The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine
US$19.95 | PC, PS4, X1 | WWW.THEWITCHER.COM A fantastic farewell to a great fantasy RPG.
Have you ever wanted to get drunk with a vampire? The Witcher 3’ s Blood and Wine expansion gives you that opportunity, and lets you ask all the important questions. What’s it like to die and come back? What’s it like to live for centuries in a world that mostly wants you dead?
You’re invited to the huge, gorgeous new region of Toussaint by the Duchess, who wants you to slay a creature targeting elite knights in her retinue. A twisting detective story unfolds as Geralt investigates the murder scenes and begins to hack through a series of interlocking plots.
The plot has superb pace and variety throughout. Geralt awkwardly picks his way through an artist’s soiree, storms a castle or two and has a creepy encounter with a spotted wight. Vivid characterisation and some great voice work — particularly from Geralt’s main ally — sells the world.
The story takes roughly ten hours to finish if you slavishly blast through the missions in order, but there are many side quests to enjoy. Seek out grandmaster gear for multiple witcher schools, collect armour dyes, tackle monster hunts, join a tourney and compete in Gwent competitions to take on the expansion’s new Skellige deck. With these, you’ll easily reach the billed 30-hour play time. Early on, you get your own vineyard, which can be upgraded — slowly, at great cost — for access to useful adventurer amenities. Once you’ve taken a particular opening quest, you can start working towards the new mutations, which let you put ability points into powerful ability modifiers.
While not revolutionary, mutations are a productive place to put your points as you move to Level 40 and beyond, but I found more worth in the new armour sets and the magical bonuses they confer. In a green flash, I now absorb enemy life force with every killing blow thanks to a suave set of ancient black gear. This is the most fun I’ve had with Witcher 3’ s combat. There are some decent boss fights and the extra abilities at high levels generate more interesting options.
Toussaint itself lends this adventure a different flavour. It’s a sun-drenched land of relative opulence. The Duchess’ castle, and the azure and terracotta town of Beauclair at its foot, create a postcard-perfect centrepiece. As you ride around the outskirts, you can almost always see the shining white spires of the palace. The winding trails reliably offer stunning vistas, cleverly arranged by CD Projekt’s environment artists, yet, where required, the landscape can hide an ancient dungeon or a foggy graveyard, or the site of a bloody massacre.
Fantasy RPGs offer us the chance to walk through the pages of pulp fantasy fiction, to stand opposite the wights, witches and wizards of those stories. The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine is an accomplished piece of genre fiction, with some characters I’ll come to miss. Tom Senior