Not Your Granddad's Gwent

There are a lot of things that surprised me about Thronebreaker. Overall, I think those surprises were positive.

For one thing, the story is less personal than I'd expect from The Witcher folks. And maybe that's just because I haven't gotten far enough, yet. While Thronebreaker's storytelling is rooted in the same shades-of-gray, everything-kinda-sucks world that Geralt played in, its story so far is about a queen and her kingdom; there are other people in it, but just barely. I'm eager to see some new characters with intriguing quirks or relateable struggles.

For another, its idea of Gwent isn't what I'm familiar with at all. The topmost rule is similar - cards are worth points, they have effects on the playfield, most points in two out of three rounds wins - but there are dramatic differences that I'm still getting the hang of. Like the Order mechanic, which lets a card use its special effect after being played, and can only be used once -- except that another card can sometimes restore it!

Crucially, the combinatorial effects of different cards seem way more difficult to track, and predict, than they were in Witcher 3's rules. The game is still primarily decided by building a good deck; but I don't totally know what "good" means, yet.

In addition to "normal" games of Gwent, Thronebreaker presents a lot of "puzzle" challenges. In these match-ups, your goal isn't to get more points than the opponent, but to satisfy some match-specific challenge. One puzzle asked me to kill a rabid cow, without killing any healthy cows; another puzzle asked to bring some rotfiends to exactly 1 HP, without killing them. These matches give you a pre-determined hand, which needs to be played in precisely the right way to solve the puzzle.

I really like these puzzles. (Actually, I like them more than the regular game.) Though, while I suspect that they're trying to teach me more about how specific card interactions can work, to bring those lessons back into normal Gwent...

In practice, the puzzles play out so differently from the regular game, that I still feel fairly lost when a "normal" match comes up. Especially since I've encountered way more puzzles than normal matches, so far.

Another surprise is the user interface. Well, sort-of; its mobile-friendliness is very apparent, and I assume that phone and tablet versions of Thronebreaker aren't far behind. But the UI still works pretty great on a desktop PC. So that's a pleasant surprise.

What isn't a surprise, and is even paradoxically soothing, is Thronebreaker's soundtrack. Having become pretty accustomed to the Gwent songs in Wild Hunt, this game's strained Slavic strings and chants feel just like home.

Thronebreaker didn't hook me in the way that I expected, but I'm hooked on it nevertheless.

Progress: Still in Lyria.