I've played these games so many times, and I love them, love making my own puzzles even more. There really isn't much more to say than that, but the fact remains, these were designed to be 'edutainment', but evolved far beyond that, and then, faded out of popularity, into obscurity. ... Why? Game publisher/distributor politics, mainly, nothing I wanna elaborate on here; one can find articles and vids many many on the subject. ... I'll always be a fan of Sierra Online games, and of TIM games in particular.
Yes, it is the only official TES game to include all of Tamriel in a single game pack, though not every part of each region is fully developed. It is exceptionally difficult and there's no indicators of what anything is, or how to go about v/x/z except vague dialogue here and there. About the only fully usable dialogue comes from the ill-fated sorcerel. It does well with what it does well and falters everywhere else, but hot damn, it's great for what it is. It is true that some character builds are going to suffer whilst others are more apt to thrive. If one wants to have a certain character build, their playstyle must adapt. There's no shifting that. The spell maker? It's broken if one can utilize it in such a way, yes. Overall, if one is wanting to have a true, classically brutal RPG experience, yes, this is exactly what one seeks. If one is wanting to get into TES, TES III Morrowind might be a better option.
Setup, needs tweaking. If you use or wish to use a gamepad/joystick, you'll have to do the following: [joystick] timed=false joysticktype=auto This goes anywhere in the dosboxT2K.conf file (I suggest using Notepad++), and also, change memsize to 32 in the same file. What the joystick configs do is keep the controls from going ballistic in menus and in game. After all that, it's smooth, melodically sound sailing from there. Alongside games like Raptor, Nebula Fighter, Demonstar, and others, Tyrian is one of the greats, and the music to boot is fantastic. Sure, like all games, it has its' faults, but not enough of them to make the game undesirable, and definitely rewarding for perserverance. It's not necessarily a game designed for the everyday casual gamer, but then again, the majority of these games made many years back rarely ever had the casual gamer in mind because well, the casual gamer didn't really exist. You were either a gamer, or a watcher. Tyrian, the Level: Beautiful, tearjerker music. Admit it! It brings tears to your eyes too. Okay, maybe not, but still! It is an amazing melody, one of many in the soundtrack alone. Ship Editor: How can you punish this. Basically this allows one to create their own custom ship graphics and ship stats with their unlocked abilities and such. Can start a new game with great levels of power this way, or at the very least, a full set of weaponry for 0 credits. Can also share ship data between rivals (though one cannot bypass the locked abilities with ship data). Best of all, this is completely cost free, and to boot, it comes with the OST as a free DLC. Hot damn.
Personally, I'm no expert at this game, and the way this game series is made, it never forces you to be, which is a plus in my book. No 'beginner's traps', no harsh learning curves, none of that. Just a fun, engaging, somewhat violent, gory and brutal bloodfest; a twenty-first century (or thirty-first perhaps?) gladiator match. There are no overpowered weapons or opponents, or the weapons that are come with a grave execution error cost-your own life. Actually, some of my favorite fantasy (some are semi-realistic) weapons have come from this series, including the Redeemer. The Redeemer is a weapon I could do a full review on by itself, but that is for another time, perhaps. Probably the best part is how quickly re-spawning occurs; we all will get our asses handed to us at some point, so it is good that re-spawning only takes a second to occur (of course, waiting to re-spawn in multiplayer is a long wait period but that's a different thing altogether), rather than having to wait five, ten seconds and be vulnerable in that time period. The weapons are great, the stages are great, the physics are stable and predictable, and the customization is some of the best I've seen. A classic, and unforgettable. The Unreal Experience.
