Tyranny vs Deadfire (my experience)

[Vasvary5050]

Hi folks. This one is slightly off topic as its a bit more about Tyranny than Deadfire, but it does sort of relate to my experience with Tyranny compared to Deadfire.

Yesterday I thought I'd give Tyranny a go having recently completed Deadfire for my third time, and I really don't like it (yet). It's not the story, or different world, or the main narrative arc being evil, that bothers me (those are all fine, and I would be very happy to play through the Tyranny story multiple times if it was using Deadfire's mechanics, classes and engine). I'm not saying Tyranny is bad, and I'm struggling to put my finger on why exactly it isn't quite working for me (but I'll try to articulate it):

I think my biggest problem is that I'm finding it really hard to put together an even vaguely synergistic party in Tyranny. I think my main problems are:

1) Rather than having a limited number of spells or ability points per encounter, abilities in Tyranny have really huge cooldowns. I've currently got 2 mage characters (MC + Lantry) and 2 mostly physical characters with small amounts of magic (Barik and Verse). I'm finding that the 2 non-mages are spending most of their time using auto-attacks between their few abilities, and it feels dull, and as if they are not contributing much. The mages have a lot of spell (sigil) combinations, and can be casting spells a lot, and feel quite OP, which makes it feel like a game for mages only (if I could create/hire completely custom characters like you can in Deadfire, I'd probably just have 4 mages investing heavily into Lore). Admittedly I'm not far into Tyranny yet and it could be that this smooths out.

2) I like the spell crafting in Tyranny, but I'm not sure it is superior to Deadfire's more interesting mixture of spells, abilities, ciphers, chants; and beyond the spell crafting, the combat feels a bit one dimensional. To be honest, even the spell crafting gets a bit repetitive.

A question to people who have played both; I'm I missing something? Does it get better. I mean, it's certainly challenging in places, like the ambush at Tripnettle Wilderness (my party has been rinsed a few times and I'm not even playing on POTD yet), but it's just not quite floating my boat. With the classes and multi-class characters in Deadfire, a lot of my time was spent looking for synergistic ways to construct my party, but I just can't see how to do that in Tyranny. 

On a more concrete level, I'm interested to hear what builds people have used for their main character in Tyranny and which companions they preferred. I ended up re-rolling my main character a few times and settled on pure mage, not because I wanted to play a mage (I find pure mages a bit dull), but because it feels like this is what the game was built around. I'm interested in Verse and Barik as characters, but find their talent trees and abilities to be dull.

(And apologies if this is just a bit too off topic for this forum, but I am interested to hear what my fellow residents of Eora who have also travelled to Tyranny think).

Best wishes, Vas.

[thelee]

Yeah, I've played both Tyranny and Deadfire and I think your criticisms hit the nail on the head. For reference, my Deadfire guide has slowly ballooned to a 700K text file, whereas my Tyranny guide has pretty much stayed at like two pages. It reflects both my interest and also IMHO the relative system depth between the two.

 

1. Absolutely. I know some people were big fans of the cooldown approach at the time, but it really gives Tyranny the feel of an ARPG that's been shoe-horned into a RWtP framework. There's no scarcity or management, you're just spamming whatever cooldowns you have as soon as they're available and not much more. To me, for martial classes this can be OK, but for caster classes, as you say, you only have a handful of abilities that actually reflect your "caster"-ness and you're just cycling between them, which is not very interesting. I also have a more fundamental problem in that the cooldown system, as designed, make it possible for battles to enter a stalemate - everyone has infinite spells and health and abilities so long as their cooldowns are set up right. I actually had this happen in a hard fight where I was knocked down to one character, and there was one enemy left. Lantry had just enough healing to not die, but also not enough offensive power to really take down the final enemy with any speed. Lantry leveled up like thrice before I finally managed to end the fight. Some people might find that "neat," but PoE and Deadfire have mechanisms that help battles be a lot more decisive, even if it's just the number of abilities you have running out.

2. Absolutely. It reminds me of final fantasy-style JRPGs in a bad way - where every spell's primary focus is on damage, and everything that doesn't do damage is garbage. In terms of the party-based RPG, BG and somewhat BG2 remains my ideal, where you had plenty of damage spells, but also all sorts of other spells, including "fluff" spells that the game actually incorporated (using Charm Person to get extra details out of NPCs, Detect Evil for the days back before gamefaqs and walkthroughs were easy to look up), and non-traditional spells that opened up interesting gameplay opportunities (Farsight to control summons from a distance, Limited Wish to get a special quest, etc.) Most CRPGs today are a little bit too combat-focused, but it's a compromise I accept if it means the available options are more fleshed out (some things in BG/BG2 just flat-out didn't work or were too fluffy, like "Know Alignment"). But Tyranny goes way too far in the extreme, and it's just not as interesting a system to me when the choices are just "damage, healing, or damage with extra steps."

 

What I value Tyranny for is: great world-building and reactivity. The latter, including with companions, is imo unmatched by any CRPG that follows. What I did value Tyranny for, but is no longer special: this was like the first RTwP i really played that had big technical fights. PoE was pretty static, but in Tyranny in the latter end you had to watch for bosses with big wind-ups, big visual signals to maneuver around, etc. But Deadfire does this a bit too, and is generally better in every other way, so I don't really miss it.

Edited June 23, 2023 by thelee

[Shai Hulud]

Tyranny is too dominated by magic. Make a mage MC. I used this build to great effect, with some minor adjustments.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=814845354

All that really matters is collecting sigils and boosting lore to high levels with skycap (and other means) so you can craft stupidly powerful spells. The game becomes pretty easy once you get your lore high enough, and saving trainer points can be used to get lore well over 200.

Barik sucks. The best companions are magic users. Lantry is probably the best, then I'd take Eb and Syrin. Syrin makes the best tank. I do find fights kind of degenerate as all you need to do is have enough spells and sigils to blast off all your ice/fire spells like with frostfire sigil, and if you have enough spell slots and lore (cyclical energy sigils) you can just cast nonstop. 

@thelee I do miss farsight + wizard eye + spell immunity + mislead/project image. Also BG is one of the only games I've played that actually had good thief classes (I particularly enjoy bounty hunter maze traps). And I didn't learn about the limited wish quest until my third or fourth playthrough which was awesome. Also the optional but insanely hard fights like the twisted rune, kangaxx, etc... I'm thinking of playing it again. I always have to start with BG1 and play the whole series so I have all the tomes and whatnot so it takes a while though. I know you can use shadowkeeper to just edit the tome stats in and items but it doesn't feel the same. 

The amazing megadungeons like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep seem lacking in any recent video games including Deadfire. POE1 did have Endless Paths, wish Deadfire had something like that. 

[Boeroer]

Ahhh - cooldowns:

[Vasvary5050]

On 6/23/2023 at 5:03 PM, thelee said:

For reference, my Deadfire guide has slowly ballooned to a 700K text file, whereas my Tyranny guide has pretty much stayed at like two pages.

Is your full Deadfire guide online? If so, I may have used it without realising it was yours. 

On 6/23/2023 at 5:03 PM, thelee said:

I know some people were big fans of the cooldown approach at the time, but it really gives Tyranny the feel of an ARPG that's been shoe-horned into a RWtP framework.

For me, the cooldowns remind me of playing MMORPGs like world of Warcraft.

On 6/23/2023 at 5:03 PM, thelee said:

In terms of the party-based RPG, BG and somewhat BG2 remains my ideal, where you had plenty of damage spells, but also all sorts of other spells, including "fluff" spells that the game actually incorporated (using Charm Person to get extra details out of NPCs, Detect Evil for the days back before gamefaqs and walkthroughs were easy to look up), and non-traditional spells that opened up interesting gameplay opportunities (Farsight to control summons from a distance, Limited Wish to get a special quest, etc.) Most CRPGs today are a little bit too combat-focused, but it's a compromise I accept if it means the available options are more fleshed out (some things in BG/BG2 just flat-out didn't work or were too fluffy, like "Know Alignment").

You know, I'd forgotten about those spells. I played BG1 and BG2 back when they were new, and loved them, which was why I was very happy when developers started making RTwP CRPGs again. You're making me quite nostalgic and I'm tempting to go back and try them again. That said, whilst my formative years of Tabletop RPG-ing were with second edition AD&D, the shine on that system has worn off for me now. I've got too hooked on the multi-classing from 3.5 edition D&D and Pathfinder (and even better, in Deadfire). Still, I'm running out of CRPGs to play, so I might install BG2 again.

On 6/23/2023 at 5:03 PM, thelee said:

What I value Tyranny for is: great world-building and reactivity.

I'm going to persevere with Tyranny just to experience this at least once.

 

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Tyranny is too dominated by magic. Make a mage MC.

Yeah, this makes me sad, but I did in the end accept that being a mage MC is the way to go. I will check out the link and compare it to my current MC.

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

Barik sucks. The best companions are magic users. Lantry is probably the best, then I'd take Eb and Syrin.

This makes me sad. From a roleplay perspective, I want to stick with Barik and Verse, as I find them and the Disfavoured and Scarlet Chorus rivalry interesting and would like to see it playout. Also, I like mixed parties in these sort of games, usually with a mixture of brutes, rogues, wizards, priests, etc. But I think having at least 3 lore-focused mages is the way to go with Tyranny.

 

6 hours ago, Shai Hulud said:

The amazing megadungeons like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep seem lacking in any recent video games including Deadfire. POE1 did have Endless Paths, wish Deadfire had something like that. 

I wish there were more of these in CRPGs. To add to the ones you mention, Pathfinder has Tenebrous Depths. I know some people don't like them, but I'd love a mega-dungeon DLC for Deadfire, just something I can use to build a new party from scratch and run it through. I guess the nearest thing in Deadfire is the SSS DLC which gives a lot of optional repeatable arenas and relic hunts.

[masterty66]

I played Tyranny I think once and beat it, and I remember enjoying it, but moreso for the story than the gameplay. I don't recall the gameplay being anything that gripped me to the extent that Poe/Poe2 has.

In fairness, I'm not sure I've replayed any rpgs as much as this series apart from Bg1/bg2/tob. I should revisit Tyranny at some point and see if I still like it. 

[Pharaoh]

Spells were awesome in Tyranny

Also the story and setting were amazing

We need more evil CRPGs

It's a shame it's only half a game

Really sad they are never gonna make Tyranny2 now they got bought by Microsoft

Edited June 25, 2023 by Pharaoh

[thelee]

On 6/24/2023 at 6:17 AM, Shai Hulud said:

The amazing megadungeons like Durlag's Tower and Watcher's Keep seem lacking in any recent video games including Deadfire. POE1 did have Endless Paths, wish Deadfire had something like that. 

I consider Forgotten Sanctum to be a "dungeon" DLC and to that end it's part of why I like it so much - nicely focused with lots of interesting challenges and rewarding loot. I actually thought Endless Paths were a little flat in PoE1, it didn't quite have the "epic dungeon grind" feel (some of the levels were really tiny) and it didn't have much to do or IIRC to loot other than grindy trash mob fights.

by contrast, WoTR's most recent "rogue-like" DLC is very unsatisfying - some decent loot but also endless uninteresting trash fights. a solid dungeon-type experience is hard to do I guess.

 

On 6/24/2023 at 12:53 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

Is your full Deadfire guide online?

yep!

[thelee]

On 6/24/2023 at 12:53 PM, Vasvary5050 said:

For me, the cooldowns remind me of playing MMORPGs like world of Warcraft.

you know what that is a much better description than mine.

tyranny also had taunting as well. very MMO-like, trying to manage enemy attention, especially since tyranny AI wasn't like PoE/Deadfire AI and would aggressively break engagement, which made it a lot more important to have a clearly-defined "tank" role in your party.

 

actually that led to a major gameplay "trap" that I didn't like about Tyranny. Taunting accuracy is dictated by Athletics, which is extremely hard to train if you're not deliberately training for it, so your tanky characters (incl Barik) might be actually extremely terrible at tanking. You could do a lot better with magic (yes, I agree, magic is too dominant in Tyranny) and the Emotion school, which provides an easy taunt.

[Kaylon]

I enjoyed Tyranny more than PoE2. NG+ and the choices you have to do at the beginning added more incentive to replay compared to PoE2. However it takes some time to adjust to the gameplay and understand the intricacies and the synergies. The best build is duelist with a combination of all the trees which makes you basically invincible with the right items and skills. Each companion can become good enough - Barik can become basically unkillable, Verse is a great dps, Sirin is a powerful CC, etc. but in the end you don't really need them because the MC can go alone and destroy anything in a few seconds (comparable to what monks can do in Poe2).

Edited June 26, 2023 by Kaylon