Steam Summer Sale

[isgrelindisguise]

Also, been playing mass effect 3 a lot and enjoying it. The cover based shooting mechanics still hold up really well. The environments and level design can be boring, and the graphical textures are bad even for their time. That you're quest journal doesn't update when trying to collect stuff for citadel side quests is annoying. Femshep's voice is so powerful though.

I was worried I wouldn't be that into ME3's combat after The Division did cover shooting so damned well. But Biotics and Tech abilities made up for that 10 fold.

[isgrelindisguise]

I've been making good progress in Witcher 3. I like the Slavic Fantasy setting. There was a strategy game that came out last year also based on Slavic Mythology (Thea: The Awakening) and it's cool to have as a thing game designers do.

I don't get the reason behind dwarves in this game at all. There doesn't seem to be any real reason for them to be in this world.

I like doing the special monster hunting but man combat is like the devs looked at Shadow of Mordor and the Arkham games and said, 'this is cool, we should do this with our game but make it boring".

Dicking around with the Bloody Baron and some witches was fun and awesome and great. So far doing Novgorod Underworld shit is boring though. I just want to fight some zealots. They did a really good job making the Baron a fleshed out character though.

[isgrelindisguise]

Durability system in this game is a dumb chore. Never had armor damaged but I feel like I have to repair my weapon every 2 fights.

Speaking of chores, I spend a lot of time running around from one non-descript grayscale neighborhood in novigrad to another, entering buildings that all look the same to fight maybe 2 or 3 non descript enemies and then run back again. I know its a staple of RPGs but it feels way worse in this game. Like for filler content to consume time, it fills filler content with filler travel.

Or Maybe just fuck Novigrad. This wasn't something I was minding so much in the fields. Those character models tho.

[Pewps]

I pretty much skipped Novigrad. I got like 70 hours in the game and I bet I only completed like 1/2 of the map, if that.

[Grommok]

filty casuls

[fallenchicken]

Novigrad is dope.

[isgrelindisguise]

Novigrad is like a series of 30 or so 3-4 part quests where every part is 200m away from every other part, in a city that has no real distinguishable landmarks and universe appropriate lack of any kind of city planning. It's boring and frustrating to navigate and almost every quest in it is designed to make you run in circles. Worst city I've visited in a video game.

But I did do some side quests and Witcher Contracts outside of the city and remembered that I do enjoy the rural setting.

Skellige seems promising, just starting that one.

[Grommok]

Skellige was the weak point of the game for me, it just felt like it existed for no reason other than "Vikings!" It didn't fit the tone and aesthetics of the universe at all. There's hundreds of years between the vikings and medieval world that The Witcher emulates.

[isgrelindisguise]

So far I've been really enjoying Skellege. Spirit of the Wood Contract is one of my favorites so far and I really enjoyed hunting the Frost Giant (even if the fight at the end was disappointing).

Trolls in this game are just the best, Almost Elcor tier.

[fallenchicken]

Is Spirit of the Wood the one where the town has a deal with the beast and you can choose between the elders who want to placate the monster or the villagers who want to destroy it?

I agree Skellege is a highlight of the game. I think the story there, and the characters like Cery and Hal-whatever her brother's name are really likable. And the whole royalty race/political scheming ends up being pretty fun. I really like Cery's quest of trying to exercise a demon.

[isgrelindisguise]

Is Spirit of the Wood the one where the town has a deal with the beast and you can choose between the elders who want to placate the monster or the villagers who want to destroy it?

Yeah. I opted to kill the monster, wonder how it would have turned out if I did it the other way.

I agree Skellege is a highlight of the game. I think the story there, and the characters like Cery and Hal-whatever her brother's name are really likable. And the whole royalty race/political scheming ends up being pretty fun. I really like Cery's quest of trying to exercise a demon.

I liked both characters, but only one got like 30 other people killed. So I made the one that didn't Queen. I even liked the Evil Mother's son.

My favorite part of Skellige is a chain that starts walking into a tavern where I meet some bozos, doing a couple quests, watching my quest giver get killed by the bozos, killing the bozos, being jailed for killing the bozos, then questing to help the Jarl's son where I end up having the weakest will of the group. So embarrassing.

[isgrelindisguise]

I finished the main game. They did a good job making the final fight feel pretty cinematic, but like every other fight in the game it wasn't particularly challenging. This was a 3 button game for me: Shield sign, dodge, quick attack. I upped the difficulty once and it just made my fights longer, not really harder or more interesting. I think they tried too hard to be both an action game and an RPG in terms of their combat and the mechanics for both are pretty weak. The few Ciri fights where they dont give you regenerating health and take away the RPG mechanics were the best in the game.

I didnt really care about Emhyr or Temmaria or that psycho killer king in the north, so things when to shit after the game ended, but that's not really my problem. Unlike say Inquisition, the stability of human kingdoms doesn't really benefit me in any way so let them do what they will.

Every quest involving the persecuted elves in the game boiled down to help elves and murder and steal from people without any proof of their wrongdoing or be labeled a racist.

I enjoyed Philippa talking shit about Triss. Triss seemed like the weakest character in the game.

The game is beautiful but realistic 5 room towers and caves don't call out to me to be explored and I never really stumbled upon a multi-faceted quest from exploring like you would in Skyrim. I think inquisition had the same problem, but you could expect to find large set pieces once or twice a zone in Inq and Witcher didn't really have any outside of the main storyline.

Velen, The Crones and the Bloody Baron were the highlight of the game for me. Skellige and the prologue I thought were pretty good too, and I enjoyed interacting with the other Witchers in the interlude at Kaer Morhan. I thought Novigrad was just completely abysmal though.

I'll give the expansions a go at some point, but I don't think I'll be backtracking to do content I may have missed.

[Pewps]

I didnt really care about Emhyr or Temmaria or that psycho killer king in the north, so things when to shit after the game ended, but that's not really my problem. Unlike say Inquisition, the stability of human kingdoms doesn't really benefit me in any way so let them do what they will.

If you play the first and second games, you'll care more about the political situation (or rather the characters involved in said political situation)

If you ever get super bored, I'd recommend going back and playing the first two