Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

Most of the game is slowly walking around the map and playing card puzzles. I thought you would just be playing Gwent, but no. It's also got moral "questions" where everyone is just generally terrible and you get to choose between supporting two different kinds of horrible people.. or just playing something else and not dealing with any of that.

So you have this great and engaging story with many choices but you also have this freaking stupid auto save system that ruins it all. One choice didnt resulted in what you were expecting ? Or even worse like me you missed an important character because the dialogue was poorly writen ? Well then get ready to restart the game since the beginning. Appaling.

At the outset of this review, its title will be controversial. Maybe this is even a baitclick somewhere. However, this is my honest opinion. Thronebreaker is a mixture of a number of different genres. Like in the Heroes of Might and Magic series, the player explores the map and collects resources as Meva, the queen of Rivia and Lyria. A player can spend resources to build their military camp, so there is a bit of strategy involved. There is also a small amount of role-playing. Not leveling up and grinding your stats, but developing the relationships you build with your companions. And there really is an abundance of interesting characters with rich back stories. However, Thronebreaker is first and foremost a game of cards. The rules of the game are quite different from those of The Witcher 3. They were developed and implemented in the online game Gwent. On a map, a player will find the obligatory duels that will push the story forward, additional duels that will allow you to meet new characters or discover some secrets, and puzzles that have special rules. Just as the game in general is not too difficult by genre standards, the special puzzles are really tricky. Having said that, what really stands out in Thronebreaker is the plot. I am not afraid to say: It is the best written story of the CD Project Red. Far better than The Witcher 3, better than Cyberpunk, even better than The Witcher 1. Just like in The Witcher 1, player's choices are hard and meaningful - has a real influence on the world. And the story is long, which makes the game longer than others in the genre. The campaign takes over 30 hours to complete all the optional challenges and find all the secrets. As the campaign has been mentioened - there is no multi. As a matter of fact, there is free online Gwent game. Purchaising the Thronebreaker, you will be granted with some cards and avatars in the Gwent. 5/5. A must-have for all card fans.

The story telling in this game is riveting to the point where you would have played the whole game in one, single bated breath. Though the (five) maps are linear to look at - there is not a semblance of linearity in gameplay . With every shining rock which catches your attention, you'll be pushed down a road to collect and complete more and more objectives. With almost 5 hours spent in 5 maps with one of the repeating as prologue and epilogue, the 30+ hours you spend on this game will fly past leaving you both wholesome and yet yearning for more. In spite of barely knowing these characters at all, you find tethered to them and their emotions. Like the Witcher trilogy, every decision you make splits into a path you will find an emotional bond to, giving the players many chances of replayability - 20 to be precise. The story picks up from the perspective of Meve - the Queen of Lyria and Rivia who took to Guerilla Warfare during the Second War with Nilfgaard as presented in the Witcher books by Andrzej Sapkowski. CDPR extended the tale of Meve - the character only introduced by Sapkowski, and provided her a fleshed out background and an epic tale in between her defeat and her winning back her legacy. Again, thrust in the twisted and gruesome world of the Witcher, no event can be labeled as righteous and evil. With a small army at her disposal, Meve is presented with a world of pain and consequences – one she must brave to achieve victory. In between the main events of the game – interaction by no means takes a backfoot. With numerous activities happening along her path, Meve can either choose to participate or to opt out – every choice which will come back to bite her when least expected.

I was looking quite a lot forward to playing this game, both as a big fan of Gwent and the Witcher series in general. Sadly, I was left quite disappointed with the game. I'll list both the pros and cons I found with the game below: + The world of the Witcher is as interesting as ever. + Meve is a well written and interesting character to play as. + The game looks very pretty; The map and 3D models look nice and the art displayed in the cards is top of the class. ++ Music is fantastic. ++ Many cards have very interesting and unique abilities, which make them fun to experiment with. +++ A lot of the puzzles and fights have been designed extremely well. They exhibit much more creativity than I was expecting for a game of this type. ----- The game is too easy. Way, way too easy. I played the game on the hardest difficulty and even still it was a complete cakewalk; Sometimes I felt like I should've picked the easiest difficulty just so I could skip fights, as they don't offer any challenge. This is a huge redaction in points, as you can misplay and use bad cards all you like but you will still fly through the fights. --- Some puzzles have bad design: The Pestilence puzzle being a particular offender. You NEED random hits to strike just the right targets in order to clear this puzzle, and I don't feel leaving the puzzle solution to random chance is good design. -- The game is veeery buggy. Sometimes I couldn't move my character for no reason, requiring me to restart the game; some of the card abilities simply do not work at all (Strays of Spalla and Isbel, for instance) and some puzzles can be beaten unfairly easily because you can target cards you shouldn't be able to (Gascon Sneak puzzle) - A lot of the game time is "filler": The game can boast "30+ HOURS OF GAMEPLAY" all it wants, but in the end a lot of it is just walking around collecting resources. All in all, the game is heavily undermined by its lack of difficulty. If you look for a challenge, do NOT buy this.