Old school post.

I died a lot here.

I remember being a kid and going to the local corner store and renting this game.

In point of fact, I remember renting it numerous times as 3 days wasn’t enough to clear it.  The boss in the picture above was the first time I learned to think outside the box in gaming.  There was this item, a rod, which made ghosts appear.  You could not get through this level without the rod.  As the game was rented, it didn’t have an instruction manual and actually using the rod was a mystery.  It took a day to figure it out, and I finally cleared the boss.

Now I’m giving it a shot on my Pi and the game is a pile easier than it was before.  Save states certainly help with that, as the controls are still rather unforgiving and there are spots where lack of input, or taking the wrong path is just plain death.  I can remember the frustration all those years ago of a screen filled with fireballs and having to jump on the exact right spot to move on.  Very annoying.

To top it off, StarTropics is renowned for one more thing – a code within the instruction booklet.  At one point, you get an in-game message that says something like “Remember to dip my letter in water”.  Well, the instruction book came with a small letter, and if you did dip it in water, then you had a code appear.  This code (747) was used to progress in the game.  Without it, you needed to bruteforce the way through.  I think this was the last time I saw this type of DRM used.

Anyhoot, back to the game.  You’re a young guy, armed with a yo-yo, exploring islands and dungeons, killing bats, snakes, minotaurs and finally aliens, all on your way to find your uncle.  The plot is actually pretty good, considering some of the stuff on the NES.  The controls are directional, with no diagonal movement, making some sections quite difficult.  There are various alternate weapons, like a bolo, or a baseball bat.  Enemies have patterns, you have life points, bosses are tough as nails.

It’s a hard game, but one that requires planning versus twitch movement.  With only a few places as exceptions, you can always see what’s coming ahead, and a quick pause can lay out the enemies to plan the attack. The largest issue is the lack of diagonal movement, which the sequel gets rid of (but introduces other quirks).

I have fond memories of the game and it’s certainly longer than I remember.  I thought perhaps I had rose colored glasses here, but StarTropics does a really solid job of holding true over time.  Well worth the trip down memory lane.

Plenty of ideas rummaging through my head but I’m finding it really difficult to put virtual pen to paper.  I am reading a lot of blogs mind you, and everyone seems to have something interesting going on.

Games

Kids are enjoying the Retropie.  There are nearly 2000 games on it right now, and browsing through the selection is a pain.  How do you pick one of 700 NES games?  So my kids found 1942, if only because it’s alphabetical. They also like Donkey Kong Country, Super Mario World (an oddly difficult game compared to memory) and PacMan.

I’ve played a bit of StarTropics, DKC, Illusion of Gaia, TMNT4…dabbing around here and there.

We also played  a fair amount of Lego Star Wars Force Awakens together.  The game feels like some quantifiable progress in the genre.  I won’t hit 100% because, why?  96% has unlocked everything of merit.

Aside from computer games, we’ve played a lot of Ticket to Ride:Europe (kid mod: remove destination tickets) and Fire Rescue (play family mode).  TtR:E can be played with 2 players, but like Monopoly, it’s more fun the longer you wait between turns.  Long-played strategies are easy with 2 folks, but I can see them being derailed (yeah, I did that) with more players.

Fire Rescue is an interesting beast.  I’ve never lost family mode, or really come that close.  Hard mode, the closest to a win is missing my 1 marker.  I don’t think it’s doable with 2 players, and even with 3 requires a tremendous amount of coordination.  Lots of fun.

Both games are recommended for family play, and I have a 4 and 6 year old.

Other

I built an ice rink in the backyard.  Weather hasn’t been terribly helpful.  Kids enjoy it and have seen dramatic improvements in just a few days of use.

I’m working on an interesting project now that should dramatically change the way that the Canadian government does mobile work.  Finally catching up to the rest of industry.  It’s a project that will impact about 400,000 people, so there’s some kick in the risk/reward facet here.

Health-wise, I didn’t really make any new year resolutions.  I’m finding it very hard to play hockey multiple times a week and continue to strength train.  I’m at the strongest yet, and my legs have grown a fair amount.  Heck, I need to buy new weight plates.  I also need to re-jig my nutrition – I can feel something is off, so time to strip away and go back to basics.  I should be down to high school weight by the spring.

All of that to say that I am realizing that I need goals to function.  I do not do well by just fluttering in the wind.  I have, both luckily and not, achieved a fair set of my goals much earlier than I had anticipated.  Some of which I didn’t expect for many years.  I need to sit down with my better half and do a rejiggering.  Adulting, here I come!

Clearing up the Steam backlog and South Park is on the list.  I used to watch it fairly regularly but I cut cable a few years ago and haven’t really paid much attention since.  I had heard good things about the game, and obviously it was at a good price.

The game certainly takes the source material to heart.  It’s voiced with all the same folks as the TV show, the art is the same, the story is full of the same with, sarcasm and black humour.  It really feels like an 8 hour episode, and I’ll touch on that in a bit.

The game is RPG, all the way.  Classes (all very similar in effect), melee and ranged weapons, 3 armor slots, customizations for that gear, HP/MP and special powers.  Very generic and trope-like items, but with a South Park twist.  You’re as likely to find a giant dildo as you are a shovel.  Max level is 15, and that should be easy enough to reach by the end of the game.  There’s enough tinkering here to make you feel like you’re specializing in a particular type of role.  I personally prefer to stack the Bleed effect, as everyone appears vulnerable and it deals a lot of damage over time.

Combat is very similar to Paper Mario.  Turn-based, with you getting 1 accessory skill and one attack per round.  Press a button in the middle of an animation to deal more damage, or defend for more.  Nearly all fights are against multiple opponents, even a few boss fights.  You get to team up with 1 of 6 possible NPCs to help fight.  I liked Butters, Stan and Cartman, once they became available.  Stun an enemy in the overworld, and they show up stunned when the fight starts.  It’s fun to find the little links between the various skills and effects, which can make combat either very simple, or quite complicated.

The world itself is well done, with plenty of side quests to undertake. Each area has sub-areas, often locked behind story progress to attain a new skill.  Shrinking, anal probes, shooting, or one of 4 types of magical farts.  It sounds dumb, but when you’re playing it makes sense.

Without spoiling the story too much, there are clear acts within the game.  The town, sewers, Canada, a spaceship, school, a tower…and your own home.  This last one, well, it’s worth playing just for this 15 minute section of the game.  The battle with the Gnome Warlock is the most unique boss fight I have ever played.  Just don’t play with the sound up too high, or without headphones.

The final battle is reminiscent of FF’s model of multiple end bosses, with twists.  It works, not because of the mechanics, but because of how absurd the entire thing plays out.  When I completed it, I felt as if I had accomplished something, that the story had seen an end, and that in some way, it made sense.

There are certainly weaknesses here, though it’s hard to tell if they are on purpose or not.  The Girls recruitment quest exemplifies that issue.  Repetition is a little strong in some areas, where it feel more of a grind than it should be.  But then you get a quip from a character stating just that, and it gets too meta.  Some skill balance issues remain, where massive AE attacks and status ailments are just way too powerful compared to other choices, and the last skill for each class just changes the game – again, this is likely done on purpose.

If you play this as a straight RPG, then you’re gonna have a bad time.  If you play it as an interactive TV episode, then you’re likely going to find it too much of a grind.  Instead, it finds a solid ground between both.  It’s certainly made my top 10 RPG list.

I finished Tyranny the other night, solid ending.  I opted to take the Disfavored path, so that meant killing Nerat.  I won’t ruin the rest, but I tied up loose ends with the other 3 Archons nicely.  The game ends with a nice set-up for a sequel, if they so choose.

One thing I like are boss fights, and most RPGs have a half dozen or so.  Due to the way Tyranny works, the bosses you end up seeing are all at the tail end of the game.  The fights are impressive, very impressive.  Enough to make you wonder why there aren’t more of them throughout the game.  You really need to think strategically, which is a swap from the floor mopping you’re doing by level 10 or so.  I died a few times in them, then needed to swap some things around.

Which ties into a thought I had about the game overall, and that’s how it approaches experimentation.

Finding the Elements

Tyranny doesn’t provide you with nearly enough instructions on how to experiment, or how the systems intertwine.  It’s quite old-school in that regard, as until you understand how Sigils work together, and what Sigils exist in the game world, you’re mostly playing blind.

This reminds me a lot of Dragon Age Origins, or even Fallout, where you needed a full playthrough to understand all the pieces and how they fit together.

When I completed the game, I was missing a few Sigils, though I had an idea what they did.  I was missing upgrades to them as well, like improved accuracy and whatnot.  What I didn’t realize was that I was missing some essential ones – like Volcanic Weapon.  This one makes it so that every melee strike shoots out a beam of elemental damage.  Combined with Verse’s ninja-melee speed, there’s a potential for a nuclear event if you build her right.

Making Explosions

My favorite part of learning is making mistakes.  I have made more than my fair share of mistakes, and each one taught me something.  Rarely have I ever made a mistake that I would consider permanent, which is good.  Experimenting and tweaking is the key to success.

Some games punish this behavior (EvE with it’s time-based skill points) and others allow you to go wild (WoW with infinite talent resets).  Stand-alone RPGs often put you in the former situation, where once you make a selection, you’re stuck with it.  Very few games allow you to turn back the clock, though it should be said that few actively punish you for poor choices.

I wrote a character building guide for Dragon Age Origins, it’s on Gamefaqs.  I wrote it originally for myself, as a sort of grid to map out options.  I came up with a concept of a tank/mage, though it was predicated on unlocking a certain class in a previous playthrough.  It took a fair chunk of tweaking mind you, and the tank never really stood on it’s own until the early mid-game, but from that point on, it was a walking god.  It took a fair chunk of tweaking to get there, and a lot of talent reloads.

Given the way that Sigils work in Tyranny, there’s a tremendous opportunity to experiment.  I now know that the latter portion of the game has fairly high armor and magic resistance on enemies, meaning that base damage is vitally more important that attack speed.  I now know that Raw damage and Cold damage are king, that Fire and Shock are used more for crowd control than damage.  I know that AE attacks are vital, that fast movement and ranged attacks are needed, that Quickness is better than Resolve and whole bunch more.

It took the first playthrough to understand the mechanics, some reading to understand the pieces I had missed, and now it will take some planning to come up with a new strategy for the next try.  I have a bit of writing to do, methinks…

Link here

First, I liked the previous game, Pillars of Eternity.  It was in the vein of Baldur’s Gate, with the same difficulty challenge and bugs/features.  Some things worked well, others were less fun.  The dragon at the bottom of the tower was one such thing, where it took 2 days to beat, and with ample amounts of cheese.

Tyranny uses that engine as the foundation, then lays a new RPG game on top.

Story

Instead of a combat-heavy game, Tyranny is more akin to a choose-your-own-adventure.  It is incredibly text heavy, though each on-screen message has links within to add extra context.  Choices matter, and you gain favor/wrath based on it.  This may close out entire quest paths, or provide alternate solutions.  And that choice is consistent throughout, with each map offering at least one of these decisions per.  It certainly makes you feel more invested in the story, as you’re a part of it, rather than an on-rails approach in most other games (Final Fantasy).

A further change is the overall plot of the game.  This is no hero’s journey.  You play an adjudicator for an immortal tyrant, in the final throws of a campaign to conquer the continent.  You’re thrown between 2 supporting factions, with wildly differing approaches to life (order vs chaos) and eventually need to pick a side.  None of the sides are nice.  Even the rebels you’re attacking aren’t nice in the traditional sense. So each and every decision you make is either the lesser of two evils, or a completely pragmatic one.

For example one quick conversation had me adjudicate a deserter from one faction trying to gain acceptance into another.  The one doing the running saw that it was a better deal on the other side.  The one accepting had strict rules to join, and even more strict rules on deserters.  The options were either to let either side “win”, outright execute the deserter, or subject them to a live of slavery.  The “win” options were not viable to my character plan, plus it would have pissed off the opposite side something fierce.  I opted for slavery, to which the deserter was actually happy as an outcome.

The main judge in all this is a character called Tunon.  An extremely pragmatic character, with a penchant for the long game.  Two people argue in front of him, one wins but rarely in the fashion they thought.  Which in fact is a smart thing, as it forces people to resolve their issues outside of court, as no one really wins but someone ends up losing big time.

Suffice it to say, that the writing is very well done, and the characters are much more than just posters.  There is purpose.

Mechanics

Mechanically the game is fairly sound.  It’s a mix of PoE,Dragon Age, and Elder Scrolls. You have a 4 person party to play with, though by the 5 hour mark I had 3 more in the wings.  You start off with the traditional tank/dps/healer folks, then get some interesting additions.  Again, there’s a bard-like player who uses song to help in combat.  You can issue commands in real- or stop-time, and health pools are inflated enough that combat isn’t over in 3 hits.  Group combat is common, and some strategic planning is required so that people don’t get knocked down.

Getting knocked down introduces wounds to the player, which can stack.  A 10% hit to stats may not seem like much, but compounded it makes a large difference.  Rest is the only way to cure the status.

Magic, melee, stats and whatnot are still there.  There are fewer equipment slots, which is good.  You can craft your own spells, for more damage, range, effects – each increasing the Lore requirement to cast.  Mana doesn’t exist, just cooldowns on spells and skills, stopping you from chaining the same attack.  Reducing that cooldown is a big deal.

Stat themselves are interesting. You have the basic attributes that impact damage, health, crit and the regular stuff.  Then you have the combat skills and tertiary skills.  Swing a two-hander, get better at two-handed weapons.  Cast fire spells, get better at fire spells.  Pick locks, get better at Subterfuge.  And these skills are used in more than combat – it could be climbing a wall, intimidating someone, or finding a secret.  It all works.

Miscellaneous

I’m not terribly far into the game, under 10 hours.  I’ve had a few head scratchers where I wanted to find a better way out of a situation.  I’ve had combat go terribly poorly, until I seriously rethought my combat approach.  I’ve encountered few things I’d consider a bug, though I did find an odd dead end without much reason behind it.

The sound and art click for me.  The voice acting is relatively well done.  I get the feeling I’m in another world, which is essential for any RPG.  I like that my reputation precedes me, and that for good or ill, I don’t have to rebuild things in every new town.

It’s certainly an iterative take on the classic RPG, one that I think works better for the risks taken.  I strongly recommend picking up a copy.  It’s a rare thing where we get indie companies that can make such strong gaming statements – and we should be supporting that as much as possible.