My opinion after 20 hours

[Destal]

Here's my opinion about the game if it can help people decide.

First of all, I love the The Witcher 1 and 2, I don't really like The Witcher 3, I don't play the game GWENT, I liked the Gwent in The Witcher 3, and I don't play card games in general.

I play Thronebreaker in maximum difficulty, I currently have 20 hours of gameplay:
+ Beautiful design (map, characters, cards)
+ Very good story and characters
+ Awesome sound design (music, sound and voices)
- It's ♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy (just can't imagine in lower difficulties and if you are a veteran of card games)
- Too many fights with "special rules" that make me think "OMG let me play my deck in real conditions!"

About the "mobile game" aspect that some have mentioned, probably because you click things and it gives you gold/wood/soldiers: first of all I don't like mobile games in general, and I especially hate the ones where you tap things to get resources. Thronebreaker gameplay has nothing to do with that, you move on a map and you find resources, there is no mobile feeling here in my opinion.

[Fargol]

Can you explain further what you mean by "special rules"?

[Destal]

Originally posted by Fargol:

Can you explain further what you mean by "special rules"?

A normal fight is: you use your deck, the player with the most points wins the round, you must win two rounds to win the game. This are the classic Gwent rules as far as I know.

Now you very often have special rules when starting a fight. Let's say "mutators". A very common one is that there is only one round to win. Another one is you must do a special action in order to win, like killing an enemy card or not losing one you have for this fight only. Sometimes you have your deck but the enemy deck is very special like there is a "gate card" and "wall cards" and you must destroy the gate.

You have puzzles too, where not only you have a special deck, but the cards are special too and don't appear anywhere else in the game, they have special effects only used for this puzzle, and your goal is to solve the puzzle like "escaping from a prison", "every enemy must have 1 HP", things like that, and there is often only one way to do it, using the cards the game gave to you in the right order and there effects on the right cards.

[Kyutaru]

Originally posted by Fargol:

Can you explain further what you mean by "special rules"?

About half of the battles in the game have a special win condition that you can or must aim for. This isn't simply a game of building an awesome deck. You will run into boss fights and encounters where your goal is contrary to how your deck normally works and must use the cards at your disposal in creative ways. There are also many puzzle encounters that give you a fixed deck and you must figure out how to use those cards to win.

As an example of a fight with special rules, there is a part early in the game where bandit wagons are attempting to escape. If you allow three wagons to escape, you lose. So you have to play the game around trying to prevent the wagons from escaping with special rules for how they do so. Overall it's not that difficult if you have a balanced deck with a variety of options and the hero cards make certain maps very easy to clear. Black Rayna is overpowered in combination with Xavier and will turn your deck into an elf-killing machine regardless of the special rules.

[Lagrange]

This is badly written. You CANT play your deck in puzzles.

Think of the puzzles like a math problem with only one answer. No matter what the answer is, the logic will more or less the same. You cannot use "division" (your own deck) to solve an "addition" problem. You need different tools.

your deck is your army used to beat monsters and fight nilfgaard