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

[Riso]

Like everyone said, the regular Gwent games are the worst part of the game.

 

[cvv]

Which is funny because in TW3 Gwent was the best part of the game.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Good, I hope they take a kick in the fucking pants after what they did to Gwent.

 

[ColCol]

Not surprised, I was wondering why they put so much effort into the game. I loved it, but it was a niche game.

 

[Rahdulan]

Not surprised, I was wondering why they put so much effort into the game. I loved it, but it was a niche game.

Probably because they put Witcher somewhere in the title.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

the amount of effort put into the overland stuff makes me think they're working on a traditional RPG game tbh

don't really like gwent but the story is pretty good

 

[RNGsus]

Too much effort, too much money for a card game... Then again, that's what I paid for W3.

 

[fobia]

I have to travel by train quite a lot, so this would be a cool diversion. Despite it's weaknesses, the Witcher universe is one of the few I still enjoy.
My laptop has integrated graphics though, so no idea whether this will run somewhat decently. CPU and RAM are way above the requirements.
Anyone any experience running this on an "office laptop"?

 

[cvv]

Yeah, I've never thought I'd say this but....this could actually be a nice little mobile game.

 

[KevinV12000]

Here I was, enjoying the hell out of this little gem of a game, when yesterday I come home, hit "Continue," and then find myself back in the kingdom I had recently left behind AND with my party icon stranded on an "X" inaccessible point in the middle of a snowy mountain range.

No way to continue without starting all over, no way to revert back to another save.

GREAT, great game.

LOUSY, lousy save system.

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.gamebanshee.com/reviews/121564-thronebreaker-the-witcher-tales-review/all-pages.html

Introduction

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Talesis CD Projekt Red's latest foray into Andrzej Sapkowski's world of witchers, monsters, and rival kingdoms. However, this time around instead of using the witcher Geralt of Rivia to dispatch monsters in solo combat, you're put in charge of Meve, the queen of Lyria and Rivia, and your focus is more on armies, treaties, and castle sieges.

As the game opens up, you're only worried about some pernicious bandits who have been plaguing your kingdom, but soon enough Nilfgaard invades and you lose your castle -- and you suddenly find yourself in desperate need of allies who can help you to re-take your lands. And that's just in Chapter 1. From there, it's a long road to setting things to rights.

Game Mechanics

Thronebreaker is only sorta, kinda an RPG. You and your soldiers don't gain any experience or levels, there aren't any skill trees, and while the game keeps track of the quests you've completed, I'm not sure what it's counting (unless finding out about a chest and then opening it counts as a "quest"). But you control Meve in the game, and you make a lot of decisions for her, and so Thronebreaker is an RPG in the literal sense since you're role-playing Meve.

But really, Thronebreaker is more of a tactical strategy game, where you control a ragtag army and guide it through various battles, all while collecting resources and keeping up morale. Just imagine if The Witcher (the original one), The Banner Saga, and Heroes of Might and Magic had a night of wild sex. Thronebreaker might be the result.

Each chapter in the campaign is played on a large, linear-ish map. You move Meve on the map by left-clicking where you want her to go. As you explore, you find people to talk to, monsters to defeat, and piles of resources to pick up. Interacting with these objects is accomplished by right-clicking. A lot of what you see is optional, so if a battle is too difficult for you, then you can skip it, and if you just want to hurry through a map, then you can.

The three resources in the game are gold, wood, and recruits. You find gold and wood on the ground, especially after battles, and you gain recruits when you visit towns and ask for support. These resources are used to upgrade the tents in Meve's camp: a tavern (where you can talk to your named companions), a command tent (where you can choose which soldiers fight for you), a training ground (where you can practice your battle tactics), and a workshop (where you can train and upgrade your soldiers).

Sadly, you find way too many resources in the game, to the point where I finished constructing and training everything I needed by the middle of Chapter 4 (out of 6). In particular, I ended the game with almost 800 recruits, which is about ten times as many as I spent. It's one thing to provide players with extra resources, just in case they miss some while exploring, but with that many extra, you might as well not have the resource at all.

Along with resources, you also have to pay attention to the morale of your soldiers, which can be high, low, or neutral. Your choices and actions affect your morale, but after each battle it's reset back to neutral, so it isn't possible to bury yourself in bad decisions. As examples, praying at a shrine raises your morale, while killing enemies in a field hospital lowers it. Morale has a fairly minor effect on the power of your soldiers, so even if you regularly do the "wrong" thing, you should still be able to survive.

During your travels, you often have to make decisions. You might buy supplies or confiscate them, fight a monster or ignore it, or execute prisoners or let them go -- or even let them join you. Thronebreaker mines a lot of the same territory as The Banner Saga here, just with far less in the way of ramifications. As an example, at one point you rescue some peasants, and you have to decide if you want to take them with you. If you do, then they steal some food from your stores, but since food isn't one of your resources, the theft is meaningless. Compare this to The Banner Saga, where losing food might cause your people to start starving and dying.

You also meet some named NPCs during the game. These companions become "hero" soldiers that you can use in combat -- for as long as they travel with you anyway. Companions also provide dialogue during interactions, give you somebody to talk to in your tavern, and provide extra options and strategies during battles.

Combat

Combat in Thronebreaker is handled by playing Gwent, the card-game introduced in The Witcher 3. I've played some RPGs with strange battle mechanics before -- including one that used slot machines -- but Gwent works about as well as anything.

With Gwent, each one of your soldiers is represented by a card. Your deck for a battle must contain 25 cards, and those cards are limited in the total power they can possess (at least theoretically; I never came close to reaching the power limit). Hero cards have the greatest power; regular soldiers have less. You can use at most five copies of each non-hero card. Hero cards are unique. This rule guarantees that your deck has some variety.

A battle proceeds in "rounds." For each round, you and your opponent each get a number of cards, and you alternate playing them until both of you pass (or run out of cards). At that point, the side with the higher total power wins. The victor of the battle is the side that wins two out of three rounds -- at least usually. Some battles are played using only one round.

Unlike The Witcher 3, Gwent in Thronebreaker is played with two rows for cards (instead of three), and cards can be played in either row indiscriminately (so there are no melee, ranged or siege cards). Cards also usually have a skill attached to them (instead of just a power), where that skill typically heals your cards or damages your opponent's cards. And finally, the leader of a side takes part in battles, too, but not as a card. Leaders stand on the sidelines and use an ability every few turns (depending on what they have equipped).

Skills are triggered in a variety of ways. "Deploy" skills are triggered when the card is played, "order" skills are triggered when you choose (but usually after a short delay), "loyalty" skills are triggered when the leader of a side uses their ability, and "deathwish" skills are triggered when the card dies. By the end of the game, I had found over 80 different kinds of cards, with a great variety to the types of skills they had and what those skills did. That gave me all sorts of options for how to build my deck, and I enjoyed trying out different combinations.

As an example, one of the cards is the Lyrian Scytheman. He has power 7, and his loyalty skill is that he gains 7 more power. Meanwhile, there is a special card called Reinforcements that plays all copies of a played card from your deck. So I'd play the Lyrian Scytheman, and then Reinforcements to add four more Scythemen, and then every time I had Meve use her ability, my side gained 35 power, which was nice.

Unfortunately, the balance for the battles is terrible. I think they're supposed to end up somewhere around football or maybe basketball scores, but after Chapter 2, I started regularly winning by over 100. The Scytheman strategy pretty much guaranteed I'd win one round easily, but even without it I could usually kill my opponent's cards as soon as they appeared, and build up my power in the process. I almost never lost a battle, even playing on the "bonebreaker" (aka most difficult) setting, and I rarely had to make adjustments to my strategy, or shuffle cards in or out of my deck. That's just bad, bad, and bad, especially in a game where combat is supposed to be one of the cornerstones.

Luckily, along with the battles, there are also Gwent puzzle games. In these sequences, you're given some specific cards, and you're tasked with achieving some result. Some of the puzzles are basic, where it's just Concentration or a match-3 game, but CD Projekt Red also had some fun in this department. In one puzzle, you help a dog explore a cave and sniff out some food. In another, you help a companion win a drinking contest. The puzzles, by and large, aren't any more difficult than the battles (I only got stuck once, on the very last puzzle), but they're way more entertaining.

Extras

Thronebreaker is played using an isometric view. Nothing about the presentation is fancy or memorable, but it's effective, and you can always tell what things are and where you're allowed to go. Also, the resources that you can pick up almost always have some sort of green coloring to them, making them easy to spot, which is nice.

The star of the game is the writing. Stories about battling kingdoms, with lots of politicking and background shenanigans, are almost always fun, and Thronebreaker's storyline is no exception. Plus, all of the characters are handled well, and they do believable things for believable reasons, with their personal motivations directing their actions rather than the plot. Nobody does evil things and commits atrocities just because they're the bad guy. And best of all, the voice acting is terrific, and the actors always sell their lines. Even the minor characters get nice performances.

As for bugs, I encountered very few. I noticed a couple of typos, and I had a problem with treasure chests where I missed out on an achievement, but there weren't any broken battles or skills, or anything adversely affecting gameplay. That's not bad considering I spent nearly 50 hours with Thronebreaker, especially since the game still hasn't seen a patch. There's a lot of polish to the engine, if not the balance.

Conclusion

Overall, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a nice game. Dare I say "pleasant"? It tells an effective story, and it is polished in many ways, but it's also lightweight. It's far too easy to play, even on the toughest difficulty setting, and it covers a lot of the same ground as The Banner Saga trilogy without providing anywhere near the same sort of tension or pathos. The outlets giving Thronebreaker a 90% or better score are just plain wrong. They're either fooling themselves or trying to fool you. But still, you could do a lot worse than Thronebreaker. If a balance patch comes out, then it might elevate itself to "good," but for now I'd only recommend you try the game out if you can get it on sale. Or if you really love The Witcher and / or Gwent.

 

[SlumLord]

From first ~2 hours it's more about puzzles with very limited deck so only one correct order to play your cards than about deck building and card battles.

Does this get better later on? I watched a few streams back when the game first came out, it seems like you do nothing for the first X hours apart from trying to puzzle out sidequests. Which is annoying as fuck, since all those 1-turn battles can only be won by a single predetermined sequence. It's like wanting to play an RPG with deck building, but the game pigeonholes you into puzzle-solving. I was hoping you'd get to build your own deck and tackle quests on your own terms. Even if you do get to do that later, the fact that most optional battles are basically sequence puzzles kills the game for me.

 

[Vibalist]

Quite a few optional battles are regular battles, not puzzles. Don't worry too much about that.

What you should worry about, however, is that every single regular battle is so easy that puzzle battles, ironically enough, end up being the only fun part about the game.

 

[SlumLord]

Quite a few optional battles are regular battles, not puzzles. Don't worry too much about that.

What you should worry about, however, is that every single regular battle is so easy that puzzle battles, ironically enough, end up being the only fun part about the game.

No worries, I don't play card games to bust my own balls. Thronebreaker is just the right amount of comfy to run through it with one hand on the mouse and another on a cup of hot cocoa.

But thanks for the heads-up, I'll probably pick up the game now.

 

[taomcio]

Cdprojekt needs a real witcher to lift the curse from Thronebreaker. Today is console launch of it and it turns out that on xbox you download a 101MB trailer instead of actual game.

 

[Wolfe]

I have written a review for this game: https://www.thegameslashers.com/2019/01/thronebreaker-the-witcher-tales-review.html/

Pros:
+ Excellently written story, protagonist and cast of characters
+ Many varied, diverse and fun Gwent challenges and puzzles
+ Choices and consequences are well implemented and offer replayability
+ Great use of companions, both in terms of narrative and gameplay
+ Impressive artistic design and attention to details
+ Brilliant soundtrack and voice acting
+ Many references for those who have read the Witcher books

Cons:
– The overabundance of resources trivialises some choices and decreases their emotional impact
– No support for multiple decks discourages experimenting with new decks
– Lack of cards for some factions
– Occasional stutters and freezes
– Somewhat too easy

 

[Hevnknekt]

Gwent died for this.




Btw. KevinV12000, your save files are stored here (consider making periodic backups):
\AppData\LocalLow\CDProjektRED\Thronebreaker\SaveData

 

[Vibalist]

Somewhat too easy? lol.

 

[HarveyBirdman]

The trailer does make me interested. I like revenge stories, and bad-ass women are also very cool. Want to see more.

Cool bad-ass women, Ahmed.

 

[cvv]

Have they listened to the feedback about the easiness and spiced up the game in the meantime?

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

Have they listened to the feedback about the easiness and spiced up the game in the meantime?

Apparently they did, but in a lazy retarded way that doesn't actually spice anything up. Supposedly some enemy cards are a little meatier and worth more points but it doesn't change all the "I win" buttons you get that don't care about enemy points. I'm talking vaguely though since I haven't got it yet myself, might pick it up when it's $10 or something just for the story and moviecards in lobotomized Gwent.

 

[Jokzore]

I miss gwent.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Gwent died for this.

Gwent died because CDP incompetence by trying to change a small but having a strong niche game to try mimicking Hearthstone.

3 lanes was very nice design that was utterly underused due to CDP bad choices.

 

[fantadomat]

I miss gwent.

reinstall witcher 3

 

[Gord]

Got it on the GOG-sale yesterday.
Nice enough game for in-between, but I'm already annoyed by the save system (I'd sometimes like to replay a battle to test a different strategy/succeed with bonus goals).
Also the ration puzzle/normal battles is pretty large, i.e. puzzle battles seem to be the meat of the game, which is both a blessing and a curse - they are varied and can be pretty interesting, but your "normal" deck apparently becomes a kind of afterthought.
Well, maybe this will change later, I'm not that far in yet.