Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales

[shinymcshine]

I'm playing Thronebreaker: Witcher Tales.

 

It's okay, wander around, isometric view, gathering resources, making the side quest choice, and having occasional Gwent battles.

 

It's Gwent that is the central focus, albeit disappointingly it's slightly tweaked from the W3 version - you start off with a compressed deck, and don't really seem to gain new cards in the same way as you did (by winning them). Instead there's a camp option, and you spend resources on them. Added too are puzzles, where you have a single hand one turn to complete different objectives - these are real head scratchers, in terms of understanding card mechanics.

 

For now its just not really as enjoyable, as Gwent was in W3. Perhaps it'll open up later, but the limited deck is frustrating (and THB, I don't even recognise the cards from those previous played with in W3).

 

[Maryokutai]

It takes some time to adjust to it but after a while you should start appreciating it more. The "old" Gwent from the main game wouldn't have been substantial enough to carry an entire game on its shoulders (and Thronebreaker is huge at around 30-35 hours). I also really liked the puzzles with one exception from later in the game (it has two solutions but only accepts one). But it mixes things up nicely and I love how they incorporated some cards into the game as party members/NPCs – or vice-versa depending on how you want to look at it. I hadn't seen a card game bridge gameplay and narrative in this way before.

 

Overall it blew me a bit away to be honest. I think it's an excellent game. It also has some really good dialogue, an intriguing political plot, really nice visuals, a superb soundtrack. No idea why this bombed so hard in terms of sales.

[one-armed dwarf]

I would buy a stand alone triple triad game. 

[shinymcshine]

@Maryokutai that's good to hear, I'll be sticking with it, but the first 3 hrs haven't been quite what I expected.

[shinymcshine]

7hrs, and just as I get reasonably competent with my deck the storyline progresses, and I'm moved onto a different deck, with a whole bunch of new unit tactics to figure out.

 

Which is great, as I'm really enjoying the challenges it throws at you.

 

[Maryokutai]

This is actually where the game properly begins. The entire first area is sort of a prologue/tutorial, you'll have more deck options going forward from now on.

 

Also, as a general tip: whenever you come across a character who looks like he could join you, try your best to make them do just that. There are lots of benefits to having a big party, both on the gameplay and the story side of things.

[shinymcshine]

I'm now back in Rivia, having also met a certain Witcher and his friend, so I feel the end is drawing near.

 

It's a good game, and tells a great story, but the card mechanics, and deck variety, doesn't really feel as rounded as it was in W3.

 

Puzzles can go from really complex headscratchers to simple placement, and occasionally through design or luck I feel I just fluked a few (one notably after trying several approaches, I just passed on my first turn, and won).

 

I also just won a battle against an optional monster that had 700 health, and again not sure whether I ought to have, as the way I did felt a bit 'cheap'. (explained in hidden text below).

 

But I suppose you just have to use the hand you're given (albeit sometimes I'm never sure whether all draws are winnable).

 

Spoiler

The 700 health boss had a dynamic where by eliminating other enemies it increased the damage you did to it - albeit I struggled to get it down much below 300, whilst my hand plateaued around 200.

 

So on a retry I got a Strays Infiltrator + , played it next to the boss, increased my hand by the bosses health + adjacent unit, then later damaged the boss enough to get an easy points victory. 

 

Didn't quite feel the right way, but it worked !

 

[Maryokutai]

I don't think I fought that enemy – did you need Eyck to get access to it? Because I didn't recruit him on my playthrough and regretted it the entire way through.

 

Generally speaking though I felt you had a solid amount of options about your deck and strategy and most of them were viable. With the exception of the final boss, but you'll see that soon enough I guess.

[shinymcshine]

I've got Eyck, but no idea if it was unique to having him. It was in Rivea, where lumberjacks and Nilfgardians had been slaughtered by a mysterious beast.

 

Description below from walkthrough might explain:

Spoiler

Battle - The Guardian of Ruewode

Although eliminating the Leshen is an optional objective, its 700 HP means that you will struggle to win the battle without doing so. It's not as insurmountable as it seems since the more damage it takes, the more damage subsequent attacks do. Killing the wolves and ravens increase the bonus damage inflicted on the Leshen. After a few enemies have been eliminated Arnjolf can do huge damage to the creature every turn. After the battle, make your way to the northeast of this area and approach the necrophages for another battle.

 

I've not been using a walkthrough, but checked up this one to see if the approach I did was the recommended one - clearly not !

[Maryokutai]

Ah, no, I fought that one. Don't remember having particularly big difficulties with it, maybe I just went in with a good deck by chance.

 

I kind of want to play this again but it's barely ben six months. Hm...

[shinymcshine]

Completed the big battle at the castle in Rivia, was expecting credits to roll, but there's more.....

 

Castle Siege :

Spoiler

Had a couple of goes then overhauled my deck once I'd understood the mechanic - seemed little point in destroying their units, since they redrew, and focussed on filling my deck with +10 strength cards to negate the leader order he used each turn (which gave +10 if their unit was higher than yours). Also maxed out the number of Stray Infiltrators I had, to up my unit strength total. Then beat it reasonably comfortably over 2 rounds.

 

[Maryokutai]

I didn't find a way to beat the last boss and had to drop the difficulty down after ten tries or so. I checked online and every guide mentioned a card I didn't have so I don't know if that's really a must or if I just failed to find the proper solution.

[shinymcshine]

12 hours ago, Maryokutai said:

I didn't find a way to beat the last boss and had to drop the difficulty down after ten tries or so. I checked online and every guide mentioned a card I didn't have so I don't know if that's really a must or if I just failed to find the proper solution.

 

 

Now you've got me intrigued as to which card it is and whether I have it or used it....?

 

I've been playing on "battle-hardened" (medium/normal) level.

 

Spoiler

I remodelled my deck, used a few Strays Infiltrators+, used the Muzzle trinket to seize one of his units (the one that gets +2 for every order), used Reinforcement trinket to summon a bunch of Stray Slingers+ (which I used to chip away at his unit strength, but without quite killing them). Most of all I just avoided killing his units and made sure my deck composition reduced his chance of getting the +10 every order. I did, later on, use a Demierituim Bomb trinket to reset his units to their base strength too.

 

[shinymcshine]

[Maryokutai]

14 hours ago, shinymcshine said:

 

Now you've got me intrigued as to which card it is and whether I have it or used it....?

 

The Balista. Every guide mentioned them and I didn't have that card because I chose a different outcome with Villem (or whatever he's called - Meve's son).

 

The fact that cards aren't just throwaway but properly integrated into the story is one of the coolest features of this game but it can also result in a couple of frustrations like these.

[shinymcshine]

I don't recall ever using a ballista (or even if I had one in my deck).

[Maryokutai]

Apparently it's an easy way to keep his strength down. But considering you beat him without it I suppose the guides were over-relying on it too much. Whereas I'm just too bad at the game. 

[shinymcshine]

I overhauled my deck totally after a couple of failed attempts, and went back to using the Lyrian Banner and Meve Longsword, to increase my unit strength - rather than eliminating their units.

 

I won the first round quite comfortably, got up to something like 50 v 10 before they passed.

 

On the second round I decided to go for victory, so used my Mahamhak Ale trinket, then later I brought out about 5x Stray Slinger+ using the Reinforcement trinket, then used their 3 shots each for 4 damage, to gradually damage their units, then used Reynard Odo (summoned by Black Rayla) to refresh their orders.

 

I also had a bunch of Knights that summoned from deck when Neve used her order (with Loyal) which helped my overall strength too. Then again so did Gascon - since his strength benefitted greatly from all the movement the slingers caused.

 

So doing that, carefully not to eliminate units, this reduced opponents strength by (5x 4 x 3 x 2) = 120 pts over the round, which meant they ended up with a whole bunch of low strength units clogging up their melee and range rows.

 

Don't know if this is a repeatable strategy, but worked for me !

[Maryokutai]

Sounds like a solid tactic that for some reason I never tried. I remember also using the Azula (?) Adept card a lot but I forget what it did - summon units? Strengthen them? I just know that it had some great chemistry with one other unit.

 

But I just couldn't figure out a way to build something around them. To be fair I've never been good at deck building and this is arguably the only fight in the entire game that asks you to build a deck specifically to counter your opponent. For everything else you can just use whatever you want and maybe pay a bit attention to whether those cards work together or not and even then it's not even a must.

 

I didn't have Black Rayla though. She left me in the swamp. Too bad, really useful card. But she kind of made everything a bit too easy in the early game.

 

I think I actually might replay this over the holidays. If I do, I'll try to beat that final boss on Normal. Kind of bugs me to this day.