I haven’t been here for a while, because BLAEO website is officially blocked in my country, because it shared an IP address with a service which helped to browse internet anonymously (therefore, it helped to access blocked resources, which is unacceptable for our Big Brother). There are different solutions to this inconvenience, but they all mess up my steam login sessions, so I’m still in the process of finding the best one.

What a marvelous expansions! Seriously, it is the best additional contents for video games ever! Firstly, it lasts as long as a standalone game (10+ hours of Hearts, 30+ hours for Blood and Wine, but for me it was twice as much), it offers new locations, new enemies, new weapons and gear, and even new mechanics, which can be used later in the original game or in game+ mode. As for the story, the main quests are so good, that they even surpass the original game in some aspects. There's a drama, a horror mystery, a story of love and revenge, a comedy; there are new and familiar characters, exciting events and unexpected situations.

Both DLCs are intended (but not necessary) to play after the main campaign. Hearts of Stone opens an area to the east and to the north of Novigrad, and part of it takes place in Oxenfurt, with enemies of levels ~30-35. You'll meet two strong and unforgettable characters, whose stories will be unraveling by the entire duration of the expansion. You'll also reunite with Shani from the first game in a very colorful event =3 Additionally, you'll be needing a lot of money (20K or 30K) if you're planning to try a new gear enchantment mechanics. Blood and Wine invites you to a new huge territory, a place which you'll never want to leave. It is a land of knights, vineyards and sun - an exceptionally beautiful place with many things to explore and many activities to do. I don't want to spoil anything, but I really loved the general storyline and many of the side quests. There are two main different outcomes depending of your choices, and four slightly different epilogues based on your relationship in the original game - finishing everything makes you a bit sad, when you know there are no adventures left. You can see some of my screenshots in steam.

A pretentious visual novel from 1999, polished and remade a bit. Apparently, there are many fans of it, because it was a debut work of Suda 51, an influential figure in Japanese game industry, but for me the game didn't feel interesting. There were many good ideas or things no one tried before - every minute of playtime you realize how unusual and strange the game is; sometimes it feels like an art experiment (there are live action or anime scenes, for example), but I didn't feel any depth or additional meaning behind a large part of that visual stuff. The characters, a group of detectives who investigate mysterious murders, are weird - they never act like adults or professionals at all, they love to have a long pseudo-philosophy conversations, and they remind me a group of kids who already "tired of life". Some plot things happen for the sake of happening, they are unreasonable and they never explained. The controls are beyond terrible - simple movement isn't simple at all here. So, despite my interest to the story and structure of the game (there are different cases, some kind of detective work, two sides of investigations - the police and the journalist), I see it as buried under Suda's creativity and his lack of knowledge of people and the police work (at least, by the time he published this).

I don't want to talk much about it, you should read steam reviews for a clearer picture. I had high hopes for Numenera, I was a backer and ordered a collectible edition, but it's nothing like the first Torment. I'm not really disappointed, because I've played it every chance I got, and I never got bored (except for combat), but it didn't feel like role-playing to me. 90% of the game is reading texts and choosing dialogue lines/doing skill checks in dialogues. The thing is, having balanced skills in your party, you would never have a problem with any checks, and the game reminds reading a visual novel (the texts themselves are great, by the way). Gameplay is mostly linear - you're usually doing everything in one area, then move to a next one. Some party characters are nice, but you'll hear all about them during the first dialogue - and barely get anything new from them later (they don't even talk among themselves). There are no voices and no character portraits, except for your party, and most of the world's inhabitants doesn't feel "alive". Combat and combat-related stuff (skills, for example) are shrunk to a minimum, everything you are used to from other RPGs isn't here, but existing fights are so uninteresting and tedious (and buggy for now), that they are better off skipped, thankfully it's usually possible. Tides system, the cornerstone of game's lore, isn't changing anything in the world. So, that's what we left with... I understand that it all sounds too negative, but I repeat: it's not a bad game at all, just not the game of the year I hoped for.

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