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Blood & Wine is often regarded as the best DLC in gaming history, alongside Oblivion's Shivering Isles. I can see the similarities: a new land separated from the main game, taking place after the main story, characterized by unique and interesting characters. Beauclair is a vibrant, lush place whose warm colors and clarity contrast with the gloomy greys of Velen and the claustrophobic whites of Novigrad. It is a magical place, wholly inspired in the Mediterranean countries (namely France and Italy), with some of the best quests Witcher can offer.
While Beauclair itself is smaller than it appears, being able to traverse everything in half an hour or less, compared to the slow, endless slopes of Velen, the city of Toussaint is deceptively large, perhaps bigger than Novigrad once you're in those streets. The verticality really adds a charm to it that reminds me of those aforementioned countries. It's like traversing through spanish Andaluzia or southern Italy. It's beautiful and memorable.
But like always, the crux of it are the quests. There isn't as much content as the base game, naturally, but what remains are polished versions of quest archetypes we have seen in the base game before. Quests like the Fists of Fury get a unique spin, being able to defeat two of the opponents through unconventional, peaceful means, while the final battle takes place in a drunken stupor. In the other hand, quests like Paperchase grant a whole sense of reality and hilarity by having you fight the greatest enemy of all: bank bureaucracy. I especially love how the game forces you to wait one week instead of just being a turn of the phrase like in other RPGs. It does it again on Wine Wars if you do the third option, having you wait three days. But after that, Geralt gets a wine named after him. That's peak fantasy right there. Geralt also gets his very own estate, for the first time in the series. While not comparable to Skyrim's Hearthfire, it's a neat little piece of quietude you can enjoy and display a handful of your favorite swords and armor, not to mention paintings you might've collected from both this DLC and Hearts of Stone. It isn't costly like the Runewright and I think it's far more worth it.
The main quest is the meat and potatoes of any RPG. And to be frank, I felt it a little short and bittersweet. I like having book characters return (after all, CDPR's Witcher contradicts ever so slightly its original form in the books) but the story itself isn't as gripping as it should've been for most of it. In fact, having played Witcher 1, seeing it summed up at the start as a contract to an entity named as The Beast and with the reprisal of Barghests as enemies, I started having war flashbacks. In truth, it took to the Night of the Broken Fang for it to kick in, which is ironically past the point of no return for most sidequests. Fablesphere, if I am permitted another Oblivion comparison, is like The Painted World but far more developed. It is fun, interesting and short enough to not drag on. It's followed by a final fight with Dettlaff (in my case, for I believe this would've been avoided if I hadn't picked up the ribbon nor sided with Regis in the first place. This is a hard battle, but fair. It's intense and perfect as the climax. Past this, the story becomes more or less an epilogue, with some choices I think dictates Syanna's fate if she didn't die. Naturally, I chose the happier ending where she reconciles with Anna Henrietta. It is a fitting end, considering the base game's epilogue. Geralt, now with Yennefer, find their peace at last, over the hillside of the idyllic Beauclair.
The return of original enemies that didn't appear in either Witcher 2 nor Witcher 3 was a big deal for me. Barghests, Archespores, Alps and Bruxae, Kikimores and the infintely less janky Giant Centipedes all make a return in glory. Somehow, however, Archespores became a whole lot more annoying, while Alps and Bruxae became incredibly tough and horrible to fight. Fleders and Garkains also return in style, reprising a lesser vampire role the base game gave to Ekimmara and Katakans, and I'd say they're balanced well. Sure they have one attack that deals ungodly amounts of damage, but otherwise they feel like their original renditions in battle. From the first entry also returns the Lady of the Lake (and the Hermit but not really) and the fabled Aerondight, which is indeed a unique weapon here, but honestly a bit worse than in W1. In W2, you're meant to lose it as you stab Saskia in the prologue with it, but there is a common bug where you keep it. I ended up selling mine as imported weapons in W2 are pitifully weak.
Bug wise, there's quite a bit of them here. Thankfully, asides from a couple of bugs during "The Night of Broken Fangs" main quest, where Regis' AI breaks after fighting a bruxa and stops moving, softlocking you, there's nothing major. Some z-fighting with LOD textures, namely the palace and NPCs that spawn blatantly in front of you in groups of four as you traverse the countryside. In Fablesphere, at one point Roach turned from the unicorn to the vanilla horse while keeping the unicorn features, which resulted in a fully decked unicorn with a constantly z-fighting mane. In the end, it's small potatoes which breaks immersion a little bit, but isn't too jarring to make a dent in the overall package. I also disliked that abandoned sites now have you go through a lot of new screens specially made for this DLC and that it forces you to wait until 10 AM the next day, rather than just a couple of hours in the base game.
Overall, I really liked this DLC, even if I don't think it's peak DLC content. Yet, I can see the resemblance to Shivering Isles in terms of quality, and even more so comparing both the base games and the first DLCs as well. Whichever the case, Blood & Wine is well worth its price and a solid, very enjoyable piece of content you shouldn't miss out on.