Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

At the best of times, this feels like an epic story in the Witcher-universe, played through a good reinvention of the gwent mini-game. At the worst of times, it feels like a too stretched out glorified commercial of the gwent multi-player game. I liked how the choices seemed to affect the story and plot. I disliked how most of the puzzles felt more like gimmicky mini-games than actual puzzles based on the mechanics of gwent itself, and I especially hated the fact that the game constantly had to remind me of the existence of the multi-player version of gwent. I tried this for the solo-palyer experience, not for being aggresively advertised at by CDPR. In spite of that, a few bugs, and some sloppily used artworks that did not fit with the story's timeline, the rest of the game and its mechanics feels polished enough for me to recommend it to any gwent- or witcher-fan.

Don't just take my word for it, read the other 5-star reviews for the game. For those familiar with the original in the Witcher 3 it's a better more refined version of what once was. For those familiary with the Gwent - Standalone game, then this isn't going to feature the same balance and variety as its sibling, but makes up for it in the sheer volume of interactive and fun puzzles dotted all across the game. Another nice note is that there are some awesome collectibles available for the FTP game found in this game. It features a surprising amount of replayability for a narrative-driven singleplayer game and will most likely give you a good run for a second playtrough.

I just don't like that the game incite you that much to play GWENT. Feels like a very elaborate advertisement for a card game. Preparing the gamers to the universe of GWENT through a game you paid for. This is clever. I woundn't mind if it wasn't that the EULA of the card game is freakingly permissive. It clearly states that they are gathering information about you... and they sell this information to third party (their customers). I won't play GWENT. Ever. I'm tired of corporations wanting to know what kind of underwear I have. Fortunately, the Thronebreaker game isn't a scam, it is very good and fun, especially, kudo for the art direction is pretty solid. The gameplay inherits from Heroes of Might and Magic, with a card game instead of the traditional battles and less focussed on production, and more on exploration and the story. This twist allows battles to be far more strategic and a more dynamic experience in general... very interresting. But I won't play GWENT.

Gorgeous cell shaded graphics and top notch voice acting, but the actual game play leaves a lot to be desired. Apart from the card battles, there’s little else to do except read the story and collect resources – a cross between an ARPG without the enemies and a visual novel, complete with meaningful and meaningless choices. The story is good, although quite predictable, and even though it has war, betrayal, monsters and lots of characters, it didn’t feel as exciting or engaging as it should have been - a Witcher’s adventure would have been far more entertaining for many reasons. The “choose one evil over another” thing gets old quick, the Witcher’s barely made an appearance and being locked out of content due to arbitrary decisions was rather annoying. The game is far too long with a slow and meandering pace which meant it took both a long time to get invested and I was bored before the end. It was enjoyable enough and the card battles looked great but they were often unbalanced and somewhat restrictive. There doesn’t seem to be much depth to the tactics – whoever has the better cards will always win. The puzzles were different but ended up being either trivial or impossibly challenging and most times, when you did solve them, they never felt rewarding. The economy was unbalanced, the morale system completely trivial and I had a few bugs and crashes, but nothing too bad overall. You have to admire the effort and depth they put into a card game campaign with its narratively branching story, superb production values and sheer value of content, but I don’t think it was my kind of game.

I'm personally a fan of neither Gwent nor CCGs in general, but I love The Witcher and I thought that might get me over the line. The fact is, CCGs just aren't for me. That said, the presentation is beautiful, especially the isometric portions of the game. And the small amount of story I experienced was well written and engaging. If CDPR had made an isometric RPG (a la Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Pillars of Eternity, etc.) in this art style, then I think I'd be in love.