RoyaleDuke
Banned
So I made a mistake and started new game plus thinking it wouldn't really effect the quest line requirements for Hearts of Stone. Well, I was wrong and since I already completed white chapel at that point, I went ahead and said fuck it, might as well play it all the way through again, level up till I am close to level 62 and then play hearts of stone, then finish the game. I also started NG+ on the second to highest difficulty, blood and broken bones. ]
Now, originally it took me like three months of playing to complete it the first time, in fact it was somewhere around 160-170 hours, and this recent playthrough has added almost another twenty hours on top of it. Admittedly, I've been able to speed up my playthrough considerably due to remembering things and choices.
My ending was really bittersweet for me, as I somehow managed to pretty much do 90% of everything right for the best ending of the game. I managed to fuck it up by admonishing Ciri at several apparently key points in the game. Which causes
her to die. Geralt, goes back to the swamp kills the Crones, and then finds Ciri's amulet and crouches as he lets a swarm of necorphages consume him.
One thing that continues to surprise me about the game is how reactive it is, I've differed some choices here and there and gotten completely different outcomes, new bits of dialogue, it is really astounding how much changes depending on what you do or don't do.
Oh and the game is fucking GORGEOUS, and now it runs pretty much flawless on my system whereas there were several areas that would occasionally dip but otherwise it was a great PC version overall and they've only improved it over time. I honestly love CDPR a lot just because of how they continue to support their games with content and mod tools. Eventually, Witcher 3 will have mod tools and I look forward to seeing what the community comes up with. I honestly can't wait to see what they do with Cyberpunk 2077 and I sincerely hope that game pans out and is half as good as Witcher 3 or better and I will be happy.
One thing is I dunno if it's just because I am good at the game, but Blood and Broken bones is surprisingly easy for the most part barring the Ciri sections which I absolutely fucking hate, not because of Ciri but because they are so poor and not fun. The writing for Ciri is great, I really enjoy her character but her sections are abysmal to play through, the portions with tons of combat are simply frustrating.
Anyway, I've wiped up most of the quests in Novigrad, Velen, Oxenfurt that weren't completely in the red(surprisingly not many were too hard). I have the first level of the new legendary Bear School armor, and I am gonna find those other schematics for sure because it's literally the best armor and arguably the coolest armor in the game.
If you couldn't guess, I'm in skellige now. Got that Master Armorer's kit for that one questline, which is great because it won't be long before I need a master craftsman.
So, I've done quite few quests in Skellige but I'm still firmly in Act One of the three acts in the game. I am level 52 and getting closer to the point where I will be able to do hearts of stone. I will update this thread with my thoughts on hearts of stone when I get to it.
I mean look at that shit, it's fucking awesome. That's the final tier, the mastercrafted set. It's amazing to see how NG+ scales, as a lot of weapons are viable on NG+ in comparison to your gear from the original game save. In fact the legendary tier one set of Ursine armor is better than my mastercrafted set from my first playthrough.