Tyranny - Standard Edition

I did actually enjoy playing and finishing the game, unfortunately, the experience went from "this is very cool" to "ah, this could be so much better". Yes, it's true that the game feels a bit short (and the end comes quite abruptly - it's like when you set up a scene, characters, rich history (or its illusion)... and then bash, boom, bang, the end. I did enjoy the game more than Pillars of Eternity, probably. I found the characters to be (a bit) more memorable, some sections genuinely good (e.g., the burning library), but: a) The game is very small, spatially - the number of areas isn't massive, and many of them are single screen. Even the big ones are quite small, you can run from end-to-end in a short time. There is nothing like the feeling of exploration of large (and not boring!) areas, such as in Arcanum, Baldur's gate, Fallout, etc. etc. b) Narrow story - it's not "linear", as there are branches, but the game felt like I was steered from choice to choice, not living the story in even remotely natural way. It's often impossible to make fairly sensible choices, because the game doesn't offer it to you, while it would, if you went in a very subtly different way. c) No strong side-quests. This is probably what made the game clearly worse for me than some other existing RPGs. Remember stories like Valygar entering his globe, or going after Jierdan Firkraag in BG2 - such examples, which are good stories on their own, are tightly woven into the world's fabric, and make it richer, and character deeper. Well, there is nothing like that here at all. At all :( d) Problematic balance of items - there was never a real need to buy items, as they were never better than what I have found. From the half of the game on, I was swamped in named and fancy-looking artifacts... but no incentive to use them. All in all, a nice world, I enjoyed the graphics and sounds, but just too shallow a game to score better for me.

Absurdly small text in a game that requires lots of reading.

*Glares silently*

I stopped playing after three hours. It's just too much dialogue, too much blah blah, too much digging through dialogue trees to try and find what gives you a bonus. Not enough combat, and combat is too tedious. Yes, it's an interesting story, but I should've learned my lesson from Pillars of Eternity. The same company made this game and I stopped playing PoE, so why did I think I'd enjoy Tyranny? Oh well. I'm too old and have too many responsibilities to be able to dive into walls of text for just an hour each day. I'd rather have a more action-oriented RPG at this point, I guess.

As someone who is not a regular with these types of RPGS I was a bit wary before going into Tyranny, especially with the many negative reviews floating around, but in the end Tyranny and the world of Terratus won me over and made me sink a good 30 hours in the game. The first act is by far the weakest mostly because it is very linear and especially for someone new to the genre it requires a lot of reading and familiarising with the mechanics and world around. After that the game begins to expand and grow, becoming more interesting and diverse. Depending on how you play, ACT II can be totally different from playthrough to playthrough being changed by the choices you make both actively in the game and in the Game's Conquest Mode which starts off the story. The more you advance in the game the better it gets, as you become more powerful as a character and as your choices begin to shape the world around you, the game shifts from being about this grand campaign to being about YOU the player and the tremendous potential for power within you. You choices matter (though I admit, not all actions are equal and minor things you didn't consider might have grave consequences while other actions which you might believe are of great importance end up mattering very little) and the world changes to adapt to the choices you make. I was particularly impressed by the degree of power the player can gain in the end of the game and that's as much I will say without spoiling. Tyranny would be a solid 5/5 if not for one problem that became more and more obvious the more you advance: The game is missing A WHOLE ACT. The biggest problem with Tyranny is that everything in the game points to a rushed finish, even the artwork included with the game points to the fact that there should have been an additional act, what we are left with instead is a rushed ending with a few cutscenes and an obvious cliff hanger that will no doubt be the basis for a Tyranny 2 (Not that I mind).