The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine Reviews
Geralt’s final hours are his absolute best.
Much like Mass Effect III’s wonderful Citadel expansion, this last outing is as much a victory lap, to remind us of the good times and end in the right spirit.
Blood & Wine is so long, vast, and packed with content that it feels less like a major expansion and more like a small sequel
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is a nearly flawless sendoff for Geralt of Rivia, and the world of The Witcher.
In Blood and Wine, things are quite different. Rather than a war ravaged wasteland, or an archipelago on the brink of civil war, famed monster hunter Geralt of Rivia travels to the southern region of Toussaint - a gorgeous unspoilt stretch of countryside. It truly is a wonderful place to be, lush with colour and an ever present orange sun that bathes the landscape in a warm glow. Its vineyards - famed world-over for their iconic wines - dot the landscape, while its beautiful capital of Beauclair sits visible from almost every point in the land, perched atop an elven ruin on a huge hill. After visiting Toussaint, the rest of the Witcher’s world feels unnecessarily depressing - you won’t want to leave.
The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is a great sendoff, not only to Geralt, but to the Witcher franchise as well. CD Projekt Red have crafted a masterpiece in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and have changed how additional content should be presented with Hearts of Stone and Blood and Wine. At $20 you are already getting a better deal than most full priced games. If you are fan of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Blood and Wine is a can’t-miss.
Blood and Wine is not the epic "save the world" adventure prior Witcher titles were, but that's okay. It's a fond farewell to Geralt of Rivea, ensuring your last adventure with The Witcher leaves a smile on your face.
If we never get to step foot in Geralt’s shoes again, I’m fine with that. The time spent in his boots, the adventures had, the memories created, will stay with me forever
Blood and Wine feels like a fitting end to Geralt’s story.
Geralt goes out on a high note. Developer CD Projekt Red, once again, raises the bar for every other company making an expansion pack.
CD Projekt Red has released three masterpieces within the space of a year. Alongside Hearts of Stone, Blood and Wine ensures that The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is, without question, the role-playing game to beat going forward. Toussaint provides a gorgeous new location that's a joy to explore, and the sun-soaked land houses enough engrossing content to put many fully priced retail releases to shame. Geralt's last hurrah is a pleasure to experience; a fitting end to a stunning achievement.
This is an absolutely brilliant adventure, which alone can match the giants of the genre. At the same time, it is also with a certain melancholy that we are now waving goodbye to The Witcher 3.
Review in Swedish | Read full review
I didn't expect anything different, given hearts of stone's performance, but The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine is so wide and well done that it looks like a giant trolling to the triple-A system. After the generous free DLCs, the exceptional story of the first paid DLC, the addition of NG+ and a lot of technical optimizations, Blood & Wine exploits and amplifies Geralt's power at the highest levels – from 34 onwards – and blows it up on a gigantic, colorful and varied scenario, with the addition of special equipment and deflagrant mutagenic talents.
Review in Italian | Read full review
To spend my final moments here was quite fitting – the darkness laying just beneath a dazzling surface, the vast threads meeting to create either your happy ending or your bittersweet reminders and the adventures small and large that led there. It has been a life well lived, and if there are to be no more adventures, then a villa in Toussaint doesn’t sound like such a bad idea.
CD Projekt Red has raised the bar on what it takes to make a high quality story driven RPG. They did not fail to deliver on Geralt’s final tale either. If this is our last hurrah with the White Wolf it was time well spent.
It was inevitable that The Witcher 3 would close on a high, but few will have expected what they’ll find in Blood & Wine. While unrequited love, barrels of red with a blackberry aroma, and excessive amounts of pomp may not be what you think you want from The Witcher, it won’t be long until you’ve changed your mind.
Blood & Wine is an experience that is truly bittersweet. This is the hallmark of a studio at its peak, wholly confident and with nothing left to prove, but also still committed to delivering an expansion that’s more generous with its content than some full games – and which is good enough to be a Game of the Year contender in its own right.
A triumphant return to the world of the Witcher and the most fitting of farewells. Blood and Wine is the swansong the franchise so richly deserves. An epic tale worthy of greatest theatres and even Dandelion himself!
If you are a fan of the original Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and feel the need to embark on a new journey, there is certainly a lot here to offer with Blood and Wine. The large-sized new area, dying armor, and the incorporation of mutations present a sufficient amount of new gameplay elements to play around with. However, it is the thirty hours of new adventures tied in with the amount of new quests and point of interests that will get players back into the game. Blood and Wine even offers a dynamic point of interest system that will affect the number of enemies in a certain area based on your actions. With the game being standalone, it could sell by itself. Being able to import a previous character, however, will certainly bring a lot to the table for fans of the series as The Witcher 3’s core gameplay is still in tact.
In a time where an expansion pack is regularly nothing more than a new map or a couple of character gadgets, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine brings us something hearty and filling enough to prove that there's hope for DLC yet. Geralt's adventure in stunning Toussaint is an absolute triumph.