Monthly Report - November 2019

Only one game played this month, but it has been in my list for a very long time !

• Won : -
• Free : Serial Cleaner
• From bundles/gifts/sales : -

• The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition
  

  83 hours playtime

  52 of 52 achievements

The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition - completed

This is a mystery for me… The first time I played this game was in 2013 according to my achievements. And I didn’t went very far as there are basic achievements unlocked in 2015.
What happened is that I played The Witcher and loved it. As soon as I finished it, I started The Witcher 2 and… I didn’t really like it. It felt too much that it was ported on console and a lot of things were hard to swallow just after the first one (simplified combat, inventory…). Don’t get me wrong, in terms of gameplay & UI, the second one is better but when you play them back to back, it’s… strange.
So… I paused a bit and took the game again in 2015 (yes quite a long pause ^^), and played through the first chapter and stopped… Again. I honestly don’t know why.
And then it has been in my “I’ll play that next month” list for a very long time (until I decided to stop making this list, as I didn’t follow it ^^).

And today’s story starts there. Beginning of chapter 2, don’t remember much of the first one (not surprisingly, 4 years later) but still decided to continue there (as I’ll do another playthrough…).
And this is a very good game, it is beautiful, the gameplay is good, fighting feels great, story is nice, choices have a meaningful impact…
But I still have a few issues with it : I think the story is a little too into politics (too many characters I barely remember the names…) and there’s not enough monster hunting :). The game lacks of a quick travel, as there are a lot of quests that require you to run around the map, it quickly becomes annoying, and some characters are always in the way, which can be a pain (I look at you dwarfs during Vergen undergrounds mission).
I encountered A LOT of crashes (some even crashed Steam… I’ve never seen that before), but I had a few mods to fix a few issues (remove the Cat potion heart beat noise, or the grey overlay when using dark weapons, things like that…), which it might be the cause, so in doubt I won’t blame the game ^^.
What I also liked is that the game requires that you do at least 2 playthroughs (for each path + a the troll achievement + a few story choices that you make + difficulty), which usually annoys me a lot, but there is enough diversity and choice that this is not a problem here, you don’t feel that you are playing twice the same thing, and you learn more details about the event, or view things differently.
But this causes another issue that is inherent to this kind of game: I’m constantly worried that I’m missing something (a quest, a plot point, an event…), and as I’m a completionist, this annoys me a lot ^^.
But overall, a great experience. I’ve been hearing that The Witcher 3 is the best game ever for years (and as I’m stupid, I bought the game at full price on launch but play it 4 years later ^^), now I’ll be able to check that by myself :).
Achievements : As mentioned, you need to play the game at least twice. A lot of achievements are missable, but thanksfully each save has its own file so once I finished my first playthrough, I could go back and do the few things I missed. And combat achievements can be unlocked in the arena (like unlocking abilities).
I was a bit afraid of the “Madman” achievement (finish on Insane, which means that your saves are locked upon death), but in fact it wasn’t really a problem… I didn’t die that much as I already knew most of it and came well prepared, and you just have to be quick on the “Quick Load” button when things go south :).

• The Longest Journey
  

  2 hours playtime

  no achievements

The Longest Journey - unfinished

A friend gifted that game to me, as he liked it a lot, and people seem to say that it has a great story.
I had issues launching it (this is a very old game - it starts, but there was a lot of UI issues), but after a few internet research, managed to play it properly.
This is not really my kind of game (point & click, with puzzles…), but I’ll try to play it. At worst, I’ll play it with a guide, just to experience the story…
So far, not much to say about it… We’ll see !
Achievements : There’s none, so it’ll be easy on that side :)