RPG Tourist

Minor Spoilers Yes, yay! I have finished Witcher Enhanced Edition. Although there is a lot of things I like about it, I must admit it was a slog. I was not inspired to try out the premium content. I don’t think it matters to the story arc anyway. The story, the characters and the alchemy system are cool and you can pick out advanced abilities to complement combat styles you like. The gift giving can lead to some hilarious NPC interactions. Unfortunately important characters can show up in unexpected places or at specific times and Geralt can’t meditate wherever he likes. Climbing and jumping is also restricted and he can’t take short cuts across some of the maps. This means a lot of tedious running around for Geralt. I’m not sure how many quests I failed or how many rewards I missed but I don’t care much. The whole amnesia thing worked well for me because I didn’t know what to expect from the game and for the most part Geralt just goes along to get along until he’s forced i...

I’ve been granted some access to the PS4 again and in the meantime Playstation has released a couple of free game titles. So for a short period I was playing three games at once. Whee! Once I started encountering some cool references to the original game in Witcher 3, I stopped and turned all my attention to Uncharted Drake’s Fortune. I appreciate the remastering but I soon remembered what caused me to abandon it in the first place. At one point I left the room to have a toddler tantrum. Then I thought to turn down the camera sensitivity. Things went much better until the mutant uglies showed up. I truly wasn’t expecting this although when Nate first discovered an abandoned U-Boat I should suspected that something gruesome would turn up. It wasn’t long before I set the controller down and said “I don’t want to do this.” Maybe turning the camera sensitivity back up might help. On the bright side I have finished Witcher Enhanced Edition.

Having temporarily lost access to the PS4, I decided to try the Witcher Enhanced Edition once more. I had left it in Chapter I because of repeated fails at vanquishing main boss The Beast. I couldn’t remember much else about the game so I decided to start over and quickly realized what the problem was. Once you get used to games with a lot of freedom of movement, it isn’t easy to return to restricted movement. Because Geralt can’t jump over fences and take short cuts through the map, he is reduced to running in endless circles. Chapter I’s tedium probably led me to rush through it and I wasn’t really prepared to face the end battle. This time I made sure to do everything possible before I even went to the cave. I tried to knock the Beast down and take him out but failing at that I sent Geralt to that safe space behind a house and dealt with all those Barghests from there. Soon I was on Chapter II which offers a couple of more interesting areas to explore. The swamp has the sam...

Warning: Spoilers The past few weeks have been disruptive and self discipline has pretty much gone out the window. I have mostly been escaping into Witcher world when I can. I have been pleasantly surprised by how much I don’t really remember. I remember most of the main story missions but there are many quests and locations I had forgotten about completely. Thanks to a geared up Roach I am not nearly as anxious about exploring or leveling up. I’m finding it hard to play Geralt as a jerk because he’s generally fairly decent anyway. I struggled with the Keira quest line but finally rationalized that Geralt wouldn’t care much about being used and he didn’t sleep with her because he didn’t like her, right? He didn’t romance her the first time but that didn’t make any difference to the story so once again he gruffly sent her off to Kaer Morhen. At this point I decided that Geralt only goes out of his way for his friends but takes the easy way out whenever he can. And is sometimes ju...