This game has no plot, and that is not a knock on it at all. Your goal is dismember stick figures by the hundreds, kung fu style. And occasionally Rambo style. And sometimes Leatherface or Yoda style. It is mindless twitch fun, and it is _so_ good. The one downside of this game is that it is hard on your wrist. Small price to pay, though.
I bought this game when it came out, and to be fair, there's a lot to like. It's a CRPG with interesting NPCs and a good plotline. Honestly, the story is quite good, and most of the uneven bits from the module have been ironed out and turned into a coherent narrative. I also like the alignment system and how it influences your dialogue choices. Really, Owlcat has taken almost everything about Pathfinder and made it into something good. But. And of course there's a but, because I gave it two stars. The but is that the game is horribly, horribly buggy. NPCs disappear. Storyline quests are broken. You can get through 20-30 hours, but at some point it becomes literally unplayable. I've waited something like three weeks for a fix, but I have yet to see a patch that addresses any of the current issues. Instead, Owlcat released some DLC for extra gore. Yeah ... gamebreaking bugs are left to fester so that your PCs' portraits can get some extra red masking. I don't even have the words. At this point, I've given up on this game. Don't waste your money on it. If there's a patched version out next year and the price has dropped, it might be worth the gamble. As it stands, just don't.
Pointless. I would have preferred they just one of the dozens of gamebreaking bugs in the current version than this.
This is the first computer RPG I've ever played that made me feel almost like I was playing a pen-and-paper RPG. The choices are that intricate and deep. Playing through just the intro is amazing, and I am not a person who gives praise lightly. The NPCs are also great and detailed and fun and well-voiced— much more than I usually find in a CRPG. The combat system is much like Pillars of Eternity, and works fairly well. There's a bit more micromanagement than I'd like, given that the combat AI leaves a bit to be desired. Still, it's not bad, and that's a minor complaint. There are also currently some bugs, though I imagine they'll be fixed relatively soon, and given the scope of the game, there are honestly very few of them. The worst gripe I have with Tyranny is that it ends abruptly, just when I felt like my character was really starting to hit stride. I honestly considered dropping a star for this, but on the whole I think the game still deserves a 5/5.
At the outset, AoD seems like a really great game. I was willing to overlook a bunch of the mechanical terribleness that literally ever other game on the market has solved. Like, having to find a quest NPC who is essentially hiding in a closet in the middle of a large city, when the sum total of your instruction is 'Oh yeah, he's somewhere in that city.' Frustrating doesn't begin to describe it, especially when this exact scenario happens 10 or 20 times throughout the course of the game. If I hadn't gone online and found some suggestions, I'd have deleted the game about 4 hours in. There's a lot of talk about choice and replayability, but frankly, that's all a load of crap. The game starts in City 1, progresses to City 2. then to City 3, then to the Final Temple. Yeah, you can fool around with different professions and sidequests, but it's essentially running around a racetrack, and you get to choose whether you run in lane 1 or lane 6. Wheee. Summary: Interesting world and story, awful mechanics, nonexistent replayability. Worth an afternoon or two at $10, but certainly not worth $25-30.
The good: Neat mechanics, cool art style, fun challenge. The meh: Unlockables. Playtime-based unlockables always seem like cheap filler to me. The bad: It's sloooooow. So ... many ... unskippable ... animations. And having to sit through five AI turns for each one of yours is mind-achingly tedious. If this game had a fast mode, it would be an easy 5/5.
