Tyranny + Bastard's Wound Expansion Thread

[Sannom]

No, it's not mandatory, it's one of two paths in the second year of the conquest, you can choose between that or joining the invasion of Vendrien's Well/Apex.

 

[ScubaV]

Base game for $15 or Gold Bundle for $25 on Steam sale? Reviews for the two content DLC's seem pretty meh and I don't care about the soundtrack or portraits or that shit.

 

[DavidBVal]

Base game for $15 or Gold Bundle for $25 on Steam sale? Reviews for the two content DLC's seem pretty meh and I don't care about the soundtrack or portraits or that shit.

I for one am not thrilled to play more after I am done with the main quest... Might even not finish it. A pity, the game held great potential.

 

[aeroaeko]

OK is this game / dlc actually good?

 

[Butter]

OK is this game / dlc actually good?

Base game is all right. Tales from the Tiers DLC is decent, but should have been part of the base game (likely would have been if Tyranny's team hadn't been fucked over to give extra resources to Pillars of Eternity). Bastard's Wound DLC is barely functional and should be avoided.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Started this the other day, so far so good. Writing is superficial (I'm keeping a rolling pin handy to run over keyboard when talking to companions), but the abundance of choice making is keeping me amused, for now.
Annoying how party members walk right over discovered traps.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

Not gonna lie, this game got me hooked good.
I think it's the combination of old world style (like Conan the Barbarian), where not everything is strictly defined, civilizations are not highly developed etc), the main story and characters, abundance of choices and political intrigues. Even certain companions are growing on me (not Kill in Shadows). Character building, skills, abilities and especially spell crafting are done well, or at least well enough to get me to muck around and look for different things.

I've only just activated second spire, started Unbroken mission, and really enjoying the ride.

I'm bracing for disappointment relating to lack of funds everyone's mentioned here, but it's already a million times better game than PoE.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

I really wish this would get a TB mode just like Deadfire. But I guess the bad relations with Paradox as well as the Microsoft ownership of Obsidian makes an EE improbable.

 

[ScrotumBroth]

And done.

Really refreshing little game, I saw in credits that the concept was done by MCA, and I can't help but wonder how much better it would have been with him at the helm and proper funding.

Where budget limit was really obvious was at repetitiveness of Old Walls interior and Spire puzzles, along with skirmishes for each faction. But at least it was kept short and sweet, so it wasn't boring and tedious.

Loot and items started good but near the end I was swimming in artifacts, but went with Guts Berserk two-hander, just because it's cool (nice little reference there).

Combo abilities based on reputation were a nice touch.

I also appreciated having options to play political games with multiple sides and showing my cards until the right moment. And having cool lines written for delivery.

Somehow I've missed out on personal companion quests, and I wonder if that's because I went through all conversation options as soon as they joined the party, or I just didn't choose the right factions to trigger them.
I went with Verse, Barik and Sirin. Kinda disappointed I couldn't get her helmet off, and there was no option to force Voices of Nerat into anything.

Also disappointed with Graven Ashes willingness to throw his and Disfavoured lives away, after I've already killed other Archons, including Tunon and Bladen Mark. It would have been cool to have the game reward you for saving his daughter with an option to persuade him to join you and stop the Northern advance that way, instead with an Edict.

I only had fire and storm Edicts, but there were three more slots. One would be stone, but I chose Scribes instead of Earth shakers, so that leaves two question marks.

It could have been so much more, but props to the team for wrapping it up neatly and drawing the maximum out of what they had.

The end obviously leaves space for a sequel, but I probably won't play it unless they get funding and right people on it, in order to achieve full potential.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Also disappointed with Graven Ashes willingness to throw his and Disfavoured lives away, after I've already killed other Archons, including Tunon and Bladen Mark. It would have been cool to have the game reward you for saving his daughter with an option to persuade him to join you and stop the Northern advance that way, instead with an Edict.

you can totally do this. you need to side with the disfavored from the beginning, I think. then you need to persuade him at the end. maybe you have to approach him before Tunon puts you on trial, I'm not sure.

I went with Verse, Barik and Sirin. Kinda disappointed I couldn't get her helmet off, and there was no option to force Voices of Nerat into anything.

Spoiler

you can trick the Voice of Nerat into becoming your pawn. You need to convince him to ally with you, then he'll demand you feed him one of your companions. Pick the right companion and they take over Nerat from within.

I think the companion quests are in the DLC.

 

[Safav Hamon]

I saw in credits that the concept was done by MCA.

False. The original concept wasn't his idea, and he was only involved in the early stages of development.

 

[Feyd Rautha]

The companion quests were added later and it was only Barik, Verse and Lantry that got them.

 

[DalekFlay]

Was Tyranny really as bad as I remember it or is it some sort of Codex psyop done on my memories

I played the whole thing, which for me lately means it was at least okay. I just remember it being bland and kind of railroaded, but not terrible.

 

[Mikeal]

Was Tyranny really as bad as I remember it or is it some sort of Codex psyop done on my memories

Good beginning but everything derail in second part of second act.

 

[Lacrymas]

Some prestigious Codexers like Kyl Von Kull, and I think FreeKaner like Tyranny, so ymmv.

 

[FreeKaner]

I like the first act, it is somewhat mediocre afterwards. Might feel disappointing because of that reason. It was also mismarketed as some sort of deep philosophical conundrum about nature of evil or whatever when it is more like playing as a commander in an expanding empire.

 

[Mikeal]

I like the first act, it is somewhat mediocre afterwards. Might feel disappointing because of that reason. It was also mismarketed as some sort of deep philosophical conundrum about nature of evil or whatever when it is more like playing as a commander in an expanding empire.

And even that wasn't implemented well. Like holy shit woman I'm a Fatebinder show me some respect.

 

[fantadomat]

Tranny was a garbage,a third of mediocre game. It was marketed as playing an evul guy,but you ended up playing as a some dude in a conquering army that wasn't even averagely brutal,let alone evil. But that was on us really,it was marketed by those swedish cuckz paradox,for them everything is evil and oppressive.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

Some prestigious Codexers like Kyl Von Kull, and I think FreeKaner like Tyranny, so ymmv.

Roguey wrote a review that I generally agree with: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/tyranny-1-2-no-dlc-the-roguey-report.120345/

Tyranny’s setting and story either hook you or they don’t. If they don’t, the game doesn’t have enough other things going for it to make it worthwhile. For me, chapter 1 was good enough to keep me invested right to the end, which made the drop off in quality in chapter 2 and the barebones/totally unfinished nature of chapter 3 all the more depressing.

But, man, that first act had a lot going for it:

• Conquest mode CYOA character creation gives you a real backstory based on your own decisions, and it has a lot of impact on the state of the world.
• You start off as a grizzled veteran in a position of relative political importance. More RPGs should do this.
• Immediately after the tutorial area, you’re thrust into the action and need to mediate between two of the most powerful men on earth. It’s fucking awesome watching them argue. More importantly, you’re making very high stakes decisions from the get-go.
• So much reactivity and important C&C in the first few hours.
• While character building and progression are a lot thinner than POE, let alone D&D, combat is still challenging and fun in the first chapter, as long as you’re playing on POTD. Although it’s not great that the most challenging fight in the game so early—Lantry’s trial by combat.
• I liked every companion except for Kills-in-Shadow.
• The setting wasn’t revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, but it was still a pretty interesting departure compared to standard RPG fare.
• Drenched in moral ambiguity
• Major Black Company vibes

Of course, a lot of this deteriorates over the course of the game, in some cases dramatically, but I still liked the trial at the very end where it becomes clear Tunon’s been watching and judging your every move. It pains me to think of what this game could’ve been if MCA hadn’t been de-ownered.

Still, I think the beginning of Tyranny has a lot of worthwhile lessons for the genre, even if you hated the tone, setting, prose style, whatever:

1. Don’t make us wait to find out the game’s core conflict. Shove it in our faces from the very start.
2. If you’re using a fantasy setting, embrace that shit. Give us enemies and allies with unspeakable powers who look weird and menacing and can destroy the PC with a snap of their fingers. Introduce them early.
3. If I’m the chosen one, or anything approximating the chosen one, give me some fucking influence early on.
4. You can have easy to understand factions that nevertheless have some complexity to them.

 

[Prime Junta]

IMO the only thing fatally wrong about Tyranny was the grindy and repetitive gameplay. Sure there's a lot to bitch about in other areas as well -- the beastwoman sidekick was frankly retarded f.ex., and the Oldwall dungeons are among the worst in recent memory -- but if they had just made Tyranny with Pillars mechanics and cosmetically reskinned classes and monsters, it would have been genuinely fun while at the same time being genuinely different in a number of interesting ways. Plus going that way would also have left more budget for better dungeons.

As it is though it's just mind-numbingly dull to play. I gave it a replay last year and ... yeah. No.

 

[Cross]

• Conquest mode CYOA character creation gives you a real backstory based on your own decisions, and it has a lot of impact on the state of the world.
• You start off as a grizzled veteran in a position of relative political importance. More RPGs should do this.

But Tyranny doesn't do that. You start off as a level 1 noob with nothing but the clothes on your back and who spends the game running errands for factions. It's no different from the usual 'from zero to hero' progression in other RPGs. In fact, it's worse than some previous Obsidian games, which at least bothered to provide a justification for why the protagonist is underpowered at the start of the game (e.g. having lost your connection to the Force in Kotor 2).

And that's indicative of the whole game: an unwillingness to actually do anything interesting with the premise. They even railroad you into rebelling against your evil overlord.

A much better fit for Tyranny's premise would be something in the vein of Jagged Alliance, where you direct squads of mercenaries with conflicting personalities to do your bidding across the land. Sadly, they went the lazy route and made a Pillars reskin.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Tyranny was just boring. You were supposed to be this bad ass secret policeman but all you did was legwork for the actually important people. Why aren't you allowed to do actual secret policeman shit like spying on the generals, cultivating informers, running detention camps and stomping on dissidents? The devs did not have the balls to run with the concept they were pushing. Sad.

 

[DalekFlay]

Also the game bills itself as a choice-n-consequence-a-palooza but somehow I felt very underwhelmed by that aspect.

 

[Kyl Von Kull]

But Tyranny doesn't do that. You start off as a level 1 noob with nothing but the clothes on your back and who spends the game running errands for factions. It's no different from the usual 'from zero to hero' progression in other RPGs. In fact, it's worse than some previous Obsidian games, which at least bothered to provide a justification for why the protagonist is underpowered at the start of the game (e.g. having lost your connection to the Force in Kotor 2).

And that's indicative of the whole game: an unwillingness to actually do anything interesting with the premise. They even railroad you into rebelling against your evil overlord.

Level 1 is an abstraction--they could call it level 10 with the same stats and it wouldn't make any difference (also, if you followed conquest mode, you haven't actually been in combat for two years). You're not a Navy SEAL, you're a judge. Within the first hour, you're adjudicating between two of the most powerful people in the empire. You choose which archon, if any, wins. You can't actually force them to obey you, but there are plenty of moments in the first act where they defer to your judgment. Their men follow your orders.

You're not important because you're a super badass at the beginning, you're important because Fatebinder is an important job. Tunon is like Kyros' supreme court rolled into one dude, and you're his enforcer. If you diagrammed the empire's management structure, there's only one dude between you and the overlord.

Also, they restored the loyal to Kyros ending with the first patch. But the mechanics of why you have to rebel, because Kyros wants you dead for becoming too powerful, make perfect sense.

Tyranny was just boring. You were supposed to be this bad ass secret policeman but all you did was legwork for the actually important people. Why aren't you allowed to do actual secret policeman shit like spying on the generals, cultivating informers, running detention camps and stomping on dissidents? The devs did not have the balls to run with the concept they were pushing. Sad.

What game did you play? Spying on the archons is the main quest starting in act 2 (Tunon orders you to do legwork for one of them in order to build a case against either Ashe or Nerat). You can also take the anarchist path and not do any legwork for Ashe or Nerat; you can decide they're both traitors and kill their people with impunity very early on. You can side with the rebels, in which case you're either doing the legwork to build your own faction within the empire or to rebel against it.

You need to cultivate informers if you want to convict either archon of treason. Stomping dissidents is the entirety of act 1, and potentially a huge part of act 2. I'll admit, the closest you come to running a detention camp are the Conquest Mode decisions, but some of those are pretty fucking dark.

 

[FreeKaner]

More games definitely need to start you in position of some power, not so much power that you are ultimate authority but some that you have weight to your decisions and its consequences. Especially as a representative of an structural power with organised force behind it, be it a state or company whatever else it is. It feels like so many RPGs are all rags to riches rebel stories where individual power is put above all else, which is very American now that I think of it.