Hearts of Stone has a better story than Witcher 3’s main game. It’s premise is incredibly intriguing, centring around an immortal rogue and a mysterious man who fulfils wishes. The writing is fantastic and is really brought to life by the well voice acted, layered and nuanced cast. The main game is superbly paced not only with its narrative, but with gameplay. There are some fantastic bosses, creative missions and great visual variety. A particular highlight was a level where use your Witcher vision to move items in a scene into their correct positions to commence flashbacks which give you an insight into the relationship of two of the games main characters. I did have a couple issues with this expansion, primarily in how you face the new spider enemies to the point where I was sick of them and there are barely any memorable side missions. However, these only slightly tarnish what is undoubtably the most fun I’ve had with any Witcher game to date. If you enjoyed the Witcher 3, you owe it to yourself to play this expansion.

Ranked DLC Recommendations

Essa DLC é algo incrível para a época, onde esse tipo de conteúdo era algo mais pequeno ou apenas um minigame do jogo. A Hearts of Stone tem uma história muito legal, como praticamente todas as side quests do TW3, com personagens impactantes e principalmente um vilão fenomenal.

Foi minha segunda vez jogando, mas agora prestei bem mais atenção e aproveitei mais a DLC, já que da primeira vez eu estava jogando só pra platinar.

TW3 é meu jogo é favorito da vida e essa DLC é fenomenal. Nota 9/10.

Playtime: 10 Hours
Score: 8/10

Pretty good expansion with a really fun storyline added. Although it's not as big as Blood and Wine, this expansion still offers a lot compared to most story DLCs, if any even get made for a game these days.

All DLCs I have Played and Reviewed Ranked - https://www.backloggd.com/u/JudgeDredd35/list/all-dlcs-i-have-played-and-reviewed/

While I originally played The Witcher 3 a number of years ago, I never had the expansions at the time, and thus recently decided to replay the whole game in order to finally experience them. It's a bit of a risky endeavour. What if I wasted all that time and they turn out to be terrible? Well, my fears were for naught, for the first expansion Hearts of Stone proved to be rather excellent. It's not nearly the length of the main campaign, but the extra content proved to be incredibly memorable and well written. The base game's plot got a bit slow in the middle, and while this only has the pressure of being a series of sidequests, it still crafts a very well constructed premise and eventful characters and events. Geralt becomes indentured to a mysterious omniscient benefactor (who is briefly alluded to in the base game) who employs him to fill three impossible requests, each interesting in their own right. The locales remain the same along with most of the mechanics, so it really is the characters and plot that carry the show, and they do it well. I'm eagerly looking forward to finishing up with the second expansion, which hopefully will keep up the excellent pace.

Faust meets Witcher in one of the most deeply tragic and moving love stories of all time. Hearts of Stone is more than just a love story; it is also an interrogation of love, seeking to both affirm love and understand its proclivity for destruction when left unchecked. It retells an age-old story, but it does so in a way that excellently demonstrates The Witcher's almost supernatural ability to transform simple story concepts into some of the most intricate and riveting studies of the human condition ever seen. 

Excellently paced and written expansion that channels the best parts of the base game and gets super creative with them. All of the characters are so well-realized, especially Gaunter O'Dimm, who is an absolutely brilliant villain. I just love the plot itself as well, though It is kinda weird how quickly the Ofieri become totally irrelevant to it.

My issues with the gameplay, i.e. the combat, still persist unfortunately - which is mostly why I don't feel comfortable rating this any higher than 8,5/10 for now, maybe a 9/10 in time.

One of the most emotion-jerking stories I've ever experienced in a video game. Genuinely amazing. I'll admit I teared up playing this and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Just... If you even liked the Witcher 3 and are judging if this is worth it and up to the same quality as the base game. Yes. Yes it is, if not in some cases higher. A small bit of the map is added, with plenty of content in it though, as well as other quests and items spread throughout the rest of the world, including a heist, a heist! Get it. There is no reason not to pay the small price for this amazing amount of content. This is quantity and quality.

Hearts of Stone is absolutely great, it might be the inferior expansion of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt but it's very solid nonetheless.

I was seriously intrigued by the story, it's very fascinating, and I really liked the new characters as well.

There are some new boss fights which are quite challenging, especially in comparison to the disappointingly simple boss fights of the main game.

And lastly, the setting is very interesting and unique, I absolutely love it.

The only issue I can find is that it's relatively short and lacks content. Unfortunately it's barely 10 hours long and there's no replay-ability.

Final Rating: "Fantastic" ~ 8.5/10.