Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

I was advertised an rpg but got a card game. I guess it is allright for what it is. Writting, narration and sound design are good. It's an interresting take on an expansion to a multiplayer card game. But I still do not like how it promotes and ties into another game with loot crates and microtransactions. 5/10

First things first: if you don't like Gwent or card battling games in general, I wouldn't waste time with this game. This isn't for you. For the rest of you, however, the game is a very intriguing combination of isometric overworld RPG and Gwent battles. The overworld portions are a bit boring ("managing resources" is just collecting stray pieces of wood and currency on the map), but the choices you must make during critical moments are fun and interesting, though sometimes what your character, Meve, ends up doing isn't clearly indicated by the choice text. The battle are just Gwent, sometimes with some spoken dialogue, sometimes in the form of a puzzle during which you must use the correct sequence of moves to solve. I cannot recommend this game right now, however, as it is SERIOUSLY buggy. The game will freeze during load screens, leaving you stuck until you forcibly quit the game. Or, the game will freeze after you end a turn during a match, leaving you stuck until you forcibly quit the game. For Gwent or Witcher fans, I would hold off purchasing this title until these game-breaking bugs are finally ironed out.

Neverending loops in loading screen. Enemy turns are sometimes very slow. Barely playable right now. Dont buy.

I was rather enjoying this game for the first few acts. I have no interest in Gwent but was intrigued by the mechanics in a single-player, story-driven setting. As soon as I hit Act 4, however, the game's difficulty curve took a massive spike upwards. On top of that, several important cards seem to either be bugged or to just inaccurately describe how they're supposed to work in their text. Characters that are meant to buff themselves when "X" happens just stopped doing so. And one that is meant to have a special effect when you're facing monsters refuses to trigger despite the fact that I'm clearly facing a bunch of nasty swamp vampire beasties. Difficulty on its own is one thing, and a few cards not working correctly is another thing; but those two things together has basically made me rage-quit. I'm just not willing to spend any more time carefully re-working my deck before a tough fight only to realize mid-battle that it isn't working as intended, for no discernible reason. Kind of a shame as I was getting fairly invested in the story and characters.

This game seems like a good experiense but it is so exited to play itself that it does not let the player play the game. The tutorial is like that annoying friend who constantly tells you what you need to do and don't let you do what you want to do and play like you want to play. "Now play this card and shoot that card and now skip and then play this card...And to complete this puzzle you need to play this card and shoot that bolder...".