Those unfortunate events send Geralt haplessly towards the crux of the Hearts of Stone campaign: Gaunter O’Dimm (or the Merchant of Mirrors) helps you escape the Ofieris, but he’s none too happy with your taskmaster. Due to some arcane high fantasy reasoning though, the dubious O’Dimm is still bound to fulfil three duties for Olgierd and, well, that’s what you’re doing—helping him perform those three tasks or, as it turns out, doing them for him.
Wolfin' Things Down
Befitting a premium expansion, Hearts of Stone is a substantial addition to the main game, but it dares experiment in some subtle yet satisfying ways. Few of these experiments are mentionable here without major plot spoilers, but suffice to say the tone wavers between dread and deadpan comedy very gracefully, with one particular wedding sequence playing out like a stoner romantic comedy. These scenarios subvert Geralt’s steely and aloof personality, and what might prove tedious in a poorly written game works wonders in the hands of CD Projekt RED.
While Hearts of Stone doesn’t add new regions to the Northern Realms, there are new locations north of Novigrad to explore, and these are populated with new fauna, side quests and random encounters. It’s the von Everec saga that matters most though, and while it has its lighter moments the general thrust of the story is quite bleak—family can’t be relied upon to stick by your side, self-interest rules the world, and any treachery can be justified by the allure of cold hard Orens. It’s Witcher 3 storytelling at its finest, but strip the characters and intrigue away and not much is left: boiled down to its gameplay core, Heart of Stones is a series of runnings to-and-fro. The combat is mostly the same, the boss encounters are visually stunning but tactically straightforward, and even the campaign’s heist centrepiece is largely driven by cutscenes.
Meanwhile, the addition of Runewords and Glyphwords are likely to appeal to roleplaying completionists, but the stat and effect boosts they provide to gear don’t make a huge difference in practice. Much like The Witcher 3’s character tree, progression feels far too gradual, though if you’ve got an inventory full of unused runes you’ll have a lot to experiment with. In other words, there’s nothing about these new upgrade paths that feel essential, not yet anyway: they’re just new things to do.
The Witcher 3 has an unusual problem to overcome: in a game with an abundance of sidequests most players will never experience, what’s the appeal of this particular one? I hear these concerns, and felt them going into Hearts of Stone. I enjoyed the 12+ hours I spent with the von Everec saga, though it did serve to reinforce some awkward truths about the core game, namely, that the combat and character progression really needs the epic scope of a 100 hour campaign to sustain them. Oh, and there really is a lot of running back and forth in this game, isn’t there? As a new self-contained saga though, Heart of Stones is unparalleled RPG storytelling. Just make sure you bring an investment in the fantasy.
Source:[ Internet]
By S0ft Hcks!
MR:47{XYBER SHEIKH}
MR:47{XYBER SHEIKH}
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