Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is a Gwent card game with adjusted rules and you play in a role of the queen Meve, not the witcher Geralt. It’s a well written story about Nilfgaardian invasion, brilliant voice overs, lip-syncing and graphics. Dialogues are like Banner Saga’s (referenced in-game) and fully voiced. Meve is a spirited leader who will not avoid all the battles. You can make impactful decisions that will determine your next experience with or without your favourite companion/card. Later situations might require you to adjust your tactics or future options will scratch off 1 solution of outside-of-battle problems because you will be missing that one companion. The game has interesting worlds with various environments, finishing the story in one semi-linear world map will prevent you from going back to pick up some forgotten treasures or side quests. So glad, there’s so much content and story turns, it’s not straightforward when selecting ally or foe. Exploring the tactical map is casual and its features are easy to understand, you only use your left and right click on the mouse for controlling everything, map is showing you position of loot and encounters once you find them, or you can discover new ones at the signs or boards. Gather resources; gold, cards, soldiers and treasures which you will find plenty on your travels or build upgrades in a pitch camp’s Workshop, such as new cards, gold and exp boosts, then create additional cards in the Command tent or edit your deck which are limited. Most importantly, you can talk to your companions in the Mess tent who will add up onto the existing story of the game. You can have one Meve’s weapon and trophy per deck that have its own cooldowns, however trinkets are increasing by the time you proceed through the story, and units which you can earn in battle. You can access a pitch camp any time outside the battle. Shrines increase your morale which you can lose when choosing a certain decision over another or after battle. Morale affects the strength of all your cards in the battle. You follow the story at your own pace, the dialogues continue after click (except for cutscenes), so you can explore some areas first, then trigger a puzzle or battle which are displayed with icons, however there are some ambushes. I played on Easy, the difficulty ranges from very hard to very simple but once you exploit all your moves and opponent’s deck, you will always find a solution. Puzzles give you unique cards and rules and must be approached by different tactics than standard battles. Before battle starts you can redraw 10 starter cards up to 6 times per one battle, unlike puzzles which always give you the same cards. You can restart any battle if you are defeated or load the moment before it, even if you quit during battle. I am happily surprised this has proven to be a high quality game and the gameplay trailer pretty much sums up the situations happening on the first map, so you have a good idea what to expect. If you don’t like it, well, there’s more but that’s a pretty much honest trailer.
Other Helpful Reviews for Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
If you take a "Choose Your Own Adventure" novel (reminiscent of those by Ian Livingstone and/or Steve Jackson), give it fully voiced narration and characters, have the dice combat replaced by The Witcher 3's Gwent, and a... Read Full Review
