I loved Gwent in Wild Hunt and was enthusiastic of keeping it playing as a solo game. The game introduces you step by step and seemingly offers a lot of fun. BUT: If you do not like playing against other people, this game punishes you by giving you exactly one AI with one deck only. Get's really dull after the 25th game because you basically foresee every step the AI does. If you then want to play classic games (against others) it starts out with a match making that is somewhat balanced, yet since so few people seem to play it, you still get matched with Level 5 against like Level 9 people. If you decide to keep going, the match making lures you into believing it will all get better, by sometimes even matching you against people your level. You might even have a winning streak. Then you get Level 12 and this games turns into Dark Souls big brother but with way less personality. Suddenly you have to explicitly mention you do not want to play ranked (which I advise because people will not finish the game the second they see themselves loosing in a ranked, that is how much pride people take into a card game!). But again, since few people seem to play this game (and I now know why that is) it matches you, with your sweet little Level 12, not an ounce of real money invested, so with a good but not superior card deck, against a Level 60 bored out dude, who spend all his mommys coins in this game, has even animated card backsides and who whippes your ass across the board. You do not have a chance because you simply cannot have all the special cards that he has. And this nightmare continues, you get matched against Level 32, Level 50, Level 56, Level 27 and so on and so on. Absolutely. Broken. Matchmaking. !!! Sad part is, this takes all the fun out of this promising game start because you cannot get better without better cards. This is the way, the game tries to force you to invest real money in it. No thank you.
