Recent reviews by RMcD94

Pretty great for a free game

Could use some more features, like being able to tell neighbouring territories, seeing troop drafting in the log, seeing all information you can see if you're watching in the log, play by post would be nice, as well as being able to play multiple games (so you can play with your friends not simultaneously) :)

Though the core of this game is fun, the trappings are not.

For example, it has silly crpg mechanics where you are forced to slowly walk around a map and pick up loot which adds absolutely nothing to the game and you are incentivized to boringly explore the map and collect wood and gold that is lying around and they are always located at uninteresting dead ends.

This game would have been superior without this map even though it does look nice and adds some flavour the cost of wasting your time is not worth it.


Further, the game divides itself into separate acts, and in at least the first act even though you keep your gold and wood you lose your deck, including cards you crafted with that gold/wood/recruits so again the mechanics are telling you do not craft cards unless you absolutely need to complete a challenge. Basically, I crafted 3 Regiment Drummers for my deck (for a total of 5) in the first part even though it wasn't needed just for fun. This cost me gold, recruits and wood. When I moved to the next act, I kept all my gold, wood and recruits but lost those 3 Regiment Drummers (back down to 2).

There is no cost for retrying a challenge so the optimal way to play this game is to never use the crafting system at all because if you do you are just going to lose all of the cards that you crafted the next time the map changes. If you can win one time then you can just keep retrying until the odds are in your favour.

The game seems to suggest that there are some definitely wrong choices but it does not make that clear. Most gamers/players will be used to both choices having positives or negatives. The game should open with a choice where you are clearly wrong if you choose the dumb decision but it does not so I'm not even sure if there are bad decisions which would improve the game if they existed because in some cases I would choose a decision that cost gold and morale that gave zero benefit only because I thought because this is a video game there probably is some upside and I'm sure other people think the same because that is the culture of gaming that exists.

The best part of this game is the combat and it has an okay voice acted story too. Though it's not breaking any new ground it probably is enjoyable for fans of the Witcher universe. I recognised characters from the TV show and that's some minor pleasure. However, because of the games structure I would, for those who enjoy Gwent, sadly recommend you just play multiplayer Gwent because the fun interesting restrictions the game adds with deck building and limited card pool are hidden by rpg mechanics of wasting hours collecting minor gains which cloud the best part of the game.

Also, having choices in a game improves replayability, but I can't imagine ever wanting to replay this game in part because of the really annoying campaign map where you slowly walk from point a to point b and wait you have to walk up five dead ends and along dumb semi hidden paths behind bushes to collect some dumb avatar for the real multiplayer.

The puzzles in this game are very fun if somewhat easy even on the hard mode, perhaps they don't change, not sure what the hard mode does. Perhaps it would have been better to include the difficulty in each battle so that if it's too hard you can skip it, and in my improved version of the game where the campaign map is perhaps more like what the golf or even just a list of events/trees which you click along you could go back and easily click on previous battles and refight them at new difficulty levels with your new army, I think this would have been a better design. Oh and also 90% of the battles are single round which ruins the whole benefit of Gwent which is the three round combat. I really hated getting these and it changes completely how you should d
esign your deck. Yet is the deck editor easy to access prior to a fight? No, it's not. It's just bad design. It could be fun to craft your deck ideally to defeat the specific enemy you come across but interest it's like seven clicks and opening up this deck editor, figuring it out, saving it, going back to the fight, losing, exit do it again. Unpleasant.

Anyway, the point is that since you won't replay the game, the choices should be there to improve your connection to the story or characters or mechanically be interesting, but sadly I didn't find them to be even though the choices themselves are often actually quite thought provoking the result is usually fleeting though not always.

Honestly, I want to ask the designer of this game who each part of the game is for? Gwent fans will enjoy Gwent, but stretching out the Gwent far away is going to annoy Gwent fans. Fans of the CRPG genre which I think it's trying to ape will find the world shallow and uninteresting with little interactability. All you do is click on things to collect like a mobile game. Fans of the Witcher universe will also have no interest in collecting wood and gold.

A lot is two words not one.