Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales Review (PS4)
Having not been able to get enough of the Witcher 3 game, and loving the side game named 'Gwent' that is played as a mini-game, I took the plunge and bought Thronebreaker on the back of some great reviews.
With Metacritic scores in the 80’s I figured this was going to be good, but not good as in The Witcher 3.
I do like decent stories and the look of the screenshots reminded me of the old Microprose game of Magic the Gathering.
You roamed a corridor, hit a bad guy and then played cards with him for victory.
That's what one does when meeting a pack of thugs down a dodgy alley right? Get the cards out and snarl, 'I will kick your arse at cards motherfuckers!'
Shalandar (The MTG game) still has a huge following, and although written for DOS, yes DOS.. there are guides around on how to make this dinosaur work on Windows 10.
If Thronebreaker was another 'Shalandar' then I would be having massive erections followed by multi-orgasms simultaneously. Wait, is that possible?
After a few minutes of bumf and some story, if you like, you are presented with Queen Meve the protagonist walking around this 2D screen. For around the first hour it's more like a training exercise in learning the game.
Some of the excellent music from The Witcher 3 has made it to Thronebreaker and I felt the atmosphere seeping in, but not for long.
There’s a camp section, you can build your deck and add upgrade the workshop which amongst other things allows you to buy troops and train them.
The dialogue is done well with voice actors and there are some decisions you need to make. These are remembered throughout the game and there are implications.
It’s nothing we have not seen before, and similar to the TellTale series of the Walking Dead in this respect.
Then things start to go downhill.
If you have played Gwent in The Witcher 3, then you will be familiar with the rules, know that duels are open and it’s up to you to win by playing the correct strategies.
The battles are NOT the same in Thronebreaker. They are made up of puzzles and there's only a single way to win.
If you don't place the cards correctly then you are shown one defeat after another. The puzzles are not mandatory and can be bypassed in most cases but then you are losing a large part of the gameplay.
With the card rules not being much like Gwent at all, I was still struggling to learn what to do and had to resort to watching YouTube spoilers to win these stupid puzzles.
After around 3 hours and not getting out of the first section I had played zero open deck games and was getting pissed off and bored.
Everything is linear and there is no diversion from where the game wants to take you.
A Missed Opportuity
Thronebreaker could have been something special. Nothing would ever be as good as Shandalar, though I am looking at this old dinosaur with rose-tinted glasses in the year 2020.
Lose the puzzles and replace them with regular open-ended card games. If this was done then I would now be playing Thronebreaker and not writing this negative review.
As it stands, I can't recommend this game and as it was a digital purchase, I can't even sell it. We need ownership of content and not this old fashioned crap we still have.
All images were captured by me using the PS4 snapshot utility, copied to a USB stick and then used here. Why does nobody else do this?
If you found this article so invigorating that you are now a positively googly-eyed, drooling lunatic with dripping saliva or even if you liked it just a bit, then please upvote, comment, resteem, engage me or all of these things.
Sounds like a pretty frustrating game to me. I actually don't play Gwent in the game. I don't understand the rules. I think I won once, but the other two or three times I haven't been able to get a victory. Maybe you need to do a tutorial in a future post. That would be nice :)
Gwent is not so hard.. when all the shit settles I may do something like this.
Ha, I've started this a few months back but it d didn't really grab me... You beat me to the review!
I had high hopes for it, and that made it all the worse. As it's only purchasable via the PS Store, I waited for it to be on sale and then made a grab.
Why do those reviews place it so highly? It gets boring very quickly. Such potentntial and waste.
I got it on pc via a GOG sale... The story is vaguely interesting, but the game is more like a puzzle game than Gwent.