The Witcher 3

[Fuctifano]

Tits. 

[RandomGuy.]

Well I've just picked this up today (original not GOTY) for 12 quid. Was rather excited to play it as I've been given rave reviews and it's one of those games people always compare new games too. However I've been met with a 20gb update so it'll have to wait for now.

Without spoilers, what can I expect?

I took a while to go into it, tbh. I struggled a bit and it felt sort of samey, spent a lot of the time running about. It turns into a fucking superb thing though, regardless of whether you just batter through the storyline, go on side quests, or just f**k about.

Some of the side missions can take longer than main missions, and one in particular with get you right in the feels.

[NotThePars]

*extreme ramagamma voice* Take your time and soak up the atmosphere. It's rare to play a game that's as well written and interesting as the Witcher 3.

[accies1874]

*extreme ramagamma voice* Take your time and soak up the atmosphere. It's rare to play a game that's as well written and interesting as the Witcher 3.

Bullshit. Just run around slicing c***s in two.

[forameus]

11 hours ago, NotThePars said:

*extreme ramagamma voice* Take your time and soak up the atmosphere. It's rare to play a game that's as well written and interesting as the Witcher 3.

Nah, if it was roombagamer, he'd say something needlessly controversial like "W3 is nowhere near as good as <insert obscure JRPG you've never heard of obviously>"

[Tamdunk]

I found it a bit hard to get into at first. Even though it's free roam, I didn't get a lot out of exploring, however it's so well written that you will want to do all the quests anyway, so that makes up for it.

[forameus]

55 minutes ago, Tamdunk said:

I found it a bit hard to get into at first. Even though it's free roam, I didn't get a lot out of exploring, however it's so well written that you will want to do all the quests anyway, so that makes up for it.

I was the same.  I remember getting towards the end of the Velen section and thinking "is this it?".  Almost put it down, like I've done with other critically acclaimed games.  Stuck with it though, and once you get out of Velen and on the way to Novigrad, it really, really gets good.

Exploring is one of the weaker parts of it, I'll admit.  The landscape isn't as "interesting" as a game like Fallout 4, as you won't find landmarks or anything like that, but it makes up for it in other areas.  It sounds like their new game will be more like that, and if they can nail every aspect they got right with the Witcher series, and add a more interesting setting, then they'll have hit another winner.

[Thistle_do_nicely]

Opted to buy this on a bit of a whim the other day due to burnout on my FM save and other games (tickled me a bit that the GOTY edition of The Witcher 3 which comes with the two expansion packs was £35 on steam but £17 on cdkeys.com!)

Think its going to be great value so far - some of the sidequests are giving me a prime Baldurs Gate/Neverwinter Nights vibe in a good way ie well thought out + decisions to be made + well voice acted, which is encouraging. Also quite like that I'm diving into it without any prior knowledge so I've no idea what the mechanics are like, not going to spoil it for myself by trying to google the best way to pick equipment, abilities etc. Pretty much right at the start of the game but the early signs are encouraging.

Didn't really fancy playing on piss-easy mode but I'm not familiar with these kinds of games so stuck to Normal mode. Still regularly getting slaughtered by ghouls, wargs and those fucking Drowner things so I think I made the right call (1v1 I'm okay, but when there's multiple enemies I struggle a bit. I've literally only played Football Manager, Undertale, PES and FTL in the past 3 years though so its quite a change of scenery!). Was quite proud of myself for figuring out how to f**k up that Devil at the Well all by myself after a few shots getting bitchslapped though, even though in retrospect it was really obvious once I looked at what it was weak against what I needed to do!

I'm torn a little bit as to whether I should i) try to read up plot summaries for the first and second games, ii) stop where I'm at right now and buy the earlier versions to experience them blind and get a feel for the plot or iii) just keep soldiering on. Will most likely cave and do i) but I'm a bit feart of spoiling it.

Not too sure I can be arsed with the card game but maybe I'll grow to like it.

There's the in-game biographies etc. which is a nice touch, might just dig into them.

Edited January 30, 2018 by Thistle_do_nicely

[forameus]

I never played either of the first ones, beyond a wee read of the plot.  I don't think it's that necessary.

I think you're a c**t for getting to come into this game with fresh eyes though.  Very jealous, you're going to have a ball.

Edited January 30, 2018 by forameus

[Tamdunk]

I just played it, didn't bother with the first 2 or read any summaries. Didn't really affect the game for me, depends how bothered about lore history etc you are I suppose. The dodge is pretty op, so make the most of that if you're having trouble in combat.

[Busta Nut]

I was playing this ages ago. Haven't played it since. Might delete my saved game and go again

[SweeperDee]

Gonna restart this soon. Never gets old.

[WeAreElgin]

I've been playing this pretty regularly since Christmas and still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Completed a side quest in Skellige that would put some main storylines to shame.

 

Still the expansions to go, too..

 

 

[forameus]

16 hours ago, WeAreElgin said:

I've been playing this pretty regularly since Christmas and still feel like I've barely scratched the surface. Completed a side quest in Skellige that would put some main storylines to shame.

 

Still the expansions to go, too..

Is it the Black Pearl one?

[Thistle_do_nicely]

On 30/01/2018 at 14:23, Thistle_do_nicely said:

Opted to buy this on a bit of a whim the other day due to burnout on my FM save and other games (tickled me a bit that the GOTY edition of The Witcher 3 which comes with the two expansion packs was £35 on steam but £17 on cdkeys.com!)

Think its going to be great value so far - some of the sidequests are giving me a prime Baldurs Gate/Neverwinter Nights vibe in a good way ie well thought out + decisions to be made + well voice acted, which is encouraging. Also quite like that I'm diving into it without any prior knowledge so I've no idea what the mechanics are like, not going to spoil it for myself by

I'm pretty far into it (I think! Honestly not sure how far through the main game I've got but I think from the way the plot's going I'd guess I'm 2/3 through the main story), been playing it almost exclusively recently. Got plenty of side quests and the two expansions to go even if I am nearing the end of the main plot so there's life in it yet.

The Baldurs Gate vibes are very, very strong at this point - without trying to give away any major spoilers for either game I'm referring to the similarities in gathering allies to Kaer Morhen in TW3 to the part in BG where you gather allies like Drizzt, the paladins, the Shadow Thieves etc. prior to attacking the vampire's lair.

It's one of my favourite video game tropes to go through the game world and gather all the allies you've made along the way, so I've no complaints on that count.

Something that has bothered me about the game was when I got to level 4 or 5 and finally cottoned on to how ludicrously useful the ability to have food heal you for 20 mins would be, game has been significantly simpler since then. I'm unsure whether there's differences at the higher difficulty settings but on normal it just takes one piece of raw meat to turn Geralt into Wolverine for 20 minutes of gameplay. Doubling the time food restores health for would seem to me to be more balanced but hey ho. Haven't really bothered with any of the Green abilities tbh, going through the game blind I've pretty much gone all in on some of the general abilities for better adrenaline, stamina etc. and the red combat/blue sign abilities, along with equipment tailored for critical hits. Pretty much smash everything I come up against at Level 24 by now, particularly since I've turned Geralt into a critical hit machine.

I'm almost certain I'll replay this on NewGame+ and a harder difficulty. Got into Gwent a little bit later on in my first run but I've already failed the quests for one of the unique cards as I didn't realise some of the quests/unique character quests are only doable at certain times in the game prior to completing other quests, so the completionist in me wants to amend that on a new run.

Geralt and co getting absolutely blitzed on voddy at Kaer Morhen 

Edited February 13, 2018 by Thistle_do_nicely

[Stellaboz]

When you reach Skellige, it's such a huge ramp up in difficulty. The fist fight in the first town put me in my place.

[forameus]

The higher levels definitely get more brutal.  I think on the lower ones you can sleep and completely replenish health, which I roundly abused on my first few playthroughs.  I did New Game Plus, thinking my updated gear would help, but fucking hell it was tough.  And Stellaboz is right, Skellige ramps things up quite a bit.  I always found the highest difficulty to come when  you were facing a lot of low level enemies rather than one powerful one.  Getting caught with 10 drowners meant you had to get it absolutely spot on, or they'd just hit you as soon as you dodged a couple of them.  

In terms of how far in you are, you'll reach a point when you think you're coming to the end of the game, and it'll keep going.  When you reach that, I'd say you're 2/3 to 3/4 of the way through.  I remember being quite disappointed when I reached that part, not really wanting it to end, then there was hours and hours left over building up to the excellent final couple of boss fights. 

[Thistle_do_nicely]

I'm over level 31 now. Hit a point where I've stopped taking on Witcher contracts and exploring the ? markers and, to be honest, I'm just trying to do the major secondary quests and the main quests now.

Reason being is that Geralt is an absolute killing machine after I've played about and got what seems to be a very good setup of equipment, mutagens and abilities (as mentioned that perk that heals for 20 mins from food is game breaking, and the Quen secondary ability that heals you is incredibly useful combined with it, and I'm killing everything by focusing everything towards attack power, critical damage and critical chance increases. imo there is always a bit of fun to be found in finding out ways to bitchslap a game; I die more often at this point falling from heights than in combat!)

I'm still having a blast going through the story, trying to just soak up all the cutscenes and think hard about my dialogue choices. Will go through the game on New Game + on a harder difficulty and try to do the Gwent quests, given up on it as I failed to get some of the special cards at the point where I wasn't really arsed about it which means they're gone forever. 

Spoiler

Have to say that the Battle of Kaer Morhen is one of my favourite ever gaming set piece moments. The fight against Imlerith is up there.

Zoltan has really grown on me. Vesemir too.

Opted to go solely down the Triss romance route, got a Stupid Sexy Princess Fiona from Shrek look to her that I find very enticing. Still had to pump Keira Metz because reasons. Was quite pleased that my boy Lambert rode off into the sunset with her and she got a happy ending with him.

There's a crazy amount of nods to Game of Thrones too, although I'm not certain how many of them are the developers having fun vs. being taken from the original source material. For example some of the items (there was a sword I found called Longclaw which I would imagine isn't a coincidence), Charles Dance being used as the voice of a ruthless pragmatist, Bran from Skellige and some of the other character names I'm sure being taken from GoT.

Still got the expansions to play through.

[Tamdunk]

The DLCs are huge. Especially Blood & Wine.

[accies1874]

After almost two years (I dipped in and out, to say the least), I finally completed the story. The final 15/20 minutes left me upset, then angry, then surprised, then delighted. 

There were some annoyances I had with the game, such as the awful movement and overly-long and unpausable cut-scenes, but they created such a wonderful world with so many compelling side quests to add to the equally-compelling story.