I’ve been homeless again. Right now I have no internet (on my phone here) and so so so much free time in an unfurnished basement (my joints are death and if I had 500 dollars I’d be buying some of that ultra light camping equipment to get a chair, table and cot because lord I’m desperate rn) so I’ve been playing Tyranny finally.
I actually REALLY like the worldbuilding. Like... it’s obviously a pretty crap CRPG in gameplay terms, but the worldbuilding is really well done. Of course, the worldbuilding is also sort of a blatant pastiche of BioWare and Bethesda properties, so it sort of was inevitable that it would be good.
The plot isn’t too bad either: incompetence, selfishness and egotistical bullshit is the order of the day, just like real life.
Most interesting of all to me, I actually... don’t really hate Kyros? There’s a lot of weird shit about that. I don’t really know how to feel about it.
I’ve also been playing more Phoenix Point, which is really worthwhile for anyone who likes Firaxis XCOM type gameplay, but wishes it was a bit more detailed and nuanced. No XCOM classic level, but still, not insignificant amounts of added control.
I find the smaller maps and shorter mission structure greatly benefits it as well compared to the XCOM formula. It’s at its slowest in the story missions, but the most tedious Phoenix Point mission is an order of magnitude more sensible than the snappiest XCOM 2 mission.
An example: Clearing the Phoenix base in the tutorial (the most mindnumbingly tedious mission I’ve played so far) compares favorably to XCOM 2s Operation Gatecrasher — the NON tutorial one. Yes, really.
There’s also some really good sorta zone defense type missions and while there are definitely rough edges and it’s obvious the developers were not able to include everything they wanted, it STILL stands out as an impressive game to me. And there’s more DLC to come besides.
If it included the XCOM 2 character pool and allow for full visual modification of your troops like in XCOM 2, I think it would handily beat that game.
