The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine

10/10 Would seek the crownjewels again...

One thing that must be given to B&W is that it's not a ripp-off : for the price of an expansion, you get about the same content as a full-fledged AAA game. That's something highly commendable. That being said, if the expansion sets the bar for customer respect, it's sadly a rather stark let-down after Wild Hunt. As a separate game it would be pleasant, but as the final chapter of TW3 it's simply a disappointment. I understand that Toussaint is supposed to have a distinct tone, be somewhat of a satire of fairy tales, and to be much lighter and softer than the very grimdark setting of the main game. But they clearly overdid it, throwing all subtlety and good taste, and ending with an over-the-top colour theme (ultra-saturated with a horrible yellow filter), an excessively parodic tone (the main game is itself no stranger to humour and silliness, but manage to keep the balance ; B&W just makes a joke of the setting and feels downright farcical) and overall ends up with a change of tone which reach "jarring" levels. More crucially, the writing is simply of a much lower quality. Geralt is more or less neutered, losing most of its snark and being pretty passive and submissive. The moral dilemma and the strong emotions, which were a staple of TW3, are pretty much absent. The new supporting characters are okay, but the main opposing ones are just plain bad. Samely, the side quests are acceptable, but the MQ, which started nice, ends up in, frankly, fanfiction-level of quality. Overall, it doesn't feel like at all that the same team from Wild Hunt or Heart of Stone wrote this, but rather Bioware at its most mediocre. The new mechanisms are welcome, if you get a graphic mods which remove the horrid colour filter it's a pretty gorgeous locale, the size is humongous for an expansion, but on the whole it's just subpar compared to the main game, lacking subtlety and depth. Impressive as a work, disappointing as art.

Well I finished Witcher 3: blood and wine. Overall I was I was disappointed, sadly. Aside from the main stories writing, I found the rest of it slightly surpassing the base game, the writing for side quests/activities seemed on par, and the detail was higher (for example, all the abandoned sites I cleared out had an NPC that gave a proper conversation about what had happened in the location, rather than just generic thanks. For most of the main story I felt like I was being pulled along a nonsensical route with no say in the matter, like you weren't given the chance to treat the situations as you should have. It felt like no matter what I chose, nothing changed at all until the very end, and even then they messed it up severely. Spoilers below. An example of what I mentioned would be the end. In one of the endings you're able to figure out Sylvia's final target was her sister, and that she felt no remorse at all, and still wanted to kill her, and you were then able to warn her guard captain. I expected this would actually make a difference, but it didn't. No one warned her, she was allowed to walk right up to her, and she was killed for it. You are given the chance slightly earlier to warn her yourself, not sure if that would have saved her, however it doesn't matter. The captain knew and could have stopped it, it's absurd that he did nothing. If he tried to stop it, and she ordered everyone to stand down anyway, and then died, I'd be fine with it, as she'd constantly put herself in danger for no good reason, so finally having consequences for her actions by letting a murderer hug her would have made sense. Why wouldn't she eventually be killed by her own recklessness, that'd be a good ending for her. Not the case though, she died because her captain "sort of forgot" Geralt told him she wants her dead. Good job dude.

tfhht

I think this expansion is not worth. The base game is already great, I feel this "addiction" is completely not needed and not well balanced. The game becomes way too much difficult without improving the fighting system and controls (which are not soo good). I completed the base game on PS4 at death march, the bought the complete game un PC and replayed. Finished the main story (and almost all side quests) but then started this dlc and dropped it. My advice is NOT to buy this, just buy the base game (or the GOTY edition if you find it at same or lower price than base game). Just don't waste your money on dlcs.