The Witcher Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - Gwent expansion turns into standalone RPG

[Quillon]

Finished the first map, seems its gonna be more open with deck building from second map onwards but its still a low effort game, they didn't even bother with proper pathfinding on the map.

 

[abnaxus]

What happened to Lyria after Witcher 3?

 

[Quillon]

I don't remember, depends on the endings I guess but what happened to any specific kingdom doesn't matter much since they made the map consist of nilfgaard vs north pre-Witcher 3 for simplicity; nilfgaard conquering every kingdom on their way up north, Radovid killing off Henselt so there is no Kaedwen to speak of to complicate things etc. Also Meve wasn't even in W2 when the northern kings met and her kingdom prolly got invaded again & conquered this time between W2 & W3, I don't think CDPR bothered to tell whatever happened to her. Also games aren't canon IIRC

 

[fantadomat]

Make sure to have 1000 bucks saved before attacking the siege army in the first map/chapter. They make you do a choice that ether fucks you up or you have to pay 1000. The retarded part is that i just looted 2000 gold a few seconds after the choice.

The game as whole is.....annoying,too many pointless actions,slow movement,slow animation,hold down a button to do thing,the random cards. The random starting hand is pretty retarded thing,most battles are just one turn and you both try to out kill each other. In the beginning of the turn you get 10 or 8 cards and 6 tries to redraw a card,if you don't like the composition then just restart the battle. Therefore totally useless mechanic that is there to just waste your time.
Also it is just another retarded game with no manual saves,i am tired of all this lazy retardation!!! The auto save happens after everything you do,thus you can't try out different things and see the outcome,it really fucked me with those 1000 bucks.
The writing is meh,the protagonist is typical mery sue,she is just perfect and that is all of her characteristics. It is clear that the writer was jizzing all over himself while writing his tranny wet dreams. Oh and there is a fucking narrator....... it is written as bad as deadfire. I just skip forward every time begins describing the stoic yet gentle pose of our perfect queen .



PS:We really need a vomit smile!

 

[Frozen]

What happened to Lyria after Witcher 3?

Nilfgaard made it great again.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Never interested in gwent not even in the witcher 3

 

[Bocian]

Windbreaker: The Bitcher Tales

 

[fantadomat]

Decided to download a far superior game....King's bounty .

 

[The Wall]

The game is great and a lot of the puzzles in it are interesting. Decisions have fucking weight as the game ravages you each time you make a humanitarian choice and rewards being an uncaring despot. The supporting characters are great as well and well leave you/betray you if you do not follow their whims.

So basically Poles gave us Crusader Kings: The Card Game

 

[Ibn Sina]

Finally completed it. Overall the battles get very easy once you build a deck impossible to beat. The soundtrack, presentation and art direction is overall excellent . I was surprised by the story and it turned out to be very good. Meve is a great character and the supporting characters are great in a typical Witcher fashion. I forgave my 16th year old brat at the end and it turned out to be a good choice.

Overall I would not call thronebreaker an RPG, but it does have great C&C more than 99% of rpgs out there. Definitely worth the price.

 

[Projas]

So I got to Mahakam. I'm guessing that's past or very close to the midway point in the game given that I have all the camp upgrades unlocked. Putting it on hold for now, but might finish at some point in the future.

Overall I'm kinda disappointed. Did you guys ever play Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes? This is p. much that, except with cards instead of connect three. The most fun thing about the game is the puzzles. Lot of other battles also give you alternative objectives or some cards on board to make the battle more unique. So that's nice. If you were looking to play actual Gwent in singleplayer, you might be disappointed. Normal three round battles are extremely rare. Battles are usually one round only and rather than having to win point advantage you often have to kill shit on board. Deckbuilding is extremely underwhelming. The most variety is probably in the trinkets which you can have like 4 in your deck and get quite a lot of them by playing the game. Sometimes you get unique cards based on what companions you are traveling with. The bulk of your deck is the cards you can unlock through the camp buildings and then craft. And the selection is rather pisspoor. You can forget playing with cards you know from online Gwent. Last thing that affects deckbuilding is what weapon you equip on Meve, which is just what determines your active ability. There's no other chardev, itemization or deckbuilding apart from these things.

Also, difficulty. I was frequently ending battles having over 10 times more points than my opponent. And this was on the highest difficulty setting mind you. I don't know if this gets better later in the game, but I doubt it. Basically the only challenge the game offers is whether you can figure out a puzzle or not. The resource system is also extremely generous and you will likely be swimming in money, making most of the C&C involving resources (or morale because everything is super easy even on low morale) rather pointless. Overland map felt like pointless busywork. Just click on resources and go from point of interest to point of interest. Can't really miss anything because you can use the scout ability for absurdly low price (50g).

Writing is serviceable I guess. Didn't stand out to me as particularily great, but not bad either. Can't really judge how good the C&C is since I didn't finish the game, but I assume there is some payoff for the decisions I made down the line. Sometimes you get new weapon or card based on your choices which is nice. Lot of it is about exchanging resources/morale which is like I said mostly pointless.

Also this

• Thronebreaker will be an RPG, not a card game

is def. not true. This game is not an RPG by any definition of the word.

 

[Junmarko]

Fact that they decided to keep this separate from GwentWCG is a nice surprise. Assumed the mere announcement of an Online TCG meant CDPR were giving up on DRM-free.

Respeck

 

[Lacrymas]

they have a whole website dedicated to the no DRM thing, I doubt they'll give up on it soon.

 

[Junmarko]

they have a whole website dedicated to the no DRM thing, I doubt they'll give up on it soon.

Yeah, I meant in terms of them entering the f2p market with Gwent - could lead to a shift in company focus. Both for the GoG ecosystem and CDPR's own projects.

Ubisoft lowers the bar every chance they get, Double-DRM with Uplay in Steam, and now selling "loot-crates" in their single player games (odyssey) - you just fear the industry standard as a whole will just take a hit.

Glad to see CDPR won't budge.

 

[Mark Richard]

Projas has the right of it. Deckbuilding is beyond stingy. It takes too long for things to open up, there's little incentive to experiment, and the selection of cards is paltry. What happened to the rush? I would've pushed my own grandmother down the stairs for a Gwent card in The Witcher 3.

Similar story with the difficulty. The game did offer a challenge at first, prompting multiple restarts during each battle in order to develop a winning strategy. This stops before reaching Mahakam. The highest difficulty setting was no match for drummers, which can quickly flood the board when backed up by cards that refresh their summon ability. Even if an opponent were to somehow whittle me down, their impending victory is easily stolen by Isabel's companion card. She boosts the remaining cards with the damage taken throughout the entire battle, often by hundreds of points. It's like a win button.

I'd give Thronebreaker a miss unless you're a diehard Witcher fan that has a replica of Geralt's codpiece. One of the few good things I can say about it is that it spreads an immutable truth - elves cannot be trusted and should be wiped out.

 

[Quillon]

elves cannot be trusted and should be wiped out.

 

[Salvo]

Story, setting, atmosphere, music and overall feeling are all phenomenal. The game is very, very pretty and a joy to watch.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the gameplay itself. It is simply too easy, thus invalidating what's supposed to be the most important part of the game: deck-building and then playing with the deck you built. The puzzles where you have a pre-built deck are quite enjoyable though.

Choices and consequences are good, with some even coming to bite you down the road hours later, which is very impressive for what's supposed to be a simple card game.

Final verdict is: if you're a storyfag like myself and are looking for more things in the Witcher setting / a good story to enjoy, buy this. If you instead are searching for a complex game with difficult and meaningful gameplay, you should probably skip this one, at least until they rebalance it.

 

[St Antony of Padua]

Miss seeing Ludo on here sometimes.

 

[Zer0wing]

Decided to download a far superior game....King's bounty .

Why not Etherlords? Same gameplay gimmick as Thronebreaker (cards) but better execution.

 

[fantadomat]

Decided to download a far superior game....King's bounty .

Why not Etherlords? Same gameplay gimmick as Thronebreaker (cards) but better execution.

I forgot about it,also it is a bitch to find and run. Still a good game.

 

[Vibalist]

Yeah, the difficulty in this game is shit. So shit I stopped playing.

Thronebreaker will often present you with scenarios where you can spend a certain amount of resources to avoid a bad situation. Presumably because there is supposed to be an advantage to conserving resources so you can upgrade your camp and build a better deck, but there isn't, as resources are so plentiful you cannot run out of them, even if you make a concious effort to waste every last piece of gold and wood.

The basic gameplay could have been so, so good if resources were actually scarce. And if battles weren't so ridiculously easy that you could win them by a 50 point margin even if you made up a deck consisting only of the shittiest cards. They could replace the battle screen with a literal "I win" button, and it would be the exact same experience in terms of challenge. I'm not exaggerating when I say this is the easiest video game I have ever played. In my entire life.

It sucks, because the basic concept is good: A relatively simple, 'Witcher lite' experience with the same attention to detail and C&C (although I haven't really run into any consequences as of yet, and I'm halfway through the game) with a simple, enjoyable, easy-to-learn-hard-to-master combat system, deck building, exploration and resource management, but the execution is terrible.

The game has good artwork, voice acting and characters. That's about it. Get it on sale if you're an absolute sucker for Witcher content, otherwise pass.

 

[Infinitron]

 

[LESS T_T]

Steam release:



Buyers will get Witcher 1 for free on Steam.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

When I saw the screenshots the first time, I hoped it would be a cool tactical game with rpg elements... but instead of well built encounters, unit development and itemization I got fucking cards.
Why cards ffs, why do devs insist on putting stupid cards everywhere. The art direction is beautiful, the story is not bad, but those repetitive, too-easy card encounters...

 

[Infinitron]

Sad! https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-tales-hasnt-done-as-well-as-cd-projekt-hoped

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales hasn't done as well as CD Projekt hoped
GOG exclusivity didn't really work.

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales, which we've reviewed and Recommended, hasn't sold as strongly as CD Projekt Red hoped.

Here's the admission by joint-CEO Adam Kiciński in a CDP financial call yesterday: "The game appealed to the community, which drove up our expectations regarding sales. Unfortunately, as yet, these expectations have not been fulfilled. Still, we remain optimistic ... We expect to continue to sell Thronebreaker for many years to come, even though the initial period may not have lived up to our initial expectations."

It explains why Thronebreaker suddenly appeared on Steam after originally being declared a GOG exclusive - a milestone moment for CD Projekt's digital game shop. But it didn't quite work.

"The game appeared on GOG first for fairly straightforward reasons," said Kiciński. "GOG is our priority platform and we wanted to release the game there first to gamers who support us there. However, the reach of GOG is incomparably smaller than that of Steam. We know that there's a large Witcher fan community on Steam and that's why we also released the game there."

Was a Steam release always part of the plan, then? "We consider various options at successive stages and we do not rigidly stick to a single long-term plan," he said. "While I do not want to go into details, we are aware of our options and a Steam release had always been considered."

The Steam release shows CDP cannot do without Valve's platform yet. It's a pertinent development in a marketplace trying to find ways to move away from the crowded shelves of Steam. Perhaps more importantly, it suggests CD Projekt won't try similar with Cyberpunk 2077, although it would be a missed opportunity not to leverage GOG at all.

"You should not draw unwarranted conclusions concerning the future," Kiciński said, as if reading my mind. "Thronebreaker is a very unusual project from our perspective and it should not be viewed as a mould for our other releases."

Thronebreaker is, as he says, "unusual". It was originally a smaller, single-player Gwent campaign, but CD Projekt Red sensed an opportunity and blew it out into a 30-hour standalone game. And it's excellent. Its storytelling is as strong as The Witcher 3's and its world as brutal, and the many ways CDPR finds to vary the underlying Gwent rules for encounters is inspired.

Clearly, Thronebreaker was a considerable undertaking, but if Thronebreaker fails to take off will CD Projekt Red bother doing similar again? Or will "The Witcher Tales" live and die in one game?

"Regarding further instalments of The Witcher Tales, we have made no announcements in this regard," said Kiciński. "Of course, depending on the results of Thronebreaker - I assume that it will continue to positively affect our bottom line; it is not, of course, a financial failure, it's just that our expectations are very high - these factors will be considered when making decisions regarding future releases of this type, but it's too early to provide any specifics."

About Gwent specifically, he added: "We will carry on with our work on Gwent. We regard it as a strategic project: in addition to business expectations we also treat the game as an experiment which precedes other multiplayer products of this type."

Thronebreaker's fortunes should improve with the impending PlayStation 4 and Xbox One release on 4th December, which coincides with the 1.0 Homecoming release of Gwent on consoles. Sadly, a Switch version isn't part of the plan - not yet, at least.