Also, some quest markers will send you entirely in the wrong direction. You can be right where you are supposed to be with the quest marker sending you elsewhere. It’s basically an early and faulty HorsePS.
Reemul
4504
OK got it thanks, was one floor too high.
JeffL
4505
I’m still low level, due a good stretch of playtime after getting back from some travel, but I have found I am enjoying the exploration much more with the ?s turned off. Much more. It’s not “Oh, there’s a marker where something is, need to go get it to complete things” it’s walking or riding through the countryside, seeing something interesting, investigating, etc. I’m sure by doing it this way I’ll miss some things, but that’s OK, I walked every inch of the land in Skyrim and still missed some things. But the feeling of exploring is much better (for my style of play) now.
And yeah, the writing is really good. Now I EXPECT a twist of some kind, think I have something figured out, and I still get surprised. Simple example:
Werewolf
So I go into a village, guy says can you find my wife, ask around the village, people like her, but say with all the wolves or whatever she probably wandered into the woods and got killed. I thought I was being clever when I interviewed the husband and the other woman was talking about her, I thought I was being clever, and the animation and voice acting was good enough I knew she had a think for the guy. So I figured I was going to go look for her and find this woman had killed her so she could have the guy. When she met me in the woods and told me it would be best if I just abandoned the search to save the guy’s feelings, I was sure I had it figured out - she killed her, and didn’t want me to figure that out. Wasn’t sure about the werewolf though. Then to find out the end of the story - wow.
BTW, Telefrog wrote an excellent review for the QT3 front page. I (mildly) disagree with a few points he raises, but can see how they’d color someone’s experience. And though I think the review almost reads like it’ll be for a 2 or 3-star game, it’s a 5-star outing from here too.
The Qt3 rating system strikes again!
That was my thought process EXACTLY through that whole thing. So good :D
robc04
4509
Do you visit the job boards, or do you just try and find the quests on your own?
I really like the review, and it touches on things I haven’t seen elsewhere.
It’s interesting, I’ve read a lot of reviews from great reviewers–including the Gamespot 10.0 and the Game Trailers 9.8–as well as RPS’s WIT. With a game that seems to lend itself to such easy effusive praise, I get a sense that reviewers also feel a need to point out that a perfect or very high score doesn’t mean a game without issues.
I feel that most of the perfect scores are given for its sheer ambition as it’s not a perfect game by any means, it’s filled with bugs, control and interface problems but it pushes the entire genre forward. Stunning graphics AND great writing was previously unheard of.
The janky controls, especially for keyboard and mouse, the excessive streamlining of quests and exploration and the unexciting leveling system and loot prevents it from being a 5/5 or 10/10 in my book.
It compares in many ways to Planescape Torment, the creators themselves said it had little role playing and poor combat but the story made those complaints insignificant.
ShivaX
4512
excessive streamlining of quests
Compared to what?
Seriously, what game have you been playing that I’ve never heard of that beats the TW3 for quests?
Excessive streamlining? I swear you’re playing a different game than everyone else and have been since the beginning.
KingNee
4513
Read the past 10 pages and you should get what I mean, no need to repeat it just for you.
Horse racing just makes we want to murder Roach for all the times he pulls up and stops in the middle of the trail.
After playing it a bit more (at the Bloody Baron now, can’t wait to see what all the fuss is about…) I can safely say I like this game a lot. I haven’t got that many problems with the movement, am slowly getting into Gwent and liking it (allthough I don’t have a clue about all the deeper tactics yet) and mostly ignoring the crafting has helped a lot with inventory stress.
The one thing that does bug me are the loading times after dying. On Ps4, it really takes a while to load the last save, and particularly at hard fights that I have to do a couple of times to get the tactics right, this becomes immensly annoying…
Reemul
4516
I have to agree with this, it’s almost bashing for the sake of bashing.
jsnell
4517
Gwent as a standalone game seems implausible, it’d need a massive overhaul. The only thing that prevents the game from collapsing completely in TW3 is that the deck compositions are limited by the game world rather than by Gwent rules. If you could have multiple Thalers or Avallach’s, scout+decoy decks would be the only playable ones. The only question would be which leader you pick (e.g. a siege Foltest vs. clear weather Foltest both seem valid). Actually I’m not completely sure whether any of the other decks are valid even in the current state of the game. The second problem is that there are some counters that are way too hard. For example there’s basically nothing a monster deck can do against an opponent who draws a biting frost. They can’t even counter that with a clear weather since Monsters never have a card count advantage, and end up having to pass first.
Story-wise Gwent is really not worth it, I gave up on it around level 16 after winning the big Novigrad Gwent tournament. That appears to be the only place where even a borderline competent deck is required, and though the quest is very neat it’s probably not enough of a pay off for the couple of hours of grinding required for getting that good enough deck. There’s also a few places where you can use winning a match as a way of bypassing an obstacle instead of a fight / paying money / using Axii. But you don’t really even get different story beats from that, and those other options are actually going to be easier and faster.
This is practical, right?
My Geralt looks nothing like that. Is that what happens when you put on Cat school witcher armor?
Reemul
4521
Yeah, she will burn without a hat on in that warm weather and such light skin.
JeffL
4522
Question that I hope can be answered without any spoilers: I gather from tidbits I see here and there that at some point in the game you make an irreversible choice between Yen and Triss. When I get to that point, would it be worth saving the game, making the choice and finishing the game that way, then restarting the game after finishing with a save load and making the other choice and then finishing the game that way? Are they two very different game paths depending on the choice?
