I'm going to have a noticeably difference of opinion from the majority here : overall, I was comparatively disappointed by this expansion.
Of course, the operative word is "relatively". It still had its strong points, and the relative letdown is in no small part (though not entirely) due to following the masterpiece that was Wild Hunt.
First, though, the good : It's massive. It's hard sometimes to remember it's just an
expansion. I often thought about other adventures Geralt had previously, and it struck me "oh shit, it's actually
in the same game and I can actually just fast-travel back there ! This point is really deserving a ton of pro-points to CDPR, because a 20 bucks expansion pack that has more content and a bigger location than most "epic" games, is certainly about unheard of.
This alone elevates this expansion above the "average" point, if only because of the respect toward consumer it shows. Regardless of the result, it proves there was a definite good will to do good.
Toussaint is also a pretty striking locale. The assets are impressives, the palace is gorgeous. I like the idea of a lighter, softer and more upbeat land to compensate the absolute grim of three games and end up Geralt's adventures on a slightly more positive outlook.
A lot of quests are actually pretty good, and suitably humorour or imaginative.
Finally, the trip in Fablelands was absolutely great - easily the highlight of the expansion.
That being said, though, there is a lot of little (and a few big) things that made me consider there was a lot of "quantity over quality" there.
- First, the thing which stroke me, is the wasting of gorgeous models through the use of an absolutely ridiculous graphical carnage. The horrible yellow filter and the ever-present blurring made the expansion actually much uglier than the original game - people claiming it's more beautiful must really have either terrible screen, or terrible eyes. It even stopped me to play, until I could find a way to replace this horror with some modded lighting - thanks the modding community in general, and
CertainlyStenchy in particular. It's a big pet peeve of mine, but seriously I can't understand how it could go through QA as is, and how any designer could not only let such atrocious distorsion pass, let even actually propose it...
- Second, if, as said above, I like the idea of a change of tone, it was just overdone. The Witcher always had this bit of satire and spoofing, but it always managed to avoid going into farcical. It was greatly handled in Wild Hunt, with a light touch and a bit of silliness. B&W, though, lacks subtlety and makes the whole duchy feels to be kind of a joke. The idea was good, but the execution was simply excessive.
- Overall, the writing and the missions, though not strictly speaking bad, was noticeably inferior to Wild Hunt (and to HoS). It was much more formulaic and predictable, and lacked the depth and subtlety we got from the main game. Especially, the snarkiness, the moral dilemma and the personal bonding were mostly absent (only Regis managed to add a bit of the latter).
All in all, the writing was serviceable, but I don't remember a moment where I felt really moved or surprised, while interaction between Geralt and Ciri were always ladden with emotion. Again, it wasn't "bad", but it certainly was "worse" - it didn't felt like it was the same writers at all.
I also dislike the amount of time the game would confiscate control for long period of time - to be fair, it's also something I would blame Wild Hunt toward the end. But it's truly infuriating when you can't issue a non-combat command for 15+ minutes in a row. Seriously.
- Finally, my biggest beef : the main story ranged from "mediocre" to "frankly bad". I liked a lot Anna Henrietta, and it was okayish until the assault of the castle (though not great by any means), but after that, save with the Fableland bit, it simply crashed down into fanfiction territory. The massive vampire attack was a moment of /facepalm, completely destroying immersion and suspension of disbelief. It was hamfisted in the extreme, contrived and felt just like an unsubtly way to up the ante in the most superficial manner.
Syanna was absolutely unsufferable, and it was made even more annoying by the game basically bending over to make you feel that she was the victim and you should feel sorry for her, and barring you to any kind of good ending if you didn't just suck up to her. I especially disliked how often my own agency was robbed of me, with Geralt assumed to be sympathizing with her. I guess it could be claimed to be a deconstruction of Twilight (with the arrogant bitch in relation with a vampire, which is designated as the heroin despite being, well, a bitch), but I'm afraid it's just bad writing.
Geralt itself seemed to suffer from a lot of fatigue, being overall pretty inept at deducing the obvious, and the game holding the player's hand quite a bit too much.
And worst of all, the endings, which were forced and shoehorned to death. Either the easily forgiven mass-murderess whose responsability in killing hundred is happily cast to the wind ; or the idiotic "everyone blames you for the death of the traitoress, despite the same guys saying a bit early that the populace would be ready to storm the palace to lynch her" ; or the even more idiotic "everyone knows Syanna planned to kill her sister, but nobody is close by to prevent the extremely obvious stabbing even after being warned about it 15 seconds before".
Good writing is organic and happens naturally. This was the antithesis of that, and felt just like a big block of idiot ball being passed.
So yeah. For all the praise about B&W I've read on the Net, I find it overall very unsubtle (no room for Bloody Baron here, that's for sure), going too far in the farcical and losing a lot of the typical Witcher authenticity which made Wild Hunt to great, and having an especially trite, hamfisted and shoehorned main plot. I also can't shake this weird feeling it was a different team which wrote this expansion, even though I have read nothing about it - but the writing is simply not the same.
That being said, despite the lengthy criticism, it's still a worthy expansion if judged by its own merits - the mediocrity of the MQ is easily counter-balanced by the scope of what is "just" an expansion, but feel like a full-fledged game - and it falls short mainly because of the standards it has to hold to.
Still, I hoped for a better send-off for Geraly, leaving with a whimper instead of a bang, in a finale that is massively below the fantastic "empress Ciri" one when it comes to "moving moment".
I still go back to Novigrad sometimes though. And even Kaer Morhen and White Orchard - for no reason at all....
