I'm really pleased on how they managed to make Gwent feel so varied. There are two types of encounters: battles, and puzzles. No two encounters are the same. All battles and puzzles seem to matter and have a reason to exist in the larger context of the story. However, some puzzles can be a bit annoying, requiring some really obscure solutions. I had fun with most of them, but some are just awful. Some are also extremely simple and feel like a waste of time compared to the others. There's one particular annoying sequence at the end. For most of the game, the game autosaves right before a battle, puzzle, or important decision, so if you're having trouble you can reload that save, change your strategy and retry the same battle with little to no downtime. Towards the end of the game this changes. You have a really simple, but slow, puzzle, followed by a boss battle. The puzzle is so simple that probably you can do it without thinking about it, but it will still take 1 or 2 minutes. The battle is quite different from all the others you experienced so far, and may require some radical changes in your strategy or deck. Only, this time, the game saves before the long, slow, annoying puzzle. The battle is also slow, with the enemy looking at two cards from each deck every other turn, which involves a slow, long, unzippable animation. He also has an almost infinite supply of cards, so you can pass at what you may think is an advantage (let's say 200+ vs 40), and then watch as he slowly recovers from that. It's just one battle and one puzzle, but the game shows such little respect for your time that is spoils the entire experience. Still a fun game and a good story.
