The Witcher Tales ( PC )

Beaten in: 25 Hours

Difficulty: BoneBreaker ( Hard )

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a role-playing strategy video game developed by CD Projekt RED. It is a single-player spin-off of Gwent: The Witcher Card Game which was released on 23 October 2018. Been a prequel to the witcher games. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales follows Meve, queen of the northern kingdoms of Lyria and Rivia, a woman who is said to be a formidable warrior and a wise ruler. The tale starts right after a meeting between the kings of the North, Vizimir of Redania, Foltest of Temeria, Demavend of Aedirn and Henselt of Kawdwen, an event which is fully detailed in the Blood of Elves novel. Following the meeting, Meve and her retinue are forced to deal, on the way back to the capital, to deal with a crisis involving a group of bandits called the Strays of Spalla. Little does the queen know, however, that something much bigger is brewing, and the Nilfgaardian invasion of her kingdoms is only the tip of the iceberg.

This game was indeed a unique game that i have played in 2018 and i have to say “CD Projekt Red” has nailed it once again, Here is my thoughts / review on “Thronebreaker – The Witcher Tales”:

Pros:

• Lets start of with the story, Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales tells its plot in a very engaging way. The most important events are represented with some beautiful art in the vein of The Witcher 3’s recaps told by a really well written and voice-acted Storyteller who guides you through the game, while dialogues between major characters are shown with big, animated sprites of the involved characters. Other story events are simply narrated, with more art being shown to give players an idea of what is happening. While all this may be different from what fans of The Witcher series are used to, it works incredibly well.

• And the Presentation of Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is also excellent. The art used during story sequences is beautiful and so are the locations ( 4 maps been the main part of them ), which are filled with detail at every turn. Menus are also extremely easy to navigate no matter the used control scheme, and the soundtrack in on par with The Witcher 3’s one, with a few standout pieces that better highlight some of the most important story events. Voice acting is just as good as the soundtrack, with British accents giving the game a true medieval feel.

• Also speaking of the excellent narration by the storyteller. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales’ story is extremely gripping, and not only thanks to how it’s told. It starts a bit slow, but things ramp up before long, making it difficult for players to put the game down. 

• Characters are extremely likable and believable, especially main character Meve, and his two partners Gascon and Reynard with their writing been excellent done from beginning to end. All dialogues are also voiced, which helps immersion considerably. Those who have read the novels will also find plenty of references to The Witcher books, with some unexpected returning characters. Interaction with other characters involves, most of the times, making different choices, in true The Witcher fashion. All Meve’s choices have consequences: they may improve the army’s morale, lead to the finding of treasure, lead to a loss of resource and even prevent some characters from joining the Queen. There aren’t big story repercussions, so don’t expect branching paths like in The Witcher 2, but what’s in the game makes the choice feel real, and not just a gameplay gimmick.

• What’s most surprising about Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is how CDPR managed to create an incredibly engaging gameplay experience based on Gwent, the card game originally introduced in The Witcher 3 and later released as a stand-alone title. The game plays like a true role-playing game: during the course of the game, players will control Meve in a top-down view as she and her army traverses a lot of different regions, some of which never appeared before in any game of the series, like Aedirn, Lyria, and Mahakam, home of the dwarves. But Where Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales truly differs from most RPGs released so far is when Meve’s army has to engage the enemy. The game’s battle system is based upon the Gwent Homecoming redesign, which brings a lot of important changes, such as the different number of lines, now two instead of three, and a lot of balance tweaks. At the beginning of the game, players will have a pre-built card deck which is more than enough to deal with most battles, but there’s plenty of customization possibilities if the players want to engage in them.

• While it’s not really possible to improve single cards with experience points and similar mechanics, there’s still plenty of room for improvement in Meve’s army. During the campaign, players can access the Camp at any time and use its many facilities to unlock additional cards, check out documents, play against the AI in a practice match and unlock additional perks for Meve and her army, such as increased movement speed on the map and higher recruitment limit, which is extremely important when building a deck, as all cards require a certain amount of resources to be kept in the deck, with better cards requiring more.

• If you are those kind of people who likes soundtrack in the games, Well i have good news. It FAN-FREAKING-TASTIC and nearly as good as the soundtrack in the “Witcher 3”. It’s a joy to listen to and especially there are 2 soundtracks that are stuck in my head

• And as this game is based on “Gwent Card game”. You think that the 2 rounds matches is the only mode there is to play, Well you areWrong, During the course of the game, players very rarely will play a “Three round regular” game of Gwent as most battles come with different objectives, like destroying a specific card, preventing one from moving across the board and so on. The different objectives force players to adapt to the situation, making everything quite varied and engaging. Even more engaging are the optionalPuzzle battles, which task players with completing a certain objective using a custom deck created for the occasion.

Cons:

• While the Gwent game like combat is fun, It is too easy to beat the enemies as even on the Bonebreaker difficulty ( which is the hardest one ) it feels like a piece of cake except of 3 battles i remember i been stuck for a while, it does not match the difficulty i had faced when playing gwent on the Witcher 3…. It was not hard Until i got into another huge issue in this game which made it even more easy for me

• Some cards are just way too OP and especially 2 cards that i remember in my head as of typing the review. It can be almost broken and can you can Abused them a lot ( if you want to ). I remember i was stuck in a game for almost 15 minutes featuring a monster with lot of HP, i was customizing the deck, thinking in which way to beat him until i used 1 specific card ( if you have him till than ) and that just exploited the game. Not like i will reduce my rating on it but i had to mention it as there are many times which you can exploit the poor game if you want ( Don’t tho )

• Speaking of cards, As you play through the game and get new cards every time, you collect a crap ton of cards and sadly you do not use all of them ( you can use them if you want but one card will be better than the other one so you will just ignore the weak card ).

• As you are exploring the map, you gather resources of Coins, Wood and soldiers, you use first two to upgrade your camp ( which is your home base ) to get new cards and some small abilities and the soldiers for some events during the game. Problem is that it is useful during the first half of the game but when you have upgraded everything they become useless in the final chapters of the game. Wish they had some other way to use them when you have already upgraded your basse fully.

• There is No consequences for battle loss which sucks. I wish they would punish you ( not hard but smaller ) by losing some coins or some other way

Final Verdict: 9 / 10 ( Fantastic )

Despite the issues, CD Projekt Red’s “Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales” is a wonderful RPG game and the risk they took to make something different payed off. They nailed the difficult choices i had to make during my playthrough as i was sitting there thinking which is less evil than another. Although it’s a narrative-driven game, Thronebreaker is a great tutorial for CDPR’s Gwent card game with exquisite combination of deep storytelling and refined card game combat mechanics, Thronebreaker delivers an exceptional RPG experience that not many developers can achieve these days. It’s a pity that Geralt’s saga has ended after just three games ( Or as they say it 🤔), but Thronebreaker is definitely going to quench your thirst for anything The Witcher related, at least for a while.