Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Fri Oct 19, 2018 1:18 pm

That was exactly the one I was picturing when I posted :lol:

"Even Rocky had a montaaage..."

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Sun Oct 21, 2018 7:10 am

B&W finished, now back to the main quest!

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Medicine Man » Sun Oct 21, 2018 10:55 am

:lol:

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Jez » Sun Oct 21, 2018 11:51 am

Haha great gif to illustrate
19-10-2003
12072 :-({|=

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Oct 22, 2018 9:40 am

Made it! :D

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*immediately starts New Game+ playthrough* ¬_¬

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Medicine Man » Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:10 am

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Mon Oct 22, 2018 11:19 am

:lol:

Is it weird that I'm sitting here after playing nothing but Witcher 3 for the past month, with Thronebreaker not out until tomorrow, thinking 'what the hell do I do now?'

I've got work to be getting on with I guess, but we're having new carpets fitted today and the house is noisy af.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Wrathbone » Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:04 pm

Wander round local pubs asking people if they want to play a few rounds of cards. Gwent wouldn't be bad.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:13 pm

It was a close run thing :lol:

I'm on flat-pack furniture duties today so I've literally only played the first few minutes and the first card battle in the tutorial so hard to draw any real conclusions, but what little I've seen of it already I've liked.

I don't really get what the RPS reviewer was talking about with Meve's dialogue, though. It's fine.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Wrathbone » Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:16 pm

Thronebreaker's next on my list but I reckon I've still got another 20 or so hours at least left in Pathfinder: Kingmaker.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Oct 25, 2018 10:31 am

Played a little bit more, have exited the tutorial and done the first few battles without the game holding your hand.

I like it. It's not the Gwent we know from Witcher 3. I won't go into the specifics but many cards have unique talents that trigger either when deployed, as orders you can activate whenever you want or when the unit is destroyed... the first and last being similar to Hearthstone. Even in the early game this sets up potential combos... as a basic example your arbalest card gains +1 damage he can target an enemy with for every card already on his row (and despite being a ranged card they, like other cards, can deploy either in the melee or ranged row - the third siege row from W3 has been lost here). You have another card that when deploys spawns a couple of low-value mobs. So a good early combo is to play that card first, then the arbalest on your next go to inflict 4 damage rather than 1 when he deploys.

Then there are unique 'puzzle' battles where you're put in a scenario with specific cards in your hand and a particular task you have to achieve in a certain way. You can replay these, and the first one I faced I needed to do about a dozen times before I hit upon the correct sequence. An easier one put me against four monsters I needed to reduce to 1 health but not kill, and to achieve this you need to deploy the above arbalests in a specific order. Experimenting with these puzzle scenarios is actually quite fun.

Overall it's the type of game I could easily sink hours into. I only meant to play it for 30 minutes this morning with my morning coffee, and ended up doing twice that, coffee untouched and long since grown cold.

Even if you didn't like W3 Gwent but generally enjoy card and/or puzzle games this is still worth looking at, largely because the base game is unrecognisable here.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Fri Oct 26, 2018 3:45 pm

I don't want to give away any spoilers, but just wanted to say, this is really good. It works as a card game and a puzzle game - some of the challenges really have you thinking about the solution - and six hours in (after the initial area you start in) the story is really developing nicely and I've found myself surprisingly engaged in it. I say surprisingly as a compelling story isn't at all what I was expecting from a Gwent-based release.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Thu Nov 01, 2018 1:13 pm

I think I'm in the final stretch now. Again, no spoilers, but I will say it was nice to meet a familiar face, if only for just the one battle ^_^

What I will say is that I think even people that didn't like Witcher 3's Gwent will like this, particularly if they like Hearthstone or similar CCGs. There's far more reliance on combos and building a deck with complementary abilities, and timing and using abilities to damage enemy cards, rather than the simple 'my number is higher than yours, so I win' mechanic of W3 Gwent.

Dj, imho you would dig this.

The puzzle battles are some of my favourites as well, they've really gone above and beyond in being imaginative with scenarios and how to mix up the formula. Some real head-scratchers in there as well.

There's even a tongue-in-cheek Hearthstone tribute in there as well, which was a lot of fun.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Medicine Man » Thu Nov 01, 2018 2:25 pm

Thanks for the updates Sly. It's one that definitely on the radar for me.

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Re: Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales (single-player Gwent RPG)

Post by Sly Boots » Fri Nov 02, 2018 5:13 pm

No problem mate :)

Finished it just now - remained really good until the very end. Moment of frustration in the final battle, until I (belatedly) worked out the tactics that had stood me so well through the rest of the game were utterly useless, and had to go back and tweak my deck to take it a different route. I think I gave the screen the finger when I finally beat the boss (on about the 8th attempt) :lol: A "take that, you Nilfgaard bastard" may also have been uttered. Sweet victory!

In a way, the game maybe could have done with more of that. While the scenarios were very varied and some interesting adaptations of the mechanics, I didn't really struggle with any bout up until then (some of the puzzle scenarios were quite fiendish but don't really count those as they use bespoke decks). I was playing on medium difficulty, so I don't know whether playing it on hard means having to do more strategic deck tweaks.

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