Tyranny - Standard Edition

First of all, I liked the setting quite a bit. However, as someone who is mainly interested in the story, the characters and the roleplaying, I was very disappointed. Planescape: torment or baldur's gate 2 this is not. The game is very railroaded, your choices barely influence the game, You make a lot of the choices before the game proper starts (in conquest mode), which mainly determines flavor text and which faction is located where. However,only the single the choice you make in act 1 (a couple of hours into the game) determines the rest of the game. The choice you make there places you on a rail that you cannot deviate from for the rest of the game.. If you ally with a Kyros faction in act 1, all interactions with non-Kyros factions will end with you murdering them, no matter how well you get along with them. If you allied with the non-Kyros faction in act 1, all interactions with non-Kyros factions end without murdering them. The game world does change depending on your actions, you just can't choose your actions. Characterization and character development of the companions is almost entirely missing. You find out everything that there is to know about the companions when you first meet them in a giant loredump. There are no further quests or interactions centered on the companions later. For example, one companion has a headdress sealing her powers forged by some of the factions in the game. Quite a bit of the initial conversation is about this headdress that she wants to remove, but you can never act on this while talking with these factions that made it. Finally it should be mentioned that the game ends very abruptly. A lot of mysteries arise and questions are posed, absolutely none of which are answered before the credits suddenly start rolling. If you mainly want a good story, character development, roleplaying opportunities and a world that changes according to the choices that you as a player make, this not the game for you.

To address the common complaints. * I'm 20-25h in, and there are still two major locations to go to, and three more Spires to claim. Don't know how you can blitz through the game so quickly. * Yes, there are few 'monsters' and you mostly fight human enemies of different factions. IMO, that's just the setting and you either accept that or not. What makes up for the lack of typical fantasy monsters is the extraordinary cast of characters - the ideas behind some of them are among the best I've seen in gaming in the last 20 years. * It may vary, obviously, but I've only experienced a handful of harmless bugs. * Can't comment on replay value, as I'm still in the midst of my first playthrough, but I'm already itching to start a new character and go a different path. * Yes, there are spelling errors here and there. As for the game itself, one of the strongest points of Tyranny is, in my opinion, not being forced to be GOOD. You are not out there to save the world, even though you can try. And that's the beauty, you may choose to be purely evil, disinterested in the struggle, you may betray forged alliances, or just be impartial and do your job as an executioner of justice. I consider the world and lore to be fantastically designed; it's deep but not overwhelming, fresh but not forced. The scope of the game may be smaller than grand RPGs like BG2 or Neverwinter, but the density and replay value (hopefully) make up for it. Writing leaves nothing to be desired (lot of flavor text based on your origin, and skills). Combat works well, it may seem that everything goes too fast at the beginning, but after getting used to it, have to say fighting presents a challenge (I play on Hard) and one has to be smart about the approach towards different enemies. I bought Tyranny without knowing anything about the game (didn't watch gameplays nor read much about the game) and I'm pleasantly surprised, and that comes after being disappointed by Pillars of Eternity. Highly recommended.

I am very taken with this excellent game. It's a party-based RPG, top-down view, stylistically similar to Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate, but in a different world. The party is 4, instead of 6, which helps quite a bit with feeling combat can become too micro-managey. PROS: -I love both the world - a genuinely dark and evil world in an RPG, and not in a cartoonish "we eat babies" way (you can kill a baby in this game if you want to though, don't get me wrong) but actually in a very grounded, orderly, rationalized way. It's almost a sort of bureaucratic evil at times, and uncomfortably familiar. Why do we do x evil thing? Well, we all live under the law, which keeps the peace, and you've been convicted by a judge, so here's the punishment. . . -Related to the above, but introducing optional-mouseover pop-ups for lore in dialogue boxes is a great solution to the problem where your character should realistically know what something is, living in the world, but you as the player don't because you are new to the world -Combat and related systems are fun. Character development is very versatile because it progression is skill-use based, but combat experience is divided between all skills, which means interesting hybrids are functional if not perhaps even favored. The magic crafting system is reasonably constrained by lore and available sigils, but makes it easy to customize your spell slingers. -Game seems genuinely reactive to big choices at a regular interval, which is not always the case in choice and consequence RPGs. CONS: -I do sometimes feel like there's a bit much of running back and forth for certain quests (did I really need to report to Graven Ashe again at every step of taking Stalwart?). -Some zones have excessive unnecessary combat (cough oldwalls) -I think I"m getting good length value out of the game for the quality of the experience - I'm 20 hours in and not that far - but I hear the end comes abruptly, before you are ready for it.

I really like this game a lot. I grew up on c64 games so I've been around. This game reminds me of the Baldurs Gate games, obviously, but in my opinion it's the greatest of those sort since BG1+2, icewind dale, etc. I enjoyed Pillars of Eternity and others, but this game is far different, and better in my opinion. Honestly nothing else since has captivated me or drawn me in as much in the past 10 years. It creates it's own world. The setting is new, the character types are new, the way magic works are new. . . You'll have to learn the workings of this entirely new world and background. I think it's wonderful. You can't, and shouldn't, click through every dialog option presented. It's an actual Role Playing Game. What you say or do matters, you play a character. Gods and mediators and supplicants and beastfolk abound. It's a new, and very welcome take. The choices you make are HUGELY influential. I can see playing this game through 3 or more times, and I've never played more than a few games multiple times through. (FinalFant 3/6, Vampire: bloodlines. . . thats about it, honestly). It's really magnificent, looks great, and runs very well even on a mediocre system. I also lets you pause real-time (ala Baldurs gate) while issuing commands, BUT ALSO lets you slow or speed up time while doing so. Hit keyboard "-" in combat, and you'll slow to ~1/2 speed (still with active pause) and have more time to plan and realize what's going on and adjust accordingly. Sneak mode in "+" My only slight negatives are that I'd really like a 1/4 or even 1/8 combat speed in some battle instances. I'd like to be able to press "-" multiple times to further slow and plan. even at 1/2 speed, with active pause, combat sometimes goes too quickly. The AI sometimes does stupid stuff too, if you have it in their skill set. A non-healer with healing will use it way too often. . The gog word limit is killing me. I think you get the jist. It's great. really really good

I've been really enjoying the roleplaying aspects of the game. Navigating the different factions within the Overlord's empire is a compelling challenge, and while the range of options for dealing with a sitution are frequently pretty narrow (which helps create the feeling of being a minion, though a high-up one), it generally feels like the distinctions between those options are meaningful. I really want to continue this game. But...I am so sick of the combat. I'm playing on a low difficulty, which means I very rarely feel threatened - but it still takes ages for a combat to resolve. I would like to go up and be challenged, but I don't want it to take even longer. I also don't feel like I'm making many meaningful tactical choices, just matching attacks with a particular type of save to enemies that are bad at that save, and similar. To make it worse, there are loads of filler combats which don't need to be there to advance the story. So...I've stopped. Which sucks.