Poorly balanced. Playing on medium difficulty and only Act 1 presented any real challenge since at that point your deck's quite limited. But as soon as you jump into the next chapter, any real challenge disappears from the game. That manticore miniboss fight? Visually looked so cool. Designed so cheaply and poorly! Poor UI/UX. Text widgets showing up on top or under reach other. Actions will happen and reactions will trigger with no explanation. Compare that to HS and the way they use language, animation, and graphic design to make sure the player understands the current card and all resulting effects. There's a card that supposed to damage a unit by 5 and if the row is on fire, damage all units by 5. So far, this card has done none of these effects for me. Is that a bug?! Numerous other weirdness such as Gascon not strengthening himself every time a unit has moved or Isbel not counting up the amount of damage done in the round. And yet, it is still quite impossible to lose a game! Other row, opposite row, enemy row, opponent row, all these phrases are interachangeable and mean nothing and everything. You will slowly and painfully realize that it's not what the card tells you but what it does in practice. So be prepared for a lot of wasted plays and tons of repetition. The only positives here are story and presentation. Narrative design is top notch as with all CDPR games and the presentation is pretty and fairy-tale'ish with a hint of "choose your own adventure". Voice acting and audio design is excellent. The camera's motion is also far from smooth when Meve is traversing the map. There's a constant visible lag and jerkiness to it that is quite uncomfortable for the eyes. The original creator of Gwent is gone and it shows. I can't recommend this game at full price. It tried so hard to be Hearthstone, failed, and ended up losing sight of Gwent.
