Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales may be all but forgotten about by now, especially amidst all the other tantalizing news from The Witcher’s IP lately. Branching apart from seminal source material influences, The Witcher has become a contemporary entity through Netflix’s current and upcoming adaptations, with the overwhelming popularity of CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt having a seminal hand in the franchise’s success. Indeed, Thronebreaker was yet another byproduct of that success, but particularly the success of its in-game mini-game Gwent.
Thronebreaker is phenomenal as a standalone title and expands upon The Witcher lore and Gwent gameplay in compelling ways throughout its narrative. However, CD Projekt Red has already explicitly and briefly confirmed that there are no plans for a second installment in The Witcher Tales, which extinguishes any potential hope for a Thronebreaker sequel from the mouths of the developers themselves. Thronebreaker may have reportedly failed to meet sales expectations, but it absolutely deserves a wholesale sequel due to its fantastic narrative and gameplay.
Thronebreaker is a Gwent Lover’s Dream Game
Admittedly, if The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt players were not fond of Gwent, they will almost assuredly be disinterested in Thronebreaker. Gwent encompasses about ninety percent of what players will be engaged with in Thronebreaker as it lays the foundation for combat and puzzle encounters. Thronebreaker’s Gwent in particular is centered around a deck of cards that players are constantly updating and adding to after purchasing encampment upgrades, or adding new characters to Queen Meve's company. That said, fans of Gwent will immediately know its ins and outs and be able to play their allotted cards strategically on the battlefield.
Regular combat encounters play into Gwent’s traditional three-round structure, where it is often a tactical advantage to forfeit an early round in order to salvage higher-end cards for later. Then, puzzle encounters diversify Gwent gameplay and apply comprehensive problem-solving in order to complete particular challenges. For example, players often receive a specific hand of cards to play and are tasked with achieving a goal under certain constraints. These challenges are equal parts arduous and satisfying, making Thronebreaker’s Gwent gameplay a paramount and gratifying experience.
On top of Gwent, there is a beautiful cel-shaded aesthetic to Thronebreaker in top-down map exploration and interactive card animations. As for its storytelling, few games come close to how narratively impactful gameplay is and how much substantial weight is behind every choice players make.
Thronebreaker’s RPG Features Are Impactful to Both Narrative and Gameplay
There is much to Thronebreaker beyond its Gwent gameplay, and even its Gwent gameplay is greatly and explicitly impacted by each narrative event. Queen Meve’s resolve is bolstered by her companions, whom players are perpetually unsure of and mistrusting. Each narrative moment in Thronebreaker is associated with a pivotal choice that players make themselves, with either immediate or unseen consequences awaiting them soon thereafter. Characters are all intriguing and complicated, maybe aside from the Nilfgaardians who are chiefly cut-and-dry evil.
Characters may leave the player’s party seemingly on a whim, but players learn that a laundry list of previous choices led to their departure due to their staunch ideological convictions. If a character leaves, this impacts gameplay as well since their card is stripped from the player’s deck. Indeed, each combat encounter is narratively immersive and the player’s deck of cards never feels like a disassociated gameplay feature. Instead, Thronebreaker’s interconnected narrative and gameplay roleplay each circumstance with Meve and her company in each Gwent battle.
There may be no plans to make another Thronebreaker game, but such a fate is undeserved for a game with incredible writing, voice acting, illustration, and RPG features. If any game should have a sequel based upon the potential for its mechanics and gameplay as a single-player RPG from The Witcher, it is certainly Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales.
Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales is available now on mobile devices, Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.