Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

The music is decent, cards and battle graphics are nice, whole game gives _the feeling_ of the Witcher world. But where was the sign "ITS A PUZZLE GAME with a bit add-on of SINGLE PLAYER GWENT". Still, I had decent fun with solving these riddles (tp some extent) and following the plot. But this game offers too little single player gwent NORMAL BATTLES, that I expected to give me.

Good game im waiting for ios version like gwent!

This is what comes first when I think of it. I loved the graphics and all the visuals. Soundtrack is really good, gameplay is a lot of fun (nice RPG elements) and story is quite long (took me 50 hours - explored everything) When it comes to mechanics I enjoyed all the puzzles because these were quite challenging. The only thing that perhaps could be improved is dificulty overall - it is little imbalanced. However I didn't beat the game on Hard so I can't tell. In general - it was worth it.

I'm some 18 hours into the game as of writing this review and haven't finished it yet and I'm really enjoying my time with it. This is of course GWENT story mode, which as a concept can be executed so well and so poorly. You may be wondering, have I been tricked into buying a feature that was chopped from the free to play game? Why play it if I have GWENT for free? Well, the truth is that you are playing both for very different reasons. Being a single player game, the gwent card battles can go into many different directions that GWENT wouldn't and flow completely differently. We can use season battles from GWENT to make a simile with what you will find here, special rules, etc. but it doesn't come close. Most battles are thematic, with objectives, obstacles, special rules, "escort missions"... and then there's puzzles, which make you think about the mechanics of synergies between cards very differently. And it all comes wrapped in a narrative that I can equate to something like the Shadowrun Returns games or maybe the Banner Saga, with some choice and consequence, effective limited animation animatics and excellent voiceacting in many more languages than the mainline Witcher 3 supports. The story also fleshes out the more geopolitical aspect of the Witcher universe and, believe it or not, you won't miss not having it revolve around witchers for a change. The only downsides to it are some RNG based puzzles that seem to rely on a bit of luck for you to get them solved and, arguably, how the cards in Thronebreaker are so different from their counterparts in Gwent. This last point is not entirely negative, though, as it's pretty understandable that the power levels that would work in the kind of battles that Thronebreaker offers would make them illegal in regular Gwent (plus, they are affected by mechanics which include buffs and debuffs based on morale)... but by playing Thronebreaker you are only practising Gwent to a degree. Unlockables also come with it.

I havent been following CDPR and the news since Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay reveal, and then boom, a new game appeared, and its surprisingly good. like always. an rpg unlike any other, simple yet engaging.