Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

A must play for all fans of the Wither world. Played for about 9 hours properly, fiddling with gwent, and then completed the rest of the story as a visual novel and still had a more than enjoyable experience. [h3] Gameplay [/h3] Storytelling takes the shape of a visual novel while all other gameplay is handled by the gwent game. This includes even other things that aren’t related to fighting as the game has plenty of puzzle “fights” with totally custom cards. While largely skipping on Gwent in my two playthroughs of the Witcher 3 I found it quite enjoyable. However after I took a long pause from the game and subsequently forgot how to play most efficiently I gave up and just enjoyed the story. I wouldn’t say the combat is hard, but it relies largely on creating synergies between different cards so quite a lot of reading and strategy crafting is required. What I didn’t like that much was the puzzle engagement. I felt a lot of them had only one proper solution and often the sequence of cards isn’t that easy to predict - or at least requires the player to do a lot of easy arithmetic multiple attacks in advance. This wouldn’t be so bad if only there wasn’t a lot of time wasted on animations, waiting for the opponent to finish their turn and one didn’t need to skip through so much information at the start of the fight. That’s also a problem in normal fights where if you make a mistake it takes some time to get back. Thankfully there's an option to skip fights. It must be said that it’s far from optimal - to say the least one is missing a lot of in battle extra dialogue, achievements for those who care, and obviously diminishes the weights of Meves' struggle when each fight ends in 10 seconds and a stunning victory. [h3] Story and worldbuilding [/h3] The worldbuilding in Thronebreaker is one of the best in the series, definitely better than in Witcher 3. The world of Thronebreaker is ugly and miserable (even with being sanitized from the more sensitive topics) and it still holds that the true monsters are the humans/other sentient races. In general the Witcher fairy tail is gone - there are no beautiful witches, no magical lands and only the depressive reality of senseless medieval warfare (not like there is some sense in modern warfare also). I especially liked the inclusion of the morel system which underscores the point pretty well. Contrary to most games where you have some morality system that basically ranks you according to rules of modern society, here Meves isn’t judged by her conscience, but according to the morale system of your soldiers. This means that treating POWs well, being accepting of other races will lead you to losing morale points. On the other sometimes actions like executions, torture, stealing from the common folk will make the morale indicator all green. I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a system, a game that would reward you for being essentially a war criminal. And even outside of this system, you will be often punished for behaving like a “normal” person would. The story itself is well written, beautifully voiced, acted and very well drawn. It’s one of the best in the series and well worth experiencing. [h3] Conclusions [/h3] If you are a fan of the Witcher world this game is a must play. Even for those who aren’t fans of card games, experiencing it just as some 9 hour visual novel is more than worth it.

Bela historia, bem montado o jogo, gwent é clássico...

Absolute cinema! This has to be the most underrated game by CDPR

puzzles interessantes, não muito intuitivos para os mais lesos mas são legais

goods

This game is all about story telling, its gwent based gameplay is atrocious. You dont need to play the Gwent based combat, you can skip it after forfeiting an encounter on the menu, and a recommend you to do it, just play for the story of it. If you like The Witcher series you should get it, theres choices with consequences later, a cool well written narrative, and even a opportunity to became racist against Scoiatael, just like me. :) At least until a play The Witcher 2 and choose Iorveths path I think. And dont go to it thinking that will be a lot of Gerald, he have a single line, appears one single time, gains the title of Gerald of Rivia, and runs off. But do a favor to yourself, and buy it on the 80% off that is almost constantly there.

This is the second time a gwent spin-off manages to be terrible when compared to the witcher 3, story is good but gameplay is awful, and this one is singleplayer they didnt have to worry as much about balance and make it actually fun