January 11th, 2018
Those of you that played Witcher 3 may be familiar with Gwent, the absurdly popular Witcher 3 minigame that was made into its own stand-alone video game after approximately a million people asked for it. I’ve always thought that CD Projekt Red seemed a little miffed that people wanted a “simple” card game over their graphically intensive RPGs, so the announcement of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales didn’t surprise me that much. After all, what’s better than a free-to-play card game based on a minigame in a video game based on a book series? Obviously it’s a card game video game based on an untold story from a book series with a video game series that inspired the card game.
Thronebreaker is based on a relatively unknown part of the Witcher series, specifically Queen Meve’s guerrilla activity during the second Northern War. Those who read the books will remember that this was the second time Nilfgaard tried to invade the Northern Realms, about five or six years before the games, and those who haven’t read the books will probably be very lost. Yes, Thronebreaker is a story that is meant for people that know and loved the Witcher books, with references to events and characters that were never seen in the games and may just lead to confusion for those who don’t know the “history” of the second Northern War. This comes to a particular head when Geralt shows up for just one fight, seemingly out of the blue, and then vanishes two minutes later off-screen with nothing more than a passing reference. But hey, anything that might encourage more people to read the Witcher books is okay with me.
Thronebreaker’s gameplay is split into three parts: playing Gwent, traveling across the map, and “tough choices.” We’ll go through the latter two partsin a minute, but the game is built around Gwent so we’ll spend the most time on that. This isn’t the Gwent you might remember from Witcher 3, or even from any foray you may have made while the stand-alone Gwent was in beta. Instead it’s the “new and improved Homecoming” version of Gwent, featuring two rows instead of three, leaders and cards with repeatable abilities, and frankly an absurd amount of card draw. If this doesn’t sound like the Gwent you may have known in Witcher 3…it isn’t, but it works very well for one of Thronebreaker’s highlights: the puzzles.
As you move through the game’s map, gathering resources and triggering quests, you’ll find two types of enemy encounters that are played out through Gwent: regular battles and puzzles. The regular battles are just straightforward games of Gwent, typically using whatever deck you’ve built using Thronebreaker’s custom cards, and almost always far too easy to even mention. I’d consider myself to be pretty good at card games, but I’d imagine most people will be able to get through the regular Gwent games with very little trouble, especially considering how good your starting deck can be. The puzzles are the real joy, with creative brain teasers of all sorts that range from very easy to moderately difficult while utilizing the new mechanics from Homecoming Gwent to their fullest. The biggest problem with these puzzles is that they’re still limited by Gwent’s own mechanics, specifically that you can only play one card per turn and need to press “end turn” and wait for the turn end animations to finish before you can play another card. This is especially painful in a puzzle that parodies Hearthstone, since in Hearthstone you can play as many cards as you want (if you resources allow, of course) but Gwent’s “one card per turn” policy cripples any similarity after the first few turns.
Gwent’s own mechanics clashing with Thronebreaker’s puzzles also goes the other way however, as players moving from Thronebreaker to Gwent may find themselves in for a rude awakening. Cards in Thronebreaker are either far more powerful than they are in Gwent or simply don’t exist at all, which is a bit questionable when you consider that some people might get interested in Gwent after playing Thronebreaker. It’s especially weird that Queen Meve isn’t in the stand-alone Gwent either, but maybe she’ll be added later in an expansion that CDPR will release later in Gwent’s lifetime.
Outside of playing Gwent you’ll spend most of your time controlling Meve across several maps like an old school adventure game. It generally feels like filler as you wander around, uncovering relatively inconsequential secrets (unlockables for Gwent), finding optional battles or puzzles, and gathering resources to craft new cards and upgrade your military camp. Every so often you find little prompts or other events that will give you additional resources or a choice that will impact the morale of your soldiers, which affects the strength of your cards. These choices can be generic things, like whether you build a bridge or ambush some elves, but every so often you come upon choices that are so many moral shades of gray you may need to pull out your paint swatch to help make your decisions. While the game does have multiple endings the effects of these choices generally have more of a direct impact on your Gwent deck, since you may acquire some cards and others may “leave” your army/deck depending on what you decide to do. It’s a real shame too, because some of the best cards are cards that you’ll either lose later or lose your morals as you try to keep your precious cards. I do enjoy games where your party members could end up leaving you, forcing you to choose between your own sense of right and wrong vs losing a valuable ally, but the game is so easy anyway that most of the time these losses only affected me in the “oh darn, I was hoping to learn more about this character” kind of way.
In fact that’s probably the biggest problem with Thronebreaker: most of it just feels rather boring. Whether it’s plodding around to find resources or fighting yet ANOTHER GOD DAMN PACK OF VAMPIRES, the ease of the Gwent games and the relatively uselessness of resources after a point (you never lose any as a result of the Gwent matches, despite the story telling you you’ll lose a ton of soldiers during sieges or whatever else) just turns much of Thronebreaker into a chore after the first two or three maps. Some of the story beats and puzzles are worth all the monotony, and if you play real Gwent you can keep unlocking rewards for that game, but if you aren’t invested in learning more about minor Witcher characters and you don’t REALLY like Gwent then Thronebreaker isn’t worth your time.
