I finally bought this on Steam. The GOTY version with all the DLC for $20.
Now it can sit uninstalled and unplayed alongside The Witcher and The Witcher 2! :doge
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Are the first two even worth bothering with since III is apparently so awesome?
That intro was atrocious and should have been optional like Witcher 2’s.
:beli
It's better if you've read the books and did the first two games. spoiler (click to show/hide)
Because you're hunting for your canon love-of-your-life-due-to-a-wish after they and you got taken by the Wild Hunt after saving Ciri in the series of novels. CDProject gets around the novels "death" (and Sapkowitz is doing this with this new novel that is supposed to be releasing in May) with Geralt returning with amnesia in the first two games (which is cleared by Triss in the second one IIRC), so the stakes are "high" since you're trying to find her and figure out WTF went on post-book.
Also did you get the Gwent cards from White Orchid dude in the Inn? If not, you're hosed. If you did, start going around asking shop-keepers "how about a game of Gwent?"
Gwent is like the FF8 mini-game of Western RPG's. So good that they made a Standalone (and are trying to balance it for PvP because Spies + Decoy = OP).
Death march is an hp sink. :beli lowering difficulty.
It's only an HP sink for the very beginning. Once you've got the Cat-school (or really any better sword damage) gear, it becomes way more manageable.
For a while I saved posts of turnarounds where a poster disliked whatever about the game initially, picked it up at some point later and it clicked, becoming one of their fav experiences. Saw enough to collect them. For some it was revisiting their impressions following a particular area/quest/expansion, returning to it after a break, some sold their copy or tried to get a refund after disliking it only to later buy it again and it become their favorite WRPG. Was different for each person. A few examples:
Poster
Starts a drag and uninteresting, gets better moving on. I started it like you, sold it immediately. Got back to it months after... now it's the best wrpg I ever played probably. DLCs are the real thing btw, Hearts of Stone and Blood&Wine are not just better than the main game itself but better than most other games. And they're fucking DLCs! Amazing stuff.
Poster
When I first put the game in, last year, I knew the hype this game had - the love and the adoration that everyone gave it. So I went in expecting a masterpiece. Note that I don't usually play RPG games because I think they are too tiresome and are just not for me.
So I went in and I felt super-overwhelmed with everything that I could do in White Orchard. The inventory system felt alien to me and the combat felt lackluster. I just wasn't enjoying my time with it. I dragged myself through to the Bloody Baron and still wasn't feeling it. So I gave up on it.
Then a few months later, Horizon released and I played through it, loved every bit of it and got the groove of RPG games - thankfully it was light RPG so I didn't feel overwhelmed.
So I decided to put in Witcher 3 again and give it a shot since I had, sort of, a hang of the RPG elements a game like this could provide. I still struggled at first but now I'm hooked. Now I realize what the hype was all about. I'm almost done with Novigrad and I have still so much left, I feel, to explore. I'm doing all the side quests, the Witcher contracts and regularly progressing the story.
I have to say, I'm glad I gave this game another chance.
Poster
I really thought I would enjoy this game. I'm honestly a bit shocked at how much I dislike it. Going by all the rave reviews and impressions, I'm just baffled at how much I disagree, at least after the first half dozen hours. What the hell am I missing? I feel like the world and atmosphere are great but the actual gameplay is really, really bland.
Update:
Guys.
GUYS.
I like this game now. A lot! Clearly I didn't know much about this game going in. Novigrad.
NOVIGRAD!!!
I love big cities in games. LOVE them. And this is one of the best! It actually feels like a real place! This area has really impressed me.
Other than that, I've just really warmed up to just about everything in the game. Yes, even the combat.
Poster
Honestly, I think I was wrong about TW3. I bought it at launch last year, had stuttering issues on my GPU, felt like I wasn't making progress, and quit after 35 hours. Then, while I was at school, I bought the ultimate edition on PS4. Again, I felt like I was making no progress.
But then I picked it up again 2 days ago to catch up for HoS and B&W and OH MY GOD I can't put it down. I finally got a handle on combat, which I actually like now. The story has me hooked (at least now that I'm nearing the end). And the world and size of everything consistently amazes me. Skellige is insane to explore, especially the island with the giant. And then Kaer Morhen happened and I thought it was just one area, but it just kept going and going and going. This went from a game I thought was overrated to one of my all time favorites within a week, and I'm not even close to done.
Poster
My experience with TW3 started off a little strange. I really enjoyed the first two games in the series and was beyond excited for 3, but after playing it for a couple hours I felt so overwhelmed by the size of the game that I actually tried to refund it on Steam. My request was denied because I played an hour too long. While I was kinda annoyed, I had no excuse to not play the game now.
And boy did I play it: over 170 hours worth of playtime across several months. I have never put anywhere near that amount of time in any other single player game, RPG or otherwise. I just became so absorbed in the world.
Poster
I had a similar thing with this game. Had a 6 month break shortly after the game was released. Started playing it again around 2 weeks ago. Loving it
Poster
After playing the Witcher 3 for about two months, rushing through the story and largely ignoring all the side quests and refusing to put effort into the combat system I got bored of the game and didn't bother to finish the game. I didn't find the combat fun after coming off of Bloodborne and the world and its characters seemed kinda fun but lacking because I wasn't really giving the game a chance to spread it's wings.
Coming back to it now nearly 5 months later with the release of Blood and Wine and considering I already bought Hearts of Stone I decided to give the game another chance. Started a new playthrough and decided to take my time and actually go through the game 'properly' by exploring, doing the sidequests, taking the time to learn the combat system instead of trying to play it hack and slash and not only am I enjoying it a lot more but I'd say it's one of the GOAT games and I'm sure plenty of people will disagree with me but here's why.
Story wise, the main story isn't all that great in terms of plot but it's the characters, experience and crafting your own journey along with choices that actually matter that make it so much more enjoyable, how you respond to situations along with your actions make it much more personal and interesting along with adding plenty of replayability. Will you help your friend in getting revenge by killing someone and strengthen your friendship? Or will you do the morally correct thing and not murder him but risk losing your friend in the process. Many of the characters can be pretty silly but they all seem real in some way and like they really live and breathe in the world CD Project red crafted.
So who knows.
Fuck this waifu shit
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(https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4599/27800348629_019e499bd0_m.jpg)
:noah
Fuck this waifu shit
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(https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4599/27800348629_019e499bd0_m.jpg)
:noah
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(https://i.imgur.com/nxwr9RN.jpg)
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#teamyen :-*
Trish is a girl, but Yennifer's a woman. :jawalrus
You're goddamn right.
World building :lol
"CIRI IS IN MORTAL DANGER ZOMG"
"Hold up, some cunt challenged me to a fist fight, then I gotta find that old hag's frying pan".
I'm not talking the main-quest (which yes, with the amount of side-objectives is pretty dumb to have it sound SO DAMN URGENT OMG). I'm talking the contracts, in general. Also in the books it takes Geralt like 5 novels to spoiler (click to show/hide)
save Ciri from being used by her father for political reasons, etc.
:lol what games
I just don’t like modern games or games period too much and tell it like it is. :umad
“Give game a chance” = play this game for 30 hours before it gets good. Thankfully Baron quest is at the beginning so I don’t have to do that bs here.
You tried Sonic Mania and hated it for various reasons while half this board liked it because it was a "return to form"/going-back-to-roots for Sonic, for instance. I like you, Himu. But everyone that has said you have flip-flopping opinions is right. Depending on what side of the bed you wake-up on in the morning, your opinion on things change.
"I don't like modern games!"
Ok, then why do you "suffer" them? Why bother making this thread if you were already in the "ok, I'm trying to play this because everyone says it good despite thinking all modern games suck!" camp? :idont :idont :idont :mindblown
The Baron Quest isn't even the best part of the game. But again: If the world isn't for you, then feel free to stop. But I already knew you were pretty much dead-set to shit on the game at the earliest convience you could get to fit your "all modern games suck" narrative.
Also I'm nowhere near mad. If anything I'm ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) ::) so hard my eyes are going to fall out of my head.
Crafting is actually the most OP thing you can do in Witcher 3. Eventually, you get buffed enough from potions that you gain and regain more health than lose it from toxicity. For Death March difficulty, the most viable build is built around alchemy, crafting, and getting recipes.
Which is what all the loot you get feeds back too. You get sooooo much useful shit from looting random containers anywhere. That does eliminate the feeling of finding something awesome, but the trade off being any container being worthwhile makes up for that in spades.
One skill you can get makes it so your vitality regenerates at a fixed rate for 20 real life minutes if you eat or drink anything. That makes finding water or a loaf of bread in a random container worthwhile. Ive found good potion recipes in random containers.
As for exploration, every part of the game map is used for something or you can find useful things for Geralt. Witcher 3 uses its landmass to the fullest extent. You can stumble into areas and start quests you didnt know about, find useful loot, or a place of power, which gives you a skill point and long term buff.
The side quests absolutely add to world building. Trail of treats is a fantastically grim idea introduced in The Bloody Baron questline. Early on, a hunter calls himself a freak, as Geralt, you can empathize with that. Turns out, that hunter was gay and shunned for that. Tons of sidequests that play around with classic fantasy and fairy tale tropes, subverting them.
Rebuilding Dandelion's club in Novigrad involves a really dark murder mystery, with cult type shit being part of it. Saving Dandelion, you have to put on a play that revolves around what citizens in Novigrad want to see. A baunted house ended up being a god being thing haunting a woman's dreams for fun.
I have never played a game that succeeds with world building and role playing like Witcher 3 does. Every minute spent feels worthwhile.
At the same time, this game wont be for everyone. It doesnt have the same highs or lows of the majority of RPGs, the pacing and amount of content can be offputting at first.
Hardly. I linked that Steam guide I followed in here. It used like Quen maxed on down, Igni for like 3 levels (to get the "Flamethrower" mutation on it) and the other signs to slow down ghosts (and hit them)/etc.
I think it only buffed Alchemy to lower the toxicity risks.
Ah, nah. Sword all the way down. Signs three levels down. Alchemy to get Acquired Tolerance to lower the Toxicity level (well, raise it actually).
Honestly, with my like 250-ish hours into Deathmarch and doing all the content this past fall, I don't think I used the Witcher concoctions outside of like 2-4 particular areas. All you need is bombs, the Quen regen health shield, food (which you can get in tons looting like everything), and the Witcher sword oils to annihilate everything.
(Also that guide is right: Cross-bows are utterly worthless until you get one of the school Cross-bows, but you have to level to like 30 so yeah... kinda a sour-note with the game on Deathmarch, but you only use the Cross-bow to pull aggro or take fliers down to hack them, so... :yeshrug )
And yeah, the Dandelion bar/prostitute-house-turned-theater was a great quest. Especially if you've read the novels (or just read the signs between Dandelion and Priscilla). spoiler (click to show/hide)
Shame that you find out at the end of that that she'll never be able to sing again because the damage to her vocal cords being worse than it was. Dandelion and Priscilla singing together. :'(
https://twitter.com/witchergame/status/973937807373819907
:thinking
Fuckin wut :mouf
Edit: more like fuckin duh... forgot about Soul Calibur 6 :doge
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Finished Blood and Wine. This was my favorite part from the game
I think I ran around Toussaint exploring more than I did the entire rest of the game. Honestly love this place, in no small part due to how good it looks
Anarietta and Regis quickly joined my favorite characters too. And I love vampire drama so this expansion was entertaining through and through (except for maybe the Unseen Elder quest, which wasn't nearly as fun as the other option). Even the issues I had with the regular game seemed to not matter as much here
Also, that soundtrack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ui7s31Tp84
Overall, the entire thing is just amazing
Regis is the best character in the books, bar none. So the fact that CDProject Red spoiler (click to show/hide)
revived him despite him being melted into Goo protecting Yennifer and Geralt when the big-bad sorcerer on the final assault of a tower to protect Ciri happened
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Rigis sides with Geralt when Geralt says "I'm not going to protect him over the city, sorry." Which basically makes Rigis exiled in the Vampire community and hunted
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:nsfw https://lyumos.deviantart.com :nsfw
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Elric is totes a ripoff of Turin Turambar tho