Witcher 3: Heart of Stone – Review

[dropcap]D[/dropcap]LC is a bit of a dirty word in the gaming community, defined by money-grabbing attempts from developers trying to sell additional content at exorbitant prices. Take, for example, the Arkham Knight DLC released this year, ridiculed for its high pricing and pitiful amounts of actual content. However, bucking trends as always, CD Projekt Red have come along and released something that can only be described as the antithesis of typical DLC. Heart of Stone, is, quite frankly, brilliant.

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Many developers would have happily provided one or two additional missions and slapped an £8 price tag on it, but that has never been the way of CD Projekt Red. For a relatively low price, not only do you get access to a lengthy new questline, but also a whole smattering of new side quests and markers to discover in the existing map of Novigrad/Velen, which is ridiculously good bang for your buck.

The main questline here centres upon Geralt, the titular Witcher, being forced to work for the immortal Olgierd von Everec in order to pay off a debt. Whilst that may seem a fairly bland premise for a quest, it quickly shows itself to be something far superior. The main draw here is the sheer variety included in the quests. There are the typical ‘Go to Point A, kill monster, return’ quests, but these are mixed in amongst ideas that the base game left alone. During the quest, you’ll attend a wedding and take part in its various festivities; get possessed by a drunken ghost and even plan and take part in a heist. For a Third-Person Action game, these may seem bizarre, but they are pulled off spectacularly. Much praise here must go to the voice acting work of Doug Cockle, who is here allowed to show completely different sides of Geralt to brilliant effect.

The main draw here is the sheer variety included in the quests.

The quest also differs from the base game by offering more challenging boss fights. The game throws you in at the deep end here, with a giant toad being one of the first enemies you face, making it particularly tough for rusty players. However, the level design is so superb that, despite the high difficulty, it never feels unfair, and only makes you want to keep trying.

Even the additional content of the DLC could hardly be described as throwaway content. Side quests can often take up to an hour to complete, and tell riveting stories themselves. Along with this, despite being set in the first open world map from the original game, a whole host of new areas to discover have been put in, fleshing out areas of the map that had previously been quite sparse, giving you even more new things to do in the DLC pack.

This isn’t to say that the content is perfect. Unfortunately, the glitches from the base game are also present here. The background music is often missing for many minutes upon loading; dialogue often sounds like it’s echoing for no reason; in one particularly hilarious glitch, I was forced to have a fistfight against an enemy who had no head or hands. Whilst glitches such as this are understandable in full-scale open world releases, they’re harder to forgive when they are part of a self-contained DLC story, and should really have been ironed out pre-release.

Unfortunately, the glitches from the base game are also present here.

Some of the new inclusions do seem slightly superfluous, adding very little to the game mechanics. For example, the DLC includes a new Runeword system, where you can get your sword enchanted by a merchant to give it special properties, but the system doesn’t seem fleshed out enough to make a substantial difference to the combat and after trying it for a while, I quickly reverted back to the old system.

Despite these small flaws, these do very little to retract from just how good the experience provided by the expansion really is. The length, high quality, and sheer variety of the content all comes together to make an experience that shows the true potential of DLC. The fact that this is supposed to be the smaller of the two expansion packs for the game is frankly breathtaking, and, thanks to the superb quality of this pack, I am shaking with excitement about what Blood and Wine will bring. Bravo CD Projekt Red, you have created one of the all-time great DLCs.

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