Alright. I've finished my 1.75th time through B+W last night, watched all 3 endings each time (just one with natural dialogue choices and Yen; and the other with antagonistic dialogue choices and Dandelion in the end - I didn't do everything the second time around).
I like BaW. I like it a lot.
After some time in Touissant, I simply cannot return to the vanilla areas anymore, because Touissant had hooked me up completely. Also, on my destructive way throughout vanilla until I was ready for Touissant, I felt longing about getting down south. But of course, that might have been also related to the destructive nature of my choices in vanilla/HoS - I really wanted Dandelion there, so I had to treat Yen and Ciri like a total jerk; and added other worst behaviours ever in other quests. Quite unbearable. However, I did feel longing for Touissant, which indicates that it is really good.
I am particularly fond of the 3 endings of BaW. In all of them, someone gets the shaft; there is no ending that is happy for everyone. This is very, very lovely game design, because it makes the choices less obvious.
I liked the parallels to the short stories and to the tv series a lot; I liked the GoT references; Beauclair is very stunningly designed; the new NPC faces look extremely well. Anrietta was regal but not dislikeably so (which is an astonishing accomplishment). Both the wonderland and the Elder's cave are fabulous. I love the feeling of dread that I always ended up with, because of Orianna and that Elder still around. The paperchase is simply hilarious. The fistfighting encounters were brilliant - I didn't know that it was possible to top the Olaf encounter, but BaW managed to top them so much.
During the Iocaste quest, I had very early a feeling of "hey... so this is the local Villemtretenmerth-alike?", and then the Crinfried Reavers appeared to underline the similarity. I loved it.
I love it that the merchants have good amounts of money. I love it that you can simply buy the missing superior formulae instead of growing insane on the hunt for that last missing superior oil. I love the little stories of the grandmaster gear sets. I loved the hanse quests-without-questlogs and their little stories.
Some dislikes or mixed feelings I have though:
- end of world before the interesting two cliffsides in the east
- end of world before Mount Gorgon ... I would love to climb both. Yes, there will be mods who fix it, but still.
- end of world outside of that druid forest island thing in the northeast.
- that hood on the feline armor. Just whyyyyyyy did you have to do that.
- Archespores are both "yay they're back" and "omg no". I probably just haven't figured out the way to deal them without having to dope up to 100% toxicity and almost dieing all the time anyway, but right now, they're more dangerous to me than an encounter with an upset Dettlaff.
- Skellige gwent deck feels a bit too overpowered. I played quite a bit with it against B.B. and the winning ratio is even higher than my allaround powerful Nilfgard deck, which I sort of avoid normally because it's too powerful. And I don't particularly like playing overpowered decks. Then again, because of the Monnier Tournament, it HAS to be overpowered so that the player has a chance to win all these matches without opportunity to save in between... yeah well.
- I feel that there have been created some lore problems with the "only a higher vampire can kill a higher vampire". This saying means that either Hubert Reijk in Carnal Sins lied (he is, in fact, not a higher vampire), or that he's now regenerating (that would explain the continued occurence of the Concerned Citizen Sermons). Then again, he was in bestial form nothing like Regis or Dettlaff's bestial forms. Didn't he even drop a lowly Katakan mutagen? I need to check this. But it feels like a lore inconsistency.
- Speaking of lore problems, there's the A Night to Remember trailer in conflict with the ingame Orianna. Trailer Orianna seemed to be an ordinary bruxa and could be killed. Ingame Orianna is most definitely not a simple bruxa. So, one of them is wrong.
- too much clutter. I always pick up everything. Was it really necessary to have like 80 different kinds of junk items and a billion types of food? And the clutter makes the ingredients/crafting materials tab laggy.
- Green Gold is a bit too rare; mostly considering the uber-completionists who want all sets of grandmaster gear.
Anyway, I loved BaW. Thank you CDPR for this lovely addition to an already lovely game.
