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Hmmm.
-
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Tyranny + Bastard's Wound Expansion Thread
- Thread starter jaydee2k
- Start date
Hmmm.
Pirata Alma Negra
Learned
Paradox usually hires outside development for this kind of shit.
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2014
- Messages
- 13,578
I assume all profits go to them. It's something that could easily be handled internally, without any need of Obsidian's involvement.
GloomFrost
Arcane
That portrait pack could have been handled by one art school student.
- Joined
- Jul 14, 2008
- Messages
- 2,159
I like how there's no consistency for the portrait styles between the different types of characters. The Fatebinder has these cartoon-y looking ones, party members have very detailed, sorta realistic looking ones, and NPCs use their character models in place of portraits.
Erebus
Arcane
- Joined
- Jul 12, 2008
- Messages
- 4,771
Finally finished the game, allied with the rebels, with a PC specialized in lightning/illusion/stone/fire.
I’d actually started playing it with a PC specialized in unarmed combat, but gave up halfway through when I realized spellcasting would be more interesting (also, I was allied to the Voices of Nerat and the annoying git was really beginning to get on my nerves).
I may try to replay the game just once as an anarchist, but that’ll be all. Tyranny has some decent things, but also significant flaws.
The main problem is probably the fact that combat is seldom entertaining.
- Having only four party members instead of six really limits the tactical possibilities. Combat wasn’t exactly great in PoE, but you could control six characters and it meant you could try a lot more things.
- As far as enemies are concerned, the lack of diversity is mind-numbing. I’m not opposed to the idea of mainly facing human opponents, but they have to be more than legions of clones. Each group (Scarlet Chorus, Disfavored, Vendrien Guard…) has about four types of soldiers that you keep encountering again and again throughout the entire game. Even named characters aren’t very different from the faceless minions (the Archons themselves aren’t distinguished by much more than a bloated amount of hit points and a few minor abilities).
- The fact that there are many needless fights of course emphasizes the repetitive nature of the enemies. The Banes are probably the worst offenders (the fact that they’re completely shallow and uninteresting doesn’t help).
- I’m not opposed to putting limits on pre-combat buffing (though I think PoE and Tyranny went a bit too far with that). However, what I find really annoying is that so many combat buffs/debuffs have extremely limited durations and/or (often “and”) unimpressive effects. Where’s the fun in making an ally slightly more resistant to a specific type of attack for 30 seconds ? Or poisoning a weapon so that it’ll somewhat weaken the enemy you hit, but only after you land a critical hit and only for 20 seconds ? The kind of magic/alchemy we had in games like BG2 may have been less balanced, but it made things more exciting.
On a related matter, I didn’t find the difficulty of the game to be very consistent. I played on Hard (I found it annoying that it apparently means your enemies won’t use their abilities as often as they could, but I simply couldn’t win major fights on PotD without focusing on the use of cheap tactics). I had a hard time with some fights early in the game (whether I was facing the rebels or the Scarlet Chorus, the fight in Ascension Hall took me quite a few tries). But the more I progressed, the easier things got.
It’s understandable in Act 2, because the order of the quests is somewhat non-linear. But Act 3 is a complete walk in the park. By then, you’ve gained access to powerful abilities and spells, but the guys you face remain pretty much the same as before. I played through almost all of Act 3 with Kills-in-shadows to act as a tank and three mages (using bouncing False Pit with heightened area of effect, as well as a variety of damage spells). I don’t remember any fight giving me any real problem. Even the fights against the Archons are extremely easy (and also uninspired and boring, unfortunately).
I rather liked the classless system and the way skills improve through use. The magic system is nice. I really appreciated the fact that you can add (within the limits determined by your Lore skill) diverse improvements to the basic spells ; it makes magic more flexible and forces you to make tactical decisions.
The Conquest is an original introduction. I’m not sure the material consequences are very important, but it’s still nice to be able to decide what our PC did before the story starts and to have people refer to it from time to time.
The companions are okay. Their reactions are fairly logical (other than the fact that you can convince Barik to fight against the Disfavored in Act I), their personalities tend to be reasonably developed without being annoying, and they have some interesting interactions.
The story offers a big choice in Act I, by letting you decide who you want to side with. However, by contrast, the rest of the story doesn’t feel like it gives you a lot of freedom. True enough, you’re given opportunities to betray your allies, but those opportunities don’t provide you with good incentives or interesting alternatives, making them less than tempting.
To be fair, I understand that offering many choices with a major effect on the scenario could end up requiring a disproportionate amount of work. But lack of freedom is even found in small things. Take the Forgebound chick we rescue from Captain Crazy. When I was allied to the Scarlet Chorus, I had to send her to the Voices of Nerat, even though I knew the lunatic was going to kill her and she consequently would be of no further use to me ; I wasn’t given the option to tell her to go into hiding or anything like that. And when I was allied to the Rebels, I had to tell her that I intended to fight against Kyros, a remarkably stupid thing to say in your first conversation with the high-ranking member of a magical order that seems to be doing fairly well under the rule of Kyros (and it wasn’t even true, as my PC had no intention of genuinely turning against the Overlord).
The Spires are the magical reason you’re special. It’s nothing uncommon in CRPGs, of course, but in Tyranny, it seems either unnecessary or underused. Your being a Bhaalspawn in the BG series or an Awakaned Watcher in PoE is an essential part of the plot : it provides you with motivations and shapes the reactions of many people. But in Tyranny, there are stronger scenaristic elements (the rebellion, the conflict between Disfavored and Scarlet Chorus, the Edicts…) ; giving you mystical ties to ancient mystical buildings wasn’t necessary to drive the plot forward.
Late in the story, the Spires give you super-powers to save the day, but the fact that they haven’t been developed much precedently makes it a Deus Ex Machina rather than a satisfying development.
At some point, it’s suggested (by your penpal) that Kyros, for his own reasons, meant for you to bond with the Spires. But I don’t think anything comes out of it.
Putting aside those flaws, I think that the first two Acts are okay from a scenaristic point of view. The problem is that the third one is a rushed and disappointing conclusion. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was supposed to be much longer, but was cut short due to lack of time or money.
The confrontations with the Archons are utterly disappointing. They’re central characters, supposed to be intimidating and mysterious. Dealing with them should have been more elaborate and impressive than just showing up and kicking their asses. Tunon at least offers you a trial, but the confrontations with the other three show a lack of imagination and efforts.
Throughout the game, I’d rather liked the fact that you often get allies to fight by your side. So I was quite disappointed by the fact that the allies I’d painstakingly gathered during Act II ended up doing precious little in Act III, except during the battle of Lethian’s Crossing (probably the best part of the Act). In the attack against the Spire, the PC just nukes the attacking soldiers with an Edict and not much help is needed to wipe out what’s left. When we attack the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus, our allies don’t appear… even thought fighting against those armies is the very reason they decided to ally ! Having them help us would also make more believable the fact that we only need to kill a few handful of soldiers before reaching the Archons.
TL;DR : I feel like replaying it to see things I missed, but odds are I won't finish it again because combat is going to be even more of a chore the second time around.
I’d actually started playing it with a PC specialized in unarmed combat, but gave up halfway through when I realized spellcasting would be more interesting (also, I was allied to the Voices of Nerat and the annoying git was really beginning to get on my nerves).
I may try to replay the game just once as an anarchist, but that’ll be all. Tyranny has some decent things, but also significant flaws.
The main problem is probably the fact that combat is seldom entertaining.
- Having only four party members instead of six really limits the tactical possibilities. Combat wasn’t exactly great in PoE, but you could control six characters and it meant you could try a lot more things.
- As far as enemies are concerned, the lack of diversity is mind-numbing. I’m not opposed to the idea of mainly facing human opponents, but they have to be more than legions of clones. Each group (Scarlet Chorus, Disfavored, Vendrien Guard…) has about four types of soldiers that you keep encountering again and again throughout the entire game. Even named characters aren’t very different from the faceless minions (the Archons themselves aren’t distinguished by much more than a bloated amount of hit points and a few minor abilities).
- The fact that there are many needless fights of course emphasizes the repetitive nature of the enemies. The Banes are probably the worst offenders (the fact that they’re completely shallow and uninteresting doesn’t help).
- I’m not opposed to putting limits on pre-combat buffing (though I think PoE and Tyranny went a bit too far with that). However, what I find really annoying is that so many combat buffs/debuffs have extremely limited durations and/or (often “and”) unimpressive effects. Where’s the fun in making an ally slightly more resistant to a specific type of attack for 30 seconds ? Or poisoning a weapon so that it’ll somewhat weaken the enemy you hit, but only after you land a critical hit and only for 20 seconds ? The kind of magic/alchemy we had in games like BG2 may have been less balanced, but it made things more exciting.
On a related matter, I didn’t find the difficulty of the game to be very consistent. I played on Hard (I found it annoying that it apparently means your enemies won’t use their abilities as often as they could, but I simply couldn’t win major fights on PotD without focusing on the use of cheap tactics). I had a hard time with some fights early in the game (whether I was facing the rebels or the Scarlet Chorus, the fight in Ascension Hall took me quite a few tries). But the more I progressed, the easier things got.
It’s understandable in Act 2, because the order of the quests is somewhat non-linear. But Act 3 is a complete walk in the park. By then, you’ve gained access to powerful abilities and spells, but the guys you face remain pretty much the same as before. I played through almost all of Act 3 with Kills-in-shadows to act as a tank and three mages (using bouncing False Pit with heightened area of effect, as well as a variety of damage spells). I don’t remember any fight giving me any real problem. Even the fights against the Archons are extremely easy (and also uninspired and boring, unfortunately).
I rather liked the classless system and the way skills improve through use. The magic system is nice. I really appreciated the fact that you can add (within the limits determined by your Lore skill) diverse improvements to the basic spells ; it makes magic more flexible and forces you to make tactical decisions.
The Conquest is an original introduction. I’m not sure the material consequences are very important, but it’s still nice to be able to decide what our PC did before the story starts and to have people refer to it from time to time.
The companions are okay. Their reactions are fairly logical (other than the fact that you can convince Barik to fight against the Disfavored in Act I), their personalities tend to be reasonably developed without being annoying, and they have some interesting interactions.
The story offers a big choice in Act I, by letting you decide who you want to side with. However, by contrast, the rest of the story doesn’t feel like it gives you a lot of freedom. True enough, you’re given opportunities to betray your allies, but those opportunities don’t provide you with good incentives or interesting alternatives, making them less than tempting.
To be fair, I understand that offering many choices with a major effect on the scenario could end up requiring a disproportionate amount of work. But lack of freedom is even found in small things. Take the Forgebound chick we rescue from Captain Crazy. When I was allied to the Scarlet Chorus, I had to send her to the Voices of Nerat, even though I knew the lunatic was going to kill her and she consequently would be of no further use to me ; I wasn’t given the option to tell her to go into hiding or anything like that. And when I was allied to the Rebels, I had to tell her that I intended to fight against Kyros, a remarkably stupid thing to say in your first conversation with the high-ranking member of a magical order that seems to be doing fairly well under the rule of Kyros (and it wasn’t even true, as my PC had no intention of genuinely turning against the Overlord).
The Spires are the magical reason you’re special. It’s nothing uncommon in CRPGs, of course, but in Tyranny, it seems either unnecessary or underused. Your being a Bhaalspawn in the BG series or an Awakaned Watcher in PoE is an essential part of the plot : it provides you with motivations and shapes the reactions of many people. But in Tyranny, there are stronger scenaristic elements (the rebellion, the conflict between Disfavored and Scarlet Chorus, the Edicts…) ; giving you mystical ties to ancient mystical buildings wasn’t necessary to drive the plot forward.
Late in the story, the Spires give you super-powers to save the day, but the fact that they haven’t been developed much precedently makes it a Deus Ex Machina rather than a satisfying development.
At some point, it’s suggested (by your penpal) that Kyros, for his own reasons, meant for you to bond with the Spires. But I don’t think anything comes out of it.
Putting aside those flaws, I think that the first two Acts are okay from a scenaristic point of view. The problem is that the third one is a rushed and disappointing conclusion. I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was supposed to be much longer, but was cut short due to lack of time or money.
The confrontations with the Archons are utterly disappointing. They’re central characters, supposed to be intimidating and mysterious. Dealing with them should have been more elaborate and impressive than just showing up and kicking their asses. Tunon at least offers you a trial, but the confrontations with the other three show a lack of imagination and efforts.
Throughout the game, I’d rather liked the fact that you often get allies to fight by your side. So I was quite disappointed by the fact that the allies I’d painstakingly gathered during Act II ended up doing precious little in Act III, except during the battle of Lethian’s Crossing (probably the best part of the Act). In the attack against the Spire, the PC just nukes the attacking soldiers with an Edict and not much help is needed to wipe out what’s left. When we attack the Disfavored and the Scarlet Chorus, our allies don’t appear… even thought fighting against those armies is the very reason they decided to ally ! Having them help us would also make more believable the fact that we only need to kill a few handful of soldiers before reaching the Archons.
TL;DR : I feel like replaying it to see things I missed, but odds are I won't finish it again because combat is going to be even more of a chore the second time around.
- Joined
- Jan 19, 2014
- Messages
- 13,578
These have Obsidian Entertainment as developer but no publisher is listed.
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
Paradox also just released upgrade DLCs for Stellaris and Hearts of Iron IV, and they also just list the developer (Paradox Development Studio).
http://store.steampowered.com/app/616191/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/616190/
http://store.steampowered.com/app/616200/
Background Character
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2015
- Messages
- 781
I can't believe I played this game like 6 times one for each path I dunno if it was because it was short-ish and I had nothing else better to do or some weird stockholm syndrome
No allies genocide path best path, just kill every single character.
No allies genocide path best path, just kill every single character.
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
Last edited by a moderator:
4 euros is worth like 8 beers in my country. 8 beers are enough for having a nice two friday evenings. Definitely not worth it
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,486
Tyranny is 33% off on ParadoxPlaza now: https://www.paradoxplaza.com/tyranny
The 50% off coupon from the PoE2 campaign stacks with that discount! You can get the game for $15.
The 50% off coupon from the PoE2 campaign stacks with that discount! You can get the game for $15.
Kuattro
Augur
Doesn't Paradox realize that players can just crop the portrait they want from the preview images?
Lol just saved 4€
They didn't realize (or they didn't care, but with their competence, I'd go with the first one) that in Stellaris you could get the plantoid ship and portraits packs just modifying the text files of the game and deleting a couple of blocks (I don't even think they've actually fixed it). This is just on par with them.
Rev
Arcane
- Joined
- Feb 13, 2016
- Messages
- 1,180
Good move from Paradox, but didn't the coupons expire after 31 March?
Anyhow I already have Tyranny, so if the coupon is still working I can give mine to anyone who's interested in the game.
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,486
oldmanpaco
Master of Siestas
Is that when people who backed through the codex will get the coupon?
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- Jan 28, 2011
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- 97,486
- Joined
- Mar 16, 2011
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- 7,328
Wow just noticed this,Paradox gonna Paradox I guess,sprites and music dlcs are coming next I assume,
LESS T_T
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 5, 2012
- Messages
- 13,582
:D
So Steam version got five reviews so far...: http://store.steampowered.com/app/611370/#app_reviews_hash
Recommended
Portraits are beautiful! And for a reasonable price. Now I have a reason to replay Tyranny again
:russia:
- Joined
- Jan 28, 2011
- Messages
- 97,486
Background Character
Arbiter
- Joined
- Jan 17, 2015
- Messages
- 781
Better than the actual game
vortex
Fabulous Optimist
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