What a tale. Though very simple in it's structure, the character writing is so rich and sharp in personality and charisma I did not expect coming into this. Same praise goes for the voice acting as well, with Lucy Black's performance stamping Queen Meve as one of my newest favourite protagonist in this series. So much wit, fierce and cunning that by the end of the first chapter I was immediately onboard to see her story through the end. Part of me wants to see more of her stories in new entries, but knowing how arduous her journey has been, I'm also satisfied in this being a one and done story. The weird thing for me is Gwent, and no manner how many times I try, since launch, playing the standalone game for 4h+, and even retrying it on my replay with the next gen version of TW3, I can't seem to gel with it, so most of my journey has been experiencing this game as an interactive graphic novel, which I'm not mad about, as outside the combat there is enough in here, from the beautiful art direction, world map and side stories to really keep me hooked, tho it can become repetitive due to pacing and variety issues. In an ideal world, this game would've been perfect for me if the combat was instead a turn based game, as I feel fits the overall energy this projects aims to be, but alas I respect the decision to make it Gwent oriented and evidently introducing additions to make it more compelling than the base minigame itself.
