Yeah, I always found magic to be far more effective than physical combat. Some of the artifact weapons you can find will offset that to some degree, but Verse just never did all *that* much damage compared to the mages. Sirin's semi-magic made her surprisingly strong, and she could mix it up pretty good on the front line, so I ended up preferring her pretty strongly to Verse.
Barik, of course, barely did any damage at all. He could be made strong enough to be somewhat useful with magic buffs, but on his own, he was a typical tank, at least the way I used him.
The game has lots of problems, but has a lot of good stuff, too. Like many (most?) Obsidian games, their reach exceeded their grasp, and the game sold so poorly that they abandoned it, and stopped fixing bugs. The Bastard's Wound is still a mess, years later.
Yet, for all that, I put a lot of hours into it, exploring all the various nooks and crannies. I loved the world they created. There's nothing wrong with their ability to tell a tale, even if their control over choice mechanics and overall gameplay wasn't up to the challenge they created for themselves.
So I've reached the first spire, clearly have an unbalanced party (I have no idea what I was trying to do with my fate binder but appear to have ended up with a second Barik) and using Verse as an archer and Lantry as my healer. I'm winning battles - slowly - but it doesn't seem to make a hell of a lot of sense. I've also not really got any lore heavy characers (apart from Lantry) which means I have't really explored spell making yet. I get the impression I should do something about that.
I'm also finding the Disfavoured / Scarlet Chorus stuff to be a little too binary. It needs a little more choice earlier on. One thing I am finding is that it making me role play in a way I've not really had the inclination to do in many of the RPGs we've played to be honest. I'm trying to be a fair but harsh judge - there to carry out Kyros's judgement in accordance with his laws as far as possible. It sort of means I'll listen to the Ventrian Guard (for example) but if they don't surrender, they're going to know about. I also
judged the old man in the first village how had the forge bound Iron. he was hiding it, didn't declare it, I handed him over to the Disfavoured.
In that regard it's doing really well.
I probably should have spent more time/money on crafting weapons at our forge on the spire. I just never had enough money or materials to do that, but I probably would have if I had sold more of the stuff I was carrying around.
Oh, yeah, you definitely wanted to be doing that. Weapon upgrades at the workbench are a big deal in Tyranny. You could kinda stick with Verse's starting weapons and just upgrade them as you went along, and she would stay reasonably effective. In effect, you'd gradually improve them up to iron-quality weapons. And there's lots of money in selling off gear, especially the heavy armor that nobody but your character can reasonably use.
There must be a bazillion different endings, but my ending was perfectly set up for a sequel. It almost felt unfinished, because there were big questions left half answered.
I'm sure they were setting up for a sequel, and this was another thing that irked people, because the story didn't really feel finished.
There are a lot of things I really enjoyed about the game. The crafted world and the relationships among the various groups and factions in particular was a strong point.Toward the end I was curious how much of the game I had left, and took at peek at a couple of walkthroughs. They were next to totally useless because my ending and route through the game were so different. That's a remarkable achievement that you can make a game with so many viable pathways.
Tyranny is an extraordinarily wide game, one that genuinely respects and works with the choices you made. It begs to be played multiple times, just to see all it has to offer.
For me, the game was most enjoyable when I was working through some of the meatier quests. When the game was dancing between occasional story segments, combat, and light puzzling I really got dialed in.
When it was working, it worked well. But the Oldwalls were tedious, especially if you were in a playthrough that visited them three or more times. And not everything was obvious; you missing out on how important crafting upgrades are is a great example.
But, wow, the world is epic. The sense of place and history are awesome. One detail I liked was how the Tiers were Bronze-age, and Kyros' armies were Iron-age, and gradually switching over to iron weapons and armor was such a big upgrade. (Although, now that I think about it, it wouldn't make a lot of sense for the Fatebinder to be equipped with bronze at the game start.)
I think I've played through it four times, now, and I still saw new stuff on my most recent run.
FWIW, out of four-ish runs, it was only this last one where I actually managed to end up a Rebel, and I still had to check the Wiki and go back about two hours to undo a wrong decision. It is really hard to find that path, even if you know it's there.
It doesn't actually play that much differently, although at least the leaders aren't psychopaths. You're still doing a lot of the same stuff, but for better reasons, usually.
edit: also, keeping Barik is quite tricky on that path. He hates your guts and desperately wants to abandon you.
I think, of my four total runs, I liked the Anarchist version the best.... screw everyone, they're all jerks, take over yourself.
I have a feeling that when I restart Tyranny, this'll be my path too. I had sided with the Chorus at the end of Act 1 because, in that final meeting before the assault, Graven Ashe was being a real jerk. He & his team had not been treating the Chorus as an equal partner, and as Tunon (& Kyros)'s voice in the camp, I couldn't let that stand. But this was more a reaction against Ashe than a vote in favor of the Voices; they & I probably will clash.
Well I'm still playing through this and now I have 2 spires, although I clearly did this out of sequence with the somewhat linear path the game is sort of expecting you to follow. That's OK now I've got my head around it, but you do sort of wonder what they were thinking. I've also had another one of those events where what I wanted to happen (and clearly, there is no reason in game why it shouldn't be an option) just wasn't actually one of the options available. So I had to work out what the least worst option was and boy, I did not like it at all.
There is so much stuff here that if they had allowed it into Pillars 2, would have made Pillars 2 an immeasurably better game though. I love how magic works (when I remember to learn the various elements) and the combo abilities as well. Happy just flowing through it for now, be interesting to see where it ends up
You guys might find, if you exchange more info via spoiler text, that you aren't talking about the same area. The 'choosing the least awful option' thing happens more often than in most games.
The "you want me to do what?" effect happens downright often.
You guys might find, if you exchange more info via spoiler text, that you aren't talking about the same area. The 'choosing the least awful option' thing happens more often than in most games.
The "you want me to do what?" effect happens downright often.
I sort of agree and disagree with that. Tyranny seems to take it to extremes though
I also found myself allied with the Chorus at the end of the first act. After exploring and unlocking the Sunspire in Lethian’s Crossing (clearly before the game was expecting me to) I eventually had the event where the Bronze brotherhood attacks and steals the weird mask thing. Before I left I had the conversation with the Merchant Spy about delivering the Bronze Brother leader and the Forge-Bound leader to the Voices of Nerat.
When I got to the end of that event chain, I did deliver the Brotherhood leader to the chorus to take to Nerat. I didn’t want to deliver the Forge leader as I figured she’d be more useful to let go, even if it did piss off Nerat.
However, the only choices the game gave me was to give her up or kill her. I couldn’t just let her go. That’s just dumb. And illogical. There’s nothing in the slightly throw away conversation with the merchant spy to tell you that it’s a ‘do it or die’ situation, which considering the lengths you’ve gone to to rescue her, makes not sense. At all. In the end I gave her up as there’s no point pissing off both the Forge-Bound and Nerat
I am really struggling to get through this game.
It’s got nothing to do with the mechanics or story, both of which I think are pretty good. The magic system is very rough around the edges but it’s a system that - with some refinement - could really become something extremely interesting to see implemented in a more complex and involving game.
It’s just every time I fire it up I have a massive ‘urgh. I can’t be bothered with this’ moment and go and play something else.
Right. Committed myself to this last night and now I’m in the Bastards Wound. Is it worth playing the DLCs for this given I keep leaving the game and not going back to it? Does anyone have an opinion?
Right. Committed myself to this last night and now I’m in the Bastards Wound. Is it worth playing the DLCs for this given I keep leaving the game and not going back to it? Does anyone have an opinion?
Not really, no. It's just more of the same.
I thought Bastard's Wound was decent, but as Math said it's just more of the same, with a longer-than normal foray into the Oldwalls.
Now I’m there I’ll probably play it. It’s been part of the version I got from the free Epic giveaway so might as well if it’s there. Fingers crossed it’s not too buggy.
There is a very good game in here somewhere. I just need to try and find it.
I definitely enjoyed my game, but I think I would have abandoned it if it were a 50- to 60-hour game. The fact that it was a shorter game kept me going a few times. It's really not long at all. I'm slower than average and it was well under 30 hours.
I think that's going to be my epitaph for this game, "somewhere there's a good game here, but it never gets the time to show up".
I think the opinion on this group of Pillars of Eternity 2 as the next game would be very interesting in some respects.
Yeah, you've guess it, I'm plugging through The Bastards Wound. And walking into fights I'm struggling to win all of a sudden.
I'm finding the companion loyalty stuff now to be really odd. Barik hates me, but doesn't seem to want to leave my side, Lantry just..... doesn't care? no matter what I do with him he never approves or disapproves. It's really odd. At least Verse likes me, although I think she's a homicidal crazy woman.
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