The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt

Yeah you can actually complete some contracts without starting them, there is dialogue to acknowledge this when you actually go to turn it in/get the notice from the board and talk to the person who posted it.

I think I've finally gotten sued to the fact I don't have to interact with 90% of the doors and can't just walk through them without a loading screen. It's awesome.

It may have ruined other games for me.

EDIT: I found this: https://gfycat.com/SerpentineFlusteredIbisbill

Hmm...I think it wil soon be time for the toughest choice in the game.
triss or Yennefer ?

Well it's Triss. She wasn't turned off by Geralt's face during the sex scene. Had two decoctions in his system and looked like a sith lord.

I choose Triss due to bigger you-know-whats. Plus I think she treats Geralt better. Not that I've talked with Yennifer much so far. But another character mentioned that she leads Geralt around by the you-know-what. I'll trust their judgement. You have to hand it to Triss helping Geralt regain his memories fully knowing that he would regain his love for Yennifer. That's true love for a man there. She cared about him even to her detriment.

I finished exploring most of the areas (Novigrad and Velen). I'm nearly level 16 now, and working on the main quest again. Which was rated like level 10, and so I'm a bit high for that now. But I really wanted to finish Velen before moving on to Novigrad. Not that I can finish, as there are still several high level monsters I haven't defeated, but I think I've uncovered most of the areas. I left those 2 Wyverns, but as mentioned, Wyverns aren't too bad one on one. I tried a Giant creature down south, but he made short work of me. I'll come back when I'm a higher level.

My main issue right now is only 90 pounds (or whatever they are called) of carry weight. I'm often making trips to the merchant. I'm such a loot whore. Need to find better saddle bags I guess.

One reason I chose Triss was that I don't know Yennefer. Geralt might have regained his memories, but I only know the games and not the books.
Velen and Novigrad are one map. It doesn't make much sense to to do them seperately. I have 160 carry weight, but I don't remember where I got the saddle bags. You can also win equipment for your horse through races and the Fiend decoction gives you +20 weight.
I'm now level 18 almost 19 and finishing up one last side quest before I set sail to Skellige. I still have a couple of open contracts, but I'll have to return for those later.

Yeah, I'm not sure how much experience I "lost out" because I was a higher level. Although I don't know how experience works in this game. I was assuming I got less because I was much higher level than the monsters. It's kind of hard to know which areas are appropriate for my level.

They shouldn't have sent Yennefer off to Skellige at the beginning of the game. You barely get to meet her, people who haven't read the books don't really know whom she is at all, and you will probably do Triss' storyline first.

Patch v1.05 is out, many major improvements.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/38ozgt/witcher_3_patch_105_now_available/

They have sold over 4 million copies in two weeks.
http://ca.ign.com/articles/2015/06/...medium=PC&utm_content=1&utm_campaign=Blogroll

I am a bit disappointed by the game.
The cutscenes look great. They are also by far too numerous and long to my taste. I like a game that I can stop anytime and go back to it. Here, I feel like I have to go to the end of the scene (because for some reason I can't save in the middle) before I can do something else with my life. That's bad.
Worse are the controils. The game looks designed for pads. I feel it's very uncomfortable palying with mouse + keyboard, and the camera usually gets totally screwed up after you roll away.
At least in the beginning (just got past Bloody Baron part), the scenes with Ciri are linear clickfests with zero interest. It looks like their only point is fan-service.
The horse seems to be a mostly pointless thing, since fast-travel exists and it doesn't go much faster than on foot. Fast-travel kind of sucks as you have to be at a signpost to use it.

It's gorgeous, but I don't really care. I mean, I feel more immersed in NetHack than in this because I can interact with the word more in that old ascii-art game. I don't get stuck in conversations/search scenes where I have to click every option before I can follow with the game.

There are some choices (believing aspirit, talking to the baron, etc.) however, so it is interesting, but so far I'm halfway into shelving the game despite not going very far.
Are boss fights less mechanical than the first one (where you can just retreat/igni your way out of it if you're patient or quen/attack/retreat if you want to spend more time)? I'd like them to require some thought and not tons of dexterity but so far I am quite afraid.

Ciri does feel a bit too perfect, and her bits are short and relatively easy fights I agree. Try turning off Vsync and make sure you turn Hardware Cursor on, you'll get used to any remaining clunkiness (more or less).

Are boss fights less mechanical than the first one (where you can just retreat/igni your way out of it if you're patient or quen/attack/retreat if you want to spend more time)? I'd like them to require some thought and not tons of dexterity but so far I am quite afraid.

Click to expand...

Depends a bit on the difficulty you are playing on and what level the boss is. If the boss (and there are many miniboss like fights too) is your level or lower it's generally super easy, harder ones to require a bit more thought though and some like night/day wraiths require a bit of

The horse seems to be a mostly pointless thing, since fast-travel exists and it doesn't go much faster than on foot. Fast-travel kind of sucks as you have to be at a signpost to use it.

Click to expand...

Huh? The horse can go way faster than on foot, while it can be a little clunky and keeps trying to go on autopilot which can be annoying, it makes it much easier to go places. I only use fast travel for really long distances or if I have already cleared the area between places a couple of times (there are a number of unmarked encounters and quests you can find along the roads, which is why it's good you can only use the sign posts for fast travel because exploration is a big thing in the game. On Skellige you can buy maps that unlock many of the signposts though without having to explore them first, which is handy.).

You do need to double tap shift to sprint though, both on foot and on horse. You will get better saddles throughout the game (racing prizes are an easy way) that extend how long Roach can sprint for.

IDK what to say about your complaint for the conversations, it doesn't make sense to just leave a convo and pick it up again later. Most of them aren't very long and you can skip through them by pressing spacebar.

It's not a short game for sure.

The point about conversation : For instance, you pick up a quest, reach the guy to start it, get a cutscene and then it leads directly into a fight. Not being able to save during the cutscene nor the fight means you have to suffer the cutscene everytime again if you lose the fight. This is just bad.
Another thing is: Your wife calls you IRL, you want to stop listening/reading the conversation while RL matters happen. You can do that, but will lose most of the conversation because you can't pause in the middle.

Merchant UI also requires some taking used to. If you click space by mistake on an item (and selected items jump automatically so it's pretty easy to happen), you can't get it back (or must pay it 5 or 6 times the price you got for it), so you must exit the game and reload.

Oh, and you have to talk to the merchant and hit space space before you can actually start bartering.

Inventory shows a yellow star on newly acquired items, but I can't find any way of seeing these when you have to scroll through tons of herbs and whatnot to find out what's new. Mostly useless for the herbs tab.

Exploring, well, I like exploring, but spending tons of time on the map you already went through, particularly on boat, is just a waste of time. It's not like I wanted to dive for every plant I spot in the water.

These are all little things which are poorly done in terms of ergonomy but which really hit the nerves.

The point about conversation : For instance, you pick up a quest, reach the guy to start it, get a cutscene and then it leads directly into a fight. Not being able to save during the cutscene nor the fight means you have to suffer the cutscene everytime again if you lose the fight. This is just bad.

Click to expand...

Hmm yeah that does happen a few times, but it's not too common and most of those fights were easy. I do agree that is poor design, and they could really use checkpoints at the beginnings of them (though I think most of them already do). Since the convos are skippable it's a minor annoyance.

I completely agree on the merchant screens though, no confirmation and no buy back option. Definitely needs a overhaul, I suspect it will get one in the Enhanced edition at the least.

Inventory is pretty poorly organized, again, as usual. Hopefully they will address that in the EE.

Oh, and you have to talk to the merchant and hit space space before you can actually start bartering.

Click to expand...

That's to prevent you from accidentally ending up in the store screen when you didn't want to as it gives you an option to stop talking to the guy before you get there. Pretty standard, though yeah sometimes when you're feeling pressed for time even a couple seconds longer feels annoying!

LDiCesare said:

The point about conversation : For instance, you pick up a quest, reach the guy to start it, get a cutscene and then it leads directly into a fight. Not being able to save during the cutscene nor the fight means you have to suffer the cutscene everytime again if you lose the fight. This is just bad.
Another thing is: Your wife calls you IRL, you want to stop listening/reading the conversation while RL matters happen. You can do that, but will lose most of the conversation because you can't pause in the middle.

Merchant UI also requires some taking used to. If you click space by mistake on an item (and selected items jump automatically so it's pretty easy to happen), you can't get it back (or must pay it 5 or 6 times the price you got for it), so you must exit the game and reload.

Oh, and you have to talk to the merchant and hit space space before you can actually start bartering.

Inventory shows a yellow star on newly acquired items, but I can't find any way of seeing these when you have to scroll through tons of herbs and whatnot to find out what's new. Mostly useless for the herbs tab.

Exploring, well, I like exploring, but spending tons of time on the map you already went through, particularly on boat, is just a waste of time. It's not like I wanted to dive for every plant I spot in the water.

These are all little things which are poorly done in terms of ergonomy but which really hit the nerves.

Click to expand...

yeah I hate long cutscenes you can't pause. They need to fix this in games. Iirc, Inquisition had the same problem with too many long cutscenes. My gf often comes into the room, and if she talks, or I talk, I miss out on the dialogue. I like a game I can pause anytime.

edit: another annoyance, apparently the most recent patch reset all my key bindings. Very frustrating. I was wondering why R was using my potions. I had them bound to T.

quick question: Is there a place to store items? This inventory weight is becoming a problem, and there are things I may use in the future which I don't want to keep carrying around.

And does anyone actually play Gwent? This game is so annoying. I lose every time, and can't find any good cards anywhere. Going up against opponents who all have better cards than me is no fun.

Oddly enough no there isn't any storage, unlike the previous two that at least had something in inns.

I have the Zerrakinian Saddlebags so my weight limit is now 160 and about 60 -70 of that is permanently taken up now with crafting stuff. I try to keep it down to about a dozen of each though. I've stopped picking up anything other than the best swords, because they weight a lot and I have 56k gold with nothing to spend it on.

Tonnes of people play Gwent, it's very popular actually. You mostly get cards by beating people. I still have a build where I use a mixture of spies, hero cards, some other cards, couple medics, one or two of each special one (I don't really use weathers much though) and siege weapons with the Northern Realms. I win more often than not.

There are a number of tip post on /r/witcher.

one thing I think is cool is if you give Geralt a shave, his beard grows back over time. Nice touch.

I still struggle with fistfights against more than one opponent. Sad really, lower level guys clean me up. Finally got them though.

Yeah it's great, and subtle if you don't have too many conversations for a while. It only grows if you get a clean shave though, same with your hair if it is just a normal cut (not sure which one that is though? Maybe hair doesn't grow). If you choose a specific beard it keeps it.

Anyone know what the max character level for this game is? Or the maximum that is feasible.

I feel like I'm running low on remaining quests, and I'm only level 21. And I have a diagram for a sword that requires level 40. I can't see how to get up to that high a level. Quests and monster kills don't give much experience.

And I'm wanting to wrap this game up anyways. It's quite lengthy. What level (recommended) do you have to be for the end game quests?

There isn't a max level, technically. Item levels stop at 40 or so I think with some info in the files for stuff up to 70. You will eventually run out of quests to do and monster XP will slow to a crawl of 1XP per monster until you hit 70 then apparently it stops. (How the hell anyone got to 70 in the first week-ish is beyond me though).

Anyone else have a bug with respeccing?

I respecced, and put more points into Axii, but it doesn't seem to register. During conversations it's acting like I don't have any points in Axii. And it doesn't seem as effective in combat either. Which makes me wonder if my other respecc'd skills are getting their full effect.

edit: Nevermind. I guess a quick google search answered it. It seems to be a bug. I wasted that respec I suppose.
http://www.gamerevolution.com/faq/p...guide-axii-sign-puppet-not-working-bug-112941

I had both skills in 1.03 and I think they both worked. Pupped definitely worked, but I'm not 100% sure about delusion.

Done with this game. Good game with good gameplay. Just waaaaay too long. I guess it has helped me get over my completionist attitude towards games. After a while I just got tired of doing contracts and stuff. Killing an archgriffon gave me like 15 crowns and 5 experience LOL. What's the point of doing side quests when they only give 5 xp? And I never finished exploring the entire skellige islands. Just doesn't seem worth it.

I'll give the game a B. I'm glad they are moving on from the Witcher games. I'd like to see them put out something new. Witcher universe is good, but playing as only 1 character severely limits replayability. Especially since I respecc'd twice this game, I have even less reason to experiment around with my character. I seriously doubt I'll play this game again, at least not for a couple of years. Gameplay is pretty addicting though. I don't know how many hours I put in since I don't have the steam version, but probably over 100 hours.

Just because Bethesda games are the most popular (why, I still can't figure that out) doesn't mean everyone should start making their games like Bethesda games. Sometimes a nice 50 or 60 hour game is all we need. Shorter games I'm more likely to replay than longer games. I haven't even played Dragon Age: Inquisition again (another 100 + hour game).