So now that I've finished the expansion (brilliant, took me 20 hours) I'd like to share my opinion with you good folk. For starters, the whole package was stellar. All of that top-notch quality for just 7€, it's a slap in the face to Activision's 20€ 4-map packs or to Konami's FOB Insurance.
STORY
The storyline was probably the best part of it. The characters were well thought-out, well-designed, well-written and contextualized and the art direction was incredible (painted world!).
I'm also glad they didn't dig too much into O'Dimm's character, he needs to stay mysterious, I think that all we have to know is that he is evil incarnate. Anything else, like saying where he came from or revealing his original nature would have destroyed him a bit. Even though there's not much character development there, Shani's pretty nice too. Imho, it's for the better not to expand on the character like they didn't expand a lot on the Borsodis, the focus has to be on Iris, Olgierd and O'Dimm.
Olgierd and Iris are wonderful, wonderful characters. When you learn about what Iris has been through, how she took relief in painting and how you have to reconstruct painful memories she can't forget and defeat her fears, even her biggest one, it's brilliant. Plus Olgierd has a heart of stone (summoning two outerdimensional pets to keep Iris company!), yes, but especially in the ending one can see his human side, when he sees the rose/painting and actually reflects on what a mess he made of it all.
ENDING
The Witcher has always had such a foggy morality, sense of "right" and "wrong", and the ending here proves it. Who's the bad guy, really? Olgierd is an outright bandit, stealing and raiding, and O'Dimm grants wishes to feed on human souls. Should you save Olgierd? He brought this on himself though, and one can say O'Dimm could only be getting deserved revenge, as he tried to cheat him (…and we stand on the Moon). But one can say that he deserves a second chance, especially seeing his character almost regret what he's done after seeing the Rose. I personally spared him. (Even better, because I got to access that wonderful "Bloodborne x Shangri-La" area).
Even though I feel like saving Olgierd is kinda the right thing to do, I just don't get the other ending. You get saved from the Ofieri by O'Dimm and to repay your debt you fulfill Olgierd's three wishes to help him collect his debt. Once you're done you say each other goodbye, but before that you can wish to be rich, to have always food or alcohol, or to ride faster than the wind? Wait, what? Why do we have an option like that at all? Hasn't Geralt learnt anything from all of this?
(Unrelated to the ending). It is said more that once, that when we enter the painting of Iris, we are going in a world that exists only in her mind. So how does geralt come back with a fully fledged, real, live rose from that world into his own world?
LEVEL DESIGN
Hearts Of Stone, for its low price, brought in a massive new area. Brunwich and surroundings expanded on personally my favourite area of the game (that is, Novigrad outskirts), the Von Everec estate was very well designed too, it actually was kind of creepy and while it's not top-notch horror game material, it doesn't have to be. But something that I wanted to be more open-ended and generally bigger was the Oxenfurt University, which was cut to a few houses and a building sadly.
GAMEPLAY
I found the runewright gameplay mechanic to be way too expensive! 30000 crowns in total for bonuses absolutely not worth that price. Imho it was a wasted opportunity. It should have had better bonuses fit for different builds and cost a lot less, and also make it so that runewright can be applied in a lesser form to other kinds of equipment, like gloves and boots.
As for the boss fights however, those were nice. The frog fight wasn't that hard for me, the groundkeeper a little bit (BTW, that character is designed wonderfully), but the most surprising of them all was Olgierd's boss fight. I consider it to be Dark Souls tier, first and foremost because it's very hard, the arena is well delimited (the guy can basically two-shot you at level 37 with full Feline Armor) and because the moveset keeps changing, forcing you to change approach while clinging to life. I had to switch strategy quite a bit of times, using an Ekhidna decoction to regain life spamming alternate Aard, but away from the "sleeping" wraiths to avoid them attacking me, then rolling on the floor at one precise moment while learning to dodge his increasingly powerful attacks and stuff… it was a long, elaborate fight.
If you got this far, thank you for reading! Sorry for my so-so English, and write what do you think below, of course
submitted by deeshon
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