Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

I have played through every single game on the main witcher series, and I have to say, while choices are prevalent in all 3 of them, none compare to the choices you have to make in Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. In my playthrough, I have encountered many choices that require some time to decide, and in my decisions that I have made, I have found out that sometimes, the right choices are the wrong ones. Most of the time, the decisions look pretty clear, be merciful or not, and being that I am not a violent person in nature, I translate that into the character that I am playing and make my decisions based on that. But, I quickly learned that in doing so, I am losing critical party members, losing critical resources, and worst of all, losing encounters (not being able to see how things play out). The decisions you make not only impact the world around you, but also your world. Never have I seen a game where not only decisions are very hard to make, but also very impactful to the path your character will take. Definitely a must play in my opinion.

The narrative and voice acting are second to none, the gameplay is buttery-smooth, card battles now come with impressively upgraded visuals compared to previous Gwent versions. The game campaign is split into several chapters, each focusing on a different group (Lyrians, Nilfgaardians, Dwarves, monsters, Scoia'tael), which will at several points change the cards in your deck (a bit like in Warfcraft 3, although not to such a large extent). As you progress, some companions and their cards may join or leave you, depending on your choices. The story is developed within the boundaries set by the books, which makes it arguably harder for the creative process, but CDPR managed it brilliantly. Your choices matter and you will see the consequences - sometimes immediately, sometimes a few hours laters, sometimes in other chapters or in the ending scenes. The pace of the game is excellent, switching between the narrative sections, combat (which itself offers very diverse pacing, including special puzzle battles, shortened battles or special decks with unique cards), camp management and resource gathering. Story, narration, visual and audio quality, game mechanics and their implementation and polish are all of the highest quality. The only issues I found were a few buggy cards, which didn't work correctly (or at all); and cards' descriptions, which sometimes did not work as advertised. It is a challenge to cram a complex card mechanic, including its interaction with other cards, into a small space available on each card and in several cases what was written on them just didn't really correspond to what they did on the battlefield. This was especially the case with unique battles (mostly puzzles) and you often end up starting with a 'test run' to see how the cards really work before trying to solve the puzzle for real. Overall, it is an excellent game - especially for the card games enthusiasts (which I'm not - and I still had loads of fun) and for the Witcher fans.

The title says it all, already waiting for the next Witcher Tale! Keep up the amazing work CDPR!

So where to begin, after 14 hours in the game I find myself both loving and loathing this game. The good, so far the story is really good and is the main driving force for me to keep playing, it's familiar enough with the lore and locations etc and still original in a different time and perspective to the other Witcher games and the art style is great and a really good fit I feel. The bad, At least in my opinion. The combat can be ok or it can be infuriating as all battles are card duels with or without 1-time special rule sets. Sometimes you use the same one or two tricks other times it feels like near about there is very little you can do and you can pretty much guess whether you win or lose based solely on what you initially draw, and I've never at least yet had a battle or match that made me feel good for beating it, or that I felt was interesting. To be totally honest I don't really care for the Spin-off Gwent that this is based on and before I bought this game I knew it was pretty incorporated in it but to me, it just isn't enjoyable. I would absolutely love to see more of these mini-stories in maybe similar formats, examples like replacing the Gwent sections with a variety of or singular other systems such as RTS battle mini-game or turn-based or any other directions you can go. A couple minor complaints game crashes fairly often, there is no way (that I have found) to manually save and continue it's save and exit game or to the menu, and lastly, a couple different upgrades don't seem to work properly? for example, my recruits number over 200 yet I've not unlocked even the 175 limits, maybe it's a tooltip error or perhaps just a bug but I imagine these will be patched fairly quickly!

It's a must-buy if you also play the multi-player Gwent game, for others not so much. Pros: Great puzzles and some nice combat scenarios against the AI. "Free" premium cards and reward points for the multi-player Gwent game by just playing this game. Exceptional soundtrack. Cons: Bland & boring main character you are forced to play. Predictable story. Way to many normal battles against a weak AI that is no challange even on the highest difficulty, that just waste your time.