ssling: 9th Dawn III: Shadow of Erthil

Absurdly huge, insanely addictive open-world hack & slash / dungeon crawler. Amount of content is mindblowing for such inconspicuous game originating from mobile devices. I'm over 20 hours in and explored maybe 1/4 of the world and barely touched all optional activities. Speaking of which there is crafting of various types (cooking, blacksmithing, alchemy, jewelry etc. - everything with dozens of recipes). Mining. Fishing. Catching animals/monsters so they can fight and level up at your side (why they don't evolve though?!?). Hell, there is even in-game collectible card minigame. The only problem is mastering all of these would take tens of hours alone because of kinda grindy nature (at the beginning success rate for everything is very small and leveling skills is done by doing things so only way is to waste tons of resources to level up skill at first). But who cares when all monsters and containers respawn at any location change (including floors of the same dungeon) or load game (yes, careful with saving mid-dungeon because one may accidentally load into instadeath in the sea of monsters).
Combat system is fast and satisfying, plays fantastic with controller. Great progression feeling with smooth leveling, shitload of items, damage numbers going into thousands, rewards for achieving goals and unlockable abilities and spells. There is at least one companion character that can be also player controllable and his development is fully manual so can use whatever build you want. Quests are mostly typical fetch quests but dialogs with npc's are funny written. Settlements have their own economy and npc's work in their shops only in certain hours (and have days off!) which is surprising and neat. And all dungeons are handcrafted, no random generation.
My biggest complain so far is somewhat clunky inventory management, especially transferring between main and companion characters. And maybe respawn feels too aggressive at times. But overall it's pure digital heroine.

dtgreene: So, does the "increase skills by use" mechanic apply to things like combat and spellcasting, or just to crafting.

dtgreene: How does stat growth work?

What's the level cap?

dtgreene: Can you play as a female character?

lukaszthegreat: Glad you are enjoying it.

Did you invest in the powers?

HIRO kun: And then, I just finished Witcher 3 wild hunt. I beat the final boss with no damage taken!
But I have not played the two expansions yet, so Geralt's adventure has still continued...
Fortunately, this time Geralt got a happy ending (kind of...), unlike my first playing.
All in all this game is excellent even from today's viewpoint.
My biggest complaint about the game is the left stick on the gamepad is too sensitive, and sometimes Geralt (especially in the ride mode) could not move straightly (a few times, Geralt fell down from a high mountain and died because of it).
The game does not allow the player to adjust the left stick sensitivity in the game option (even it allows to do with the right stick).
Perhaps I should have used a traditional keyboard + mouse.
And because of it, I have entirely skipped the house race quest lines.
Also, I have skipped the Gwent game quest lines too, because I generally don't like trading card games. I prefer the dice poker in W1 and W2 to Gwent in W3.
I'll play two expansions too. I'm impressed that CD-Projekt Red's effort to long support the game.