This is a nostalgic game for me, it has a great character customization, interesting world and story. The combat is either real time or turn based, either way your heroes take their turns and chances of hitting the enemies based on their stats which you improve over time. You have to manage your health and mana, there are various schools of magic and merchants who will sell you books, characters can equip only items which they have learned to use, apart from rings, gloves and amulets, boots, hoods and helmets. Certain skills are prohibited to certain classes and some classes can master certain skills at a higher efficiency. Anyway, there are areas of map which you can travel to by foot, boat or by horse. In the second area, there is a possibility to even travel to arena sometimes. Game offers a variety of enemy types and very long dungeons with lots of loot, some chests explode and can instantly kill your party. Some entrances and secret items can be hidden so you sometimes need to interact with objects, there is a skill which reveals these. NPCs offer you some skills in return for gold shared from your loot. The game is very long to finish, the further you get, the stronger enemies you encounter, there is a lot trial and error and sometimes RNG involved in what loot you get, what enemy level you meet in an area. This is proper RPG.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a Gwent card game with adjusted rules and you play in a role of the queen Meve, not the witcher Geralt. It’s a well written story about Nilfgaardian invasion, brilliant voice overs, lip-syncing and graphics. Dialogues are like Banner Saga’s (referenced in-game) and fully voiced. Meve is a spirited leader who will not avoid all the battles. You can make impactful decisions that will determine your next experience with or without your favourite companion/card. Later situations might require you to adjust your tactics or future options will scratch off 1 solution of outside-of-battle problems because you will be missing that one companion. The game has interesting worlds with various environments, finishing the story in one semi-linear world map will prevent you from going back to pick up some forgotten treasures or side quests. So glad, there’s so much content and story turns, it’s not straightforward when selecting ally or foe. Exploring the tactical map is casual and its features are easy to understand, you only use your left and right click on the mouse for controlling everything, map is showing you position of loot and encounters once you find them, or you can discover new ones at the signs or boards. Gather resources; gold, cards, soldiers and treasures which you will find plenty on your travels or build upgrades in a pitch camp’s Workshop, such as new cards, gold and exp boosts, then create additional cards in the Command tent or edit your deck which are limited. Most importantly, you can talk to your companions in the Mess tent who will add up onto the existing story of the game. You can have one Meve’s weapon and trophy per deck that have its own cooldowns, however trinkets are increasing by the time you proceed through the story, and units which you can earn in battle. You can access a pitch camp any time outside the battle. Shrines increase your morale which you can lose when choosing a certain decision over another.
I have tried this game some years ago but I did not like it. Now when I finally manage to start, I can not move in the game nor control anything. It is broken. Other MM games are brilliant. Get them instead.
Graphics? Poor. 2/5 I remember playing this game blurry when I was kid, and nothing changes since. Gameplay? Unaspiring. 2/5 AI or pathfinding is atrocious. Workers go from point A (base) to point B (mine) and walk the straight path. There is a building - go around the longest possible way, trees - get stuck there and do not move, enemy attack - run away and stop working. The map is revealed. Warriors attack enemy in lines, so the second one is always blocked and so on, even though I just made them all in the same row, they attack in column and I need to manually click each one, that is a lot of micromanagment for simple tasks. Some do not even attack if the near ally has attacked automatically because he is blocking him, not trying to look for alternative path, they just do nothing. There is distinctive difference between units. Warriors are simplest melee, horsemen are generally strong tanks, some ranged shoot further and catapults deal collateral damage and some heal others or shoot fireballs. Enemies usually attack in few numbers from time to time, so they keep you occupied on top of you managing your units and planning on new buildings. Scouting early is important as the map stays revealed (unless in later Warcraft 3 with fog of war) but there are usually ranged units to ambush you, so it is wise to move in groups, unless you meet a catapult. You can manage only 4 units at once, so placing them in stacks is good idea, moving them around is a pain as big army just does not spread to sides and everyone is blocking neighbour. The game is very slow paced RTS, similar to Knights and Merchants (released 4 years after W1), but AI is slightly better there, if you want to play similar game to Warcraft 1 without fantasy, it is more enjoyable and hard. What story? Unaspiring. 2/5 Story in Warcraft 3 and WoW is dominant, but it is not much in here. Units talk but it feels very generic in-game. Replayability? Poor. 1/5 ☑ The campaign always ends up being same.
Grinding is real. You fight mostly the same enemies in few different types of dungeons. Sometimes there is one fight in whole dungeon, sometimes they surprise you everywhere. Good thing is it runs well on my old non-gaming pc and crashed twice, but good thing is, it threw me back where I ended. Stress is greatly affecting your heroes. When they reach 100 stress, you lose control over them, they hurt themselves, allies and resist healing from healers and eventually die if they reach 200 stress. If hero receives damage and has 1 HP, enters Deaths Door, every other damage can kill him, he only needs to be healed to 1 HP to not get killed by one hit. There are four slots for 4 heroes of 14 different classes. Some heroes can only fight in front, some are effective in the back. I play on Easy (Radiant) mode and it is unbalanced because when I entered level 3 dungeon with level 5 heroes, I lost 2 of them just in 2nd battle, in level 5 dungeon, something similar happened. Because enemies have much better stats, resist your attacks and are faster so while your hero misses once, he hits you twice and you need to remove his debuffs, heal yourself. You must trade wisely with your moves. I also fought boss, he took my hero to his side, the strongest one, she attacked my heroes under enemies command and got them on Deaths Door. I retreated and lost the strongest hero despite, she was almost on full health and not stressed at all. This game is so random I hate it. More I play it to get better at it, more I find randomness ruins my achievements and the game itself does NOT resolve into more fun and addicting. It stays same and you grinding again to get your low level heroes up and spend money into their stats buff.
