Pillars of Eternity Definitive edition and Tyranny Gold free next week - pretty good!
The shift between giving away a cheap little indie game to two 70+ hour CRPGs. (Although I suppose Tyranny is a lot shorter and less ambitious)
After trying to get into the game 2 or 3 times, I loathed Tyranny to my core. I think part of it is that I’m just not a bad guy at heart, and it’s difficult to play a villain, because I’m a hero. A glorious, well-meaning being who doesn’t understand why all the hot chicks always go for the jerks instead of the guys who go out of their way to be nice to them and do all the little favors they ask without so much as an expectation for a thank-you, let alone life-long matrimonial love and respect. It’s not that I think I deserve a kiss or something every time I solve one of her problems, but sometimes it would be nice to be accepted as a genuine member of the male species, and romantically considered as such, along with all the meatheads she seems to determined to invite into her life–not that she isn’t capable of making better choices in her life, but maybe just once she could at least notice me sitting way over here, loving her from a distance, wishing her the very best in life, even if the path she chooses to take only brings her, step by step, closer to dissatisfaction and regret at a life spent pursuing mere physical pleasure instead of a genuine soulmate who could appreciate her for so much more that the outward beauty she tries to so hard to maintain these years, even though it will inevitably fade away, leaving her divorced and alone as her shallow string of men leave her behind and move on to the next flash in the pan of beauty.
Also not much a fan of the combat system they put in, but that was easier for me to overlook.
… o.O
I was going to launch into a defense of some of the things Tyranny does right. But I admit I still need to finish that game, and I’m not sure it’s entirely about Tyranny at this point.
I still rate it higher than Pillars of Eternity - it’s got a lot more meat and less filler content.
Yes, Tyranny is better than PoE1.
You can also be good in it, just not over the top Paladin good.
Brilliant. Nicely done.
Hard disagree. Tyranny is interesting but an obvious rush job, and it’s like 95% combat, all the time.
Pillars is a much better RPG in terms of variety, character customization, NPCs, itemization, quests, everything. Especially with the White March stuff.
Also the Tyranny DLC is trash.
Like @kerzain I always play the hero - at least the first playthrough. Generally if I do a second playthrough as evil I give up early. I just don’t like being bad.
It’s been a while since I played either, but Tyranny is at least trying to do something different with the RPG hero formula. It reminded me of Sorcerer King - the Rivals standalone expansion is very underrated - which tried to similarly make you a minion of the bad guy to change up the 4X formula.
In Tyranny forcing the player out of the standard good - or maybe good / evil choice paradigm - you’re forced to make some hard decisions with real moral ambiguity. I found it uncomfortable at times, but there was redemption in finding the not-quite-so-bad-choices available. There was satisfaction in taking down some of the really evil characters. And there was some glimmer of good in that for me. Tyranny has stuck with me and I’ve toyed with the idea of going back to it and trying some different choices through the game.
PoE1 was fine as a throwback. Using skills was annoying. The party moved too slowly. There was way too much dialog, especially with the Kickstarter backers stupid inner thoughts. I gave up about 2/3rds of the way through on reading any of it and just powered through the fights to the end. Much less memorable - I have no recollection of the story at all!
So to me Tyranny succeeded in crafting a different experience that I remember. I’m not sure I liked being a bad guy but I enjoyed the experience looking back. PoE1 was junk food.
Full disclosure: I worked on Sorcerer King’s Metarealm feature while at Stardock.
Complaining about too much dialog means you’re just a fucking hateable philistine. Also the kickstart idiot NPCs are entirely optional. Just stop frobbing them. What the hell is wrong with you?
Tyranny is silly. I enjoyed it. But is is silly, and super shallow. All paths are obvious and also lead to lots of just combat no matter what. If you want a CRPG that handles an evil route with actual deft hands…make no mistake: Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer.
No contest.
I didn’t have my main NWN2 save game anymore, so I had to create characters from scratch for Mask of the Betrayer. And you fight a boss early on who does something that I just couldn’t win against. I think it was stunning my party? I can’t remember anymore. But I tried with a couple of characters, but could never get past that opening boss in Mask.
The complaint I’ve seen about POE is that every character dumps lore all the time. It’s not written as if they’re characters in a world, but as if they’re lore-dispensers.
Tyranny also had the “hot-links” in conversations that you could hover over and the game would show you the lore about the person or place. It would even show how you reacted in your prior dealings with an NPC. If that wasn’t cool enough, during a dialog with Voices of Nerat he began talking to you telepathically through the hot-link system! It was so cool.
Tyranny also has the best spell system I’ve ever seen where instead of learning spells you find spell “components” that let you alter the effects of spells to make them more powerful, with a higher stat requirement. Building custom spells out of components was awesome.
Tyranny may also have more branching paths than any RPG I’ve ever played. It’s not just that it has five or so different endings, it’s the about the many different paths you can take through the game. It’s incredibly varied for such a story rich RPG.
In short, it’s awesome and way better than PoE1.
Tyranny is 95% combat all the way through, which makes it a lesser RPG automatically. It’s shallow. Join one of the two main factions, join the resistance, join the chaos assassin guy…It just determines who you fight on each map.
I suppose Tyranny can be the Icewind Dale to Pillar’s Baldur’s Gate.
Your conclusion might be correct if your presumption was correct.
(It’s not.)
Sweet, I’ve wanted to try both of those.
The combat is kinda bad, though, so maybe he just felt like it was longer ;)
I mean, the customization of your party and spells is great, but then you fight the same three enemies in almost every encounter. They were generally not allowed to use the spell system because of the game’s lore and rather than design a replacement system they just didn’t bother.
I’m with you. Especially since the combat in Tyranny seemed like it was against the same limited types of enemies. I enjoyed Tyranny enough and don’t think it is a mistake to play it, but I enjoyed Pillars much more.
And you’re wrong and your parents are wrong.
You fight for one of the two bad factions against the free people and each other. You join the free people to fight against the invaders. Or you just fight everyone. Each map must be cleared of an opposing force. This is the game, in nutshell.
It’s fine, but firmly at the bottom of the list in terms of similar CRPGs.
EGS will be repeating last year’s batch of one free game per day, except expanded to 15 games:
Starts today.