The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine DLC Review

If there’s one thing I respect at all in media, be it film, television, videogames, heck, even literature, it’s knowing when something has come to an end, and making an absolutely cracking finale to cap it off. Blood and Wine, the second expansion for The Witcher 3 and the final foreseeable adventure in the franchise, was built up in my mind to be a phenomenal experience that would highlight all of the parts of the series that I had loved so far – something about it, though, simply didn’t resonate with me, and I came away feeling a little disappointed.

That said, the expansion retains the same high quality combat and evocative storytelling that we’ve all come to expect from CD Projekt Red, all neatly contained with the glowing region of Toussaint, an area big enough to harbour a small game of its own. Gone are the mass graves and necrophage nesting grounds, replaced with fairy-tale forests and sprawling vineyards. During the first few quests, the player is taken to boss battle after boss battle, which proved more than a little challenging owing to my being ten levels too small. Regardless, every beast had its weaknesses to exploit, and the game rewarded both observational skills and general knowledge as to what the player is fighting. Those first fights were exciting and, most importantly, enjoyable, not least in part to the brilliant music that overlaid my skirmishes.

As much as I appreciate the gift of a new country to run about in, I feel that it really works against the main quest – with Hearts of Stone, the player had already done everything and felt that inner desire to learn more about Von Everec and O’Dimm, and the story felt more coherent and engaging as a result. After completing one of the main quest missions in Blood and Wine, I would often find myself not that far away from an undiscovered area, or a contract, or a new shopkeeper to play Gwent with; the main quest felt as though it lacked the same urgency, even though uncovering the secret behind the vampire attacks was far more pressing. Once I did get involved in the story again, I found it to be just as intriguing as any other major plotline, if a little less emotionally charged (lookin’ at you, Bloody Baron).

The player is plunged into a world that is unfamiliar with the discord of the Northern Realms, who treat dangerous monsters as mere training dummies for aspiring knights. As always, the franchise presents these ridiculous characters with a healthy dose of irony – or, at least, it does to begin with. After clearing out a number of bandit fortresses, taking part in a tournament and collecting my pay for deeds as a knight errant, I realised that I was all of a sudden taking it all seriously, and so was the game. Roach looked like a steed, I looked like a ponce, and the whole thing felt like a farce, and farce isn’t a bad word for it considering the number of bugs I found. That tournament I was talking about? Broke my lock-on function. I only found this out about an hour later after getting mauled by some pumas, and just about managed to find a save that went back far enough to ‘fix’ the issue – because, on PlayStation 4, at least, Witcher saves get actively deleted like they’ve been linked to the Catriona plague. A quest as seemingly major as this one couldn’t possibly have gone without bug testing, so either the developers never had time to fix the issues, or they have a personal vendetta against me.

A lot of the new content itself, however, was pretty fantastic; the Manticore armour and the Archespores really took me back to those early days of the first Witcher, while fighting the myriad of lesser vampires and higher vampiresses was exciting and challenging as all hell. Some of my favourite fights have been with the various Bruxae and Alpor, but those opportunities aren’t respawning, or even randomly generated to my knowledge – yes, monsters are more interesting when they’re rare, but taking away the duels with the demonic nudists completely is kinda missing the point.

Don’t get me wrong – Blood and Wine is more than anything I had imagined a year ago before setting foot in The Witcher 3, but the game has spoiled me and the expansion simply didn’t live up to expectations. The vistas and the characters are just as if not more colourful than in the main game, and the staggering weight of all this new content is going to keep you occupied for more than a handful of hours. However, between a tenuous story, glaring quest issues and inconsistency in tone, this final adventure feels more like a testament to Geralt’s age than his skill as a witcher.