I started off quite loving Tyranny, just the thing of you being Fem-Sauron's loyal liutenant made me more more invested and interested in random side quests then usual.
The intro and prologue did a good job of introducing the world and setting in a natural way, as well as your place in it, without being hit over the head with big epic blocks of text like pillars did.
My overall initial impressions were super positive and played through the first 1/3rd of the game utterly enraptured, whatever faults the game might have had were ignored and i was honestly roleplaying my character, soooo much fun.
Then it all started to collapse around the mid way point, and suddenly the idea you were the evil lord/ladys evil servant apparently gets tossed out of the window and you're railroad to follow set courses of actions.
...
And that's when the game started turning sour. If there was an option for my character to just surrender to Kyros, even if that means i get a bad ending, i'd have taken it.. But was never given such an option and by the time i reached the end all feelings of enjoyment had gone.
What made the ending worst, besides how anticlimatic (gethsmani put it well when she says it felt we arrived at part 3 out of traditional 5 act story), was that possibly due to my ingame decisions, the last chapter of the game was tiny for me, almost no fights involved besides 2 easy boss fights (versus the voices and the assassin dude respectively), and bam, finished the game, with my character now forced to prepare himself to fight the evil lord for whom he was such a loyal servant. Yeah act 3 was a real let down xD
Still overall conclusion: it's better then Pillars of Eternity by a long shot. I actually finished this game for starters, and yeh even if i hated the last 3rd, at least the first third suckered me in quite well. I want to play the underling for an evil overlord more often! Sick of playing goodies saving the world.
And when it comes to combat and skill system.. After Pillars, this was a big step up, found leveling characters to be far more enjoyable here.
Gethsemani said:
Yarden said:
Tayh said:
I generally like the game, but one huge minus for me, is that you absolutely have to choose between one of two factions to support in order to advance the game.
You can't go the Lawful Evil route and be a direct servant of Kyros'(Or Tunon's) word and law, you have to choose between one of two fanatical directions. Missed potential right there, I think.
Just FYI - you are wrong, there is a "rebel" path, where you don't side with either of the factions.
Actually there are two paths besides Unfavored and Scarlet Chorus. There's Anarchy, where you tell everyone to stick it and go to war with everyone, and there's Rebels, where you side with the Velandrien Guard (or whatever they are called) that are opposing you in act 1. Going Anarchy is fairly easy, but going Rebel takes some planning and can easily be locked off if you don't make just the right choices in the prologue.
All those paths and yet no paths where you just remain loyal to your dark lord/lady (i dig the idea of fem-sauron so hope it's chick, but obviously hard to confirm)? Seriously fuck this game xD I enjoyed being an evil minion whilst it lasted though, was so refreshing in an rpg!
Zhukov said:
Tyranny, or as I like to call it, Obsidian Game: The Game is, what else, an old-school RPG.
The game encourages you to game the dialogue choices by connecting them to faction and character relations, which in turn grant you abilities, so roleplaying tends to go out the window. "Well, this seems like the thing my character would say... ohhh, but if I say this instead then I'll earn Major Wrath with Whatshisface, which should get me that nice passive buff!". Plus the relations meters aren't zero-sum (they work like the paragon/renegade bars in Mass Effect) so it ends up making the most sense to shmooze up to a faction/character for one set of bonuses, then turn around and piss them off to earn the rest.
Whilst i agree or am neutral (such as with graphics) towards more of what you said, i gotta disagree with you here.
Yes you have more relationship points then you need to max out a side but that actually gives more room to roleplay, not less, without being punished for it.
Sure you COULD be a min maxer and get max favor/hatred for maximum bonuses (considering you don't even enjoy the combat though it seems redudant for you, this would be more something people do for the one man party super hard difficulty no reload runs), but this is just one way of looking at those excess points, the other is that the reason there is so many points is to allow room for the character to roleplay their character and act "honestly" without stressing that they completely ruined a relationship with a faction, since they know there will be other ways to make up for the reputation loss.
