DLC #153 - The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt - Blood and Wine

To round off the Witcher 3 experience, a final story-based expansion pack, similar in many ways to Hearts of Stone, at least from a trophy list perspective.

However, a very different, but equally excellent storyline acts as the foundations to Blood and Wine, re-affirming the stance that the Witcher excels within it's story-telling and development of a great plot.

This final instalment sees Geralt travel to the new land of Toussaint, called upon by the Duchess of Touissaint, Anna Henrietta, to fulfil a contract against a seemingly unstoppable Vampire killing off members of the Royal Guard. The investigation into these string of murders takes numerous twists and turns along the way, culminating in multiple endings depending on the various paths the player can take through to the end of the questline. 

The Hearts of Stone story was great, but Blood and Wine was even better for me personally, and made for the perfect end to a game that just seemed to keep ascending in quality right up until it's finale.

As previously mentioned, the similarities between both DLC packs lie within the trophy list, with a solid offering of 13 trophies again here, and as before too, a handful of these trophies are missable, relating to certain choices or moments within the main story quests that you'll have to keep on top of in order to make sure you potentially don't miss them.

This has been a consistent theme throughout the Witcher 3, including the main list, and is probably my only real criticism of the game. It's a shame for a title that contains such great stories that are a joy to watch unfold, that you have to read into the trophy descriptions if you're wanting to make sure you grab everything without the necessity to play through the story again for the fear of missing something.

This has led to me understanding certain plot points ahead of time as a consequence, which is something I would ideally loved to avoid entirely, but this game is long, and as I've mentioned before in other reviews linked to this game, I want to minimise repetition where possible for games that contain considerable length.

Of the 13 trophies here, 6 of them are missable, and of these 6, 4 of them relate to the main story arc, requiring you to perform certain actions which, if not fulfilled when required, will be bypassed entirely, with the only remedy being to hope you either have an earlier hard save to load up from, or just by simply starting again from the beginning. 

Two of these trophies also split at the final quest, where you get the option to choose to approach the ending of the story through two different ways and thus, granting a trophy for experiencing each ending separately. You'll need to make sure you retain a hard save right before you make this choice, and since it occurs at the very end of the game, failure to be aware of this will require an entire second playthrough, and even just the main questline alone is around a 10-12 hour experience.

Both branches are a good 2-3 hours each, and they both offer unique quest paths with great endings, so it feels right to do them justice and include separate trophies for them within the list.

Away from the main story, the remainder of the trophies are fairly standard. Some of them are attached to the new side quests on offer which introduce some expansions to the game, including the addition of a new Gwent deck named after the Skellige region, where you'll have to collect all cards, and experimenting with the new mutations feature, which also awards a trophy once you've completed the relevant side quest.

One final thing worth noting, obtaining any set of the new Witcher gear available throughout Toussaint will also grant you a trophy, but you'll also need about 30,000-40,000 in coin to be able to afford/craft all 5 new Grandmaster Witcher sets, so watch out for that and be prepared for the possibility of selling everything you own for the sake of the trophy, which is exactly what I had to do.

There is a possibility that you might need to purchase the crafting items, which will save coin, but some of these crafting items are expensive if you don't already own them, and each of the 6 items needed for a full set has a crafting fee on top. Luckily, I had alot of items hoarded in my inventory with enough value to afford all this, but I'm completely unsure what the contingency plan would have been had I needed to raise the majority of this money.

Overall, an excellent way to end the Witcher 3. It's one of the most polished and complete games I've ever played, and despite the missable trophies, not just here within this DLC offering, but across the game, being a little bit too frequent, it doesn't do much wrong.

This package floats somewhere within the 25-30 hours range, given the amount of side content the trophies away from the main story will require you to explore, as well as having to complete the game to 2 different endings. As long as you're aware to not miss anything that could set you back, especially before making the final decision of the story, and you've got enough coin/valuables to be able to afford a full set of Grandmaster Witcher armour, it's a fairly relaxed experience.

Platinum #112 - The Witcher 3 : Wild Hunt

Platinum Difficulty Rating - 5/10

After just over a year on from completing the first of two DLC packs for the Witcher 3, it felt like good timing to finally knock this one on the head.

Contrary to my own belief, there wasn't actually much to clean up on the Platinum when I finally re-visited the game, though I do remember the sole reason for completing the Hearts of Stone DLC pack was in order to maximise the efficiency of reaching level 35 for a trophy contained within the main list.

Rather than going through non-trophy related side content to reach this target, it just made sense to do it whilst I went through some of the DLC, and after reaching it during the Hearts of Stone pack, that was the main trigger to go on and finish the rest, starting with the Platinum trophy.

The Witcher 3 is an Action-based, open world fantasy RPG, which is a genre I'm not actually that well versed in, where you assume control of Geralt of Rivia, a monster slayer by trade more commonly known occupationally as a Witcher.

The story revolves around the search for his daughter, who is on the run from a force known as the Wild Hunt, and the journey will transverse you across a big game world with many different environments to explore and pillage. As well as the main story arc, there is a huge amount of additional content, typical of any open world game, ranging from side quests, exploration opportunities, looting and widespread NPC interaction.

The trophy list is large in size, coming in at 53 trophies, and is a fairly typical list for an open world game, with trophies being spread across a host activities within the game, as well as a healthy focus on the progression of the main story.

The "Walked the Path" trophy, awarded for Finishing the game on "Death March!" difficulty level, should be the primary focus of this entire list, simply for the reason that, the length of time you can expect to put into this game is worth great consideration if you're thinking about possibly doubling this, and playing through the entire game twice in order to just get used to a lower difficulty level before tackling the Death March difficulty.

In instances where the highest difficulty level is available from the outset, I will always look to take advantage of this for avoidance of multiple playthroughs, but I would make this point even more poignant for a game of this size.

As someone who has always believed in the quickest available route through a trophy list, especially when they're as long as this, multiple playthroughs wasn't an option for me and I was always going to go head first into this challenge and play through Death March straight off the bat in order to only have to beat the game once.

Predictably, this seemed like a bad idea at first, because the game kicks you all over the place in the early stages on this particular difficulty level. It's not until you start unlocking magic and character skills, which are key to combat, that you start to settle in more, and this happens round about level 10 onwards, and the difficulty noticeably begins to taper off a little bit thereafter, so despite an initial scare, Death March isn't really that bad, and nowhere near as intimidating as it may seem at first.

Combat is fairly straight forward, magic is a game changer when you understand how and when to best use it and you'll constantly be rewarded with better equipment to handle enemies with greater efficiency as you complete more and more quests. There isn't really much that can stop you in your tracks once you hit a certain point whereby all the tools the game offers you are finally at your disposal, and it turns out to be a fairly relaxed experience.

On the way through to this trophy, the list includes a total of 10 progression-based trophies triggered at certain points within the main story arc, and as you gain access to more and more side content, which are usually introduced through the story at some point, you'll also unlock some trophies naturally this way too.

One important general note; The game contains 11 missable trophies, where you have to make the correct choice during a questline, or where you will have to complete a certain quest before progressing beyond a specific point, at which moment, the aforementioned quest will disappear. However, where those seem fairly standard, the missable trophies can be very easy to miss if you've not done your research.

For example, you'll need to collect every Gwent card in the game, but some of them are only available at certain points, so if you miss just one, you'll potentially have to face the idea of playing through the game a second time, and whilst there isn't any obvious indication as to how many hours you've managed to put into the game, this isn't a short one, and I made absolutely sure I did my research and left nothing to chance knowing this.

As much as I enjoyed this experience, I didn't want to have to go through it again, purely for missing something because I didn't do the necessary investigation work before hand. Saving often and creating multiple save files is a great insurance to this, and whilst it may not necessarily be 100% fool proof, it will work out to be a good damage limitation exercise where the alternative without it would be to just start from the very beginning again, so I would recommend that at the very least.

The "Munchkin" trophy, awarded for Reaching character development level 35, is nothing really outside of the usual levelling based journey, however, it is important to note purely because I didn't reach this milestone after completing everything the trophy list required of me. This is ultimately the main reason I delved into the DLC before completing the main list.

There is probably enough content within the main game to get you there if you want to do it without the questlines offered by the DLC, but I didn't even consider exploring this option, because it made more sense to progress this trophy via the DLC and unlock those other trophies simultaneously.

Although, I didn't notice many outstanding quests once I was finished, and I was level 31 by the time I'd seemingly completed everything, so there is a slight chance you may need to find something to grind for experience, but this won't be a problem for completionists with 2 DLC packs to also further complete. After reading up more on this after falling short of level 35 and having to explore my options, you can apparently hit this milestone by doing everything the trophy list requires of you, but for whatever reason, this wasn't my experience of this trophy.

The "Master Marksman" trophy, awarded for Killing 50 human and non-human opponents by striking them in the head with a crossbow bolt, is the only trophy in this list that made this game start to feel like a bit of a grind. The headshot detection is wonky and it takes around 3-4 hours to farm these 50 kills because there's alot of fast travel required to respawn enemies in good farming locations.

I do want to use this trophy as a way to bridge into mentioning a rare occurrence - A considerably lengthy trophy list that never felt like a grind. I'm usually a huge advocate of time consuming trophy lists equating to difficulty, and there have been many games in the past that have scored difficulty points because there is a reasonable element of length to their overall completion time but I can confidently say I don't feel this way about the Witcher 3.

The amount of time attached to your save file isn't recorded anywhere within the game itself, and because I didn't complete this game within a single sitting, it really is hard to say, even roughly, what my estimate is in terms of overall completion time. Between 70-120 hours possibly, but I enjoyed every second of it and never felt like the game was beginning to wear me down. Not until I had to get 50 headshot kills with a crossbow anyway.

Regardless, It didn't matter at that point, because I was nearing the end and just polishing off the remainder of a list that had kept me engaged from the first trophy right to the last, and that definitely counts for something when taking overall difficulty score into consideration.

Thus, I've gone straight down the middle score-wise here. Irrespective of the fact this never really felt like a slog, the length of time it takes to complete should still be a factor to some extent, because there is still a reasonable requirement of effort here, just maybe not as much as there would be under usual circumstances for games this length where the grind often kicks in at some point, and this is a great testament to the game.

Death March difficulty doesn't exactly live up to it's name, despite some challenging early signs that eventually fizzle out, but the vast amount of missable trophies can be tricky to properly keep on top of if you're not fully prepared on what to expect, and any minor slip up could see you having to play-through the game again, which would be a tough break for most trophy hunters.

Either way, if you enjoyed this as much as I did, you'll have one of the most pleasantly time-consuming Platinum trophy experiences available, which is a welcome rarity.

Notable Trophies -

Walked the Path - Finish the game on "Death March!" difficulty level.
Munchkin - Reach character development level 35.
Master Marksman - Kill 50 human and non-human opponents by striking them in the head with a crossbow bolt.

Hardest Trophy -

Walked the Path

Finish the game on "Death March!" difficulty level