When I first played Thronebreaker on PC in 2018, I was immediately impressed by its perfect fit for mobile games. Mobile gamers love deck-building tools, and I was wondering why – is it because the format’s simplicity fits the platform so well? Or is it just holding a phone in your hand that feels closest to when you actually touch the deck? 1000bestgames will help you better understand this game.
Thronebreaker – An impressive genre of role-playing games full of fun on the phone
Whether we talk about Legends of Runeterra, Hearthstone, Gwent, or even Slay the Spire, mobile is the deck building platform – check out our list of the best mobile card games if you don’t believe it. So what happens when you take a battle card with an established deck builder and turn it into a role-playing game – well happens.
Friends who have been with Gwent from the start may remember that Thronebreaker started his life with a deck-building campaign mode, before it was included in its own indie title as a part of The Witcher Tales.
Gwent used to have all kinds of short seasonal events in which it would come up with a storytelling scenario by playing with the rules of the card game, and it’s simple to see that effect in this game. What makes Thronebreaker stand out, even among all its other great qualities, are the scenarios manifested through card-based battles.
Understanding of role-playing game Thronebreaker
Plot
The game takes place during the second Nilfgaardian War, a period never visited by The Witcher games, and is instead covered by the Andrzej Sapkowski series of books, notably in Baptism of Fire. In the book, Glem actually happens throughout Queen Meve, the protagonist of Thronebreaker, as she fights her guerrilla war against the Nilgaardians – but it never fully explains how how does she end up there.
This is where Thronebreaker continues the story, and it goes like this. The Lyrian and Rivian kingdoms of Queen Meve were usurped the night before Nilfgaard invaded the north, so she had to roam in the Northern Kingdom facing every danger, while trying to muster support to take back her things. You do this with the touch of your finger, navigate the afterlife for resources, participate in storytelling encounters, and generally just travel the world.
Thronebreaker UI UI is quite small, so it can be a bit awkward in this regard, making resource extraction and collection difficult. But it’s worth mentioning, no stunning visuals are sacrificed to bring Thronebreaker to iOS, and in terms of the actual card battle front, dropping and dragging cards is easy, activating capabilities, and generally sorting in your game.
Fighting
Thronebreaker card-based combat system, which comes out when you’re fighting enemies, monsters or puzzle combat, and, effectively, Gwent – albeit a Gwent with an age in terms of keywords and abilities card features.
Regular battles follow the Gwent rule of three rounds, ten cards and whoever has the most power wins – but puzzle battles are much cooler. These encounters have their own set of rules – you will have one goal, such as removing all corpses from the board and a specific set of cards to use.
They are extremely intelligent, causing you to think about possibilities while the tokens combine quickly to reach a solution. You can also really see the influence of Gwent’s old seasonal narrative events here. Conventional battles aren’t particularly hard when you have a few jewels – magic – and hero characters to use, but that’s not unusual playing against an AI opponent in a deck builder. and doesn’t really affect the quality of the game much.
I can also see a lot of The Banner Saga in Thronebreaker. The Nilfgaardian invasion has ruined the countryside, and you go through that burning chaos, trying to make narrative choices and find a safe harbor for your flock. There’s also a small element of resource management with Soldiers, which is essentially a currency that you use during events to achieve certain results. Finally, there’s a Banner Saga-esque camp that you can set up, with training battles, character chats, deck-building tents and command tents where you can find legends, and usually show off. Work if you are not the nerd Witcher.
However, as a Witcher nerd, I have to say that Thronebreaker does a great job portraying the same chaos and cruelty that present in Baptism of Fire, with so many storytelling options. difficult for you. Thronebreaker also introduced characters and locations we’ve never seen in The Witcher games, like the kingdom of the dwarves Mahakam, a player of the full deck of the Gwent Dwarf, which I appreciate very much.
Thronebreaker is a great game, especially for mobile devices, and despite the fact that the world UI is a bit confusing at times, it retains the stunning visual style, great voice acting. Amazing, captivating story and that original killer OST.
My only complaint regarding the game is that it can sometimes feel a bit repetitive, by which, I mean, the tempo is probably off. It often feels like you are racking your brain to solve a puzzle, just to find another one right around – although it’s important to point out those elements as optional.
Overall, I think Thronebreaker has compelling storytelling and clever use of the Gwent tag rules to create quizzes and portray scenarios, far beyond every little criticism I could make. Fans of Gwent, The Witcher fans, and The Banner Saga fans will be completely kicked out of Thronebreaker – some puzzle battles will even leave deck builders scratching their heads.