GWENT: The Witcher Card Game

I love the Arena (draft) mode, where you get a bunch of random cards to select from. I have a pretty high win rate under these circumstances. What sucks is the meta with custom decks. It feels like you can't be creative with deck building unless you don't care to lose most games. It feels pretty limiting. The mechanics itself are great.

I've been long playing GWENT, since the open beta, I remember the winter update, and the game breaking decks. I loved it. Even though the game wasn't perfectly balanced, that many cards were RNG based. And not only that, the game was based in the Witcher universe. But after all the changes of the Homecoming update, completely changing, and ruining some decks, I didn't have time to learn everything again. And so, I just forgot about GWENT for a while. Until recently, when the android version released (+ quarantine [covid]) I tried it out. And though it might be again the time to play GWENT. But, I still the game is very difficult considering the amount the amount of cards in the game. As an old veteran and at the same time a newbie to the new GWENT, I have to say, the game is difficult to learn, but reading other reviews, it seems it's still great when you know what all the cards do. If you have the time and like strategic, card games, go for it.

The core mechanism of used to be chooing the right moment to pass and deck thinning. The game now draws 3 cards and replace 2 per round. You can catch up by playing 6 cards in the first round, pass in the second and have a full hand in the third one. Maybe the dev was thinking this would make the game more uniform or whatever. I think it's always some kind of top-down thinking that keeps ruining the game. Weather used to set power of all non-gold cards to one, than "you can't play around it" or "restrict design space" and it becomes row indenpendent and even more useless now in current version. Gold cards can't be targeted, "less interactivity" or "uniform" and become silver cards. Rows "restrict something" so agile. Fraction ability must "restrict design space" and confuse new players so removed. Leader cards -> one cards in one turn -> two cards in one turn -> no more leader cards because we need ability + skin -> playing a card doesn't end a turn anymore because your leader ability can deal one damage to an enemy unit, big deal interactivity. The game changes fast in beta then it changes faster after beta, the designers used to dumbed down every single cards just to make fractions uniform. The game after dumbing down and lacks of disctinction after changing rows and weathers and golds also add stuff like "create" and "hero power" and now alzur's "summon a unit with same provision cost" to distinguish itself from hearthstone. The rows are meaningless now and no more swarm because of row limit, but really it's just director trying to get a good "mobile experience", another top-down thinking. Cards now have less row dependent ability than they were in beta, it's just "have this effect or not". I bet they changed to provision system to sell more gold cards. It would be still good if all these top-down "ideas" and constant urge to change result in a good game, but it's just worse. The game has variety now because of expansions, but I wouldn't say it's more fun.

I've logged nearly 400 hours so I feel it's about time a gave it a review. First and fore most it's an excellent and properly addictive game and full props to CDPR for keeping it free to play, accessible to all with the option of DLC'S and numerous updates. The cards/artwork is beautiful, particularly in their premium versions and the soundtrack is awesome as well. For the game itself I have nothing but mostly praise. HOWEVER it has one and VERY infuriating drawback (which is in no way the games fault) And that is the player base.. 99% of players seem to have a SERIOUS lack of creativity and originality, opting for premade copy and paste decks instead of spending time building their own. Extremely frustrating to know your opponents deck/cards within the first 2 cards they play, it gets EXTREMELY repetitive and boring playing against the same decks time and time again. Occasionally you will come against someone with an original deck but don't count on it being very often at all. Personally I cannot overstate how frustrating I find this and the more I play the more repetitive it has become. I don't really know if there's anything that can actually be done about this and again it's not totally the game's fault just the total lack of creativity leaves you a little lost for words. It's bad. Another minor nit-pick is the messaging system leaves quite a lot to be desired. At best it's extremely basic. It would be wonderful to tell these unoriginal copy and paste players just how unoriginal they are..Unfortunately you can't. 😌 You just got to put up with it. Rant over. It's a good game.. just the player base sucks.

I have lost count on how much i have played this game, but i dont regret a second of it. It really has been a journey.