Hmm, was updating my progress for a while but me being a lazy noob never realized I can write progress posts as well ;p
So in this week:
FINALLY finished Tyranny - very mixed feelings. Almost everything about this game is perfect beside one thing, but this one thing is major and almost ruins it. Game has awesome climate, lore and story. World is well crafted and quite unique. Dialogues, many many consequences, using your stats in dialogues etc are also one of the best I’ve seen - basically you could replay game 3-4 times and see almost nothing of the same stuff. Game also gives a lot of unique mechanics, while most of other oldschool isometric RPGs are basically clones of BG/PT/ID stuff, here we get many new ideas, like levelling equipment, reputation system that is finally meaningfull, factions that actually matters, creating own spells and many many others. So why do I have problem with it? One word. PERFORMANCE. Game doesn’t look too impressive graphically-wise (I’d say it’s uglier that PoE, Original Sin or new Torment) yet it runs like total crap. Even with such graphics it can stutter, locations are small yet they load forever, even if you enter small room it will be loading for like 2-3 minutes, any bigger map like small village will be loading 4-5min and with small locations you can imagine theres lots of loading (this small village will have 5 houses you can enter, so going there will be like 10-15mins apent on loading houses, 20-30 min loading village up each time again, so you spend 30-45 min on loading screens for one village you otherwise would fully explore in 15-20min…) Not to mention loading savegame if you screwed sth up. If not for these loadings i would be playing Tyranny all the time, because of them I have enough after 3h (meaning 2h game, 1h waiting for loading screens), get frustrated and quit. Luckilly locations in Act II and III don’t have so many sub-locations so not so many loading times (but as you fight more bosses more loading times forloading save file when you die). If Obsidian optimised game correctly Tyranny would be the best isometric RPG on Steam, as it is it’s not even in top 3 beside it’s massive potential.
Got bad karma ending in Karma. Incarnation 1 - Loved artstyle and animation, gameplay-wise it was ok, yet some portions required clicking basically everything on screen. I intentionally was going for bad karma ending to see what happens and that was a bad choice. You see - in this game you cannot save at all, it autosaves when you quit it. And bad karma ending brings you back to beggining to do whole game once more (and since no saving you cannot load), which is kinda stupid as all puzzles are the same and playing again qould feel like a waste of time. Also it’s supposed to be only episode 1 and ep 2 is unlikelly to come. Still worth playing just for how amazing and unique it looks thou - just don’t go for bad karma ending ;p
Completed 100% Highschool Romance - I played Highschool Posession from same dev before and loved it. Highschool Romance has more plot, more options and routes, more CGs, but personally I prefer Posession. Simply because I didn’t really like any of the girls in Romance and if you don’t like any girl in VN it’s not gonna be great. But it’s personal preference, for someone who didn’t like girls in Posession this may be much better :>
Now starting to play another long game - Phantom Brave PC :>
Damn shame you have technical problems with Tyranny because I really do think it’s one of the better modern CRPGs in terms of choices & consequences, and one where people got hung on weirdest perceived issues. Like, there are apparently too many women in the game and similar opinions. I also find performance issues interesting because it was the opposite for me in a sense that Pillars of Eternity took forever to load - in my experience Tyranny’s smaller zones worked to fix that and did on my PC. This translates into more loading screens yes, but loading time was never a detrimental factor on my end.
I put together a wall of text extensive review of it in one of my earlier updates if you care to get a more in-depth opinion on Tyranny.
In terms of choices and consequences I also believe it to be the best out on Steam. Unlike many games where choices you make have only minor impact, like some character dies, here we get full parts of story, locations, quests and characters that are unique to choices you made. I for example never even visited the whole massive location where Vellum Citadel is simply because I sided with Unbroken instead of Sages. But like I said - loading times were killing a lot of fun for me, Lethian’s Crossing being the best example. Without loading screens my first visit to it, talking to everyone and getting all quests would take me 20-30minutes. Because of loading screens (few minutes for every small hut) it took me almost 1.5h and I was soo fed up with it I simply had to quit the game and try again later.
I certainly hope you get around to it again at some point because it is one of those games that are worth playing and put other RPGs to shame in many aspects that matter. There’s supposed to be some DLC also in the works, but that’s still in rumors stage it seems.
Sadly I doubt there’s gonna be DLC. The rumors about DLC emerged because there was upcoming Paradox Convention in mid-May. And thgen they didn’t anounce a thing for Tyranny. If there was any kind of DLC/expansion in the works they would surely anounce it there ;/
I really loved Tyranny but there was indeed a lot of loading screens, especially when you exit a zone by accident and realize you forgot something and need to go back before moving on >___> Which way did you go out of curiosity?
Congrats on the progress and have fun with Phantom Brave :3
I went the way of forging an alliance to ovethrow Kyros, also killed all 4 Archonts on the way. Originally was intending to let Tunon join me but I was a little short from 4 Loyality reputation with him to fully convince him, so it ended up with unavoidable fight with him and Bleden Mark. I intended to kill Graven Ashe and Voices of Nerat from the very beggining thou. In my alliance I sided with Bronze Brotherhood, Stonestalker Tribe and The Unbroken.
\o/
I managed to rally Tunon to my cause, but I still had to fight Bleden Mark, he just hated my guts.
This game was really one of the best recent CRPG I’ve played in terms of choices though I haven’t had time to play Torment: Tides of Numenera yet.
I was like 10% missing from loyality 4 with Tunon and if I had it I’d rally him as well, but had no more possible ways to rise rep at that moment ;p On rep 3 he agrees with you that Kyros law may be flawed, but decides that even if you may be right he wishes to stick with Kyros, you need rep 4 for him to join rebellion ;p
I do wonder if it was possible to turn Bleden Mark to your side if you go the rebellion way, but he seemed to hate my guts since the first time I interacted with him. I didn’t wanna read any guides before my first playthrough though, I enjoyed the spoiler free experience :D
not sure if it’s avoid fighting Blended, but I know he doesn’t need to hate you - it depoends on conversations and your dialogue choices with him. I was intimidating towards him and he found it impressive and in all conversations were respectful towards me and impressed, saying I have potential etc. He even said he hated having to kill me ;p
Yeah definitely sounds different. Me he was happy to fight me and potentially kill me… which thankfully didn’t happen :p
I guess that if you don’t disobey Kyros and remain his puppet maybe Blkeden Mark doesn’t get contract to kill you ;p
And up to tunon I was having spoiler free experience as well, only eventually loading saves to do sth different. But with Tunon I kept loading and loading till I fould I thought ultimate dialogue solution and still had to fight, so I searched internet and found out that under rep 4 it was simply impossible to get him turned, and if I had rep 4 I would convince him in my 2st attempt ;p