Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

Thronebreaker gives you a solo RPG game with a story full of those bittersweet morality choices you expect from the Witcher series. A small and diverse cast of charaters help not only to flush out deck building but the world building as well. It's also full of painful and delightful Gwent puzzles to challenge yourself for hours at a time. The only fault I could find is what I would consider a small library of cards and some poor puzzle designs, one of the puzzles depend on a randomized effect. Overall, Thronebreaker is a fun game perfect for introducing newcomers to Gwent or the larger Witcher universe.

Bought this game to have something to do while riding my stationary bike during the quarantine. It's an overall okay experience but could have been so much more if not for several bad design decisions: - your character moves very slowly on the map and you need to buy an upgrade to increase their movement speed, not only is this wasting your time but it will make the game feel extremely sluggish if you decide to replay it - your character gets stuck on the objects on the map all the time and it's impossible to visually determine if you can walk around and obstacle, further wasting your time - too much time is spent walking around pixel hunting and not enough time is spent playing the cards, which should be the meat of this game, it feels like 80% walking simulator and 20% card game - too often card effects are poorly described, using only in-world descriptions and not explaining what the effect in the game is, it typically happens during puzzle battles making you replay them not because of their difficulty but because you have no idea what the cards' effects are - upgrades are generally unimpressive and unexciting, I've never felt I was really looking forward to any upgraded card, but just knew I might as well spend my resources on something so I did - the story is set up quickly and effectively in act 1 then grinds to a halt in the next few acts, the main storyline disappears in the background to make room for a few local storylines, none of which is as interesting as the main story - the loading screen could be used to show the card text of new cards you'll be facing against, instead it's just their illustrations and you'll have to waste time during the game reading their text - the game is in a dire need of a glossary, the one provided on individual cards is insufficient. Overall, this is an okay game but it could have been so much more if the rough edges were taken care of. As it is, it's okay if you have too much time but it won't capture your imagination.

80% of the time it was just premade decks and / or puzzles. The deck you create over the course of the game is never actually used in any meaningful way. Also too many boring puzzle-"games". If you like that kind of stuff this might be for you though.

Played this for three hours. Most of the gameplay is tediously walking around the map picking piles of gold and wood from piles on the ground. You pick them up, not by walking over them or clicking on them, but by standing right next to them and holding right mouse button for three seconds. You will have to do this hundreds of times over the course of the game. Holding right click is also how you talk to NPCs, open doors, etc. The actual battles are not great either. The puzzle battles where you get a special deck are decent, the only reason this gets more than one star. The standard battles where you use your own deck are extremely easy even on the hardest difficulty. Play standard Gwent or any other CRPG instead of this waste of time.

Gwent: Thronebreaker is alright. The story is excellently crafted and the Visuals very well done. Along with the music, SFX and so on. As far as that's concerned, CDProjectRed brought their A game. But, about the half way to 2/3rds point, the game just utterly peters out in terms of mechanics. An indication that Gwent itself can't hold up to the 30 hour campaign that was demanded. Most of the battles past the half way point can be easily won without any change to strategy and there are some hilariously broken cards, especially when in boss battles. I hope they keep doing more Witcher Tales like Thronebreaker but it's clear they need to find a different genre to play in. Thronebreaker feels like they did all they could and it still wasn't enough. It's ok, but I can't give it as strong a recommendation as I could the Witcher 3.