Major necro.
So finished my playthrough of this.
Disfavored path. Probably won't do the others.
What a god damn shame this game is. unfinished masterpiece. Major Vtm:bloodlines, and Kotor2 energy.
What IS here is some of the best CRPG design in history. But its blatantly cut short. and blatantly needed a couple more passes to refine missing dialogues, quests, etc. theres clearly a few places where you lack alternatives, can't bring things up you should. or, often "BETRAY ALLIANCE" just keeps getting brought up, with like no reason why you would. storywise, if the game tested your loyalty to Kyros more often, gave you reason to question more often, and earlier it would make sense. Anarchy and rebel paths need you to instantly betray kyros for no reason, regardless of any logical sense of your background. If your char was that rebellious, they'd have been dead long before the game started..
This game was largely made by the South park, Stick of truth team, NOT the pillars of Eternity one. That is a fact not mentioned nearly enough. I think it even hurt sales.
Brian heins director, matthew singh producer, dan spitzley programmer
Seems to be Brian Heins only game. Singh im only seeing south park, and tyranny.
One of the crazy elements here, is it based off Pillars of eternity, but improves everything. combat, stats, spells. spells especially, skill leveling system. But even more so... its BETTER then Pillars of eternity 2. that shit is a straight up regression from Tyranny.
the order for obsidian was southpark stick of truth-2014, Pillars of eternity-2015, tyranny-2016, pillars of eternity 2-2018.
loyalty/Fear/wrath system. passive gains, +active ability. AND, loyalty/Fear/wrath do NOT counteract each other., they can be loyal and fear you at the same time. fucking great.
dialogue portraits. I love them. instead of a static, or even animated close up on faces. its pulled back, uses the in game 3d model, and the characters dramatically pantomime body language. what a fantastic idea. This works so well, if you don't have the budget to go full AAAA bg3 face capture. This shit would 100% fix bethesdas "we can't do faces for shit".
spell system. one of the best ever created.
learn by doing skills. this is good/great. but does create a few problems. athletics/subertfuge/lore in dialogues become optimal for skill gains. can sortof soft lock yourself if failing to meet ath/suberfuge/lore checks. Overall, char leveling is tied to skill gain. so, a mage with 6 spell schools will outlevel everyone badly. then enemies level to the pc, so will badly outlevel the rest of the party. so, the core system is fun and great, these secondary issues need to be addressed.
spire upgrades, etc. poor design here, if only due to shortness of the game. maybe these made sense if the game was intended to be longer. tons of things you can craft, not remotely enough time to actually build more then like 3 out of 40. last 2 spires get claimed within like 3 hours before the end of the game as well.
I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in the history of rpgs, or find the systems of rpgs, etc interesting. a total must play for anyone that would ever consider designing their own.
as a general game, its so blatantly unfinished though. thats a harder recommend. I think I probably still would.