Interesting! I never really found the combat to be all that tedious or enemies too difficult so long as you kept up with alchemy, oils and gear upgrades.

Obviously, different strokes for different folks. There’s a reason one of the difficulties is story only.

I try to get everyone to try playing on Death March, no fast travel.

I did my first playthrough like this. There’s so much to see in the world and so many paths to take. Fast travel is neat and all but you may miss out on so much. I took it a step further and also didn’t leave regions/nations until I completed the map. I found more incidental quests by taking a wrong turn or a shortcut over a hill than I did by following the main quests.

On Death March: It’s actually not hard at all and feels like how the gake should be played. What it actually does is forces you to look at the bestiary, learn or guess weaknesses and attack patterns then use potions, spells and pils to fight enemies. It actually feels like playing the witcher as lore accurately as possible. Going to the local herbalist, buying supplies, meditating then hunting down the enemies.

To add on: After a certain level is reached there are a multitude of tile combinations you have to avoid or they cause a hard crash. I believe oldschool tetris used to be played until the very first hard crash and that’s where everyone thought the record would end. Prior to that was the development of rolling which allowed players to get past the original game over state that sped tiles up too fast to react to.

Now we have players so proficient they’ve memorised crash states, and are rolling over the game.

I wonder how long until Points + Prestige become an antiquated measuring system.

Media literacy skill: 0