Witcher 3: Wild Hunt

[Mithas]

I have 100 hours into it and 25% completion. No idea how far I am in the story though.

[Ard]

Yeah, the last thing I need is more content right now.  I finally got back to this last weekend. I've been banging away at it all week and I still don't feel like I've even dented the first real map.  There's almost too much stuff to do 

[Khaldun]

I'm waiting to get back into my current play because I want the romance fixes.

[tmp]

If i'm not mistaken the latest patch added some dialogue and such for the other romance choice (if not both? not sure) If that's what you mean by the fixes.

[Khaldun]

Oh, good. I thought that was coming bundled in the new DLC.

[Mithas]

Finished the main storyline over the weekend. I really love this game. The story had me engrossed, the combat while repetitive still felt fun throughout, and even at 130 hours played I had a lot left to do. I also got an ending that felt satisfactory. Best game I've played in a while.

Anyone try out the new expansion yet?

[Muffled]

Picked up the expansion, put about 10 hours into it.  It changes up the combat in a mostly positive way (on hardest difficulty, at least), but the story seemed contrived and silly and didn't interest me.  The new enchantments are 99% worthless, and you need about 40k gold on hand to unlock them all.  I would only recommend it if you're still really into the game and just want a few new areas to explore and a few new dinguses to collect. 

[Paelos]

I just bought this with the Thanksgiving sale. I feel like I'm roleplaying Geralt who is roleplaying Inspector Butters.

[Paelos]

And I'm 5 hours in and I'm still level 3 in the White Orchard. I have a feeling this will take me a long time.

[Mithas]

Try and finish as much as you can in White Orchard before moving on. I didn't and felt very under powered. I put in almost 200 hours and didn't come close to finishing everything.

[Paelos]

The only part I'm struggling with is ranged stuff. Mapping that to my middle mouse wheel sucks so I'll have to come up with something else.

[Mithas]

I had a hard time using mouse and keyboard as well so I just switched to an Xbox controller. It was much easier.

[Ruvaldt]

Yeah, I'm usually a keyboard/mouse player and had a really hard time getting into the controls.  So much so that I just stopped playing after about five hours and put the game down for ~3 months.  Looking for a new game to play one day I decided to give it another shot but with my Xbox controller and it all came together for me.

[Paelos]

I can't stand controllers anymore, so I'll remap the thing, but yeah it's obvious that (as usual) PC controls were a complete afterthought. Nobody in their right mind would ever mind something to the middle mouse wheel that required action combat.

[Ard]

Except it wasn't an afterthought because they're primarily a pc development shop.  The controls for the witcher games have always been kinda  .  That said, the crossbow button is more often than not completely unnecessary outside a few specific monster types to bring down fliers.  The bigger issue is trying to use the bombs.

[Paelos]

Luckily I play on normal because I'm not in this for the challenge. If I wanted to challenge myself I'd play PvP games.

[Paelos]

I'm level 9 and in Velen. I've been playing for 15 hours. This game is absurdly large.

I followed around a glowing dead fetus to meet quest objectives. 10/10 would fetus again.

[Ard]

That's the thing I've been lamenting for the last few days.  I'm trying to finish this up before my kid is born.  I don't think I'm going to make it, and I've been putting some serious time into this.  I've only cleared up through act 2 or so.  I have no clue how much I have left because i'm trying to avoid spoiling it, but it just refuses to end.

[MediumHigh]

I'm playing this game normal and my reflexes are plenty slow enough to get me killed by random mobs. I like how every encounter needs some strategy beyond swing swing ballerina of death. Level 12 currently and I'm at a cross roads when it comes to meta gaming. Knowing I get every skill eventually how does the skill system work. Does my tier 4 (if I unlock that far) skills carry over the passive benefits from tier 3 and 1 or do I have to equip every skill in that tier in order to get the full benefit.

[Paelos]

I'm level 13 and put most of my stuff in combat. It seems to help, although gear matters way more.

[rk47]

For the reflex-challenged people, the Axii upgrade is a godsend.
It makes 1 v 1 less risky and can turn 2 v 1 into a less challenging proposition very quickly.
If it's still not enough, invest on Quen to absorb hits. Then you can stop investing on Signs and move on to making your sword attacks hit harder cause there's nothing like Axii and a nice heavy slash to the back.

[Ard]

I went heavy into Yrden and used that to cheese almost every single boss fight in the game.  It was pretty silly, but at the same point, I'm pretty sure almost every single build gets silly overpowered in that game.

[Sky]

I'm still only level 4 (!) but I just use Quen and swords. Seems to work fine so far, though I'm a hella roller in some battles...

[Rasix]

This is really the smoothest introduction they've had in the series.  Combat feels right about where it should be.  Way less awkward than 2.  Visually impressive and less of a hog than the previous iterations.  I'm impressed.

There is a lot of red and green early on, which messes with me a bit.  But at least the red glows in most situations.

[MediumHigh]

For the reflex-challenged people, the Axii upgrade is a godsend.
It makes 1 v 1 less risky and can turn 2 v 1 into a less challenging proposition very quickly.
If it's still not enough, invest on Quen to absorb hits. Then you can stop investing on Signs and move on to making your sword attacks hit harder cause there's nothing like Axii and a nice heavy slash to the back.

One giant bug (level 32 Venomous Arachas) monster in this in viking dome I'm obsessed with killing because for some reason this encounter sucks my soul. Lots of poison, has a snare, comes with level 20 buddies (i'm level 20 so its sad) and the monster hits like a truck and knocks my alt queen shield clean off (with me in it). I think I have a strategy of shielding the poison, light attacks, dodging (not rolling) the physical attacks, and burning it with FIRE. I feel really bad at the game in a good game since I've yet to kill it and I'm in normal difficulty.   

[Lakov_Sanite]

For the reflex-challenged people, the Axii upgrade is a godsend.
It makes 1 v 1 less risky and can turn 2 v 1 into a less challenging proposition very quickly.
If it's still not enough, invest on Quen to absorb hits. Then you can stop investing on Signs and move on to making your sword attacks hit harder cause there's nothing like Axii and a nice heavy slash to the back.

One giant bug (level 32 Venomous Arachas) monster in this in viking dome I'm obsessed with killing because for some reason this encounter sucks my soul. Lots of poison, has a snare, comes with level 20 buddies (i'm level 20 so its sad) and the monster hits like a truck and knocks my alt queen shield clean off (with me in it). I think I have a strategy of shielding the poison, light attacks, dodging (not rolling) the physical attacks, and burning it with FIRE. I feel really bad at the game in a good game since I've yet to kill it and I'm in normal difficulty.   

There's one witcher decotation that turns all poisons you receive into healing, makes all those bugs a joke.

[MediumHigh]

I didn't use the healing version of the anti poison potion but I did remember that curing poison is a thing. Made the encounter doable, but I wouldn't call it a joke.

[Rasix]

Everything I do in this game seems to make things worse for the people involved and the general populace as a whole.    

Still, loving this.  When you're tired of the stellar narrative experience of fucking up the entire world through good intentions, you can do some map completion and side activities. 

Can't say I care for gwent though.

[Khaldun]

I didn't pay attention to gwent at first but after a while it really, really grew on me. Once you get a deck with some spies it can have a kind of crazy frenetic feel to it.

[Sky]

There are a few fun quirks to it. My deck still isn't great, no hero cards or anything. Just playing merchants trying to build a decent basic deck and I've gotten to where I can mostly whip the merchants on the first try.

Love the decoy card with some dragon card that destroys the highest melee if total melee is over 10. So many times they have two 5s and a few others, I slap down the dragon, nukes both their 5s, next turn pull him back in my hand to use the next round.

I also like the way it  basically forces you to balance all-out mayhem on the first hand with saving enough for a second (and possibly third) round. Third rounds are sooo tough.

[Khaldun]

On tough matches, you essentially have to play for the third round--it's a matter of trying to tease your opponent into blowing out some of his resources to win a second.

[Sky]

Yep, that's what still trips me up against the guys with better decks (the Baron thus far).

This game will take me years or until I get into minecraft again. I'm still in the region around Crow's Nest at level 11, just running around the countryside enjoying the view and enjoying finding tons of little things to do.

[ynotgolf]

Everything I do in this game seems to make things worse for the people involved and the general populace as a whole.    

I finally started this game last week, maybe level 9 now?  And Rasix hit it on the head for me, Lawfull Good Giralt sure does make a mess of things.  Enjoying this game so much though.

[Sky]

I dunno, overall he seems to be improving things in my game and I'm playing as a pretty good person. I've only regretted one decision, when I just knew an npc was lying (and they even gave me a dialog option that would've led me down that path) but I decided to be a dopey good guy and set some evil free to bite my shiny metal ass later on. He plays best as cynical good guy. I like that there is a strong vibe of helping people, but ultimately letting them deal with the consequences of their actions (or inactions). Probably more of a Neutral Good in my case.

[Khaldun]

I've never gotten the argument that Geralt does nothing but make things worse, or that his world is nothing but mud and shit. It's a more realistic fantasy world than pretty much any other, for sure, and so there's not as much adolescent wish-fulfillment power fantasy shit going on. There are definitely narratives that are going to turn out bad no matter what you as Geralt do (and most of those were already trending bad whether or not he shows up).

I have been pretty surprised on two playthroughs that you can make some situations really strikingly worse or relatively better, in ways I didn't expect.

But the big upshot of it all is that almost all of the side quests are in fact narratively interesting. The stakes feel real, the storytelling is good, the characters are well-drawn even when they are in relative terms just sketches or suggestions of fully-fledged characters. And everything around the Baron is really involving--that's all astonishingly original writing for a game of this kind.