What’s Your Opinion of Thronebreaker? [Spoilers]

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After finishing the game, for someone who have read the books it's an enjoyable game, the cutscenes, the dialogues, etc, are very nice to read and watch.

Game wise, it's a joke, a super easy game where you can finish it with your eyes closed in the harder difficulty, it even become boring when you didn't even need to change your deck, when you could get all buildings and cards and even with that ended with a spare of 60k-20k gold-wood.

Imo, 30$ is expensive for how easy the game is. The more you advance in the story the less meaning your cards have. I ended just stomping everything as fast as I could just to listen to the story and see how it ended, the gameplay was just not worth it.
 
Will say I found Thronebreaker had a better story than the Witcher 3 for me. I liked how it lined up much closer with the books in therms of athmosphere and lore. For example how Nilfgaard is again potrayed as an evil conquering empire not the nice guys who want to bring equality to the northern realms we saw in Witcher 3. Also glad teh Geralt Cameo wasn´t overblown. Meve herself was a great protagnosits and I really enjoyed the recuitable companions as well. Traveling through the devasteted Norther realms really brough back memories of the books and Geralts and his companions journey through the warzone. Also glad the Drwarfs got some spotlight and we even had a gnome character in the group.

Though I have a few gripes with the story:
-Where was Anseis the whole time? He was briefly mentioned early but after that nothing.
-Why are Villem and Cadwell potrayed as cowardly traitors for becoming a vassal to Nilfgaard when Roche is celebrated a hero for doing the exact same thing in Witcher 3?
-What was the point of Demavends bastard son? Also why wasn´t Stennis at least mentioned?
-Why was Kaedwens invasion of UpperAedirn early in the war never brought up?
-Why does the ending mention Meve would rule on for many years when only 2 years later Nilfgaard is back and Meve kingdoms falls either to them or Redania? Kinda makes the whole story feel pointless if one remembers that shortly afterwards Nilfgaard attacks again and destroyes everything you´ve acomplished.
-A scene, featuring actual dialogue, with the other norther Kings would have been nice.

If these issues were actually adressed somewere and I haven´t seen them, I appologize. Still I think thronebreaker had the strongest story form any games save Witcher 2 so far.
 
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I'm still playing it, but right now it's one of my favorite games ever. (and I've been playing games for decades)

I love everything : the art, the story, the gameplay...

The only critics I can make are :
- It's WAY too easy. We really need a hardcore difficulty because right now, if you're a little bit ranked on GWENT (and there's thousands of players more ranked than I am), nothing is giving you any sense of difficulty. It's just freerolling on everything with no morale or ressources needed.
- Writing could be a bit more deep. It's professionnal and enjoyable to read, but it lacks subtelty. Characters are REALLY cool though.

Anyway it's been a long time since I last enjoyed myself so much, so great thanks for this. I'm poor but I don't regret a single cent of that purchaser.

<3
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And most of all THANK YOU for the female lead.

As a female player, I really crave for that kind of badass and subtle characters. It's a real pleasure to play.

I hope we will get her as a leader in GWENT. (right now I'm only playing Eithne, Francesca and Princess Adda. I'm not that fond of the "elf girl trope" so having a zombie princess and a badass queen is really cool)

And Black Rayla <3 That side cut. So gay. God. Meve x Rayla all the way. <3

I don't know if there will be any romance ending or options but being able to ship Meve with someone would be nice. (ideally Rayla. Yes. I know I'm dreaming. But I'd like to see it happen somewhere else than in a Bioware game. :v )
 
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Nvm. Shipped her with Reynard. A bit boring. Gascon would have been more fun. :p (though I still stand by my Rayla x Meve <3 Some fanfictions are needed here... I need to write a Rayla x Saevel one hur hur hur)
 
Today I finished Thronebreaker! I enjoyed most aspects of the game, its art and the main storyline.

What I liked...
+ the astounding beauty of the maps
+ Meve as a character (voice acting, story)
+ the puzzles, which I found reasonably challenging
+ the RPG elements embedded in the cardgame (and viceversa)

What I didn't like...
- simplified moral system (only 3 levels)
- low difficulty of all standard battles, which were quite one-sided
 
Finally beat whatshisname the final boss, and finished the game.
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All in all, what I said earlier still stands.
The game told me I had spent exactly 21 h 00 min on my playthrough, but Galaxy says more than double that. :unsure:

Anyway, I'm going to have to play through the game again, as I missed one golden chest, some characters and a bunch of achievements. But you know what?
I don't mind, because the game is just that good. :D
 
Now that the game's been patched and it's not crashing while I play, I can give it a serious critique.

To start, I absolutely love this game. It's got a "choose your own adventure" kind of feel to it and I think it's brilliant. The party members are great and I love that there's so much depth and detail put into them, their interactions with each other, and their impact on the story despite the fact that all of them can leave the party and some can perhaps not even be recruited in the first place.

I love the acting, especially Meve's actor. She's phenomenal and suits the character so well. The writing is really good, too. You feel like you're being told a proper story. In games, you often find some pretty lackluster writing that often bores me or even irritates me enough to the point where I don't want to play the game anymore. For being a card game, I was expecting to see weak dialogue and a weak story. I was pleasantly surprised by the strong, tight writing. My only complaint is that sometimes, when I'm forced to make a difficult decision, I don't feel like I have enough information. For example,
when I was trying to figure out what to do with Villem, there was the option to accept all of his conditions. Two of those conditions gave me virtually no information: one had to do with maintaining all of his policies and the other had to do with granting amnesty and protection to his advisors. I couldn't make that decision with ease because I had no idea what his policies were and I didn't know if his advisors were the same people who wanted to lock me away and encourage the "suicide" event.
If I'm playing as a queen or any governing sovereign, I need to have at least some detailed information at my disposal. Otherwise, I could mistake a good choice for a bad one or vice versa.

On the subject of making choices, I think it's a real testament to this game's merit that it allows for such a wide range of decision making with actualized consequences. The devs went all out to pit the player against some really hard decisions, and true to Witcher fashion, there isn't much black and white to be found here. Every decision comes with a price, some more grueling than others. It's very true to life. You can't always please everyone and sometimes when you think you're doing the right thing, it can blow up in your face. There's a lot of replay value in starting up a new game and making different decisions to see how the game will be influenced. I like when games give you choices that actually matter and have a real impact on your journey. Thronebreaker is pretty much all choices all the time, and they all have some impact on your journey and the fates of your teammates.

The art style is really fun. I love how it's like a comic book version of Witcher 3. You feel like you're back in Witcher 3; the world looks and feels the same, just with a different style that's reminiscent of retro adventure games. I love this style and wouldn't mind seeing it again. I also really like the artwork that's part of the storytelling narrative. There were some pretty epic and heroic poses of Meve, and it was fun to finally see some female dwarves with their beards. Those funny propaganda posters in Rivia were also a nice touch.

The music is really good, too. It feels like it's just a continuation of Witcher 3's fantastic suite. Lots of heart and soul in each piece.

Now we come to the card battle portion of my review. I'll open by saying I loved the puzzles. I wouldn't have minded at all if the game had more puzzles and fewer battles. Heck, I would've been fine if the whole game was comprised of puzzles. They were extremely fun to do and I loved the innovation. The easter egg Hearth Stone one was pretty fun, too.

I can't say the same about the battles, though. On the whole, I like the battle system and I especially like the unique boss fights like the Manticore. But it just feels like there's something missing. I'd like more variation in the cards--more units to choose from with some more abilities. I just feel like for being such a large army, there'd be more units to choose from. I think it would've been cool for each member of the party to come with some unique units alongside their gold card. I also don't like how in a battle, sometimes when you select a card, you can't cancel out of playing it. Sometimes when I clicked on a card, I realized playing it wouldn't be the best choice, but was forced to play it regardless because I couldn't back out. I also don't like how if I summon a card like the Arbalest to the field as a replacement for one of the Gheso cards, the ability doesn't trigger and I can't choose which row to place it on. That's seriously annoying because 1) it's a waste to not be able to use the ability, and 2) it can screw up my strategy when the Arbalest decides to go in the opposite row from the Gheso.

Overall, this has been a very fun game to play and I'm starting up my next playthrough soon. I really wish the game hadn't been released with so many glitches and game-breaking bugs. The next time CDPR releases a game like this, I hope they do well to make sure it's been better polished. I wouldn't have minded waiting an extra few months for the release if it had meant a smoother gaming experience. The game still has some bugs, so it's not out of the woods just yet, but at least it isn't crashing after every other battle. I can think of some battles that, if they had crashed on me, would've deterred me from playing the game again just because of the stress and unpredictability caused by the fault. I spent a long time fighting one boss in particular, and if that had crashed on me as I was winning, I would have been furious.

In all, I would love to see more Witcher Tales games. Labeling Thronebreaker as a "card game" is awfully deceiving and does it injustice. It's so much more than that. It's a long, fulfilling campaign and CDPR should receive praise for that. Too many games these days are short, expensive, and offer rehashed tripe. Thronebreaker puts a lot of those games to shame. In my opinion, it offers more as a digital-only, lower priced game than do many blockbuster games. I hope more games like Thronebreaker are on the horizon. There are so many areas of the Witcher lore that CDPR can explore. Lots of potential for another grand scale adventure that Geralt can offer a 2 minute cameo in. Not to mention having some more Skellige raiders crashing the party.

Thanks for this really great game. While many of my friends have been raving over Red Dead Redemption 2, I've been playing Thronebreaker and enjoying it infinitely more.
 
Great game overall with a good solid story, memorable characters, good world building and atmosphere and good music, among many other things. However, when it comes to gameplay, i find it lackluster at best.

- Running around with Meve, clicking on loot(grinding) is far from engaging, specially when most of the game resolves around this. The background and animations are good enough that at least the eyes have something to enjoy, but the mind however...

- Regular battles.
In my opinion simply too many of them and too little challanging. I went trought the whole game on normal(middle difficulty option) only changing 2 or 3 cards at most. I feel as if regular battles along with the resource grinding "exploration", are only there to drag the game for extra hours worth of "content".
I rather have quality content. than quantity. After fighting the same regual battles vs monsters, scoia'tael and nilfgardians for the 100th time it starts to feel very repetitive and more like a chore rather than a pleasant activity.
Story battles and the "side story" battles(with narrative, voice over and unique mechanics) on the other hand are great and refreshing!! But they are few and far apart compared to all the "filler content". I think making all cards animated rather than only a few "special ones", would add a lot of fresh life to the repetitive battle experience and keep the player engaged longer too.

- Puzzles(maybe a little too many of them?). They are either a walk in the park or infuriating hard, i think there needs to be a better balance between the two types. Otherwise they are a much welcomed adition.

- A lot of the feeling of exploration and discovery is lost due to most points of interest, side quest, etc, being market in the map, either due to notice boards, scouts or simply by geting sigly near the place. As for the reward itself... disappointing, there is simply too much loot everywhere, diminishing the exitement of finding it and as such also diminishing its value. Gold Chest in particular feel like a middle finger, rewarding stuff for a different game.

- Connected to the point above, there are very few trully unexpected events, as usually you know something is gonna happen when you get to x position on the map as there is a marker on it.
Most of the small events and interactions, in adition to the player knowing where they are located beforehand, also show you the outcomes for the diferent choises(gain morale but lose money, etc). Making it usually very easy to chose based on rewards rather than posible(unknown) side effects. As a result there is very little tension.

- *Small SPOILER* Regarding camp upgrades, there is never a tough choise on what to spend our resources on. Early on it is hinted that the workshop can only do so many things at once, meaning that we should carefully chose on what path to go, wether to upgrade our "regular soldiers" or our "rogue troops", yet gameplay wise we can simply max out both lines as they are not mutually exclusive nor resources are really scarse at all(even tho lore wise they should be).

- *Small SPOILER* There is no sence of scale regarding Meves group, a number on the top of the screen with x number of recruits is not good enough. Story wise we start with a tiny bunch of guys and by the end we suposely have a big ass army, but we never see this. Meve is only Meve when moving on the map, there are no visible soldiers while on camp, card battles work the same either you have a deck of 200 cards of 25, etc, etc... The only "real" indication to party size is the "camp tent" upgrades, yet those are optional upgrades, so there is no real connection.

- Why is there no mention of Meve's other son?

I personaly think the easiest way to address many of the previous mentioned issues on future The Witcher Tales games, would be to go even more "Banner Saga aproach", with 2d map movement looking at our ever growing army with its banner and heroes, and beatifull landscape on the background, with random events poping up here and there. Such aproach would remove what i consider "forced gameplay"(the weakest part of Thronebreaker) in favor of a more graphical novel ish game with more focus on what it already does the best: narrative and story.

PS: This review pretty much raises most of my points.
 
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I really like it. I do wish you could find treasure instead of just resources though and I do miss the simplicity of Witcher 3 gwent but I love that I can play a female character and I have a bit of a crush on Odo.
 
Like the presentation and exploration. But I feel battles are too RNG based. Will fire hit that one card? Will the opponent spawn a card on this row? Puzzles are fun, though.
 
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I generally liked Thronebreaker very much and I enjoyed it with exception of few "out of place" features, that spoiled perfect impression.

I really liked gameplay. Most of the time, it was very flavourful experience, allowing player to naturally flow in believable fantasy world. Standard battles were fine, but since I play Gwent, it was not the main attraction for me. There were few outstanding exceptions though. The most flavourful standard battle was for me fight against Manticora. Other outstanding battles were finish of Angren with unexpected help in the highest time of need, Geralt himself and his companions. Also the final fight for Rivia castle was satisfying. When it comes to puzzles, I very very much enjoyed them. Some were really fantastic and exceptionals. I especially liked all puzzles with Gascon, at example when he was searching dwarven archives in order to help "bride-to-be". Hearthstone puzzle was also fantastic masterpiece of flavourful reference.

Storyline was catching and breathtaking. It really made me want to play the game to see further course of events. Big bow to story-writers. Thank you very much. Especially end was very resonating in me and I was really touched by Gascons' heroic sacrifice in order to allow chance for victory in critical situation. It was the more touching because he was not soldier in army like all others, he was doing it willingly, especially despite all past harm from Meves' family to his family. For me, Gascon stole (he was thief anyway :p) position of the most sympathetic character in the game.

Graphics were nice and eye-pleasing. I was especially enjoying area-start and area-end zoom-out panoramatic views.

Music was also great. My the most favourite is probably Aedirn forest theme, but genreally, music did great role in supporting game atmosphere.

And now to parts which I did not like. There was unhealthy number of crashes, where game simply stopped working and I had to force-quit it and start again. The most of them were happening in the first part, the Lyria, later it was better, but still not bug-free. However with game so attractive like Thronebreaker, it can be easily overlooked.

What can not be overlooked, is out of place modern agenda, which has no place in fantasy world. I want to mention especially two for me the most annoying moments, that were appearing to me being very forcefully put into game out of ideological reasons rather than fitting into game. First was Black Rayla story, how she won arm-brawling against professional soldier, when she was mere 15 years old, in order to get into army. That was completely unnecessay and completely out of place propaganda. SJW manipulative ideology has no place in fantasy world. If you want to go this way, please do not set it into fantasy genre, but rather find place for it in Cyberpunk, because propaganda is going to be more and more prominent in future rather than medieval fantasy world. Second ideological out of place moment was with Nilfgaardian propaganda and printer workshop. This is fantasy world with swords, arbalests and hand-written books. Generally Nilgaard is supposed to be advanced in technology over Northern Realms, but all the time in history, the main focus in researching was mostly aimed to have military purpose. If Nilfgaardians had already fire weapons, using gunpowder and such, I would believe they also invented mechanized printing. But it is definitely unbelievable to have advanced non-military technology, while military research is stuck at arbalests, especially with military empire like Nilfgaard. Whole theme related to propaganda, migration and female domination was there visibly just for ideological reasons, rather then to support story. It was so obviously out of place, that it is clearly no coincidence, it was there for purpose and that really spoiled otherwise perfect game experience.

So all in all, my summary is, that Thronebreaker is fantastic game with many exceptional features, which are unnecessarily spoiled by forcefully putting modern agenda into "medieval" fantasy world.
 
When I initially played it, I was like "Meh, it's OK. It does needs some tuning to be actually good, but it is OK". The big issue for me is that for around a month I see this game as the thing that killed the game I loved. So the only positive you can hear from me on this game is I liked the lore stuff with the story within the game and the art plus the voice acting.

The actual gameplay grew stale at boring till the end of the game.
 
While there is stuff I like about the game such as the story telling I can't help but feel disappointed with it overall. My biggest complaint so far is that the battles stutter like crazy to where I had to turn the premiums off. This is all the more surprising to me considering I waited to play thronebreaker and it's been patched a few times now. Even after that I can't even play with the premiums on AND some of the battles STILL stutter like crazy and makes the game agony while it's doing it.

My next biggest complaint is how as a veteran Gwent player I wanted thronebreaker to have a difficulty that was challenging for me because that's how I like my puzzles and my card battles. So far I have found the puzzles to be not very interesting or challenging and the actual battles with the cards I choose to be too easy and again not that interesting. I expected after they added the bonebreaker difficulty for the game to be what I was looking for and this overall is not the case.

It feels like the battles were developed to just have each side have insane abilities as unbalanced as possible and they expected players to just love that. To me it just feels a bit lazy. If you know how to recognize and use the OP cards the battles are ridiculously easy. The game just needed more balance than it has and the hardest difficulty needed to be actually hard. I doubt I would buy another single player thronebreaker style game. Definitely not for what I paid for it. This is just my personal opinion. I know plenty of other players loved it for what it is. I do like the graphics of the map and the story telling was very good. I haven't actually completed the game yet but Idon't see my opinion changing by much.

Edit: I have completed the game and I dislike it even more now.
 
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I hope that they'll make the option to transmute TB cards available in the main game. I don't really want to spend the time & money on Thronebreaker.
 
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