When I heard that The Witcher 3’s first expansion, Hearts of Stone, would be releasing so soon after Wild Hunt, I was a bit worried. I didn’t think it would be able to capture the emotions and feelings I felt in Wild Hunt, it wouldn’t be memorable, it would be very throwaway. I was incredibly wrong, Hearts of Stone is one of the best expansions I’ve ever played, it’s up there with the likes of Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare and Grand Theft Auto IV’s The Ballad of Gay Tony.
Hearts of Stone is almost a standalone expansion, it rarely acknowledges the events of Wild Hunt and the story stands on its own legs without having to rely on Wild Hunt’s story. At the start of the expansion, Geralt gets a contract to go investigate reports of a prince being turned into a giant toad and killing women who come to set the prince free of his curse. Events transpire and Geralt now owes a debt to a genie, to pay off his debt Geralt must grant three wishes for a immortal man. The wishes lead to some incredibly creative quests that I won’t spoil because they are some of the best quests I’ve played in a game. One of the quests has very little combat in it, if I can enjoy a quest purely because of the characters and story that really says something.
Hearts of Stone tends to focus more on story over gameplay, which works incredibly well. As I mentioned before, there’s a quest that has very little combat in it and focuses on developing characters and taking part in party activities that bring Geralt and his love interest, Shani, closer together. For a character who is supposed to be stripped of his emotions and has a monotone voice, Geralt is incredibly charming and I was really rooting for him to get with Shani because they seem to have a genuine interest in each other and I screwed up his chances with Yennifer and Triss (whoops!). It sort of broke my heart seeing Geralt struggle for this girl, knowing I’ve been in the same position in real life, I knew how he felt. Even if he is just a video game character, I felt a very personal connection with him.
The expansion does an excellent job of playing with your emotions, making you feel scared, happy, and scared. I can’t exactly divulge what scenes made me feel these emotions because their incredibly spoilery but if you play Hearts of Stone you’ll know exactly what I’m talking about.
Even though the expansion focuses on story over gameplay, it still has those great gameplay moments that Wild Hunt had. The expansion doesn’t add any new mechanics or magic abilities but it didn’t really need to because it’s pretty perfect as it is right now.
The boss battles in Hearts of Stone are INCREDIBLY difficult, I honestly felt like I was playing Dark Souls at some parts. I was yelling in extreme rage and punching the pillow next to me, but I also felt like I was slowly making progress with each death, learning the opponent’s slight patterns and mixing my own techniques and combos to outsmart the boss. It added a new layer to the boss fights, I’m not sure if that was intentional or not but it’s brilliant nonetheless. The difficulty of the fights also made the satisfaction of killing the boss much better, making me shout out in joy and drop my controller to raise my hands in the air like I was some sort of champion when in reality I’m just some guy in his bedroom playing video games. If you haven’t played much of The Witcher 3, I’d hold off on playing Hearts of Stone as this was pretty difficult even for someone who has put in over 180+ hours in The Witcher 3.
For those worried about length and that you might not get enough time for the price of the expansion, don’t be worried. I spent over 20-25 hours on this expansion and still have some side quests and achievements to go back and do. I read originally this was supposed to be ten hours and honestly have no idea how they beat this in ten hours! However, that excites me even more for the next expansion which is 20 hours according to CD Projekt Red, which could be double the time for me if it’s anything like Hearts of Stone.
Very rarely does a game, let alone an expansion, make me feel sad, happy, and horrified in such a short period of time. Hearts of Stone manages to make me feel for a character who barely has any emotions and feel for a different character I should probably hate. The expansion manages to stand as a standalone experience from Wild Hunt and provide further depth to Geralt. I can’t praise CD Projekt Red for their brilliant writing and I feel sorry for doubting them. If the next expansion, Blood and Wine, is anything like Hearts of Stone, I can’t wait to play it next year when it releases.
Cade is a games journalist, Gaming Writer at ComicBook.com. They contributed 108 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news: served as Editor-in-Chief at GameZone before joining ComicBook.com.