He was already coming home with a certain devotion to the card gamesbut the turn of the roguelike has managed to increase my attention to everything that comes out of the genre. Beyond the obvious with Slay the Spire, the mixture of random challenge and cards has pushed me to return to games that I had already more than abandoned.
Hearthstone and Runeterra are now joined by the witcher, who from the hand of his Gwent: Rogue Mage has made me recount numbers and add combos to be able to emerge victorious. I wasn’t good at it then and I’m not particularly good at it now either, but between the Gwent multiplayer and this roguelike expansion there is only one that has really managed to surprise me.
From multiplayer Gwent to roguelike Gwent
For the launch of Gwent original had not yet given account with The Witcher 3 and, although I knew the existence of its collectible card game, what little I saw of this online multiplayer failed to capture my attention.
From the videos I didn’t understand how to play, and because it was precisely something original and different, I admit that I had a hard time getting the hang of it. Despite being the complete opposite of my main games, he completely hooked me.
For those of you who have never approached him and don’t know what I mean, in Gwent victory is achieved by accumulating more power in your army than in your opponent’s. The sum of the numbers that your cards carry against those of the rival. The game constantly moves between basic math and skills that buff your numbers and subtract the opponent’s.
It is a less aggressive and more calculated confrontation than in other games of the style, but also more balanced. Reaching the end of a game without the certainty of whether you are going to win or not is, with few exceptions, something very common. And that is precisely what it tries to exploit Gwent: Rogue Mage with your formula.
Same game, different sensations
With perma-death by flag and a solo experience that allows you to fully adjust the difficulty curve, Gwent: Rogue Mage takes the curve and turns it into a diagonal line. Why mess around when you can start big.
With limited units and the challenge of progressing through the game to get new decks and combos, the cards of The Witcher They try to give us a cable with the possibility of launching powers -three to choose from as part of the deck- from behind the table. Attacks, invocations and card draws are added to the active and passive skills to try to make our numbers grow and the opponent’s decrease.
They end up being so important that the great asset of the game in terms of their decisions ends up resulting in a “More energy or more cards?“. I would tell you that experience tells me that the good thing is to bet on one in particular, but in reality there is a lot of lottery in it.
I’ve had games with energy overdoses that have gone to waste and others in which the luck with the cards has been so dire that improving a handful of them has not helped me at all. I would be calm if it were A hard bone to crack only in the playable, but its roughness goes further.
Some changes that do not finish convincing
The idea is good, the game is solid and the theme of its difficulty will always be a matter of taste, but if there is something that surprised me with the Gwent original was its ability to hook me into something that apparently didn’t interest me.
Here, despite the interest, at no time has he invited me to think that another run more in the wee hours of the morning was a good idea. Its long and elaborate games that are ruined by a frustrating randomness manage to put you on the ropes. And the lack of flexibility of their decks makes it necessary to play the same game over again. combo start to get uphill soon.
Perhaps part of the key is in that investment of time, it is not the same to play a game to disconnect than to play it on each card, but I think that in reality they have been magic and its weight, key in many victories, which has broken my game a bit.
When I have relied on it, it has turned out to be an essential mechanic, so the decision-making that invited me to choose between fighting, getting cards, overcoming events or boosting my energy, now always has a clear winner.
VidaExtra’s opinion
It is one of those cases in which it especially affects that of the “matter of taste”, but it is no less true that makes little effort to try to reinvent the wheel -as he proved to know how to do in the original game- and the lack of experimentation has given it a somewhat impersonal tone.
There is no mosaic acting as an improvised marker, nor rounds that give you a little respite from bad luck. I miss two of the things I appreciate most about Gwent: the smell of new and the taste of justice.
Even the plot, the journey of two wizards who collect the best of each monster to bring to life the first wizard in history, seems like a missed opportunity. The weight of him ends up being significantly less than anyone who stands before that approach could wish.
Despite all the good intentions and good work of Gwent: Rogue Mage they are undoubtedly there -what the plans go well is still one of the best of the genre-, their competition is tough enough to prefer the challenge elsewhere. It will not be strange to see me fall in the multiplayer of Gwent the following days.
GWENT: Rogue Mage
platforms | Android, iOS and PC (tested version) |
---|---|
multiplayer | Nope |
developer | CD Projekt Red |
Company | CD Projekt Red |
Launch | July 7, 2022 |
The best
- As a card game it’s still fantastic
- A challenge for the most demanding
- Bosses that force you out of your comfort zone
Worst
- New powers take weight off cards
- The idea of playing in a single round makes it more unfair