I’m looking forward to the third Witcher game next year. Hopefully by then I will have played through the first two epics, which I have bought a long time ago on GOG or Steam (or hell, maybe both). Anyway, I’m not familiar with the The Witcher other than the good things I have heard, and I haven’t played any kind of tabletop/board game in many years. What could go wrong?
Well, not a lot, which is a good thing. Let me first make the point that this is a $10 game, which is quite a value if you enjoy the gameplay. While best played with friends — up to three in offline/local mode or as many online (with support for private games), you can also assign up to three players to be controlled by the computer. At first, I just jumped right into the game. I was impressed with its presentation quality, both in visuals and in sound. I ran the game in 2560×1080 and with the generic “Fastest” detail setting. I have experienced zero technical issues and while there is an option in-game to mute the sounds which I’m sure some will want to use, I was happy to keep it on. The sound effect from clicking an action (basically a mouse-click sound) gets a little old, especially in longer games, but otherwise the effects and music are quite nice.
Presentation is only a small part of the battle though, the real measure of a game is how fun it is and the merits of its gameplay. In that regard, The Witcher Adventure Game (TWAG) is no more or less subjective than any other game. Can Explode and CD Projekt Red have done a nice job with the interface and the collection of tutorial videos available from the main menu proved absolutely vital to my experience. I tried to just play the game without watching those, hoping to figure out things as I went and also refer to the complete rules list that is available at anytime during the game, and it wasn’t paying off. My advice is to definitely watch the ten or so videos from the main menu, none of which lasts longer than like two minutes and forty-five seconds and the shortest of which is only about thirty seconds. These might not sound like much, but the videos are really efficient and concise, with top notch narration and corresponding in-game footage to match, meaning you’ll quickly pick up the basics of Hero Cards, Battle, the Map, and several other key topics. If you have a lot of time or interest, you can read all of the Rules, but there are at least twenty categories (some of which are really short), and its not really necessary to do so, at least in my experience.
Once you’re ready to play, select between Offline and Online play. For online play, you can choose to join a random lobby or specify some of the criteria you want, such as the Quest Goal and time allowed for each turn. The Quest Goal is also a setting you specify in offline mode. The Quest Goal can be either one, three, or five. Obviously, the more quests a player must clear the longer the game takes, with estimates being around ten to twenty minutes per quest, depending on a variety of factors such as player skill, etc. Regardless of what the Quest Goal is, the ultimate deciding factor in determining the winner is by the number of Victory Points which each player has at the time when the Quest Goal is reached (by any player). Oh, as far as I can tell, you cannot set the CPU’s skill level, but in my experience they have as much ‘bad luck’ and battle losses and things as I do, so I didn’t feel like I was just getting steam-rolled by them. Note that, during the CPU’s turns, they move very quickly through their actions and resolutions, etc. Cards that pop-up on screen go away too fast to read, and I didn’t see anyway to slow this down. You can however view the Activity log on the right hand side of the HUD to see what happened. On the left side of the HUD is a chat window for when you’re online, too.
So TWAG features four heroes from Witcher lore, including of course Geralt of Rivia, Triss Merigold, Yarpen Zigrin, and Dandelion. Geralt can only take on Combat quests, while Triss does magic quests. Yarpen can actually choose between these types of quests, while Dandelion’s quests are all diplomacy based. When the game begins (in multiplayer, dice are rolled to determine turn-positions), players choose two quest cards from their respective decks (i.e., Geralt chooses two combat themed quests). Many details are provided, including a description of the problem, side quests, as well as consequences for failing and rewards for success.
With your quest selected (which you can view anytime by clicking on the Main Quest summary area in the bottom of the HUD), your adventure begins. With each turn, you get two Actions. Actions include things like traveling, resting, investigating, and special skills for each character like Brewing for Geralt, Preparing for Triss, Singing for Dandelion, and Commanding for Yarpen. These are all different actions for roughly the same thing, i.e., to help you gain some boosts or other benefits “on the side” to help you in battle or in your quests in general.
Battle is but one of many dangers that face you on your journey. There are six regions, compromised of seventeen areas to visit; where you start on the map seems somewhat random, and to get from any one place to another requires that you follow certain paths. You can travel from one area to another, or fast travel to speed things up, but doing so requires that you pull a card from the Foul Fate deck. Regions also have modifiers that indicate traveling there will mean an encounter with a monster (either bronze, silver, or gold class) will happen at the end of your turn, or a foul fate card must be drawn, or you get some “health” back.
Traveling to the different regions is required, so there’s not much you can do to mitigate the danger except for developing some “positive” cards in your deck and maybe helping each other out via support quests. Support quests are a neat way to co-op, whether doing two vs two with friends, or maybe against the CPU or against others online. You can only perform a support quest when you and the other player are at the same location. At that time you can view their Main Quest card, see what the Support Quest is, and perform it (if you have the resources) to net yourself six Victory Points and three for the person you supported. Pretty cool stuff.
With that, let’s get to the summary…
