GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

Been on Gwent beta testing since closed beta, I've seen it high and I've seen it low, every meta was enjoyable to play, controlled RNG made it so your strategy while deck building and skill while playing matter, I'm a huge card games fan and I've never seen a game my input so important compared to drawing my win condition and the summoning cost. However, back at Midwinter the game took a direction I was not comfortable with. RNG ran wild, the UI was far too colorful and plain ugly, cards lost charisma, texts got butchered, even the amazing card art suffered, I had to stop playing soon after said update. Upon hearing they moved onto full release and the single-player Thronebreaker went live, I decided to try it again. Granted, it's definitely not the same game I first played in TW3, but maybe it's for the best. Matches now feel like my input matters, deck building requires a lot of ingenuity with the new cost system and card limitations, UI looks great, with an actual tavern game feeling, cards got their charisma back, and the new reward system is probably the best I've seen in a FTP game. Granted, all is not perfect, removing one row and limiting the cards per row is a change I thoroughly loathe, but maybe it's for the best as this was the biggest balancing problem back in the beta. Every card had to be carefully crafted to prevent infinite loops to breaking the game and three rows made it so a mobile release was never possible since you need a big screen to see what's happening. Overall the devs got my trust again, some things still need fixing, but they managed to bring me back after Midwinter disgusted me. It's very rare to see devs going making changes to bring old players back, I'm impressed and pleased.

I know they were trying to appeal to a wider audience in Homecoming, but dumbing down the game was not a good decision. The game seems so shallow now that half the mechanics have been removed. I heard someone else call it "moving beads on an abacus game" but that feels about right. Why couldn't they keep Blacklisting, Strengthen/Weaken, Armor, Boon, Weather Synergy, Truce, CA Spies. I still miss abilities like Trio, Demote, and Effort that were removed over a year ago. The game just got to simple to have fun.

I only played a little bit of the beta, so I don't feel like Gwent is missing anything. I disagree with other reviews that say that it's Thronebreaker: the mechanics are significantly different (lower power units, less OP cards, more emphasis on boosts/lock/reveal/other abilities). I've had fun immediately, cause Thronebreaker gave me enough scraps and barrels to craft a few good decks, so it doesn't feel like I'm stuck using weak cards or playing with the same deck over and over. Also, the reward system is generous enough that I always feel like I'm advancing. Designing your own deck is a challenging exercise that is rewarding after you've practiced a few times and learned all the potential synergies between your cards. The card art is enticing and makes you want to keep collecting. I don't think the game is too slow, if anything, it gives new players like me time to make decisions and test new decks. If I had any niggles with the game, it would be that the recruitment cap is a little strict, but I assume it has to be that way to prevent OP decks. Also, some units that rely on summoning copies (Drummond Shieldmaiden, Mahakam volunteers) are a bit nerfed since you can only have two copies of each bronze unit, but again I assume this is to prevent power creep.

I had great hopes for homecoming and i tried my best to force myself to like this game, but i can't. They had 6 months to fix gwent problems, instead they just delivered a completely different game filled with problems, They promised us to remove rng and yet rng is there, stronger than ever, they butchered nilfgaard as a faction, alchemy and spies are gone, replaced with the new redundant version of reveal that no one asked for, Artifact are a binary disgrace, if you don't have the counter it's gg, everyone plays the withcer trio, they are in every single deck because it's the last shred of thinning we have since they removed almost every single tutor from the game, mulligan limit per leader makes no sense and a lot of cards are completely unbalanced, it feels like a new beta all over again and after 2 years of real gwent, i don't think i have any patience left to wait for the developers to fix this.

While exceptionally polished compared to the beta version, this version is also exceptionally boring. The reward trees with pages of lore are a nice touch, so are the visuals, but all this is nothing if there is no single interesting deck to play in the entire game. After having played almost every Tier 1/2/3 deck that has been meta at some point in the beta version, I have to say that this is really lacking and unable to keep up the pace for me.