Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales
What better time to beat a game then while on vacation at Disney World?! Well after a long day in Animal Kingdom I was settling down in the hotel room and turned on my Switch. Next thing I know I’ve finished the last couple hours!
Thronebreaker is a game that is way out of my comfort zone, but I snagged it on sale earlier this year, and Allie picked it out of my hat. I wanted a portable game I could play while traveling and during downtime at Disney and this was the perfect thing for that! I normally play JRPGs so this card game based RPG was a nice change of pace!
The whole battle system of this game is based on Gwent, the card game from the Witcher series. A traditional battle is three rounds of play, winner of best 2 out of 3 wins the battle. However 75% of the battles are either shortened to one round or have custom decks and you have to solve the puzzle in play. I liked those a lot more than traditional battles. Also there’s a lot of cheese strategies you can employ during regular battles. It was engaging and fun nonetheless.
The gameplay is heavy on making decisions, with almost every decision having a consequence. Sometimes these consequences happen an hour or so later, sometimes many more hours later. These consequences can be good or bad. There is a wide cast of likeable characters to get to know as well. One of my favorite ones to use in battle actually left me because of the choices I made. I didn’t like that, but I also did for the same reasons. More so I liked it because I took the time to try to think about what decisions I was making based on my companions and how they’d react.
There’s also an aspect of resource management for the first 80% of the game, and how you decide which order to upgrade your camp. These upgrades allow you to make stronger cards for battle. I found I didn’t really need to make that many cards, as the starting cards, the unique cards, and cards you acquired throughout were more than enough.
The music was pretty generic, I can’t remember anything standing out. However, the maps were very pleasing to look at. I actually didn’t get any screenshots of in battle, because I’m a horrible person, but you can see the pictures of the maps here. The art was beautiful.
The story is also fantastic. You are Meve, the Queen of Rivia and Lyria. After the prologue and a whirlwind of political drama thrusts you into a journey to reclaim your kingdom from the invading Nilfgaardians. You will travel through five different areas and interact with the many races of the world; elves, dwarves, gnomes, trolls, and more.
I definitely enjoyed my time with Thronebreaker and glad I gave it a shot. If you see it on sale it’s worth the cost of admission and then some. My total play time was about 25 hours. It also ran very well on the Switch in docked and handheld modes. It’s available on almost everything so don’t sleep on it.
