Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

Most of the enemies have special rules which require a specific set of moves to succeed which gets very tedious quickly. It's like some really terrible hybrid of puzzle/card game. Very limited deck flexibility and frankly, several of the enemy decks have BS cards that are better than anything you can unlock. If you're on the fence about card games, you will not enjoy this. If you enjoy card games and building your own deck you will not enjoy this until later in the game. If you enjoyed Gwent in Witcher 3 you will not enjoy this (not even remotely similar). If you dont enjoy puzzles, you will not enjoy this.

Well, I'm early access player who had spent ~80$ to support Gwent in it's early days. I do not wish to rant about how Homecoming playstile ruined everything I loved about Gwent and how I feel myself fooled, because I would never ever invested in such game. But partly this is the reason for only two stars. Let me explain. Story in Thronebreaker is cool, you have some small space to take decisions. But 99.9% of them wil affect nothing. I can't really call it RPG. You can be bloody tirant racist or merciful pacifist in game - it dosen't really change anything. I hated unnecessary loot gathering forced mechanic. Over and over and over again. Feels like third part of the game is loot gathering. And army management designed poorly. Arbalists, sorceresses and few trinkets is all you need to comlete on hard mode. So much different units, and no need to use them at all. But Gwent Homecomenig mechanic is the worst part for me. It's just boring. No mindblowing combos, no need to brew original decks. Just get as much damage as you can. 1 star for awesome art. As always. 1 star for story. Linear, but still cool.

Puzzles, puzzles and more puzzles. I have only played 5 hours but so far it it has been pretty much just puzzles. I do not like puzzle games. I like card games. Card games and puzzle games are not the same thing. In card games you build your own deck, get familiar with your own cards and figure out cool combos. Instead in this game I am constantly given a new custom deck to solve stupid puzzles. When I actually get to play with my deck it feels kinda pointless because I am extremely limited in building my deck and it is also very easy. Disappointing. The story 5 hours in is only depressing and dark. It is well written but it feels kinda monotonous. Everything that happen is bad and no matter what you do it just gets worse. Maybe some people get a kick out of depressing stuff but it is not my cup of tea. It is not really a 1 out of 5 but in game reviews on the internet there are only two scores, 1 and 5 so this is a 1.

I believe this game should have been free. It isn't much more than a(n extended) Tutorial for Gwent. The storyline is okay, I guess, but I suspect you'd have to be a fan of Witcher Lore to really enjoy it. Walking around on the map is _very_ slow, but my real issue with the game is the game of GWENT itself: It's simply not very good. It's like a poor man's version of Hearthstone and I dread every time I have to play a complete three-turn 'duel' of it. It's rather dull and lacks the humor that makes Hearthstone fun. Thankfully most times you only have to play single-turn 'puzzles', but really, I had expected more. Graphically, it's quite well done, and for Witcher fans it's probably a 3-star game.

If you were looking forward to more gwent like in witcher 3, the first 30 minutes of the game has none. The enemies all have unique decks with unique abilities. They are all puzzle "battles" with each enemy card having weird abilities requiring you to read their cards to try to decipher what they do. You'll see cards with specially highlighted terms like "blitz" that are their special abilities but the game won't actually describe what it does. This is not gwent.