Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Review
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - The RPG that plays cards on the tableA hobby of The Witcher 3 that has become a game in its own right, the Gwent grows narrative wings with the arrival of its scripted campaign called Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales. Planned from the presentation of the title during E3 2016, this solo mode has gained its independence to become a stand-alone in its own right. Thirty hours of lifespan, fully doubled characters, a world to explore and dozens of card duels await the player in this adventure of careful writing and gameplay constantly renewed by specific events. The cards are played, on the way to Lyria!
A small inventory is essential before the complete reading of this test. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is the name given to the scripted solo campaign for Gwent: The Witcher Card Game. Unlike the competitive multiplayer component of the game, Thronebreaker is not free-to-play, but paid stand-alone. The title is distributed on the CD Projekt GoG platform and does not require the installation of Gwent in order to be launched. In the wake of this launch, Gwent: The Witcher Card Game, the other free-to-play multiplayer component of the game, focused on its gameplay via various revisions of its rules of play. The latest and most important is called Homecoming and intends to change the way we play Gwent. Homecoming and Thronebreaker are released together and both use these new game mechanics.
CARDS ON CARD
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - The RPG that plays cards on the table
The player embodies Queen Meve of Lyria and Rivie
Fully scripted, Thronebreaker takes the player on board for about thirty hours of content at the heart of the conflict between the provinces of Lyria and Rivie against the surprise attack by Nilfgaard's forces. Fans of The Witcher's universe will find it easy to find some of the major themes of the license. Consequences of the war on populations, power games between sovereigns, place given to non-human peoples in these troubled times, this stand-alone offers a new look at the challenges of the witcher's world. Geralt de Riv does appear in this adventure, but it is through the prism of politics and under the gaze of a sovereign that we see how the war with Nilfgaard advances and affects the northern kingdoms. And if the fights take place via clashes of interposed cards, the title offers a real adventure tinged with several RPG elements. It is divided into several parts, linked together by the famous card duels of Gwent.
The player here embodies Queen Meve, leader of the Rivie and Lyrie who will have a lot to do to try to butt out of his lands the Nilfgaardian troops and regain position on his throne. For the record, it is this same character who granted the witcher Geralt his title of Chevalier de Rivie in the saga of novels by Andrzej Sapkowski. The first minutes of the game do not place us not in front of a Gwent board, but in direct command of the sovereign to direct in top view on an interactive map. Villages and fields to explore, NPCs to chat with and enemies to face, the environment is rightly and richly portrayed in the most successful cel shadé style. It’s on this map that the various events of Thronebreaker take place in a dynamic way, in the manner of a Heroes of Might and Magic to which the game pays great homage. All this is accompanied by a high-quality soundtrack that should delight the ears of fans of The Witcher 3 OST.
Movements are made in real time on the map and give the player a certain freedom. Walking around the area participating in card battles allows you to collect different resources necessary for progression: gold, wood and additional units. These currencies are used to resolve conflicts, to pay new troops or to help the population. If the sovereign's basic deck is predefined at the start of the adventure, careful exploration of the map and the achievement of its various main or secondary missions offer the possibility of recovering new maps. Troop management involves the deployment of our mobile camp, a bivouac available at all times out of combat, a sort of Darkest Dungeon HUB. For resources, the player can craft cards related to his progress, improve them or unlock different bonuses for the adventure.
A HISTORY OF CARDS
True to its big brother RPG The Witcher 3, Thronebreaker gives pride of place to storytelling. His scripted journey offers around thirty hours of play carried by some 80 side quests and a good package of dialogue phases fully dubbed in several languages including French. These many narrative sequences are for the most part in the form of cartoon boards animated with restraint for a result certainly rather static, but pleasing to the eye. Quite talkative, the title has a very neat writing, rich in nuances, which has nothing to envy to that of the trilogy The Witcher. If the visual presentation of dialogues remains static, our various decisions imply moral choices with more or less direct consequences on the continuation of things. Choosing to help an elf manhandled by the mob, sparing a highway bandit, forcibly recruiting a band of peasants, these choices have repercussions on the management of our resources as well as on the morale of our units. Certain decisions cause your troops' morale to fall into the red, inflicting a penalty of 1 of power on each card in your deck. Neutral morale has no impact, while positive morale gives a bonus of 1.
Without ever falling into Manicheism, the narrative of the game manages to surprise us more than once with sometimes unexpected consequences. Do not be afraid of the resource management and morale component of this Thronebreaker, the latter remains fairly basic and actually serves much more storytelling than gameplay in card duels. The applied exploration of the map and its missions also offers many opportunities to fill your pockets and boost the morale of our army before going back to battle. We would have liked a bit more impact on the adventure in the event of poor management of its resources, but CD Projekt wanted not to penalize the player on this aspect of the game. The entire narrative and exploratory component of the title adds in the end a huge layer of interactivity to this Thronebreaker and makes it the best narrative experience encountered in the world of card games.
PUZZLE AND DRAGONS
The stand-alone Gwent has evolved a lot over the course of its various updates. First very close to the rules established by The Witcher 3, he gradually emancipated himself from his model in order to better define his multiplayer dynamics. Thronebreaker marks in this sense the beginning of the revival for the game since the release of this stand-alone accompanies the arrival of the Homecoming update for the competitive free-to-play part of the title.
In this sense, the old-fashioned game board gives up its visual aspect of a tavern table to become a more realistic representation of a battlefield. Much more detailed than in the past, the duel area is getting a facelift and proudly displays a completely new scene with the physical presence of our commander modeled in 3D on the side of the field. The visuals of the maps take a huge leap forward and are equipped with superb animations to accompany the new representation of the environmental effects on the rows. While some may regret the disappearance of the bistro-style game associated with Gwent from The Witcher 3, this new game board further transmits the feeling of positioning its troops on a real battlefield.
The rule of the duel in three rounds with the conditions of victory relative to the cumulative power of our troops on the ground does not change. CD Projekt, on the other hand, reduces the number of rows of action to two instead of three in order to emphasize the importance of good positioning during the confrontations. Preconstructed by the Polish studio, the sovereign's basic deck is expanding with new cards and therefore new opportunities for interaction throughout the adventure. Some units have special orders that can be used to trigger different effects on the ground. Once made, an order can only be restarted under certain conditions or when special cards arrive on one of the rows. Other units gain strength when troops appear alongside them or when damage is dealt during the battle. These different mechanics considerably reinforce the importance of combos and interactions between units. Strategy and planning here become crucial to victory.
Especially since Thronebreaker spices up the vast majority of its card duels with different rules and special constraints. Classic battles in three rounds are ultimately quite rare during the adventure, they regularly give way to unique confrontations with new rules closely related to the scenario. Defeat your opponent in a single turn, protect a herd of cows from the voracious appetite of a Wyverne, defend a Stone Troll, avoid a rock fall, these duels in the form of puzzles imply a very good knowledge of synergies from his deck. With our hand limited to the cards provided by the scenario, the difficulty of these puzzles lies in the player’s ability to align the right combination of units and abilities at specific moments in the game. So prepare to break your teeth several times before finally finding the solution to these meetings with the strong Die & Retry dimension.
There is however no game over in Thronebreaker, the player can restart the fight as many times as he wishes until he understands the specifics. Our various failures act ultimately as excellent tools for learning the rules of Gwent, learning the hard way, of course, but just as useful in this solo campaign as in the multi-free-to-play component of the game. Easy mode remains available and allows you to fully pass the battles if only the scripted part of the game makes you eye. If they lack a bit of elasticity at the start of the adventure, the strategies required to gain victory are enriched with the acquisition of new cards and make each confrontation unique and exciting. The title never forces you, however, to rethink your deck in order to overcome an obstacle, you sometimes swap a card or two, without immersing your hands in the advanced deck construction system of Gwent.
The notes
+ Positive points
Captivating script with writing full of qualities and nuances.
The very successful environment, rich in detail.
Strategic card battles (special mention to puzzles)
Carefully animated maps and playing fields.
Excellent service life
This OST!
-Negative points
Little variety in the construction of his deck
"Die & Retry" aspect which could put off some
Managing shrinking resources
Thanks to a captivating story served by a script and characters with quality writing, Thronebreaker gives us a new vision of Gwent. More than a simple card game, more than an introduction to the multi part of the title, CD Projekt offers us a narrative and interactive adventure successfully mixing scripted duels and RPG elements. Lovers of collectible card games will find a real strategic depth in the confrontations in the form of puzzles while lovers of The Witcher will discover a new chapter in the world of the witcher.
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