Gwent the best I've seen!

So first of all, I'd like to tell that I am sort of "new" to Gwent! Played it in the Closed Beta for a couple of hours, then went for the Open Beta and I actually had fun but after a week or so it died down. Came back again this year and man do I not regret it! The gameplay might be the same but the execution is much better than the last time I played (year or so back)

1. Gameplay

I haven't had so much fun playing a card game since Yu-Gi-Oh in my childhood, the generic rules of playing "on curve" with mana/lands etc is gone and you have this wholesome system where you just get lost in the gameplay without the restriction of your mana/land pool (HS, MTG players will understand). Which leads me to the next point, the almost non-existent RNG element of the game. People I can't believe there is an actual card game, where SKILL is more rewarded than LUCK. Every card game in existence is made to be RNG based, and of course there is a fun aspect to that, but the fiasco Hearthstone became these 2 last years is beyond me! Also the number of cards is making a huge difference, 25 cards for 3 rounds is the sweet spot that CDPR came to develope! In MTG you have lands (they work like mana for the people who don't know) and you have a 35-43 actual playable cards, there is a BO3 too but the fact that you can get mana/land flooded is making the experience much worse, the fact that in Gwent you don't get back your cards in the next rounds makes the game so skilled based, It's unbelievable for me how good the balancing of this game is, in terms of GAME DESIGN not cards (power creeps). And I want you guys to understand that there is NO perfect balance in a card game, there will always be better factions/cards and not every single card will be playable. But the thing is, that your skill is much more rewarded with the "power creep-ish cards" than in other games, because they have power creeps too, but the design of the game is boiling down the skill of it to almost 0.

2. Design (Art style)

I can talk for years about the artistic style of this game. Darkest Dungeon had a similar art and it nails it! I like that Da'vinci style of art, more than anything, sometimes I hop up in a game just to watch the art and appriciate the cardstyle. Which leads me to my next section of this point and that is card-animation. God bless you CDPR art developer staff. GOD BLESS YOU! I can't say enough about your work on the card-animations, it's incredible, outstanding, miraculous, it's something like "Sweet mother of Jesus, is that even possible to achieve" kind of thing! God I love watching the animations, I want to "catch them all" if you know what I mean. I've never seen (and probably will never see) better animations on cards. There is literally no competition for your card-animations! Hearthstone is probably the closest thing that can be compared to you but LORD it's so cool!

3. Content

This is the subject I can criticise on. However I've not been a consistent player up until now, to give authentic opinion on that point. So I'll just leave the players with longer experience to speak instead of me!

Conclusion

Gwent is the greatest game I've played since Yu-Gi-Oh and the first year of HS, I can compare them in terms of balancing, art and gameplay. I'm not sure why the popularity of this game is not high, but CDPR if you're reading this, don't give up on this game, you're laying on a golden egg that just itches to hatch! I love your work, every single game. Cyberpunk 2077 will be no exception I am sure of it! Keep up the good, I mean the best work in the gaming industry!

Submitted June 12, 2019 at 01:12PM by v1ckssan http://bit.ly/2MIDIEI