Got to the first proper town (Wetterton, non-human issue). I must've done 5 or 6 puzzles by now, in the small amount of time I've played compared to the 2-3 battles with my own deck. It seems that the grand majority of battles are puzzles, which I dislike (decoding designer thoughts require no custom tactics). Is the rest of the game going to be like this?

Im with you there.
The puzzles even seem to be the most challengiing part , at least till my point where i played.
I understand that it wouldnt rlly fit the Gameplay if Meve would just run aroudn and battle everybody in 3 ROunds of Gwent to win over Nilfgaard.
But only 2-3 "normal" every Storyark feels underwhelming to me.
Generally speakign the Games doesnt rlly feels like a challenge besides 2-3 puzzzles. Im playing on the Highest difficulty and i rarely get into trouble winning, and i dont think im that good at playing the game.

Yeah, I'm of the view that there is a tad too many puzzles as well. Not against them per se but the fact that we can only use special decks means it takes away from the customization of our army. I mean what's the point of crafting cards and planning out our strategy for the deck we build if we are just going to be handed a different deck most of the time?

Meanwhile I find the puzzle to be awesome, and go out of my way to find every puzzle I can find on each map.

Exactly

I think you guys will change your tune once you're out of Lyria. :)

I am out of Lyria. Im in Angren and the Standarduells are more, true. But they arent even challenging. Most of the Duels i just quickly finish 2-0 the Enemy because your cards are OP and my half of the field is completly full of cards meanwhile my enemy has nothing...and thats on the highest dfficulty.

Meanwhile i spend prolly 2 out of the 5-6 hours of every chapter sitting in puzzles...
Not that i think those puzzles are bad..but i wish it wouldve been the other way around.

if you wouldve read my other posts in this thread, im already playing on the highest difficulty