diff accents from diff parts of ireland.

it's weird reading the diff reactions to it. i never played a single hand of gwent after the first 10-minute foray, and i was a magic the gathering nerd in my teens. just couldn't get into it.

prob be surprised if i ever enjoy a game as much as this tho i am already looking forward to their cyberpunk game.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cSqi-8kAMmM

in a world

where you have to change your sword to suit your enemy

one butt is

flexin

*slow motion shot of butt muscles gently breathing in and out*

I just started this today ! I mean III. I hate starting games though and this one seems massive but I will try.

One butt cheek is for human enemies, the other butt cheek is for monsters.

that explains the unbalanced tingling when the witcher walks through the woods

henry cavill sucks and is bad, therefore this show will suck and be bad

^

Also the game is bad.

Nah.

All three instalments are worth playing. 1-2 do certain things better than 3.

“One of the things that probably shifted the most once we cast Henry is that Geralt speaks a lot less than I initially intended. In the books, Geralt’s actually quite chatty. He talks a lot. What I found, though, is that on-screen—especially with Henry portraying him—a lot can be done in looks and in grunts. Henry’s a big grunter. I mean that in the best way possible,” she said.

https://io9.gizmodo.com/heres-why-the-witcher-auditioned-207-other-guys-for-ger-1836600508

oh he’s a big grunter alright

this game really wants me to get into Gwent. I don't understand it at all, which is typical of me because I find most card games perplexing at the best of times

I've been playing this for a good few weeks but I'm still LV5. Seem to be trying to defeat the first Wild Hunt demon with the help of a high maintenance hippie witch who reminds me of my ex girlfriend's housemate

I only seem to be able to apply ability points to one ability (fast action swordplay or something). How does this work?

can't remember how the ability system works, do remember it fucking sucks

you don't have to play gwent at all beyond that one time where they make you learn it. i certainly never played it again after that.

i'mstarting to wonder why i haven't leveled up more than I have. It's making it rather hard to defeat this Nithral character

i recall that one being a tricky one. any guide online could tell you more but use the roll away movement as much as possible. i also think i was able to back out of it or get a previous save and go back and load up on healing potions

smashed it! although afterwards I seemed to end up on the other side of the map with a bunch of tasks to do way way away

I'm loving this game, but there are a lot of glitches, which is to be expected in a game of this size. That said, I'm not a fan of Geralt suddenly forgetting how to open a door whilst in the basement of a rat-infested haunted tower.

Anyway, been playing lots of secondary quests and levelling up and I'm nearly ready to go visit Novigrad. Very exciting. Do you ever get to go to Toussaint in this game or is that one of the expansions?

it's one of the expansions, and is iirc even more sex-alicious than the main game

Ooh, I had some sexy sex last night. It was very sexual and uncannily like seeing mannequins grinding on each other

I take it it's normal to think 'Yeah I really ballsed-up that quest' on a semi-regular basis because you said the wrong thing?
No matter how hard I try, I seem to piss a lot of people off.
I really annoyed the Peller last night by not helping him, but I don't think the game actually gave me an option to help him at all.
Similarly, some quests just kind of end anticlimatically and I'm suddenly left to my own devices in the middle of a wood or whatever. Perhaps the consequences come back to raise their heads later on...

One of the good things about the game is that there are many, many quest situations where you don't end up doing the "right" thing however you might define that, or how hard you try. And yes, sometimes quests just peter out with no successful resolution, good or bad. I think it's a really good way of world-building, and gives the game replay value- things might turn out different next time. Of course it's still pretty "on rails" really, but it does give the player a real feeling of agency IMO.

I like:

'Right, we've gotta go and kill the evil witches who live in the wood, with not a moment to spare. Follow us'

*You meditate for 36 hours*

I think it's a really good way of world-building

Yeah absolutely. "That went wrong and sort of fizzled out weirdly" is the key mood of the whole game imo and what makes it feel distinct from everything else out there, it's definitely in the feature-not-bug zone.

I think it's a really good way of world-building

Yeah absolutely. "That went wrong and sort of fizzled out weirdly" is the key mood of the whole game imo and what makes it feel distinct from everything else out there, it's definitely in the feature-not-bug zone.

I lost a sidequest involving Gwent because the character I was supposed to play against died. Guess I'm gonna need to learn to play it or this'll keep happening and then I'll get a 'Great job, you suck!' ending.
It does seem like quite a complicated game. I started watching a gruelling 1-hour YouTube on how to play it but the guy was just bumbling through and not getting to the point. The images were fuzzy.

My main concern is that because I haven't played much, I only have the starter deck of cards. Would it be best to go back to White Orchard and play the yokels rather than trying to take on the people in Novigrad? Or does it not matter?

Honestly, I'd recommend getting used to having a few failed quests in your history rather than bothering to learn gwent, it's not a great card game at all.

I've had a few pretty major plot lines end up marked as failed (including one where I just didn't go back to help out the bloody baron in time and he ended up missing and never heard from again) but none of them have been game breaking and it's one of the things that ultimately makes your playthrough your own, imo. Agree that the red text etc does end up implying a level of "you suck" but learning to ignore that is easier than learning a dumb card game that you won't enjoy anyway.

I mean even if you do want to play a card game you're still better off ignoring gwent and just playing hearthstone or something instead.

tbf I didn't buy this game to play Magic the Gathering

as someone who likes MTG and other similar card games, i didn't find gwent fun at all and ignored it for the whole game

Honestly, I'd recommend getting used to having a few failed quests in your history rather than bothering to learn gwent, it's not a great card game at all.

i only played one game of gwent

however, i think it's worth noting that a ton of people seem to love gwent, and it spawned its own separate game

(a lot of people also loved/love the card game in FFVIII as well, so who knows)

right. I'm on Skellige now. Still very much enjoying this game although now I'm almost fully versed in the way the game works, I am starting to find the main quest a bit tedious. There's a lot of fetching and following the map to where it tells you to go.
Now I'm on a different map I'm starting to feel a sense of 'okay this again but with Northern Irish accents'.
Decided to go back to Velen for a bit and just ride around and explore. Found a LOT of nekkers and drowners and bandit camps which was okay.
Back to Skellige and whoa there are a lot of characters the game wants to assume I know all about. Had to spend a good while reading the character glossary and still don't quite get what's going on or why I'm doing the thing I'm meant to be doing.
Maybe I'd like to start a different game. I have Dark Souls 3 and RDRII that I'm itching to play but I'd feel a bit like I'm putting a perfectly good book down without finishing it.

for open-world games it's more like leaving a museum without looking at every exhibit imo

yeah OTM. I'm playing W3 through again and just doing what I feel like then progressing the main plot to level up. It's fun just to roam around exploring the huge world, and I think I'm doing mostly new side-quests this time round. The game is absolutely vast!

i feel like i should maybe try this again as i played for maybe 40 hours and then moved on to the next MIND MUSEUM

is there a way to tell how long you've played a game?

most games track playtime somewhere in the menus, not sure where it is in this game

if I've played about 5-6 hours since I got my PS4 that would be about 60 or so hours... but it would be interesting to know for sure

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-12-21/medieval-fantasy-warrior-is-key-to-21-000-stock-gain-in-decade

played well over 100 hrs of this according to the stats tab and only recently got to Kaer Morhen.

Does make me wonder exactly how big the game is and what the average completion time would be.

I've been doing a lot of side quests and exploration, plus I've probably left Geralt standing there while I make a cup of tea a few times.

Still not bothered with bloody Gwent and probably never will.

Something I'd like to know more about is the Skills Tree / Character Build thing. Once I've leveled to 5 on an ability, is it worth keeping in my tree or will it not matter if I take it out?

I've just finished the first two games, breezed the books and am ready for my first Witcher 3 play through. Question for you folks: how do you keep engaged with these massive open world games to the end? (I'm a casual gamer at best, mostly Civilization and two or three older games a year). I love the idea of these huge games -- got really into Red Dead Redemption but after playing intensely for a two months my passion fizzled out and it remains two-thirds completed. Should I space it out, take breaks to play or do other things and return?

i prefer to just quit when i'm bored

i have quit so many open world games when i'm 30-50 hours in. it feels bad for a second, but then it feels really good

when i start to lose interest i try to get through the main storyline and ignore as much side content as i can - basically try to beat the game before i fully lose interest. glad it worked for me with witcher 3. many games (any asscreed game, rdr, gta) i don't end up making it.

yeah the answer is i don't. i played witcher 3 for 40 hours and then drifted away from it unfinished. same with most open world games. the main story has to be really tight to keep me going until the end and usually it isn't by necessity since it has to be compatible with long periods of player meandering and side questing

I just stop playing for long periods and come back to it later if I like it enough, parcel it out over a few years

About to fight the Wild Hunt at Kaer Morhen. Still so many question marks on the map. looking forward to exploring Toussaint

ah what the hell.. that's not the end... not the end at all?? fuck me

congratulations on reaching the end of intro

now you can finally unlock the final skill trees!

listen - i refuse to believe that ANYONE has ever beaten the witcher 3

I was a bit worried I'd bugged the game last night. There's a part of Novigrad where every time I walked through I'd get started on by these high-level witch hunters.

they prevented me from talking to Ciri in one key quest.

eventually I was forced to just fight all of them as they pulverised me and nicked my coin again and again and again. think I lost like 9 grand killing them all.

thankfully they didn't respawn and I could continue my quest.

incidentally, what difficulty level did you all play on? I went for Story and Sword, although I'm starting to wish I'd put the difficulty level up a bit.

I've started the game the Broken Bones level, because I played the first two games immediately prior so felt I had a good handle on the concepts. I also did it counterbalance some mods I used to eliminate annoyances like gear decay and thus makes things slightly easier.

I usually switch to the lower level if it takes me more than three tries on an encounter, though, since video game difficulty tends to frustrate me more than reward me, and I'm supposed to be having fun doing this. Too many childhood memories of SNES games where I threw down the controller ("this is bullshit!") after missing some platform jump and consequently abandoning a game for weeks.

The most annoying thing in this game is swimming and horse riding.

Drowning because Geralt becomes a straight-up idiot as soon as he puts his head underwater is super frustrating.
Also I hate some of these horse races where you fail as soon as you err slightly off the track, mostly because riding Roach is more like steering a particularly impertinent cow rather than a horse.

But on the bright side I'm onto the expansion packs and after a mammoth Sunday session got to experience Toussaint in all its Mediterranean sun-dappled glory. Such a nice break from the gloominess of Velen which of course is where a lot of the Hearts of Stone action takes place. Blood & Wine is seriously thrilling so far, HoS slightly less so but that's far from faint praise considering the high bar set by this game.

okay so the DLC stuff is perhaps better than the main game in many was. Hearts Of Stone started off as 'more of the same' but got genuinely creepy by the end. Blood and Wine is FANTASTIC in every way. Manages to mix camp high fantasy with some of the most unsettling moments in the whole game, and Toussaint is a wonderful area to explore.

Managed to get into a mutliple glitch scenario last night though. There's a quest I happened upon called 'Extreme Cosplay' that involves fighting a bunch of tough-as-nails 'living statues'. After dying a number of times, I was suddenly given a cut-scene that made out I'd won the fight. As soon as the cut-scene ended, the baddies (who I hadn't killed) just started whooping my arse, so I ran up some steps to get away from them, meditated to regain precious vitality and stock up on potions, and when I woke up I was outside the building with no way to get back in. I could see on the map on of the enemy NPCs was still in there, and she will be in there for the rest of time!

I’m tempted to buy this as it’s on sale in the Switch store, plus I’ve almost exhausted BotW and it seemed... similar-ish?

Can anyone tell me what the gameplay’s like? I like exploration-ing more than combat, and reputedly the world is massive in this?

Not bothered by the Switch graphics downgrade - I was more concerned that it’s going to be one of those games that’s interminable dialogue trees and overlong cutscenes - is that right/wrong?

thank god I don't have to learn how to play gwent. I was wtf'ing it.

it's great Chuck Tatum. yeah there's some combat but really it's about exploration too

This is proving to be the perfect quarantine activity. The world is so beautiful, much of the time playing it feels like taking a long walk in the sunny countryside. And there’s no chance of running out of content; I’m 25 hours into it and the number of question marks on my map of Velen still dwarfs the number of identified missions/locations.

its big

Jelly tbh. I'd love to re-experience the trilogy all over again as though for the first time.

i really wish you could pick flowers/herbs from the horse.

Absolutely, I started a two or three months ago and just now completed the first Novigrod visit. I've got a fair number of graphics mods installed and sometimes I just get a little stoned and go riding through the wine country on the east of the map, stop at the little houses, watch folks work and drink some wine from my inventory and just gallop through the scenery. Very peaceful.

TW1 is rough around the edges due to age and a relative lack of financial means at the time, but it really nails the Eastern European folksy atmosphere Sapkowski was going for in the first place and has a much more meaningful alchemy system. In some ways it's a more coherent experience than subsequent instalments, except perhaps for the second, which makes for an excellent self-contained story with some of the best narrative reactivity I've ever seen in a CRPG. So if you loved TW3, you definitely need to experience its predecessors as well.

I wish TW1 had the difficulty switching: I was frustrated with the precise clicks on Hard, so restarted with the regular difficulty. However, I leveled up quite a bit at some point due to grinding in the sewers and the rest of the game was far to easy: I was killing a swarm of drowners in one swing, don't think I even used potions. I literally ran out of places to put bronze talents.

TW1 is $1.49 on Steam?? and runs on my Mac? tempting.

That's more than tempting, c'mon!

alright. this will be my first Witcher. i'll direct bewilderment and complaints here.

Sounds good. Just keep in mind that it's a 13 year-old game put together by a then-novice Polish developer with a Gothic (the series, mind you) fetish. It's got plenty of soul, though.

but to be clear, though, it is not a souls-like game

Also, check out nexusmods if you are feeling adventurous, lots of mods to update TW1 graphics to something a little better, etc. Nice list here: https://www.pcgamer.com/witcher-1-mods/

Thanks all.

The game I'm currently finishing is the most polished, G-rated RPG I've ever played (Breath of the Wild) so this will definitely be different.

Heh, that it will.

Some of the throw-away lines and characters are so good and memorable. There's this one random peasant exclamation that cracks me up every time, something like "Sir! Why we're up to our noses in frights and horrors! Imps, samovilas, mamunes, flyin' drakes, pikes... oh, and BATS!" Just the way he spits out the word "BATS!" kills me.

Another time this run-of-the-mill unnamed merchant, using the same character model (wooden eyeglasses, etc) that many merchants use, unexpectedly provided such a genuinely warm and friendly interaction (all unique dialogue that I hadn't heard before from any other character) that I felt like I wanted to be friends with the voice actor. It's so impressive how they manage to create so many unique and believable characters, even for unnamed merchants and such who don't have more than three or four lines. Of course there are also the guys who just greet you with "What?" and say goodbye by grunting.

As consistent and impressive as the voice acting is in English, for my next playthrough – five years from now, maybe – I might just go for Polish with English subtitles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQVlT1qtr0w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-egGn5WYrk

heheheh

This is delightful.

Just got to the Beast and I'm getting destroyed. I've done all the local quests except for playing dice and fistfighting. I might have to grind some more just to keep myself alive in this fight, keeping Abigail alive seems impossible.

I got lucky with Aard and one-shotted the Beast. Given that I had to quicksave at the beginning of the fight, reload several times and get lucky to win I fear I'm missing something about combat, but anyway on to Chapter 2.

Love how the typical early town full of quests turned out to be sordid and corrupt. Whereas the Salamadra are just thieves and murderers, they're veritable innocents.

I always play with companions since my tactics is generally to get someone else to do initial damage while I spell long distance casts from a safe distance. I also like to taunt giants to lure them toward enemy camps and watch the chaos unfold

Oops wrong thread (skyrim)

Combat-wise, I found the learning curve quite steep at first. As with the overwhelming majority of CRPGs, however, it became a cake-walk once I got past the first half.

Oh and a word of advice: avoid walkthroughs and wikis while you're playing the game, but do check them out afterwards – there is much to miss out on, which is exactly as it should be!

2xp

I’ve neglected the main W3 story in favor of side quests, contracts, and exploration and, somehow, I’ve arrived at Kaer Morhen (recommended level: 19) at level 31. Might have to bump the difficulty up to Death March from Broken Bones so I don’t stroll through the rest of the game. OTOH, I suppose outmatching everyone is appropriate considering Geralt is a literally legendary warrior at this point, after several novels and two games worth of fighting…

yeah I never felt any real guilt about being overclocked while playing. the fights aren't really the star of the game

After spending like 40+ hours in this game, I just today finally found out about how quest recommended levels affect the XP you get from them (from what I understand, if a quest is 5+ levels below your own level, you get basically no XP from it). I had been so confused to be getting like 2xp for completing lower-level quests!

And yeah, I also don't mind being completely OP in all the fights. I'm in it for the story maaaan, and the scenery.

xpost WAHT

If you want to spruce up the combat, I heard the Ghost and Enhanced Edition mods are worth checking out.

I killed a bunch of wyverns in that godawful swamp and got a sword with a name, cool

Gotta love a game in which the post-quest journal entry is "in some way, I've learned too much"

This situation with Alvin is bad. Triss is probably going to lobotomize him and Shani is dangerously naive to think he's just a kid.

Love how after chapter 2 the swamp is filled with EVEN MORE monsters. I just wanted to be a hero, why is everything getting worse?

So I had no idea that when I left the middle portion of the game (fish god etc) that I was entering one long, scripted series of encounters with no chance to forage for potion ingredients. I never really thought about what I had, I just brewed and foraged as I needed, so no stocks to fall back on. I think I'll get through it but this seems unnecessarily stressful.

Finished. My favorite part of the game was a random dwarf in Vizima who let out a frustrated "fuck" as he walked by.

I just got out of the prologue and made it to Vizima. I'm level 4 (recommended level 4) and I feel like I dicked around for waaaay longer than necessary in the first area.

general consensus is that dicking around in White Orchard is recommended. Some suggest completing all the side-quests before moving on. I didn't, but going slow in this game is a lot more rewarding than trying to speed through it

I've just got out of White Orchard too. I do get the urge to go and visit all the ? everywhere rather than following the main quest.

One q

is it better to sell all the random swords etc you get, or break them down? Or just stash everything? (haven't put anything in a stash yet)

Level scaling makes loot stupidly meaningless for the most part, including unique swords and armour.

Did you guys play the DLC packs? Better than the main quest in many respects!

Hearts of Stone is the series’ highlight imo.

Finished the main story a few days ago, and working through HoS now. I loathed those rich-kid hipster bandit-soldiers on sight and can't wait to whirly-blade through the whole pack of them. Except for Poos Peepuhs lady, she's cool.

I don't even loot anymore, even after installing a "no junk loot" mod; I get enough money from side quests and contracts, and don't really buy anything anyway. In the first Witcher, since I leveled up too much in the sewers on normal difficulty, I was powerful enough that I rarely needed anything other than a Swallow, so had tons of useless plants.

downloading Witcher 2

Restarted Witcher 3 and I'm really enjoying it. Just about to go and see the Baron which is about where I stopped a couple of years ago. Not getting too hung up on doing all the quests this time round is helping

One of the biggest annoyances in the entire game is having to repeatedly haul ass all the way from the fast travel marker at the front gate of Crow's Perch all the way up the hill into the main courtyard because they didn't just put the fast travel marker at the top of the hill to begin with! It wouldn't be so bad, but a number of missions entail going back there, so it gets tiresome.

That and accidentally lighting/extinguishing candles when you meant to loot a container next to them.

(one too many "all the way" in there)

I felt really bad about accidentally putting out someone's Aga.

So I can run Witcher 2 on my MacBook Pro ... at 1024x768 ... the screen only goes blank once every few minutes or so, and I can read small text (like objectives under the minimap) if I lean close to the screen ... I'll see how long I can deal with this, might just play Witcher 3 on my Switch.

One of the biggest annoyances in the entire game is having to repeatedly haul ass all the way from the fast travel marker at the front gate of Crow's Perch all the way up the hill into the main courtyard because they didn't just put the fast travel marker at the top of the hill to begin with! It wouldn't be so bad, but a number of missions entail going back there, so it gets tiresome.

That and accidentally lighting/extinguishing candles when you meant to loot a container next to them.

― Dan I., Monday, April 20, 2020 8:13 PM (two days ago) bookmarkflaglink

otm. it's really annoying, especially when you over hear the same bit of monologue over and over again

Okay, there is another bit of bystander npc "dialogue" that I love and will never get sick of no matter how often I hear it: when you run into someone, sometimes they will let out a big, nasally, Francophonic "HONNNH!" and it kills me every time

So far the music in W2 is pretty generic compared to W1. I was also hoping that getting out of the prologue meant I'd spend more time playing than in cinematics, but no luck so far.

Atmosphere-wise, it's a step down all around, but its branching paths are unparalleled in the series.

Last night, I wrapped up the main Witcher 3 quest line at 130 hours. I've got Mastercrafted Griffin and Mastercrafted Wolven Gear, and I'm level 34. I completed all of the main quests, the 'main' secondary quests, and probably about half of the witcher contracts. I failed three or four quests, ignored the question marks in Skellige and gave up on the undying werewolf in the garden storyline, because I couldn't find my way round the map.

The first twenty hours of playtime were rough. I almost quit a dozen times. I despised the design of White Orchard and the west/central areas of Velen that open at first. The fighting was hard, and I didn't understand how to use signs. The landscape design was muddy, cinematically war-ravaged, and filled with cynical and 'world-weary' characters that just seemed like bershon teenagers. I found the game .. gross and drab and leached of color. It was depressing, and not in a fun way. Only two moments kept me hanging on: visiting Keira Metz in her weird hut (when I thought 'oh! this game has colors in it!) and the stupid goat quest.

But then I got to Novigrad and ... things got better? I think that exploring the Skellige islands was my favorite part. They're so expansive and beautiful and such a contrast to the ugliness that comes at the beginning.

I haven't played with different builds yet. I invested heavily in Quen and Aard, and then the whirly rapid-attack. Potions aren't ... I haven't quiet figured them out yet. And I don't understand the adrenaline points stuff, but I have a potion of clearance, so I may play around a little.

I loved:
World-building (after Velen, anyway)
Novigrad, the most lived-in city I remember from any video game ever
All of Skellige. Pretty sure I *still* haven't visited every village on Skellige, and there are at least a few in SE Velen I haven't done more than run past
Treasure hunts for armor (I had to look up some locations)
Weird monsters (except for devourers/rotfiends)
Stumbling on random complicate caves
How the last act of the game takes you back to locations you visited like 50 hours before, and there are changes (big and small)
Oxenfurt / the fancy hidden places under the city

Did not love:
Consistent male gaze-iness
The weird direction the story takes in the last act. Portals? Space? Boring Elvish shit? IDK, I lost interest, and a lot of the ending felt slapped together.
Blah blah political intrigue blah blah
Kaer Morhan is cool, but there's not enough to do there. .
Kaer Morhan fight was boring and easy and I thought it would be better. I was also over-leveled by 4, so there wasn't much of a challenging
Map integration. Too small, too hard to follow. GPS dumb.

Hated:
First fifteen hours.
Bloody Baron quest
Witchy / Crone quest
Bad armor and weapons until act 2 made difficulty WAAAY high at first
Playing as Ciri, who always felt under-leveled or over-leveled, and too on-the-rails
Wraiths
Gwent

Gonna start DLC after a few days. Which first? Hearts of Stone or Blood & Wine?

potions are really just buffs

Start with Hearts of Stone. Blood and Wine is an epilogue.

Great post Remy. yup that was my first feeling when I started the game. 'this is so drab and depressing!', but once it gets going it's so much fun.

I liked the Bloody Baron and especially the Crones. I kind of hate Skellige as there aren't enough fast travel points and I kept having to do the same tedious journey around this enormous mountain about 4 or 5 times for some reason

I'm trying to do all the armour treasure hunts now I've completed everything but crafting the gear is super frustrating. I can't believe I still can't seem to craft a whole set of Mastercrafted gear yet for one reason or another.

I'd say the DLCs are so worth it though. Blood and Wine is like a whole new game in itself and the beauty of the new map is jaw dropping.

If you hate drabness and like color you’re going to loooove blood and wine

Is that the fairy-tale one? I'm excited. In my head the DLC are coded as "fairy tales epilogue that is difficult but fun" and "bourgeoise vampires with a good story, armor, and a lot of fetching stuff." That may be wrong.

I played this game on Nintendo Switch, so I understand the dreariness might've been exaggerated by (very) bad rendering. But man, what a rough intro to a game! I read a review on reddit or something, and it said that the (slow, brown) beginning of the game is necessary to appreciate the artistry of the latter half. To which I say: baloney. kept going mostly out of guilt that I'd spent $59 on the game, and I didn't want to waste my money. I don't think I would have continued otherwise.

@ dog latin: I am legitimately terrified of ghostly stuff, and I got freaked out during the 'wraith by the well' quest in White Orchard and couldn't sleep. Whatever, I'm a wimp. Since I didn't want to get wigged a second time, and I was already turned off by the battlefield violence and blood smears at the gates of Novigrad, I googled walkthroughs of Bloody Baron and Crones quests. I didn't really make my own choices in the game, as much as follow the script that lead to the least-freaky outcomes. For both of those quests I felt pretty anxious both at the stories themselves and that I'd *choose an unfavorable outcome* and make the game more depressing and scary. It was a weird kind of dramatic irony, but it kept me playing. After I while I (habituated? accepted? embraced?) the spookiness and realized it was mostly kind of corny, and a little tongue-in-cheek, and that's when I really started to like the game. On two other occasions I got turned-off by creepiness: the Tower of Mice story, and during the end of Hjalmar an Craite stuff on top of the mountain, where I ran into a bunch of dead things that tried to eat me in the snow. Neither was as bad as the first scare, but the gory grimness wore me down a bit.

The first twenty hours of playtime were rough. I almost quit a dozen times.

Oh god when I first encountered the wraith... no I agree with you, it's quite arresting

The words 'Fyke Island' (is that where the Tower Of Mice is?) are enough to send a shiver up my spine.

Once you get into the flow of the game though, it's a lot less creepy. For a lot of the game, I'd be investigating a room or a cavern half expecting someone or something to sneak up on me in a 'WHO DISTURBS MY SLUMBER / WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE' kind of way, but this isn't really something that happens in the game. There aren't too many jump scares. And it is a relief to get to Novigrad and see so many people after wandering the wilderness of Velen for ages.

Hearts Of Stone DLC has some of the creepiest moments of the game, but it's so imaginative and the story is really intense with some absolutely amazing twists. Blood & Wine is a lovely respite though and well worth saving for last. Geralt's 'Year In Provence', I've heard it accurately described. I think it's my favourite part of the whole game. Once I got to Toussaint I felt like I could SMELL the fields and warmth coming off the Earth. Strange to have a game that starts so drab but gradually blooms and becomes more light-hearted as it goes

How's everyone getting along with this game now?

I've managed to complete all the question marks in Toussaint, Velen,
Novigrad and White Orchard and now I'm slowly chugging through Skellige.

Hoping to achieve the medal of crafting and wearing a whole school of Witcher gear, but is it just me or is it an absolute dog to do?

I think I did everything except the question marks in the middle of the ocean in Skellige. Everyone recommends skipping those and I'm inclined to agree.

this can help you figure out which points of interest are worth pursuing (ie which aren't just smuggler's caches): https://witcher3map.com/

I'm a pathological completist so I even did those. :/

Eek. At some point near hour 120 I stopped caring about the ?s. I am 50% of the way through Touissaint, which I love, but I am pretty sure I'm not going to finish the dumb vampire story.

I've started to resign myself to the idea that my Witcher fever has passed and I'm not going to finish. I was going strong up until the pandemic--playing a few hours after work every day, seeing when I could squeeze in a few more on weekends--but it's been about three months since I've picked it up.

It's not because I got tired of the game, really--I'm near the end of the main plot, took a detour for the Heart of Stone content--but a combination of pandemic listlessness and moving in with my girlfriend took me away from regular playing, and it lost that urgency/compulsion to play it. I suppose it's like exercising or learning an instrument: once you break a regular routine/habit, it gets harder to jump back in.

I feel vaguely guilty not finishing after all the time I've invested playing and modding it. This seems to be a pattern: I think I want this big open world games like Red Dead Redemption (never finished either), though because I'm enamored with the idea of being immersed in months of game play, and I become obsessed for a good stretch, then it just tails off.

Toussaint story was my favourite of the whole thing. It really escalates and it's enormous fun by the end. I really didn't like the knight trials though. I'm not looking forward to going back and doing all those frustrating horse racing quests which I'm TERRIBLE at

Playing W3 again, this time modded to the gills. I don’t care for graphical overhauls, but I installed a bunch of quality-of-life mods that do things like turn off weapon degradation, give practically infinite carrying weight capacity, auto-loot every container within like 10 meters radius, fast travel from anywhere, and keep Witcher senses on all the time without fisheye lens effect, audio muffling, or the inability to run and jump. It’s really great! The game just flies by in a fraction of the time without any of the annoying time wasting aspects—just story, scenery, and fighting.

The auto-looting is key; I never realized how much I hated humping every corner of every shack to get every broken rake. Now I just poke my nose in the door and it all flies directly into my inventory. It’s also great for “discovering” secret chests under bridges and stuff. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss the “thrill” of finding a chest behind a bush during my first play through, but this time I’m content to grab the loot and go.

I've been meaning to replay this again once I'm finally done with Bloodborne and do it on the hardest setting. Might even give Gwent a go this time. It's such a great game. Possibly the greatest game of all time. Just wondering whether to start fresh or do NG+

I originally intended to do NG+, but didn’t realize that the enemies all scale up with you, to the extent that they’re harder than they ever were the first time through, so you start the game getting your ass kicked by wolves and such. Other systems are similarly affected (eg you get to keep all your weapons and armor from before but they will quickly need to be replaced by new high level items in ng+). A “new challenge” isn’t the experience I was looking for, so I started a fresh game and am very happy.

And yeah, after initially ignoring it I became a Gwent fanatic 2/3 of the way through my original play, so this time I’m keen to not miss any cards. I’m definitely skipping the “instantly win every gwent game” mod.

Free next gen update/upgrade arrives tonight.

Comes with full cross save too, so while I'm looking forward to playing the PS5 version I might actually end up getting more use out of being able to transfer my PS4 progress to PC.

It looks like it's not actually tonight though? Midnight Wednesday: https://www.thewitcher.com/en/news/46916/the-witcher-3-wild-hunt-next-gen-update-global-release-timings

My bad, you're right, the 14th.

Also got a feeling it's going to be one of those cross save situations which requires you to a) reinstall the ps4 version, b) update the ps4 version, c) go into the ps4 game and upload your save file to the cloud, d) exit and delete the ps4 version, e) install the new ps5 version, f) launch the ps5 version and then download your save file from the cloud within the game.