I agree. It’s slightly less Baldur’s Gate, slightly more Fallout Tactics’ real-time mode, as far as the feel of it. Plus the animations are longer and more detailed and feel more substantial.
I haven’t read that but I was getting very strong Malazan vibes.
One thing that’s really refreshing about Tyranny is being able to speak from a position of authority very early into the game. I had quite a bit of fun in my exchange with the Fifth Eye because of this.
If you like this style of game, this is the game for you. As far as difficulty - is it really a surprise that combat isn’t challenging only an hour in on normal :/ ?
I wasn’t a huge fan of PoE, but I picked this up yesterday because the theme seemed appropriate and I liked what I read about the story and choices. So far I’ve just made it through character creation and the first series of fights. SO far I’m liking it better, although I have to go back and re-tuns how much pausing I allow in battle.
How is the AI control of party members on Normal? Is it safe to leave on, or is micromanagement key? Also, if a party member is AI-controlled, does the game still pause at the selected moments?
Disclaimer: I’m still in the first act. AI control is not that great but I haven’t futzed with it much. I’m playing on hard and feel micromanagement is essential to avoiding downed states in almost every battle. That said, micro isn’t that bad with only 4 characters and just a few abilities – Mask of the Betrayer this ain’t.
Yes, the game pauses regardless of the AI setting.
I haven’t touched the AI setting on normal. And I mean I haven’t even looked to see what they’re set to! And in fights my 4 person party seems to do ok. I typically assign targets for the 3 offensive types (myself and 2 party members), control my spell/ability selection, and that’s pretty much it. The 4th party member (the healer) does his thing without me having to manage anything.
Granted, I probably should do more, but it hasn’t been required yet.
As for pausing, I have it set to pause when we see a bad guy and when combat starts, and that feels like sufficient pausing to me.
The combat system is better than Pillars’. They slowed it down so the fights are less chaotic now. I like it, definitely a step in the right direction.
Malazan is pretty much Black Company 2.0 Xtreme. The Black Company is almost an exact template for the Bridgeburners.
I was unprepared for how much the world, lore, characters, and story would suck me in. That rarely happens to me.
The combat on hard with 4 characters has been perfect - I’m challenged, I have someone drop more than a third of the fights, and I have to play well and position my characters for advantages like flanking, use my items like whetstones and poisons, and in general play smart and craft my characters with a little care. I love that.
So this is firing on all cylinders for me, and on the plus side 5 hours and no bugs, instabilities, or abilities or items or spells or mechanics that don’t seem to work as intended. Such incredible polish, between the “weight” of the UI and the excellent scripted sequences, so far.
My friend who’s a huge fan of the books already informed me of this :).
This Athletics response is the type of stuff I enjoy the most about the game. It feels so damn good to be the asshole for a change. Love it. I’m roleplaying a pit fighter who doesn’t take shit from anyone and so far it’s been amazing.
Re: Malazan and Black Company – I named my character “The Adjunct” – seemed fitting.
Funny, I use Lorn and Tavore as names for my chars all the time.
Should be in the “I hate this guy” thread but it was from the Steam Tyranny forums.
I remember similar criticisms about Planescape Torment, both when it came out and years afterward too. Some people really hate sitting there and reading. And to be fair, if it’s not good writing, so do I. But this has been very compelling so far. I’m savoring every word, even in all the background flavor text.
To be fair, there is a lot of fluff text here. I think a solution like Bioware’s codex would be a good choice here - this way conversations are reduced to essentials and make more sense as far as the conversation flow is concerned and the lore bits can still be accessed by looking them up in other sources if you wish.
What really grinds my gears though is the combat. I just can’t come to terms with RTwP, at least not with Obsidian’s implementation. Pathfinding is still a nightmare, my companions refuse to use certain abilities - for example the tank guy (forgot his name, B…something. Brevik?) - he only uses taunt but never the iron palm or w/e he has access to by default - that is on the sentinel preset. Why even have these presets? Why not full scripting control like in Dragon Age: Origins? With conditions and everything. And despite the lower pace I’m still having issues with the micromanagement. It’s hard to tell for me at a glance if a character is actually doing something or just standing there twiddling his thumbs. Grabbing aggro at the start of a fight is a nightmare, it feels more like a disorganized FFA. Maybe I’m just Chorus material, lol.
Also, SCT should be customizable. Since there are only 4 party members they could each have their own color for damage numbers and the damage numbers should ideally have source listed. The whining that their weapons are ineffective is easy to miss in the heat of battle. Props to people who manage to get by with endless scrolling through the combat log but that’s just not my thing.
You can actually set this as a pause condition.
Sure but between the 10 other conditions that I set up I wouldn’t know which one triggered it without checking the log. And I don’t want to do that 150 times for each skirmish.
Wow, just how ineffective are your weapons!?
:)
I have the auto pause set up to trigger when an ability is finished casting because the AI is so terrible at using them.
I’ve played a LOT of games.
PS:T is still #2 of all time for me. It really is a masterpiece.
So I’ve been paying this thread a lot attention…
There’s a lot of text, right? But is there depth there? Does it feel like I’m living in a believable world? Will I be attached to the PC(s?) and NPCs? Is there real lore or some lore filler to tick some boxes?
RTWP doesn’t bother me and is probably my preference. I think I’ll pick this up when it drops below $30. Still slightly burned from the hype (and eventual disappointment of Wasteland 2 and, to a lesser extent, PoE).
Sell it to me, Jeff :)