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

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.

The peak of CDPR storytelling, which for many is their strongest aspect which makes it the best content they have ever made. The characters added are very relatable and well written, the improvement of the boss fights is absolutely next level and the tightly paced story is very engaging.

It is heavy on cinematic cutscenes and dialogue though, so if you are allergic to those then dont bother, but it does very well at being a good DLC addition that is worth experiencing.

I still consider Blood and Wine to be the best work they have put, simply because that it does manage to check all the boxes of what makes a DLC worth buying, improving on the main game elements and taking a step up in every area while doing a world-map and story from scratch is worthy of praise, especially when you factor that its both quality and quantity.

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.

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.

So... They made a dlc that is somehow have excellent pacing, story that makes you think, characters to admire, have lots of new bosses as well....

Someone did a really good decision with focusing only the main story as much as they could in 10 hour runtime. Because it reminded me why I liked Witcher in the first place. If they have the power to do that, then why they overbloated and paced badly the base game's story... One only can wonder.. (Maybe it's because they didn't realize an overbloated version of Witcher 1 would do no favors for no one)

This is a story about how Geralt had to make a deal with a devil to save himself from dying and then have to pay for it with helping him for his previous victim.
With helping, of course I mean we need that victim's 3 wishes to come true. So we need to do what that victim says 3 times. Of course when we are doing that, also we start to uncover what victim's story is and devil's story is.
Damn what a heartbreaking also evil as heck story that is.

When you finish it you wonder, who was right in the first place? No one? Everyone? Now that is a good one

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/

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.

This DLC has:
-The best story quest in the game that puts anything in the base game (including the Bloody Baron) to shame.
-One of the most terrifying villains in videogame history.
-The most emotional scene in the entire series.
If it weren't for Blood and Wine this would be my pick for the greatest DLC of All Time.