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

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.