@psmr Just finished off my ng+ run of The Witcher 3 on Death March… and it all got a bit crazy, a bit quickly at the end! All playthrough I kinda glided through, finding it much easier than my initial run on Normal.

• Congrats, that's a lot of content and a lot of time to get there. I suppose you must be playing it over a week now. I think you started playing it a couple of days before I moved onto Silent Hill 2. I'm kind of glad I did hold off on a fourth play-through of The Witcher 3. It's a really big game and Crimson Desert was most definitely bigger, it made Skyrim feel small and other than the story I still haven't finished all of that content probably never will. The Witcher 3 has a more realistic level of beatable content, platinum too.

I must’ve died around 10 times to Caranthir and then maybe 5 to Eredin but there were points… 😬… maybe I was fighting them all wrong but all of a sudden I was thinking wtf!

• That's not just you, the same thing absolutely happened to other people and I think age/reaction speed was part of it. I do like the combat in the game, I also know it requires a certain level of speed to make it work. I wouldn't even call it a learning curve, it's the way the Developers designed the game and I think it does unfairly penalize people if they are forced into fights like that and the opponent boss hits like a truck and moves like a train. I really liked the Caranthir fight, I do remember him being fast though.

I still have a few grindy trophies left (headshot crossbow kills and the like) but the camel’s back is broke, and… what a game! As I’ve mentioned, I struggled to connect with it early on

• I'm not sure if you are using the island for easy trophies or not, here's the video.

It’s still a bit recent to figure out exactly where I’d place it in terms of my top games of all time but I’m thinking definitely top 20… maybe top 10. As someone that favours minute-to-minute gameplay above all else, my rating of The Witcher 3 does conflict with my inherent likes and dislikes… but it just won me over in every other aspect apart from the combat and is ultimately just one of the most impressive games I’ve ever played.

• It's a shame the combat didn't win you over and I'm sure you aren't the only one. For me it was less about the speed and more about the weight. It's hard to explain but I do fence in real life and it's why I struggled so much with the combat in Kingdom Come Deliverance. I had to unlearn what I did know to make combat viable for me in that game, in the end I had to ditch swords for maces. When I played The Witcher 3 I didn't feel the weight of that combat, it may have been the frequent pirouettes I'm not sure. It just didn't feel right, combat like that needs weight and I struggle with some of those visual ques and tells. The camera didn't make it any easier, I'm not sure if they ever fixed it.

@GirlVersusGame

I suppose you must be playing it over a week now. I think you started playing it a couple of days before I moved onto Silent Hill 2.

Well over a week actually, two weeks and a couple of days. @Capt had stated that I’d have been better off just playing it on Death March from the start and do everything in just the one playthrough, as it would’ve saved my a lot of time. He was right of course but I was already about 15/20 hours in at that point… and wasn’t finding it particularly easy at that stage on Normal tbh. So what I imagine would be 100 hours became more like 130 but that’s fine, I had a good time.

It's a shame the combat didn't win you over and I'm sure you aren't the only one... The camera didn't make it any easier, I'm not sure if they ever fixed it.

Yeah, I guess my feelings towards the combat did soften over time but I still think it is the games weakest aspect… and weak compared to other melee systems in other games. It’s just so bloody light and floaty… and twirly. It also felt a bit laggy too for some reason but maybe that’s just me. And you’re right about the camera… that was my main issue in the two final boss encounters , particularly Caranthir. I just ended up with so many frost elementals in play that the camera refused to focus on Caranthir but loved focusing on one of the elementals even though I wasn’t locked on 🤬.

Cheers for the video btw, I’ll have a look at that and hopefully it’ll make the trophy clean up nice and quick. 👍

@psmr
Well done on completing DM on NG+, I suspected that the final bosses were quite tough on NG+ because I watched Nath on PS Access doing his platinum run on NG+ and he had a considerably harder time with the final bosses than I did on NG.
NG on DM wasn’t that difficult for me except for the first 5 or so levels, the drowners can be real downers but after that when you unlock some skills , get some armour and decent weapons then you can start to dish out the pain. But yeah if you had already played 15-20hrs on another difficulty then you may as well continue.
I think everyone agrees (including CDPR) that the combat is the weakest point but I lived through the whole “its an RPG so combat will be bad” era so it didn’t bother me so much, back in 2015.
As for where it stands, I played both Bloodborne and Witcher 3 in 2015 and I found it quite difficult to pick my game of the year as they were both fantastic.

@CaptD glad that it wasn’t just me then, as I was really starting to question my life choices at one point during that Caranthir fight 😅.

Yeah it’s a great game, of that theres no doubt. As I’ve mentioned many times Bloodborne is my absolute favourite game ever, so I wouldn’t place Witcher 3 quite that high but as I said in one of my previous posts, I think that I’d have to find room for it somewhere. It’s actually making me want to put some thought into what would be my all-time top 10 right now. For context, I can’t help but equate this game to Red Dead 2 (huge sprawling world, incredible narrative and characters… horse), which I think would make my top 10. For me, I’d probably rate Red Dead 2 a little above Witcher 3 but not by a great deal… so it’s there or thereabouts for sure.

@CaptD Have you played any of previous Witcher games? I played the second on Xbox 360, so I think that stood me in good stead when I played 3.

I preferred the combat on higher difficulties, as you have to use potions n lotions more. Think I had lower difficulty for a late game boss fight, so missed out on the Death March trophy. @psmr

@JohnnyShoulder
Unfortunately not, I did buy a Xbox (not a series) S with the intention of playing that along with Sunset overdrive which I have on disc. I haven’t played either and tbh the console saw less use than the candles I bought for a power cut.
Is there supposed to be a remake coming of 2? Or even 1?
And yeah you totally need the oils and potions although I think on my subsequent playthroughs on DM I think I skipped the oils, mainly because the OP food/drink regen HP perk carried me through.

Finished Castlevania Belmont's Curse.

As a TRUE Castlevania fan I really liked it. The throwbacks to previous titles were really fun!

I 100% it, map, secrets, Tarots + their mercy points, got all 3 endings.

I have only 3 things I did not like:

1. There is no in-game bestiary. No place to show the names and info of the defeated enemies. I was hoping for LORE pages of the enemies.

2. There is no New Game + mode

3. Some of the platforming challenges were timed and I was going to pluck my eyes out and chew them!

9/10 it is close

Waiting for them to reveal the Lament of Innocence, Curse of Darkness and Lords of Shadow collection!

@CaptD I also need oils IRL to get the best out of me, but that is a story for another thread...

There is a remake for the first game, but I think it has been delayed whilst CDPR concentrates on the new DLC for The Witcher 3.

Marvel Wolverine.

Right so I recently played and well beated the new Marvel Wolverine game from Insomniac games. Now what did I think about Marvel Wolverine? Well, I did think that Marvel Wolverine was a good, cool and stylish game.

Well if you expect a modern open world games like God of War 2018 then you will likely be disappointed because Marvel Wolverine is not that type of game.

But Marvel Wolverine is more like Onimusha in a good way or in many ways quite similar to the PS3 X-Men Origins: Wolverine game. But the 2026 Wolverine game clearly has 2026 graphics and 2026 cinematics, which is very good.

Further Wolverine 2026 has a good and honestly not bad Marvel story. So I feel like you can play and beat Marvel Wolverine both as a way to watch a good Marvel movie and to play a video game. I would recommend having low to medium expectations overall.

If the game has some kind of weakness I think it that it would be cool if you had the option to style Logan more than the game allows you to do.

Because while the game offers some options to style your character, change suit, equip abilities, I think the options to style Logan could be even more comprehensive. I think for exemple that the player have more options to style the character in the new Spider-Man games.

Given that Marvel Wolverine was announced in 2023 I think you can very much ask the question why it took Insomniac games so long to develop and release Marvel Wolverine as Insomniac games is maybe one of the biggest and most famous game studios in the world.

State this because I would also state that Marvel Wolverine is basically a game which have the same or similar length or have the same scope as Spider-Man Miles Morales which as many know is a much shorter game than the other games in the new Spider-man franchise.

We otherwise get Insomniac fare in Marvel Wolverine. Beside the main story and a NG+ mode Marvel Wolverine also offers a fun challenge mode which is funner and also likely better than it sounds.

So when you beat the main story, you can try NG+ or have fun with the challenge mode! Can very, very much recommend to trying out the challenge mode in Marvel Wolverine.

Done the first of what is hopefully two playthroughs of Resident Evil 3 Remake today and it was great fair play, as someone who hadn’t really touched the series until 2 Remake (I did play Code Veronica on Dreamcast but cant really remember anything), having now played REmake, REmake 2, REmake 3 and REvelations in the past 18 months, I’m loving everything about it!

I’m a bit annoyed at myself, as I was going for all collectibles but ended up missing a book/file 🤬, so I’ll have to keep an eye out for that during my Inferno run tomorrow.

I know everyone moans about the remake of 3 but as someone who never played the original (& therefore don’t really know what was left out) I really enjoyed it. Maybe a shade under the second remake but still very good. And dat engine tho 😘

@psmr
STARS!
Well done, so far. It took me three playthroughs I think, the final fight was a little annoying on highest difficulty but not too bad.
I did enjoy RE3 but did think it was too short, I think my speedrun time was just under 70mins.