Tyranny + Bastard's Wound Expansion Thread

[Excidium II]

I thought the entire game would be about opressing the population but after you take the spire that aspect of the game seems p. much done.

 

[Bester]

Spoiler

Someone forgot to write the obvious answer "Deal."... You can't even accept her proposal.

 

[evdk]

Spoiler

Someone forgot to write the obvious answer "Deal."... You can't even accept her proposal.

Where do you even get that grimoire, because I did not get jack.

 

[bminorkey]

finished the game. i think it's one of obsidian's better games in a long time.

shame about the ending being so sudden though.

 

[Dreaad]

Good old evil empire where almost everyone acts like stupid thugs. Also don't get the hate for Crimson whatever faction, they may be crazy but at least their idea of conquest isn't kill everyone, burn everything and charge head first into traps. Still at least the story had some interesting moments. Better reactions in the game world than PoE. Same lackluster, impact-less combat.

 

[Excidium II]

Good old evil empire where almost everyone acts like stupid thugs. Also don't get the hate for Crimson whatever faction, they may be crazy but at least their idea of conquest isn't kill everyone, burn everything and charge head first into traps. Still at least the story had some interesting moments. Better reactions in the game world than PoE. Same lackluster, impact-less combat.

They're way better than the purple knights at least. They should have at least pumped the xenophobic aspect of the disfavored a bit.

 

[prodigydancer]

The combat on PotD is insanely hard but only because it's totally unfair. You can never use stealth to your advantage because every fight starts via a cutscene. Even if it's an obvious ambush, you won't see the enemies until you hit the cutscene trigger which won't give you a stealth/wait option but will simply force you to be ambushed. You start out surrounded. Enemy archers are in hard to reach spots and enemy tanks have huge HP pools. Enemies crit for 30 but graze for 20 so you're screwed no matter how much parry and dodge you have. Finally, they will all focus the same guy in your party which would be OK if you had any reliable means of protecting yourself against focus fire but you don't. Barik's taunts don't work at all.

It's just reloading every fight 100 times until you get lucky rolls. There's nothing else to it. It's much worse than PoE, where you could always gain a degree of control even when you were heavily disadvantaged.

[Edit]: OK, maybe I exaggerated a little but mostly it's still true.

Some observations:
Deflection looks OP at first but against pure damage it's not mitigating enough - at least in early game. Archers and javelin throwers seem to be the worst in this regard - you really want to make sure that they hit only Barik because of his high armor vs. pierce. Running away helps much more than it did in PoE - enemies cannot catch up with you as easily. (Leave Barik behind. With any luck ranged will stack on him and melee will pursue the rest of your party.) If you're surrounded - run past mages because they'll be busy casting and you won't get disengagement damage. Spread out so that mages don't AoE you to hell. Kill order: mages > melee > archers. Pre-buffing Barik heavily will also help: Titan's Touch, Mirror Image, Spectral Blur, Vital Body, etc.

This strategy is no silver bullet but works better than anything else I've tried.

 

[Excidium II]

All it does is make magic feel even more wimpy. Even on a lower setting like hard you have to exhaust your repertoire to kill someone.

 

[Lacrymas]

Yeah, enemies feel like hp sponges and takes forever to kill a single mage while the mages in your party drop like flies. PotD is not hard at all, it's just cheap. Rogues insta-teleporting to your mage and gibbing him almost instantly is just annoying. The combat UI is not helping this matter.

 

[Bubbles]

A couple of "bug reports", all from the same guy:

Completely ignoring the fact that it's supremely boring that the only way to actually approach these people and the quest is to just walk up to them, them being marked as allies up until that point, and a narrative low-water mark, this answer makes no sense in the given context - I do know who they are - I was specifically asked to go kill them, and even have a quest for it, "Cleaning Out the Junkyard".

And while not technically an issue to be reported as such, let me again state how ridiculously terrible and simplistic this is presented. Hurr durr, die. Absolutely pathetic narrative writing for a roleplaying game. Might as well just make them hostile to begin with, or turn them red the moment you get the quest. This is placeholder-level content.

-

Apparently, it is not necessary to kill these poor sods at all to fullfil the conditions of the "Cleaning Out the Junkyard" quest.

This, hilariously, makes the entire thing even worse, and all the more unforgivable.

RIP random malnourished veterans that an otherwise rational and forgiving fatebinder had to randomly rape to death like a witless barbarian because "¯\(°_o)/¯ i dunno lol"-level writing.

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/rust-canyon-cleaning-out-the-junkyard.982916/

After initiating dialogue, there's no way out of the dialogue that doesn't involve meaningless threats and antagonizing. If the intent actually is to force Wrath on the player, simply initiating dialogue would suffice. Forcing the player character to make threats like this is incredibly out of character, not just to individual characters, but to the writing at large.

At Duskwatch Fort, it is possible to choose to infiltrate the fort, but immediately when you enter the fort through one of the sneaky entrances, everyone inside goes hostile, you're taken into combat, and your stealth is removed. Apart from the obvious issue of having your stealth broken, one has to wonder what the point of infiltration was if it's all going to play out the same way as if you'd kicked the gate down.

Even though all are dead and the camp cleared, there's no way to talk to him. Not until I break down the gate and let the other soldiers in does the last soldier spawn. Seriously, this is pretty terrible.

 

[Fry]

That name sounds familiar. I think he is/was a serial complainer on the Obsidian forums.

Maybe stop buying games from the company you hate?

 

[GrainWetski]

He even made a Paradox account 11 years ago just to hate on them.

 

[Excidium II]

A related weird thing, after the disfavored became hostile to me I killed them all in lethian crossing, I thought cool now I can offer it back to Bronze brotherhood and they will be happy. But there's no dialogue option to do so. Seems like one of those situation where you have to wait for the scripted moment to kick off for you to do anything. Same how you can't ask the village boss to unseal the tower door for you.

 

[Bleed the Man]

A couple of "bug reports", all from the same guy:

At Duskwatch Fort, it is possible to choose to infiltrate the fort, but immediately when you enter the fort through one of the sneaky entrances, everyone inside goes hostile, you're taken into combat, and your stealth is removed. Apart from the obvious issue of having your stealth broken, one has to wonder what the point of infiltration was if it's all going to play out the same way as if you'd kicked the gate down.

The stuff about infiltrating the camp reminded me of something. In this game, like PoE, you can bypass several encounters through stealth, but -probably- due to the limited scope of the maps, it is terribly comunicated to the player. I completed a secondary quest where I had to rescue a group of people from, I think, the Disfavored, and I managed it without fighting, but I passed through the group with barely any space between my character and the enemy, there was no clear path that indicated some form of bypassing them. Stealth works exactly the same way as Pillars, so I think is an issue with the smaller maps, making the enemies stand a lot closer between each other, and (this I'm not even sure is accurate) I think they made that the enemies detect you slower than before.

His complains about infiltrating the camp are accurate, but is more a fault of bad positioning on the part of the enemies. There's one entrance that is basically a trap choice, and the other should just offer a simple encounter, and then you could open the gate with stealth, but is hard to do so because depending on where's the patrol, you will attract the atention of the nearby group of enemies, and it's incredibly difficult for the player to know and plan before hand.

 

[Mei Scarlet]

I found sneaking in the camp pretty easy. Entered through the upper left point (right one is a trap), sneaked past the first patrol, talked to the soldier, sneaked to the gate and opened it. Than the usual bloodbath. Had to reload only once when I tried to sneak to the gate with my whole party; then did it with the main character and the rest of the party teleported to her when the scene after opening the gates ended.

We probably could've just stormed the camp upfront, in the end it made literally zero difference.

 

[MrMarbles]

About 10 hours in, and pretty much made up my mind. The game is lifeless. Almost as lifeless as PoE. The wrath/favor mechanic/c&c/dialogue is unintelligent and forced, and the world feels claustrophobic. This game doesn't give you choice, it gives you the illusion of choice.

I'll finish it just to see how much potential there is for powergaming, but I don't see much replay potential.

 

[J_C]

This game doesn't give you choice, it gives you the illusion of choice.

Some prominent Codexers says there the C&C is pretty good in this game. Some (like you) think it is shit. Make up your fucking mind Codex!

 

[Gord]

The hivemind is an illusion, there's only butthurt

 

[Fry]

The Codex is a cranky old man yelling at children.

Torrent it, try it, buy it if you like it.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I keep wanting to resume my game but the initial 3 MINUTE LOADTIME prevents me from doing so.

 

[Trojan_generic]

Looks like a day 365 purchase to me. Thanks again, Codex.

 

[bminorkey]

"Ever since you arrived at the Tiers, you have proven stubbornly tight-lipped. Your speech is often stilled as if by some great terror or apprehension. Can you answer for this anomaly or are you too simple to manage it?"

[Say nothing]

"Absolutely incredible... even I could take lessons on being surly from you." (Sirin)

"I don't know why I expected any different." (Tunon)

GOTY

 

[Shadowfang]

Won't even torrent it.
It seems experience means squat on making games. Old Vets keep producing uninspiring, glitchy, bland games.
My money is on Devs like ITS, Styg and Whalenought_Joe.

Obsidian
InXile, 1 shot left.

 

[MrMarbles]

This game doesn't give you choice, it gives you the illusion of choice.

Some prominent Codexers says there the C&C is pretty good in this game. Some (like you) think it is shit. Make up your fucking mind Codex!

Who am I to argue with prominent codexers. It's not a shit game, but it's not for me. Remember how the different attitude and alignment options in PoE made no sense? There's a bit of the same thing going on here. This is a game where you are supposed to be evil, but you can never hide anything by killing all the witnesses. Reactions to dialogue options are weirdly random, and so far I haven't seen many genuine opportunities to play 2 or 3 sides against each other. Most choices are binary.

 

[Excidium II]

Won't even torrent it.
It seems experience means squat on making games. Old Vets keep producing uninspiring, glitchy, bland games.
My money is on Devs like ITS, Styg and Whalenought_Joe.

Obsidian
InXile, 1 shot left.

What experience, most of the devs are new to CRPG development.