[SPOILERS] What's your opinion on Hearts of Stone?

[HakkahLoogeeee]

scale of one to ten - I would assess HoS around 345 Quadrillion

---------- Updated at 10:36 PM ----------

Gaunter O'Dimm is obviously G.O.D. or the series story's God

 

[summerman1]

Lots of fun and a great expansion. However feels a bit out of place. I mean i played HoS after a couple of weeks i finished the main quest line. It did not feel like i was playing the same Witcher 3. The reason probably being; no connection with the series main charecters. I mean even Shani, the only actual charecter from the series, did not play a significant part as far as the story was concerned.

 

[XColonelKurtzX]

Hi,
after 160+ hours of one of my best game experience ever, I bought HoS and finished it.
I was TOTALLY disappointed. I am sorry if I am one of the few... but... not even a pale comparison with main title.

Endless cutoff, endless silly conversations fulll of nothing, characters popping out everywhere with no apparent motivated reason. No new monsters (pardon... 2 spiders and some wild boars...), almost no side quest and of no relevance.

Very sad wedding joke, spending 2 hours with shoes in the mud, pigs, drunk people and the unbearable tries of the non-geralt with shani.
O Dimm is quite intriguing but... when all it end... ? His meaning?

The idea of recomposing pictures to animate them is nice but... 4 times? 2 times is nice, 4 is boring.

And the final touch is the difficulty level of the Keeper in the Olgiert wife's house. I can kill an archigriffin 2 or 3 levels higher than me (ended HoS at 38 in 30 seconds at Death March but I cant defeat the Keeper at diff level 3? Can exterminate 10 gohul of lvl 34 in a while but a soldier with halberd is stronger than an Elemental 2-storey house high? Really? Something is messed up with the difficulty level system, I supposed. And almost non of the signs works with bosses? Why?

REALLY hope that BaW will be a way more similar to the main game then HoS. Pregnant histories, politics, quests, contracts, monsters, kings, human destiny and so on.

Antway I value the main game worthing at least twice the money I spent, so I am happy in any case.

Now I supposed I will be flayed... so Ignii on me... ;-)

ps
bag ur pardon for my english, not mother language.

 

[Riverdragon]

Glad that you guys are liking it! :cheers3:

Loved it This is how expansions should be done. \m/

 

[ThatBoy]

Very good storytelling. Do wish it gave more side quests though. There's literally nothing to do until B&W comes out now.

 

[Pav94an]

Ok so I am back after a long ass time, just played the HoS expansion ------------ BLEW MY MIND!!!!

Master Mirror (Main Vilian) what a character, the way he casually walks down from the sky :what3:

absolutley brilliant - and love how long it is, a real expansion.

But the very best part, the soundtrack - the OST for this entire game has been the best I have ever heard, but when I heard this play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYmOIzU36Zs
I got so pumped up - I play it on repeat when im working out/ in the gym now.

I am so obssessed with this game, need help.

I preordered it and played since day 1 - currently have 444hrs of play time on record - and only just started a NG+

 

[Valvatti87]

What the hell!? Doin my second playtrough deathmarch. Its been walk in the park so far. But yesterday the giant frog just totally owned me! Stomped me like a fly. I had worst possible build it seems for that fight. Long fight and i drank potions like crazy! Even all the booze i had on me . Oh well. Need to try again weekend. Ill make soup out of Its thigs! Isnt that a thing somewhere?

 

[Cerberusx32]

I really enjoyed the story. Then ending was a hard choice. Let the Prick lose his soul yo a God. Or save the prick and spite a God that is the source of all evil...but get a cool sword to go with my awesome gear, by doing so.... I found spitting a God worth it.

Besides I feel like he enjoyed being bested. After all it only happened one other time if I remember. I fully expect him to return again. Though I don't think he will be to mad.

 

[cirdanx]

I was sceptical at first, but ended up really enjoying it. I think the writing was overall very good in the DLC. Good characters, good atmosphere, very nice boss fights. A bit of a strange placement of the recipes for the viper sword. That´s the first time i actually missed a receipe in the game *sigh*

The only thing i would have loved is to be able to tell Shani, that no, i like her but i´m happy together with Triss/Yen. I think this should have been a must have in the expansion and i can´t understand why in the world it isnt there.

 

[KoalafiedKiller]

I'm a little late to the party but I just finished HoS, and I gotta say, what a journey. It somehow managed to be short and self contained yet also deep and moving all at the same time. I loved the variety in the quests. New enemies were great. Boss fights were frustrating as bosses should be (okay maybe Iris heals a tad too fast...). The atmosphere was great. The characters/voice actors were great.

It's extremely clear that CDPR took player feed back to heart when making this expansion. They fixed so many of the things that were the matter with the base game. I seriously cannot wait until Blood and Wine comes out, that is going to be a truly epic adventure.

From a modding stand point though,this was a nightmare. The devs put so many arbitrary modifiers onto monsters (like random monster having double health and damage) which totally destroyed the balance of my level scaling mod. Do you know how scary it is to have a level 40 spider that magically has double health and damage chasing you?

 

[pithikos]

Late to the party cause after finishing the main game a couple of times I had a few months away from the witcher. I played it on death march new game plus and it was a good challenge (enemies had ridiculous health which I enjoyed I like long battles) . I absolutely loved it, the story the soundtrack, the new areas, it was a great experience. I was hearing the kids song while wandering before I even started the mission and later when I realized the Faustian theme of the story then the lyrics clicked to me and I was amazed. Never have I played an open world game that nails the atmosphere and tone with such detail and depth!
My only gripe is with the enchantments, the only one worth losing the runes and glyphs upgrades for is the one that changes the range of rend and whirl (too flashy for my liking though). Still waiting on a rune that ups critical chance instead of having to wear armor that does that.
Was part of the inspiration to the story the legend of Twardowski ?

 

[Sirandar888]

Thank you devs for being so considerate with HOS

SPOILERS
Update: Never mind .... Witcher 3 game deleted again = more stupid BOSS battles that I have no patience to find the "solution" for ===> Toad Prince

PS if you are going to make this type of enemy make sure the playing field is even.

1) I cant aim Igni up and down so it should hit regardless of whether the target is jumping
2) My upgraded shooting magic trap should distract for its normal duration not after I get one igni hit in
3) If the Bosses poison is so deadly make sure it actually hits you to register a hit.

There should always be a clever way to completely avoid any given BOSS battle .... sadly this game doesn't have one.


I couldn't really play Witcher 3 .... too much politics and war and Geralt was just too passive .... I didn't like roleplaying him, I didn't like the people he was forced to serve and most of what he was forced to do. But thats mostly my tastes and doesn't reflect much on the quality of the game.

So I just forgot about the game and when HoS came out I didn't realize that you could bypass the entire game and just play HoS and the side quests.

Thank you for this very wise design choice. Now Geralt is leveled enough to be interesting and I don't have to suffer all that politics. I can also pick and choose side quests.


I have played a bit of HoS and I can say the writing is much more mature and interesting, nuanced even. It flows well and fits together well.

The platform is mature and CDProjectRED seems to have developed the skills base to make great story DLC and BaW probably will be woth playing. I would gladly pay for more focused tight well written story DLCs. Don't bother making Witcher 4, as this platform is more than good enough a medium to tell great stories ..... spend your money on writers instead and make DLCs in the 10-15 hour range. Short focused and compelling.

 

[althrian]

It's fricking hard and creepy.
Thanks for that!

 

[Me_HD_i]

I cannot utter how much I loved the Hearts of Stone expansion. A true masterpiece, which only can be described as Art, not a game.

Gripping story, emotionally moving as well as giving a feeling of creep and fear. The story of Olgierd von Everec and his betrothed, their love life, the gripping sadness of their downfall, Iris's world of darkness, Olgierd's world of nothingness.

The mysteries that were never solved, the demons in the form of cat and dog, the Caretaker and his origin, Gaunter O'Dimm's true nature and so on.

A lot more can be said to praise this work of art but all in all, everything about the expansion was amazing. I thank CDProjektRed for providing such an unprecedented element of art in a game.

 

[DukeAlmighty]

I did enjoy HOS very much, but I think the paranormal things were a bit too much. Talking ghost - ok , prince who's turned into giant frong - ok, but immortal human, devil incarnate and walking through paintings felt a bit too much compared to the books and W1, W2 and W3 main quest.
I love witcher books and universe, because although it's fantasy with wizards and dragons, a lot of it is real down to earth stories about racism, poverty, politics, etc.

 

[ReptilePZ]

I do agree about Gaunter O'Dimm to an extent - if explored any more in-depth, he would start to feel out of place, imo, but I thought they managed to keep it grounded enough by not revealing too much.

The painted world was fine by me, it kinda reminded me of the illusion cast by Stregobor in The Lesser Evil short story. Only, you know, a lot less cheerful

 

[-Hisoka]

an amazing adventure
Gaunter O'Dimm is so well done its unbeliveable

i remember b4 HOS meeting him in the White Orchad INN and i felt that this dude is too creepy and he had too much confident when he talked with geralt

now i know why


bottom line - HOS was a blast to play twice : )

 

[Garrison72]

I had played about 70% of this a while back, but only now finished it. In short, it's excellent. Everything has been improved, most importantly the writing and enemy AI. Boss battles and difficulty are great. The story is a fascinating tale, clearly influenced by Reverte's Club Dumas. But I think this expansion has a much better ending.

Two major flaws:

-the heist was seriously undercooked. We needed more actual heist action.

-rune words are not a worthwhile addition. There is in fact, no real gameplay addition to the expansion, which is why I feel it should be called a DLC, not an expansion. CDPR knows what old school expansions added, and this isn't it.

Overall this was an excellent DLC, well worth the price, and most importantly, a return to form in regard to quality writing for CDPR.


Edit- one other thing I'd like to add: the slice of life gameplay that CDPR has done so well here. Other devs vainly try to make the menial interesting, but only CDPR nails it. I was enthralled during the wedding. Utterly captivated. No other dev has managed to keep me so invested in action-free scenarios. Not Bioware, not Rockstar, not Bethesda. It's to be commended.

 

[dragonbird]

Edit- one other thing I'd like to add: the slice of life gameplay that CDPR has done so well here. Other devs vainly try to make the menial interesting, but only CDPR nails it. I was enthralled during the wedding. Utterly captivated. No other dev has managed to keep me so invested in action-free scenarios. Not Bioware, not Rockstar, not Bethesda. It's to be commended.

What gets me on this is that I absolutely HATE the other long-lasting "flippant" quests in the game, like Cabaret or Swords and Dumplings. But the Wedding is still fun, even on a second playthrough.

 

[Garrison72]

What gets me on this is that I absolutely HATE the other long-lasting "flippant" quests in the game, like Cabaret or Swords and Dumplings. But the Wedding is still fun, even on a second playthrough.

I'm in the minority here as I like the Dandelion quests, but I get what you're saying. There's something about the wedding, its structure maybe and lack of urgency that makes it work so well. It's relaxing to chill for a bit, like the witchers drinking in Kaer Morhen or the party in TW1. Interesting that the devs have included these social party moments in each game.