Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

The game is wonderfuly crafted and who doesn't like the witcher world. :) However, I find the battles way to imbalanced. Sometimes it is just easy going, and some times it is pure luck if you solve a puzzl-battle or not. I mean luck is an important component for an card game, however the balance of skill / luck should be somehow improved.

Played it for a few hours, and it was worth the buy. It is really good, but I want to mention a few things. If the technical bugs get fixed and one or the other gameplay improvement, I will glady make the rating higher. Anyways I am unable to play with the mouse, because the game instantly recognizes a controller without one being plugged in. My only choice now is to play with a controller even though the game fits to mouse. Also the first seconds of cut scenes the screen freezes with the sound still playing. The battles are extremely tactical and filled with great riddles, but sometimes the cards are described a bit poorly and in general the player has to do trial and error to fully understand details of some cards, which can be annoying. I already upgraded the queen to walk faster, but it still pretty slow, which is a bit annoying.

I'm delighted by the story; interested by its characters; concerned by every choices the game throws at me and surprised by their concequences. However, the game's difficulty is problematic. The rewards, the upgrades and the fights are meaningless because of how easy and mindless every battles feels. Because it could easly be my game of the year, It pains me to give it only a rating 3/5.

I admit it I'm a CDPR/Witcher universe fan! That said this is my first review on gog as well as one of if not the first game I've ever pre-ordered because from my perspective they have earned that from me. I really enjoyed Thronebreaker! I've been a ccg player for most of my life so when I see a new one come out it's at the very least a must try for me. I liked old Gwent before the shenanigans of mid winter patch. I thoroughly enjoy HC Gwent as well. The elements of a card game and an rpg for Thronebreaker I think are really fun. Are there some issues with the game? Sure but I have faith that CDPR will fix them. I'm currently on my 2nd playthrough as it even on the hardest mode it is a bit easy except with a few battles but I'm playing it again as I missed some things during my playthrough and genuinely want to experience the other endings to the game.

The game has a well written and enjoyable story. The gameplay elements are less perfect, with battles being way too easy, the exception being the puzzles which were great. Several achievements seem to be broken as of this review, including the Golden Chests which are missing from the last map and even though I got them all (except 4 on last map) based on the end game statistics it still said 41/46 which means a 5th one apparently was missed somewhere as well. The support for older systems, even ones that can run the game at 30+ fps is poor with support saying they don't support gaming laptops or older systems, even if they can run the game. The game has bugs such as voiceover not playing in some scenes, and occasional crashes especially in the Mahakam map. Overall it's still worth a buy for the great story telling and the decent price for the amount of content included. Wait for a patch if you want a bug free experience. The tie-in with Gwent is a nice addition that gives you cards and trinkets for use in the multiplayer game.