The Witcher 3: Blood & Wine - DLC Review / Critique 

gl, i get you are struggling, amount of work you put into the video vs the attention those videos get must be frustrating, speaking of algorythm what is your ctr and audience retention? it seems that these two criteria decide whether yt recommends the vid or not

@@newsheed11 CTR for the last 90 days across the entire channel is 4.3%, and audience retention is around 30% for my 10 most popular videos in that span. Those figures are roughly the same for the past 28 days, and the past 365 days, too. From what I understand, those numbers aren't great but they also don't seem terrible, either. I would also assume that longer videos (like this one, and many of my other ones) get inherently lower CTR and retention rates because there's less of an audience of people who have the time or interest to sit through a long video. Still, it's not an inherently unsuccessful format as plenty of other people are having great success with longer, in-depth game reviews of this sort. It's just a little discouraging because I feel like I'm doing all I can with the time and resources I have to commit to this channel, short of resorting to obnoxious, click-baity thumbnails and titles or shamelessly spamming my content across the internet, or quitting my job and going broke trying to pump out content faster, but the amount of growth (or sometimes lack thereof) doesn't feel like it matches the insane amount of time and effort that I put into these videos. I don't want to sound ungrateful or entitled, as it very well could be just that my content doesn't appeal to very many people in the first place (and thus maybe the problem is me, not RU-vid), but I really do put A LOT of work into these videos, and the numbers just don't seem very encouraging right now.

@@TheNocturnalRambler I don't think it's entitlement to want your hard work to be rewarded. Honestly I feel baffled when I see the amount of views you get on these videos. It always seems like there's some zeroes missing at the end. Both Joseph Anderson and Chris Davis made videos on the Witcher, but only Joseph Anderson seems to get the amount of views I think a video such as this deserves (His videos are even longer - 4 to 5 hours), and even though Chris Davis is doing better than you, he's still short hundreds of thousands of views for the amount of work he puts into the videos. That's why I always make sure to comment on your and his videos. Hopefully it helps a bit with the algorithm.

@@TheNocturnalRambler Would you consider the complete game, along with all the dlc, to be among the best that the previous decade had offered?

Thank you for the kind words, glad you enjoy it!

I have zero knowledge or familiarity with the Asterix comic; in fact I'd never even heard of it until someone mentioned it in another comment yesterday. From what I can tell, it never caught on strongly in the US and thus isn't well-known here, and definitely doesn't seem to be part of our popular culture. According to people on r/AskAnAmerican, it sounds like a lot who do know it have strong ties to Europe in some way (which I don't), or were exposed to them in French class (I learned German and have no memory of any Asterix in my courses). So it's really not common knowledge here and you'll have to excuse my ignorance. Thank you for your kind words otherwise; I know my thoughts don't always align with popular opinion, but I always strive to be fair and balanced in my assessments. I'm glad that people are able to hear a different opinion than their own and still appreciate an alternative perspective. That's not always the case, so I truly am thankful for your appreciation and understanding.

@@TheNocturnalRambler I am not surprised that Asterix isn't popular in the US. I am form Germany and since it's a series of comics from France, it's to be expected that it's most popular in Europe. If you know the comic, the bank quest is actually really funny. But I can definitely see how it wouldn't be if one didn't know it. I think it is important to listen to and empathise with other perspectives. Not just in this case but in life in general. And the structure and presentation of your opinions and observations make it easy to agree with you or at least understand how those opinions might have formed. Thank you for your extensive reply :)

@@marcwittkowski5146 I know asterix, the quest still sucked. Yes I get it's a reference, but that doesn't make it good just because

​@@jonathansoko1085it makes it good exactly because of that. And because it was funny.

in your opinion@@kakyo3450

Thank you for the extra addition.

Thank you for pointing that out; I didn't notice any of that because I just meditated to pass the time like I would any quest that tells me to wait a certain amount of time. So that's fair and accurate to acknowledge. I feel my point still stands, however, as you've astutely recognized that the core of my criticism deals more with the lack of player involvement, where you simply pick a dialogue option and then everything else happens automatically with no further input from the player. Thus, my intention behind describing the upgrades as happening "off screen" was less of "you literally don't see the upgrades happen on-screen" and more of "they happen with complete disregard for your presence or involvement in the process." Not a great choice of words on my part as I could've explained that better (and was mistaken about the workers in the first place), but thank you again for pointing that out.

@@thrillainthemanilla1409 Video games aren't real life; mimicking reality isn't necessarily a good thing when it comes to video game design. The whole point of video games is that they're meant to be fantasy adventures, and what would you say is a more adventurous fantasy: paying some craftsmen to remodel your home and them making all the decisions and doing all the work themselves with no interaction on your part whatsoever, or an actual quest where you have to do something exciting and interesting out of the ordinary of what you would usually experience in real life? Even the base game had more going on with this exact type of quest, when it comes to Dandelion remodeling the Rosemary and Thyme where you get to talk with the crafstmen to decide the style and have to go off looking for the client who's not there and getting up to somewhat comical shenanigans while trying to do the remodel. In a game like GTA, which do you find more fun when it comes to driving around town: obeying all the traffic laws and driving like a regular person, or doing things you can't do legally or safely in real life? As for your backsplash analogy, I work in home improvement and have done plenty of backsplashes in my time, and it's absolutely not uncommon for clients take a somewhat more active role in the process -- there are extensive discussions about what options they want with me providing suggestions and helping to guide them to a decision they'll enjoy for their budget, sometimes they go out and buy the tile themselves, and sometimes they DO watch me work and ask questions about the process so that they can learn and understand how it works. Sometimes they offer me refreshments or make small-talk for a sort of human relation during the process and not just a dry business exchange. For more elaborate projects like installing a new tile shower I'm constantly working in close contact with the homeowner, like explaining weird complications as they arise and improvising changes to the plan with them, laying out different tile patterns for them and getting their "ok" before setting it, getting their input on what personalized heights they want certain features set at, and they almost always go out and buy their own hardware and usually order the tile themselves. They're also of course very much involved in determining the style and color of what they want to match the existing elements in the room -- they're just as involved, if not more so, than I am in the creative process of determining what they want. Simply put, they don't just pay me to tile a backsplash or install a tile shower with the expectation that I make all the decisions, and I don't just show up and do the work without interacting with them, which is what happens with Corvo Bianco in B&W. You have literally no say in what you want or how it turns out, and there's no meaningful interaction with the crew, either. At the very least, you should have SOME sort of creative decision to make about the color or style, like you do with the Rosemary and Thyme, and it's not like they can't have some sort of character interaction with the contractor, not to mention other more exciting things to do like I suggested in the review -- like to investigate when a shipment goes missing which could lead to any number of unique encounters or situations, or having you go out to buy (or acquire) some type of special material (like a rare monster part/trophy) for the renovation. Even suggestions like that are analogous to real-life situations, like when a shipment of tile arrives broken and the client has to go negotiate a return/exchange, or them going to different stores trying to find exactly what they want, so those types of things could absolutely be put into a video game while still being true to real life, but with liberties taken to make the process fun and engaging per a fantasy adventure game, and not completely dry and boring like they would be in real life.

Interesting. It seems like either way, they weren't being very consistent with her character writing. Having not read the books, it made her behavior in Act 3 feel out of place from what they'd established previously, whereas her behavior throughout most of Act 1 and Act 2 probably feels out of character for people more familiar with the books.

@@TheNocturnalRambler It didn't seem very inconsistent to me. It was pretty clear to me from the start that she's being reinterpreted into a more sympathetic character, and there were still some moments early on when she acted they way I would expect from the book version of the character (like when she's dismissing Geralt's concerns letting Shaelmaar into the arena). It also makes sense to me that she would become so out of touch with reality having learned about her sister's involvement. She refuses to accept Syanna's guilt, so she becomes focused on relegating the blame to anyone else in any way involved.

@@Mrityugata So maybe she's not inconsistent with the books' depiction of her, but I'll still maintain that her portrayal in the actual game feels inconsistent. From the beginning it seemed like she was being portrayed as a proactive and relatively down-to-earth leader shirking traditional conventions to take matters into her own hands, much to De la Tour's (and even Geralt's) protests, while also making a lot of smart decisions and perceptive observations, and then in the third act those traits are completely non-existent and have been instead replaced with the exact opposite traits -- passive, reactive, uptight, ignorant, and irrational. To be clear, I'm alright with her showing a dynamic change as dramatic new revelations arise and as the stakes become elevated (that's part of writing a character arc, after all), but it seems to me like that change should've been more gradual and more partial, rather than being an almost complete shift happening practically instantly. Instead of feeling like the same character acting differently under a different situation, it felt like she was almost a different character altogether, as very few of her established traits seemed to carry over into the third act -- or at least, not of her most prominent ones that I picked up on.

@@TheNocturnalRambler I think you're right on Anrietta for what's it worth

If you have it equipped when the dragon attacks then you lose it otherwise you don't except when using the mod that is made by one of the game's developers in which case the game automatically equips it at that cutscene causing you to lose it

It's my pleasure, thanks for watching!

Sure, the fact that it's "just" an expansion could excuse some things not being as fleshed out, but it still feels like there was ample opportunity to do so by striking a better balance between quantity and quality. This is a pretty massive expansion, after all -- arguably bigger, longer, and more complex than it needed to be -- and so it would seem like they had plenty of room to devote time and resources focusing on more central and more important things than churning out so much optional side-content. How about, for instance, cutting a few side quests and taking the time and resources they spent on them, and re-framing them to be more-developed sub-quests in upgrading Corvo Bianco? Or how about, instead of making 78+ different points of interest, they cut that number in half and instead focused on making the remaining 39 POIs more unique and interesting? Or how about they reduce the size of the world by 33% and put a few more complicated "levels" or "dungeons" into the game to break up the repetitive pacing of wandering across the over-world from POI to POI? I'm just spit-balling ideas, here -- I'm not sure how feasible these trade-offs are to actually implement in practice, but at least in theory it seems like they could've made the expansion a little bit smaller in exchange for making the content all-around better and more potent. Otherwise I agree with you about the story, setting, and characters -- it's a fine expansion in most rights and certain aspects make it really fun and appealing, but I just have a lingering feeling that it could've been better still.

Thanks again, as always! Glad you enjoyed it! How do you feel about B&W versus HOS -- do you have any strong preference one way or the other, or do you like them equally? I watched the announcement trailer for Elex 2 but the whole thing was so vague and uninformative that I didn't really come away with any noteworthy impressions. Really, the only worthwhile information we got is from the Steam page (which itself is essentially unsubstantiated marketing claims as of right now, and I know well-enough to take that kind of pre-release marketing hype with a grain of salt) and what Gamestar described in their exclusive interview. My German isn't that great, however, and the full article is locked behind a paywall, and so I don't want to pay an international expense (my bank gives me a hassle any time I buy anything outside of the US, which is usually just on GOG) just to read an awkward google-translation of the article that might not capture the spirit or intention of the original article correctly. So I'll probably wait until there's a more substantial trailer or international news coverage before doing any kind of video, so that I can have something constructive to actually say rather than just wildly speculating on mere breadcrumbs.

@@TheNocturnalRambler Although it's been long since I played W3 and it's DLCs, I preferred Blood and Wine over Hearts of Stone mostly because I found it more challenging and the world of Toussaint really mesmerized me. The final vampire boss really made me gnash my teeth and my keyboard on Deathmarch, lol! As for Elex, yeah I guess they weren't being all that informative and revealing with the announcement trailer. But that's a trend I noticed in this year's E3 reveals. Most of them were cinematics with very sparse gameplay being showcased. It looks to me as if game publishers are trying to play it safe with what they promise gamers. Frankly I didn't find any of the E3 trailers catching my eye at all. And the Elex 2 trailer was no different too. It's hard to say what to expect from the game at this stage. But apparently I heard that Jax has a son named Dex from one of the sources. I think its was Click4Gameplay. But I've not seen this information anywhere else so I'm expecting it would have originated from one of the German sources

The STALKER 2 trailer looked pretty good, but Redfall (by Arkane, one of my favorite active developers) did the same thing with its "cinematic" trailer that left me more puzzled about what it actually is than intrigued by it. As for Elex and Dex, that's actually on the Steam page as some kind of premise teaser, but I would assume Gamestar goes into a little more detail about it.

@@TheNocturnalRambler Arkane is also one of my favorite studios as well. I would daresay that their first game Arx Fatalis is the second best RPG I've played after the first 2 gothics. I also enjoyed Dark Messiah of Might and Magic solely because of the combat, notwithstanding the lacklustre storyline and rampant bugs and glitches. The combat system was taken into Dishonored and evolved further. Dishonored was a gem of a game as well and I've recently bought Prey 2017 on Steam although I'm yet to play it. I hope Bethesda doesn't mess with the quality of Arkane's games and gives them ample creative freedom. Although I'd say the recent e3 trailer which you brought up didn't say much so we can't be sure if Arkane is still behind the wheel

@@TheNocturnalRambler The Elex 2 gameplay video is finally out. What do you think about about the new aerial combat mechanics which they showcased in it? Will you be keen to make a short analysis about it or just wait it out till the game shows more footage. Take care man

I had a similar experience, though personally I found Skellige to be a nice change of pace and a breath of fresh air from Velen and Novigrad, and of course I played the expansions in release order which likely influenced my enjoyment of B&W. I'm curious to know, by playing HOS last, did it alleviate some of your problems with burn-out, and did you enjoy it more than the base game or B&W?

@@TheNocturnalRambler After B&W I was expecting a similar experience from HoS, so it was a bit of a let down that it didnt happen in a new area. I remember the part when Geralt is imprisoned and the ship wrecks and for a moment I thought the beach was a new desert area haha. Im not sure if it was better but the story was definitely more engaging than B&W, at least Gaunter ODim made more of an impression than Regis vampire pal.

Hah, I thought the exact same thing after the shipwreck. Thought I was in some new Arabian-like environment and then looked at the map and saw I was still in Novigrad. For me, HOS having a much tighter story with more compelling characters and unique gameplay scenarios made it far more engaging and enjoyable than most of the base game's content. I was happy to spend 15-20 hours just focusing on a small new region and a few optional bits of side content with a more prominent, focused main quest, which made it much more enjoyable to me. In contrast, both the base game and later B&W felt bloated and excessive, and so I got burnt-out from all the tedious repetition in those games. Hence why going into B&W was kind of disappointing for me, because I was hoping it would follow HOS's footsteps instead of doubling down on the base game's formula. It's interesting that we both were disappointed by aspects of whichever DLC we played second, by virtue of things we enjoyed in the first.

@@TheNocturnalRambler BAW has the exact same problems as the base game. It's too long, there's too many pointless characters, the world's filled with pointless stuff to do, you're overlevelled (or I was anyway) constantly, the story pacing is almost non existent (although given the open world nature of the game I'll give it a pass for this), the story has several plot holes, and the morality system the game uses is extremely suspect as best. Detlaff and the sister character are both murderous psychopaths who deserve no sympathy and yet if you take that route you get the bad ending. The quests are boring and repetitive made worse by the fact most players will have played 80+ hours of the witcher 3 by this stage, If you liked Witcher 3 as a whole you'll love BAW but if like me you found Witcher 3 to be a highly problematic game then BAW won't improve on anything

Gothic writing might not've been great but gameplay-wise it's much more engaging than Witcher 3, because of the lack of hand holding and requiring player to think even about how to get to places. And having engaging gameplay makes the narrative engaging as well, even if it's not well-written, because you have to pay attention to what's going on in order to succeed. A lot of W3 quests have unique stories but most of them still follow the same gameplay formula of following the red spots, listen to Gerlat, fight something, pick a dialogue choice, get a reward. There are very few that deviate from it and when they do, it's rarely anything interesting. The only quest lines that really shook up the formula were in Hearts of Stone and a handful in B&W, but the rest of it, which is over a 100 hours of gameplay is painfully formulaic. And making a Gothic comparison makes it quite disappointing since the games are almost 15 years apart and made with significantly different budgets, the Witcher 3 should be better in many ways with it's game design, not just writing.

​@@MrFr2eman You are right, that most of the quests if not almost all of them are the same. Follow your witcher senses etc. I'm on board on that with you. I also don't like that most of the choices you have in the dialogues do nothing. But that already was the case in witcher 1 where I thought, that they could have skipped all 2- choices answers - with the exception of the 3-4 ones which were altering the story line - and save me the effort on clicking on them. The witcher 3 is definitely not in my top5 rgps's albeit it was still a very good game and probably the best open world rpg (maybe arcanum is better if you count it as an open world rpg). In that regard, it beat also the modern ones like the Assassin's creed games. I just don't get the high praise for gothic 1 +2 though. I liked the atmosphere and Jharkendar and gothic 1 were the best parts for me. But come one....you don't have any social skills for instance and the story - especially of gothic 2 was so uninventive that critising the witcher 3 blood and wine storyline as boring while still praising gothic 2 from the same author seems more like a nostalgia bonus for me and I think that he is very critical and I hope he still finds a game which he can enjoy today. I mean, just look at risen, which was also highly regarded by the author. I absolutely loved the monastery quest line. It was the same for gothic 2. Piranha bytes seemingly knows how to build intimacy in such a small place. But the rest of the game was just standard stuff with no highlights at all. And sorry blood and wine beats risen 1 in almost every detail. But with one fact I think I am on the authors side. Open worlds rpgs seems to be too difficult to keep a consistent quality.. There are always too less time, the world is too big, you lose some focus on the main story and you experience plenty of dragging moments. Oh and I didn't want to sound top harsh so sorry if It feels like that.

I'm not familiar with the source material Paperchase is apparently referencing (never even heard of it), so to me it was purely an amusing juxtaposition of this rough-n-tough monster-slayer-for-hire being utterly thwarted and defeated by modern bureaucracy. It works as an effective bit of situational comedy all on its own, regardless of what it's referencing, because Geralt is taken completely out of his element and put into a relatively mundane, ordinary situation where his usual methods don't work and he's forced into a subservient, lower position by a meager bank teller who's on break. Plus, it's a real-world situation we can all relate to, so it becomes extra humorous seeing it anachronistically applied to this medieval fantasy-folklore setting with a super-human mutant being reduced to the same level of frustration we all feel in that situation. The guy on the bench, likewise, waiting so long before stating the obvious ("You must wait. They have their break now,") is golden comedic timing. So I like the humor presented in that quest, but the actual gameplay for it was kind of tedious and uninteresting (I know that's the point), with a lot of "walk here and watch this cutscene" going on with awkwardly-forced gameplay elements like how they managed to shoe-horn the fist-fighting mini-game into the situation when Geralt cuts in line. As for the unique quests and good writing, that's absolutely what I consider to be The Witcher 3's strongest elements, and why I wish the DLC would have focused more on that stuff instead of pumping out so many shallow, tedious, and repetitive Points of Interest (and quests dedicated to interacting with those Points of Interest). I like it when the game is putting you in unique scenarios where you have to make unusual decisions or interact with engaging characters, but I feel like I spent the literal majority of this DLC just going from POI to POI mindlessly killing random enemies and reading notes -- doing essentially the same thing over and over again -- which had none of that fun stuff that I find appealing going on. While TW3 may trump Gothic in terms of its quest scenarios and its writing (not to mention acting and directing of its scene composition), I find that Gothic (and many of PB's games) have a more compelling world and gameplay design where exploration feels constantly fresh and exciting, with genuinely rewarding discoveries and engaging challenges to overcome, where getting stronger and progressing as a character goes hand-in-hand with the exploration. In Gothic, the world feels like something to be discovered and conquered entirely on your own and presents itself like its own character and dimension in the game design, whereas in TW3 the world feels merely like a backdrop to spread out self-contained adventures (ie, stories and quests). That might not be the best way to express what I mean, but that's how it feels to me, at least.

@@TheNocturnalRambler here is the reference. But i guess if you didn't grow up with it is has a minor feeling to it. m.ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-TM9xZSJO4is.html I like how helpless gerald is in the face of the public service :)

​@@MasterFeidn *"I just don't get the high praise for gothic 1 +2 though. I liked the atmosphere and Jharkendar and gothic 1 were the best parts for me. But come one....you don't have any social skills for instance and the story - especially of gothic 2 was so uninventive that critising the witcher 3 blood and wine storyline as boring while still praising gothic 2 from the same author seems more like a nostalgia bonus for me"* I think you're conflating my praise and criticism between the two games. For example, although I'm very critical of B&W's story, I specifically state that "it's not bad by any means" and that I find it to be "objectively better storytelling than the base game, and certainly better than some other, similar types of games out there. [...] I just found Hearts of Stone to be a much better executed story, which made Blood & Wine feel like a step backwards in quality, and thus somewhat disappointing in relative comparison." I'm likewise on record as being critical of Gothic 2's story, which I describe in my "Gothic 1 vs Gothic 2" video as feeling like more of a premise than an actual story -- "like a series of video game objectives pieced together in a linear fashion vaguely resembling a story. It's enough to keep you engaged and to keep the gameplay moving forward, but the story is more about setting up gameplay scenarios than telling a story." I'm praising and criticizing these games for very different reasons, in other words. My praise for Gothic also goes beyond its RPG mechanics, as the Gothic games are more of a hybrid combination of equal parts action, adventure, and role-playing games with slight hints of immersive-sim thrown in, as opposed to being pure RPGs in the conventional sense. If I judge Gothic's role-playing mechanics against something like Fallout, Vampire Bloodlines, Pillars of Eternity, Arcanum, Planescape Torment, and so on, then obviously Gothic will come up short every time, but it's things like the immersive nature of the setting, the atmosphere, the physical world design, the difficulty and challenging progression, the dynamic leveling system, the rewarding exploration, the engaging combat system, the sense of adventure from its quests and exploration, and so on, while having at least a basic, functional RPG core to it, that make it so unique and special to me. The lack of social skills in Gothic would absolutely be a knock against it, but only if you're judging it as a purely mechanics-based RPG like some of those other games I mentioned, which I don't feel it's trying to be, and thus it doesn't bother me that the RPG mechanics in Gothic are relatively simple.

@@MetalGearyaTV Yeah , it did. I started run right before announcement. It was good, but this update made it so much better.

The new enemies in B&W didn't leave much of an impression on me as it felt like the vast majority of them were re-skins of existing monsters with only slight variations (if any), that used the same tactics as their base counterparts and thus involved the same basic type of gameplay to fight. Spriggans are like Leshens, Scurvers like Devourers and Rotfiends, Banshees like Wraiths, Slyzards like Forktails and Wyverns, Wights are like Hags (that summon minion enemies), Panthers feel like beefed up lone Wolves, Barghests are like Wild Dogs but with a couple special attacks, Kikimores felt similar to Endragas, Fleders and Garkains are similar to Katakans and Ekimmaras, and Bruxae and Alps are like more humanoid versions of other lesser vampires. So to me, that really only leaves Archespores, Centipedes, and Shaelmaars that feel like they aren't being based off some existing archetype, but of course we've already seen Archespores before in TW1 (as with many of these other "new" enemies), and the Centipede is a mechanically similar copy of the Archespore (except with an underground attack instead of exploding bulb-mines, and being weak to yrden instead of igni). The game also has a habit of spamming those two enemy types at you throughout its various POIs so fighting them got to feel incredibly stale and repetitive after a short while. Thus, the Shaelmaar's the only new enemy that I actually really enjoyed, with its rolling attacks making it impervious to all harm where you have to lure it into walls so that it rams into them and stuns itself. But there's only like three in the entire DLC, and are otherwise drowned out by all the others that don't feel near as dynamic or exciting. Although I enjoy seeing certain enemies return from TW1 that weren't present in either TW2 or TW3, my excitement is curbed somewhat when they feel like slight variations of other things that were carried over from TW3. It's something I could've mentioned, I guess, but it felt relatively minor to me and had no significant impact on my enjoyment of the expansion. As for the hair, you're right, I forgot to link that in the description, but it's the same mod I used in the base game (and did link in that video's description), using the "Long Elven" style. I'll add it to the description, but for your convenience here it is as well: www.nexusmods.com/witcher3/mods/4400

@@TheNocturnalRambler Thanks.

Glad you enjoy them! I'll certainly keep at it as best I can.

It's my pleasure, and thank you for the support!

Thanks for watching, and thank you for the compliment!

I'm not sure I buy this reasoning, as there are plenty of examples where people turn against their own Blood when faced with a conflict of interest. Syanna being disowned and outcast by her parents, Syanna conspiring to kill her sister (and actually doing so in the "bad ending"), Lucien and Auguste attempting to murder their brother Hugo and vice versa (in "Father Knows Worst"), Regis killing Dettlaff, etc, are all examples of people disregarding their blood relations for their own personal, selfish interests, or because they have a higher understanding that it's the "right" thing to do. Annarietta pardoning Syanna might be the only example where someone chooses "blood" over some alternative, so I'm not sure it really counts as being an ingrained part of Toussaint's culture and society, or something CDProjekt was deliberately trying to depict in their world-building. Are there others that I'm forgetting?

It's too small

Oh they're certainly an improvement over the base game, which I believe I acknowledged in the review (though I forgot to mention that a select few of them do, indeed, give you a more talkative NPC to interact with afterwards). Like I say, my problem is mainly that they just feel excessive and that they generally rely on too much repetition of the same basic things over and over again, which felt tedious to me in a DLC of this size, with this many POIs to discover/interact with, especially after having already gone through that whole rigmarole for 150 hours throughout both of the base game and Hearts of Stone.

POIs are definitely a weak point in this type of game, but I really like how in this DLC many of the POIs have little framing stories. It makes them feel like more than just random POIs, even though they really aren't.

I specifically credited B&W's POI's as being an improvement over the ones in the base game, but the fact that the base game is "far worse" shouldn't excuse or justify the similarly shallow, repetitive nature of Toussaint's POI's seeing as they both suffer from the same fundamental problems. And even though they're technically better in B&W, I find the situational context more enervating and irritating because they should have already learned their lesson from the base game and done more to improve them in the second expansion, especially after they'd already mitigated most of those critical issues with Hearts of Stone. To phrase it a little differently, if you already felt worn out and beaten down from the endless POI's in the base game, then running into so many in B&W can feel like the game is kicking you while you're already down, thus adding insult to injury, which can make it feel it more personally offensive. Sure, it doesn't kick as hard or hurt as much as the initial butt-whooping from the base game, but the emotional impact is worse given the context of what preceded it and what you would expect from a classier opponent.

You are correct in that it was my choice to play both of those mechanics that way. However, just because someone has the option not to engage a game's shortcoming shouldn't excuse those shortcomings' existence in the first place. Good game design shouldn't ALLOW for people to exploit the mechanics or engage them in a way that leads to a negative individual experience. What you're saying, in essence, is "just ignore problems and everything's fine," but that's not the way game criticism works. If a game launched with a rubbish melee combat system and a functional magic system, where the player had the choice of which playstyle to use, it would be totally valid to criticize the melee combat for being objectively bad and leading to a bad player experience; it would be totally inappropriate and nonconstructive to just tell people "it's not the game's fault the melee combat system is rubbish, it's your fault for choosing to use it." That's perhaps an extreme example, but that's the gist of how your comment comes off to me. My whole criticism about the mutagen system is that the skills are fundamentally imbalanced which is an irrefutable, objective flaw in the game design. Sure, it doesn't have to matter if you don't care about it, but for someone who DOES care, then yes it does matter, because the different playstyles and mutagens should be balanced against each other better than they are. For people who enjoy experimentation and min/maxing to find the most efficient builds, they're deprived of that whole gameplay element when the system is so shallow and straightforward that the choice is blatantly obvious, with zero room for possible alternative considerations. And if you want the most powerful character, then yes, it DOES mean you should change your entire build because it is objectively the most effective build by far. Now generally speaking I don't personally care about balance in single-player games because the subjective experience of having the most fun is what matters most to me, but in the interest of giving fair criticism, it is fair to point out that the mutagens are objectively not well balanced. Even if I DIDN'T use the Euphoria skill, I'd STILL be making the same criticism because my personal experience is irrelevant to that fact. And the reason the house renovations were over straight away for me wasn't JUST because I chose to streamline it, but because there was no more depth or development to the quest structure to prevent being able to do so. I wanted more out of it, and there wasn't anything there, so it blew by in an instant when it seemed like it should've been a more thorough and involved process. And it's not like I was deliberately going out of my way to try to sequence-break the quest or exploit it or rush through it or anything, I basically just did the quest seemingly as it was intended to be done, and it felt like it was over just as soon as it had started. Sure, I slept a few days to advance the quest instead of going off and doing other things, but whether you do it all once or spread it out, it still takes the same amount of time in terms of active player involvement to complete. Like imagine if the main quest-line could be completed in 30 minutes if you just focused on the main quest-line without a bunch of distractions; that would be pretty disappointing, wouldn't it? Same sort of principle applies. "Well maybe you just shouldn't rush the main quest, then." Sure, but that wouldn't change the fact that the main quest is short, underdeveloped, anticlimactic, or whatever other adjective you want to ascribe to it.

Seems pretty ironic that Toussaint would feel more alive than 99% of games out there, when 99% of its environmental storytelling is conveyed exclusively through notes found on dead bodies. It's hard for me to say the world feels "alive" when the vast majority of its landmass and interactive points of interest are populated by people that are literally the opposite of alive.

@@TheNocturnalRambler NPCs in The Witcher are just like any NPCs in other games. In fact they at least try to show that some NPCs have some activity, in many other games they just stand statically in one spot all the time. The NPCs in RDR2 are better and that didn't make the game more fun in my opinion, nor did it make the "game world more alive". You criticize games a lot, I'm going to stop watching reviews not because I want to fool myself into thinking that the games I like are perfect, but because I know that I like good games, but that if I pay attention I'll find faults and consequently I will enjoy them less. It must be pretty boring playing the way you play, chasing flaws in every aspect of the game, so every game I've ever played would be boring. In fact, it doesn't make any sense for me to watch a review of a game I've played through and really enjoyed for someone I don't know to point out flaws in pretty much everything the game offers. This type of analysis that focuses so much on negative things, as if something perfect existed, can make a person who has never played the game lose interest in it and not test the game. This happened to me with Control, I saw a lot of negative reviews about the game and I was discouraged by it, luckily Epic Games gave the game for free and I liked it a lot, the game is far from perfect but it was much better than I expected. I would like to see a game that you don't have so many complaints to make, I saw that you like Gothic, I played it some time ago but as I considered the game a little outdated I couldn't get too attached to the game, Elex I watched gameplays and what I see did not please me very much, maybe I will buy this game in the future to test.

ADD is a bitch, isn't it

Nah, you can criticize his "hard work" at will, because according to his analysis you can come to the conclusion that this game is not worth playing. He transforms a game with numerous qualities into a mediocre game, whoever made the game also had hard work. I also couldn't see his analysis, he says that a game with a very large map disperses the relevant content a lot, I would say that such a long analysis also disperses the relevant content a lot, I would give this analysis 5/10 because it is impossible for me to watch something so long and boring.