Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

If you like Gwent and CD Project Red's story telling then this game here is made for you. The game has quite a lot to offer, rich story, secrets to find that also give you some Gwent cards and borders, dialog options that do matter, beautiful art for your eyes to fall into, "small" perk tree that allows you to make your game experience more enjoyable.. hopefully, puzzles... before you roll your eyes let me tell you more about these puzzles. They are pretty easy, they are optional part of the game and when you've completed couple of them you can complete most of them. And lastly Thronebreaker holds up to 40 hours worth of gameplay, according to IGN's article about Thronebreaker. If you are worried about the cards in Thronebreaker let me say you shouldn't. CD Project Red has tweaked the cards from Gwent multiplayer game quite a bit. Thronebreaker brings something new even to Gwent veterans.

As both a fan of the Witcher Series and the standalone Gwent title, Thronebreaker falls right into my wheelhouse. The game combines the storytelling of the Witcher with the gameplay mechanics of the card game Gwent. I personally love the narrative, puzzles, music and atmosphere, yet I found one major gripe. After about halfway through the game many of the normal encounters become more of a drag than anything. It also seems that the number of these normal encounters increased during this part of the game as well. To compound these two points you don't really need the resources anymore, which allow you to upgrade your cards and give passive bonuses. If you have been exploring each of the maps, you will be swimming in these. That being said, I enjoyed my time and might do another run through when doing a full Witcher series playthrough.

I just love the game. I played Gwent first in the Witcher 3, played Gwent online since the beta and now this again after three years of not playing. Well worth the money and one of those titles I felt went under the radar, in no small part due to the lackluster marketing on the part of CDPR. Having said that and playing it for the third time I do wish that they had implemented a couple of things: 1. A new game plus mode where I can move over some of the stuff from the previous playthrough and also see what choice I made in the previous playthrough (whether that be card, trinkets and/or resources) 2. A chapter selection screen 3. Manual saves. 4. A new singleplayer mode that allows you to play as the enemy in a 1v1 against the computer.

Story is good, but gameplay is trivial even on hard mode, I win boss fights 200-0 with 2 extra cards in hands... Its like a childrens game which offers no challenge but builds the atmosphere that your victories are earned (they are granted) so the children can feel good about themselves.

This game is appealing in many ways: great voice acting, nice artwork and a fun, novel concept, but it's all pointless because this is - no exaggeration - the easiest game I have ever played (and yes, I'm playing on the hardest difficulty). I'm 20 hours into the game, but already after 10 hours I began noticing that I'd reliably win battles by 50 points or more. Now I win them by 100. The AI simply doesn't have the skill or the cards to ever challenge you, resulting in every battle being a foregone conclusion and, as such, completely devoid of tension or challenge. The player's cards are simply overpowered to such a degree the poor AI can do nothing to stop you. This, in turn, leads to resource management being pointless. You never face the hard choice of say, spending 200 gold on saving a civilian or conserving that same pile of gold for a better card, because your cards are already more than sufficient. And besides, resources are so plentiful - and cards and upgrades so cheap - that you will never run short of gold, wood and recruits (the games' three resources). I suppose you could say that challenge or resource management is not the point of this game, but why include card battles and resource management, then? I think it's pretty clear CDR wanted to make a tactical, challenging RPG-lite, but merely failed. I suppose you could also forget everything I said and enjoy this game for its story, artwork and choices. And many people might! But for me, this stuff is pointless if it doesn't rest on a foundation of good, fun, challenging gameplay (they're called games for a reason). You shouldn't buy Thronebreaker unless you're a massive fan of everything Witcher, or if you really, really like interactive novels with scarcely any gameplay worth speaking of.