there are WAY too many puzzle battles

[Beardedragon]

I love the game, it feels great.

i like special battles, with MY Gwent cards and regular battles.

i absolutely HATE puzzle matches. because its a custom deck, with custom text often, in a single way to beat the enemy, mostly. not several, usually just one. get it wrong and lose.

im sorry but who ever thought puzzle matches were fun deserves to die. i HATE them, and they have NOTHING to do with the game. well maybe they have something, but why the ♥♥♥♥ did i get a camp where i can train soldiers, if puzzle matches throws that out the window?

seriously, screw puzzle matches. i do them, then look up youtube how to do it because i dont ♥♥♥♥ing want to read up every single cards details and then plan on paper the ONE AND ONLY way to win.

i just want to play ffs. ♥♥♥♥ these puzzle matches.

great game, im having fun, no sarcasm there, but ♥♥♥♥ those puzzle matches. they can burn in hell. they are the biggest waste of time for me, forcing me to either redo battles over and over with their stupid custom decks and custom rules, rather than letting me use the deck ive grown customed to, in special battles, which is actually fun. The puzzle battle to regular battles ratio is too much in puzzle matches favor its sickening.

♥♥♥♥ custom battles and reduce their numbers. make more regular matches would you?!

[Beardedragon]

Originally posted by Zulfurlubak:

Originally posted by Beardedragon:

except skipping it means not getting a reward from it. at least i didnt get one when i skipped it.

Skipping battles (including puzzles) DOES provide full associated rewards. I've just spent 5 minutes of my life to double-check it. Just keep in mind that not every puzzle battle rewards you with new cards, some of them are for fun only, provide a bit of resources scattered around battle place or allow you to access extra areas of the map previously blocked by aformentioned puzzle battle.

odd..

i have only skipped one puzzle battle but that gave me literally nothing. maybe it was just that one.

[Popo]

lol . u got to have patience and a head to play the puzzles. if u have neither , just play standard ones :P

[Devoras]

The first battle after the tutorial against the drowners convinced me that this isn't the game I thought it was and I wasn't going to enjoy it, uninstalled before I wasted more time on it.

[Dragon]

A lot of posts in this thread advise the OP to "puzzles are optional so just ignore them." Even if they are optional, ignoring them is not good advice. The means the player who does so is skipping content which they paid for.

It's not the player's fault that the game has bad elements in it. That's the designers' and producers' faults. Therefore, they should be the ones who have the onus on them to fix the bad elements (or better yet, don't include bad elements into the game in the first place).

[Devoras]

Well it is somewhat subjective, some people will like the puzzles. But for me the problem is I was expecting an rpg/ card game, but it's actually a puzzle/ card game.

[Zulfurlubak]

Originally posted by Dragon:

A lot of posts in this thread advise the OP to "puzzles are optional so just ignore them." Even if they are optional, ignoring them is not good advice. The means the player who does so is skipping content which they paid for.

It's not the player's fault that the game has bad elements in it. That's the designers' and producers' faults. Therefore, they should be the ones who have the onus on them to fix the bad elements (or better yet, don't include bad elements into the game in the first place).

You do realize that good or bad is subjective, don't you? I personally enjoyed puzzles a great deal, much more than than ordinary easy battles. So, what, I should start asking developers to put more puzzle battles into the future Witcher Tales games?

[b/s]

I must strongly disagree with this complaint. For me the puzzles are the best part of the game and they are very well build around the story and the world. The game is way too easy even on the hardest difficulty so this puzzles are a very nice addition. And as said, if you don't like them, you can skip them.

[Devoras]

Different people have varying interests so some will like the puzzles. When I bought it I was expecting a sort of rpg/ card game, but instead they just give you set decks with only one convoluted way to win instead of letting you build your own army and use your own strategies. It's similar to the feeling if you bought a first person shooter game but that game ended up being a walking simulator instead.

I just think the games appearance was misleading; though to be fair I should have done more research before getting it. There isn't really any sense of progression if you're just given the cards that you have to use, not much sense of overall strategy when you're forced to use just one specific method to win a battle.

[Sarsben]

Originally posted by Dragon:

A lot of posts in this thread advise the OP to "puzzles are optional so just ignore them." Even if they are optional, ignoring them is not good advice. The means the player who does so is skipping content which they paid for.

It's not the player's fault that the game has bad elements in it. That's the designers' and producers' faults. Therefore, they should be the ones who have the onus on them to fix the bad elements (or better yet, don't include bad elements into the game in the first place).

"Skipping content the player paid for" is a consideration in basically every game in existence that has optional content. The content is there because some people like it and enjoy doing it, and it's optional because the designers didn't want to force anyone to do it in order to experience the story or reach the end; otherwise it would have been part of the critical path. The Witcher 3 is a massive game with a ton of optional content-- should a player feel obliged to do every single thing there is to do in the game, even if they don't enjoy it, for no other reason than that they paid for that content?

Furthermore, plenty of non-puzzle games have puzzles, optional or not. I don't really see the puzzle battles in Thronebreaker as being any different than puzzles or minigames you'd encounter in an action game or any other type of game in which puzzles don't make up the core gameplay. They exist to provide variety and additional, almost entirely optional content for players who enjoy it. Non-puzzle battles still outnumber puzzle battles significantly. I can sort of understand why someone who doesn't like them might feel as though there are too many, but to suggest they have no place in the game simply because they deviate from the core gameplay is silly. I personally think there are slightly too many standard three round filler battles, with no unique rules or conditions, especially toward the end, but those are almost entirely optional as well, and I'm choosing to do them, so that's on me.

I find it interesting, too, that people are complaining about this game having an abundance of gameplay that's unconnected to the standard gameplay and progression of the game it's in, when Gwent itself began as a side activity in Witcher 3 that was completely unconnected to the standard gameplay and progression in that game.

[Devoras]

It feels really out of place to attack a group of drowners(which while it might be optional, certainly seems like something you need to do) and suddenly not be able to use your army to do it. From what little I saw, those puzzle battles are integrated too much into the game to feel right ignoring them. If instead you just went up to a sign or something and were given the option to do an optional puzzle fight instead of actively encountering the drowners on the map, it wouldn't feel like you were missing out on the game so much if you skip it. If drowners are attacking a village, you feel obligated to help them out; it's a bit jarring to try to do that and then not be able to actually use your army.

I don't believe there was any point in witcher 3 where they took away all your skills and equipment you've built up and give you a stock set of abilities instead, within which there's only one way to beat your opponent. That would have made witcher 3 annoying too, if that sort of thing had been a significant part of the game.

[Zulfurlubak]

Originally posted by Devoras:

I don't believe there was any point in witcher 3 where they took away all your skills and equipment you've built up and give you a stock set of abilities instead, within which there's only one way to beat your opponent.

But there is, actually. It's called Gwent.
Or hacking vending machines mini-game in Bioshock 1. Doctor mini-game in recent Pathologic 2. Or.. well you've got the idea. Most of the games have some sort of mini-games integrated in them, sometimes with gameplay that is drastically different from the gameplay of main game.

[Devoras]

Originally posted by Zulfurlubak:

Originally posted by Devoras:

I don't believe there was any point in witcher 3 where they took away all your skills and equipment you've built up and give you a stock set of abilities instead, within which there's only one way to beat your opponent.

But there is, actually. It's called Gwent.
Or hacking vending machines mini-game in Bioshock 1. Doctor mini-game in recent Pathologic 2. Or.. well you've got the idea. Most of the games have some sort of mini-games integrated in them, sometimes with gameplay that is drastically different from the gameplay of main game.

That's not exactly the same thing, mini games are different than what we're talking about. What we're talking about is them taking a normal part of the game(ie. you engaging in battles) and then changing the rules on you. Those puzzle battles are too integrated into the game, they seem like normal battles until you get into them. You should be able to fight the drowners with your normal army if you want, it doesn't make any sense for you to magically have different units and cards for no reason just for one battle. Where did those units and cards come from? Where did they go after? It's stupid. It's also pointless, why bother building up your army when you can't use them.

[Golfbag Mansampler]

Puzzle battles turn this game into a tedious grind.

The VAST MAJORITY of Witcher fans wanted to experience epic army battles ala Gwent, and to be immersed in great lore and story.

Having to fiddly fart around doing high school math puzzles to reduce monsters in one row to only 1 point is just plain horse sh!t. And these puzzles are way too linear.
You can't even choose your cards, and are pipelined into playing what the developers want you to play, not what you want to play.

You can't just march past the puzzles, as you need the resources, and several times they're in your way.

Not a good game. All the spin off 'card games' from the franchise are pretty meh, and they don't address the key winning factors in these sorts of games: Easy to pick up, hard to put down.

Thronebreaker sucks. How the hell can a minigame from Witcher 3 beat an entire full game on the topic?

[Sarsben]

Witcher 3 had Gwent, horse races, and fist fights, all of which were almost entirely optional but offered rewards and were occasionally tied to side quests, and all of them rendered your character build and equipment irrelevant. Plenty of games have this in the form of minigames. The recent PS4 Spider-Man game has you doing little chemistry minigames in between standard gameplay, gives rewards for doing it, and sometimes even forces you to do it as part of the story. This sort of thing is really not that unusual at all. I think Thronebreaker handles it about as well as can be done by making the vast majority of them optional, and diverse enough that even if some of them annoy you, there will probably be others you'll like. Unless you just hate the idea of doing anything in a card battle game other than play the same standard battles with the same cards and same strategy over and over.

I'm being very thorough in the game, but I had all camp upgrades unlocked before reaching the final main map area in the game, and I currently have a ridiculous amount of money and wood with nothing to spend it on, so obviously you don't have to do every puzzle or optional encounter to unlock things. And regular battles (both standard and shortened) still vastly outnumber puzzles, so it's not as if the game is lacking opportunities to play with your own deck.

As for being forced to use special cards and strategies to solve these puzzles instead of using your deck-- that's just your standard arbitrary gameplay contrivance, just like every other video game ever made has. Ever played a game with insurmountable waist-high fences? A game where you aren't allowed to jump? Where you only get three (or five, or ten) dialogue options instead of infinity? Where you're forced to solve a puzzle to proceed instead of finding some other way around? At a certain point, you have to just accept that this is how it works, or find a different game to play.

[Devoras]

I think if they hadn't gone super hardcore with my first battle after the tutorial, the one against the drowners, and made it so difficult and arcane that it was impossible to complete without looking it up, I might have had a different opinion of it. As it was, that battle convinced me the game wasn't what I thought it was, and wasn't for me. A gentler introduction to difficulty might not have had me bounce off it so hard.

Originally posted by Sarsben:

At a certain point, you have to just accept that this is how it works, or find a different game to play.

Well speaking for myself, that's exactly what I did. I uninstalled and moved on; but that doesn't mean I don't regret having bought it. I own thousands of games and thronebreaker joins a fairly small, single digit group of games that I regret having purchased. I mean, it's at the bottom of that list as there are far worse ones, it's far from the worst game I've bought. But it's still on the list, and that's entirely because of the puzzle battles.