Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales assessment – an emotive RPG with grand ambition

Meve is offended, and her son goes to learn about it. As the pair meet at a feast within the dwarven kingdom of Mahakam, the queen rounds on her son, giving him a verbal hiding the likes of which solely a mom can.

Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is perhaps a card game, nevertheless it’s one strung along with the excessive drama of castle-age fantasy, the harsher scuffles of medieval life boiling beneath. It’s a really totally different promote to what developer CD Projekt Red has produced earlier than. But what’s most obvious is that The Witcher’s narrative DNA is as carefully woven right here as anyplace within the unique trilogy.

Playing as Meve, queen of the dual kingdoms of Lyria and Rivia, you come back from a peace summit to seek out your kingdom in tatters. Worse nonetheless, the invading Nilfgaardian enemy are at the doorstep. As you wander the continent in an try and put your homeland again collectively, the conflicts that Meve and her military enter are resolved by games of Gwent, by which your troopers and generals are represented by the playing cards you play.

If you’re conversant in Gwent, both from The Witcher Three or the standalone game, the model on provide in Thronebreaker is straightforward to recognise. But a card game balanced round a single-player marketing campaign may be very totally different to 1 constructed for multiplayer. Some encounters in Thronebreaker have particular objectives so that you can fulfil – destroying a specific card, for instance, or preserving your personal troopers protected – in order that they really feel like puzzles to unravel. Others require you to plan your strikes throughout three rounds – a aspect you’ll keep in mind from earlier iterations of Gwent if you happen to performed them. These work nicely as an introducing to Gwent for brand new gamers whereas veterans can benefit from the problem offered by such restrictions.

Mostly, nevertheless, you might want to gear your deck to ensure you’re able to rack up as many factors as potential in a single spherical. Finish with greater than your opponent and also you’ll be victorious. Often meaning a selected deck will carry you thru swathes of the game at a time. There’s nothing unsuitable with that, however I get the impression that’s not what CD Projekt is aiming for with Thronebreaker.

It’s theoretically potential so that you can construction and restructure your military on the fly. Meve can arrange camp, head to her command tent, and construct a brand new deck with relative ease. Different named characters – your lieutenants and advisors – include particular results that can help you construct your military round what is going to synergise with them most successfully. A siege engineer I rescue from the Nilfgaardians works brilliantly with my mangonels and arbalists. An Aedirnian soldier I come throughout will get extra highly effective with each elven unit I kill. A brigand who joins my military is best with a pack of slingers at his aspect. It’s a system I can see making an attempt desperately to emerge, to show deck constructing into a fancy net of viable methods, nevertheless it’s simply not as efficient as merely amassing factors and injury.

In my total time with Thronebreaker I solely change my military a handful of occasions, and even these events are largely the results of recruiting a brand new character. I’ve been capable of make my method throughout half of the Northern Realms whereas barely straying from a handful of fundamental models, ensuring to make use of the identical easy combos I do know will make it straightforward to rack up a very good rating. With neither the heightened complexity of the unique single-player model of Gwent, nor the deck constructing on provide within the multiplayer standalone game, opting into each Thronebreaker encounter quickly feels repetitive.

While Thronebreaker struggles to ship on the potential of its fight, its world and story are a saving grace. Meve is talked about briefly in Sapkowski’s unique novels, however in a fashion imprecise sufficient that CDPR is ready to ship her on her personal journey, exploring locations we by no means obtained to see within the Witcher games. From the snow-capped peaks of Mahakam to the sweltering swamps of Angren, Thronebreaker’s narrative scale explores the continent in a method that Geralt by no means might.

Meve wanders an isometric model of her world. Despite its truncated geography, it’s surprisingly detailed, and every of the 5 nations you go to really feel distinct. Lyria’s rolling fields make method for a labyrinthine forest adopted by desolation by the hands of the Nilfgaardians in Aedirn. Mahakam’s slender mountain passes push you ahead, whereas there’s an oppressive, heavy really feel to the darkish swamps of Angren. You by no means actually get to go to the bigger cities of those realms, however the nations past them are stuffed with the identical sense of vitality I used to be struck by once I first arrived in White Orchard.

It’s completely potential to reach in a brand new place and run straight from one main questline to a different, however as in any good RPG, doing so solely means you miss out on a wealth of worthy side-quests. For probably the most half, these play out by having you get your hands on a monster cave, bandit camp, or Nilfgaardian settlement after which defeating them in battle. Then it’s a matter of what you select to do with what you uncover there. One side-quest has me chase after some bandits who raided a temple, to verify they don’t escape with their ill-gotten features. After I declare again the gold, I resolve to maintain it for myself – Meve has a military to feed, in any case, and I don’t worry repercussion from the nuns.

 

This being a Witcher game, that alternative quickly comes again to chunk me. More than one subsequent encounter might play out very in another way if I’d returned my prize. It’s these shades of gray – the sense that not often is anybody ever 100% proper or unsuitable – that make these selections so significant. That’s what you’d count on from a Witcher spin-off game, however what’s totally different in Thronebreaker are the stakes – they are often agonisingly excessive. The selections Geralt makes are likely to have an effect on his personal life. But Meve is a queen, with kingdoms to look at over and topics to look after, and so you’ve gotten much more to contemplate. In occasions of battle, it’s straightforward to argue {that a} well-fed military is extra necessary than a bunch of ravenous villagers, however when confronted with the human value of these actions the choice turns into much more tough to make.

Not all the alternatives you need to make in Thronebreaker are so gruelling. Dealing with the person characters you meet alongside the way in which is much less fraught, and it’s to the game’s profit. I take nearly anybody I can below my wing, which makes for an attention-grabbing balancing act as I attempt to preserve totally different advisers blissful, and it additionally helps weave an intricate narrative net round Meve. Many of my companions by no means make it onto the battlefield, however I nonetheless need to preserve them round – if solely to extend the capability for disagreements and inside battle. One adviser disobeys orders in Mahakam, forcing me to banish them from my social gathering, however that one interplay yields responses from different characters who I not often hear from. Despite the game’s decreased scope, the characters and side-quests on provide are tangled in the identical intricate knots as any in The Witcher 3.

If you’re in search of an in-depth card game then Thronebreaker might be not for you. There are some nice concepts hidden just below its floor, however I discover its tackle Gwent simplistic. Fans of The Witcher and its bedrock of interwoven tales, nevertheless, are brilliantly catered for. It’s not the deepest RPG, however Meve is a superb alternative of major character – a strong and devoted matriarch the likes of which we don’t see sufficient of in games. That mentioned, Thronebreaker’s biggest success is its supporting forged. Brilliantly drawn and fantastically voiced, every one oozes character, which means even this pared-down Witcher expertise teems with the identical sense of life as its predecessors.