ThroneBreaker

It's been out for over an hour and no quicklook yet?

Outrageous!

Witcher world is back!

Oh wow. Didn't realize today was the release date for this. Awesome. I think I'll definitely snag this and play through it during my Extra Life stream in a couple of weeks. Thanks for the heads up duder!

EDIT: If they do a quick look, I imagine it will be Vinny and Alex that run through it considering Vinny is the only member of the crew that seems to even enjoy the Witcher 3, and Alex enjoys Hearthstone/CCGs on occasion.

Put in 3,5 hours and it's already crashed twice for me =/ Playing this thing I can't help but think of Jeffs quote about Geralt in Soulcaliber. Somehow they managed to sneak in sorta unresponsive movement controls in a card game as well. Also, so far this thing is ridiculously easy for anyone familiar with Gwent. I'm even playing on the hardest difficulty and every actual Gwent battle I've done so far I've blasted my opponent away with well over 100 points in the last round.

I love the Witcher series and unfortunately did not like Gwent. I'd kill to just be in the universe again and was hoping this had some good exposition. Is there enough of that if I don't adore the card game itself? I don't hate it just never felt the desire to play much in Witcher 3.

Isn't it common for the last round to be the only real round in Gwent? The first two rounds feel like waiting for the other person to waste good cards and passing then saving everything for the last round.

@merxworx01: That's like base level Gwent strategy. During the more balanced parts of beta it was quite more complicated than that. But still, I've had games in this thing where my opponent ended the last round with less than 15 points and I had close to 200. That means I could probably make 5 very basic mistakes and still win dominantly.

@ares42: There is an interesting meta with this game that although I can't say that I like it I feel like I'm still wrapping my mind around the idea that the winner of the first round is trying to actively win in the 2nd round. The act of giving cards to a round where the loser of round one must win can only mean they will be spending good cards or at least putting up some kind of fight. The first round winner actively engaging to someone who has no other option but to win means burning cards to someone one who if all things are equal will be playing strong cards and is ripe for defeating on the 3rd round.

I know rounds are entrenched in how the game is build but I wonder how this game would play if there was only every one round.

@merxworx01: If the game only had a single round it would be completely dead in the water. It's the one single thing that stops the game from being "who drew the better hand". The whole "when to pass" conundrum is what drives 95% of the decision-making in the game, and it's by far the one thing new players struggle the most with trying to figure out.

No support for ultrawide monitors means I know at least one staff member probably won't play it :P

@ares42: Sure, the added layer of "lose a battle to win a war" is unique to the game and it's nice to feel like I'm slowly grasping some things along the way, I'm pretty new to CCGs so I'll take your word on how well the concept and Gwent in general is received within the CCG community.

@ares42: Yep. Knowing when to pass is 95% of Gwent (in Witcher 3, didn’t play much outside of Witcher 3).

The best games saw both sides tossing down spies and dummies, then trying to suss out whether to throw round one or go for an early win.

I don’t play collectable card games, but I really dug Gwent.

@billymaysrip: Hahahha looking forward to the Rorie monitor rant.

I am a couple of hours in and I am not quite sure what to think of it yet.

Let me be honest -- the overworld kinda sucks. Clicking on resources to gather them is about 50 to 70% of the gameplay outside of the card games. As for the actual Gwent, I am torn. It's certainly a lot more dynamic than OG gwent. However, as far as I am concerned, its a smörgåsbord of special abilities and I hardly feel in control because of all the synergies and chains going on. The raw power value of the cards hardly matters anymore -- the cards mostly duke it out with each other in direct combat.

As for the Gwent puzzles, they are rather restrictive. So far I managed, but I can't shake the feeling that these are designed to function as extended tutorial for Gwent proper. I fear that they might get convoluted and frustrating in the mid/late game.

The writing is decent so far, but oddly restraint. I hope the main story picks up soon, so far it is rather tame for Witcher standards. Bandits, attacking army ... the usual.

I'm about 7 hours in and just got to the second overworld map about maybe an hour ago. I'm really liking the game, though more for getting more Witcher than the actual game. Gwent is quite different from Witcher 3 and the original beta of the standalone multiplayer, and I'm not sure if its for the better. There's only been a few regular Gwent battles against the AI and they've all been quite easy and kind of lackluster. I have enjoyed the Gwent puzzles though, especially once they started getting more complicated. The overworld looks beautiful, but its often hard to tell where your character is allowed to go, and all the resource clicking is boring. There also seem to be plenty of resources to build everything at your camp, so no tough decisions there (yet, anyway, maybe some of the later upgrades are much more expensive).

The writing is solid throughout, and really picks up at the end of the first map. There's some decent short stories and moral decisions to make throughout the overworld, with consequences, albeit often minor ones (changes in resource stockpiles) sometimes occurring hours later. I'm not sure how much the main story itself can change, I haven't encountered any choices yet that seems like they would change anything beyond some dialog flavor, but I haven't tried save scumming (which seems hard to do in this game) to see for sure. I am invested in the main story though and, post-Act I-climax, I'm very interested in finding out just how dark the writers will let the story and main character become.

In particular, will Meve have the option to execute her own son once she retakes her kingdom?

This definitely deserves a Quick Look, I have a feeling Thronebreaker might've flown under a lot of people's radars. It certainly flew under mine, I was expecting a more Hearthstone-like tacked on singleplayer expansion and not a 30-hour RPG.

Anyway, I just beat it and liked it a bunch. I haven't played Gwent since the beta and don't really know if the changes they made are for better or worse in a competitive sense, but I like the look at least and for singleplayer the gameplay was complex and engaging enough. All the standard battles were very easy, but I feel that a difficulty much higher than that would've been fatiguing and made the game drag on for too long. One criticism I have about the standard gameplay is that it doesn't really matter what your opponent is doing and the AI doesn't really care about your side of the board either, save for some very obvious threats. Very early on I stopped trying to keep track of all the synergies or other triggers my opponent had (it was honestly just too much) and basically just defaulted to the same Wagenburg + War Wagon combos in every match, later on you can get some pretty OP cards that will make the battles even more mindless. There was a very big difficulty spike in the final boss, though. Or so I thought, for me the solution was to engage with the opponent even less, stuff my deck full of card draw and fodder and just Dime Bomb for the win, which was funny to me since the last time I played Gwent proper, "Just Dime Bomb LOOOOL" was pretty much the only way to win against Northern Realms. However, a lot of the battles with special rules were fun and refreshing and the puzzles, while sometimes frustrating, were clever and inventive. Which is probably why there aren't a whole lot of standard battles and most matches either have special rules or are shortened.

The writing was good and it really feels like you're picking between two evils every time you're asked to make a decision, but often I was irked by the lack of available compromise, it feels like most of the time someone will end up pissed off or someone else will end up dead. The long-lasting consequences aren't immediately obvious either, to the point that even after beating the game I'm still wondering about the effects of my choices; how many of them were mere illusion and how much did they actually steer the course of these characters. Obviously the larger story will follow the same main beats, but I'm considering a second playthrough to see if I can keep more people happy... or alive. Come back to me Rayla, I'll gladly murder those wounded Scoia'tael if it means I get to keep your OP card :(

The soundtrack is also killer.

I’m replaying Witcher 3, since there are apparently no recently released and acclaimed open world games out there...

Gwent in Witcher 3, definately has this nice game of cat and mouse with spy and dummy cards. I usually try to get mine out in the first round and either play or pass based on the size of my point deficit and card surplus. Sometimes, this happens in round 2, though.

Also, medic cards are interesting, as you can use a good card to help force your opponent into playing more cards, and without wasting a dummy, play that card again in a later round.

No idea how this translates to Thronebreaker, but being back into Witcher 3 Gwent has been cool.

For the record, I don’t recall enjoying the Gwent beta very much...

I have been playing quite a bit of this.

It has most of the good bits of story and character you want from the Witcher in smaller doses.

The Gwent part is easily the worst part about it. Gwent has been through radical changed through the years it has been in beta, and it just got a huge overhaul with thronebreaker. Some of the base might still be in place but gwent feels completely different. Probably a better basis than it had in the Witcher 3, but Gwent is still a somewhat middling cardgame when you compare to some of the good ones out there.

I wish they did This or another one like it with a tactics aspect instead of a cardgame. Alas, this was used to promote their Stand-alone gwent thing, so doubt that will happen.