Most elements (graphics, control system) of the game are the same. You can find details in my previous review. Treat this as an incremental review - I will only mention elements, which are improved:
!!! WARNING - spoilers incoming !!!
Plot
Original story was good. That is all, just good. Here on the other hand the writing is the best part. The main story of the expansion is well written with some twists and a lot of connections to the real world. It is loosely based on polish legend about Pan Twardowski and some characters are looking and acting as they are polish szlachta (difficult to explain - check wiki). The best quest is in my opinion the one where you go to the wedding with your old friend Shani to party hard while sharing your body with ghost. A-W-S-O-M-N-E-S-S to the limits. This part has a lot of cut-scenes and dialogues so it is not your typical action RPG, but rather point and click adventure, but it is fabulous. I could be a little bit biased as I have re-read all the books about Geralt prior to playing Heart of Stone and just enjoyed every second it this universe. Even just riding around, sightseeing on my trustworthy roach was enjoyable. Of course in comparison to mentioned epic wedding quest some others can look bleak, but the overall writing level is much better than the original Witcher. On a side note - there are some some really funny jokes, which in polish version are somehow specific to Poland like joke delivered by typical Janusz or an offer to take a lone in foreign currency.
Characters
Some characters were great in original game (best pal Zoltan), while some were not up to that level (especially the antagonists - they were just meh). Here we have great and even greater characters. Olgierd von Everec, the immortal nobleman, Gaunter O'Dimm, the devious mystery man, Vlodimir - the crazy wraith, oh-so cute Shani and Iris von Everec - Olgierds wife that you met in other dimension - all of them are convincing and you can sympathize with them. I really considered my words when talking with them and was really engaged in what I was doing. It should be noted that the game is well balancing the serious moments and characters with funny ones. On a side note - after I finish the game I eagerly checked who was Gaunter O'Dimm, what other players found out and more. I spent some additional time reading about other choices, and getting better info about characters.
Sound
The voicing of polish version is great, especially Gaunter O'Dimm and a song that village children sing about him. You can check even better (played during the final, more psychodelic one) version here:
Music and actors made me curious how it fares in different language. As I enjoyed how dwarfs (english Zoltan is better than polish one!) and Novigrads villans sounded in original game (even if it was difficult for me to understand them fully), the expansion characters are much better in polish in my opinion.
Fighting
Minor thing, but surely an improvement. The fights in Witcher are solid and just good. The combat is responsive, but the bosses and minibosses are not posing a challenge, does not have special powers that makes you fight accordingly. That changes in the expansion. Even though the focus is on story, the combat was much more rewarding. Learning how to fight the caretaker was fun and killing him without taking any damage felt great!
Time required to finish
I have to mention it - the expansion was advertised as offering 10 additional hours of playing, but it took me much more than that. Maybe it is because I was doing everything really slowly and enjoying every bit of it.
TL; DR
Hearts of Stone expansion is an improvement over original game in almost every aspect it was lacking. I can give it only one rating:
Over 9000! Kappa
No comments:
Post a Comment