I have finished Act 1, and I am unwilling to continue. The game is boring, and clumsily made. Lemme rant a bit, even if I know that playing a single act is not enough, but it would be a waste of time. Disclaimer: I haven't played PoE.

Let's start with the positives:

+ Reactivity: it's a pleasure. Most of the choices you do in the Conquest mode are recognized (Act I was in one area I interacted with during the conquest, and it was very nice to see everything adapt to my choices, and the Queenslayer moniker sticking). Minor choices give you small bonuses, easier fights, characters betraying others. It's very, very good. I hope such reactivity keeps up for the whole game, and I see it as its only strength.

+ I liked the Voices of Nerat. Sure, it's a stereotype, a mind-soul-eating clown, and his army is a tired rehash of Caesar's Legion. His writing is bad bar the amusing tidbits during the Archon duels, where they employ the wikipedia-style word thingies to let the "Voices" speak with you. His dubbing is weak but somewhat adequate, and it's probably the only character I'll remember in a week.

Negatives:

+ Setting: As a "bronze age RPG where Evil won" I had some.... expectations.

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Ok. I did not get this. Whatever, I can understand creativity is in short supply, but the lore is.... weak. Very weak. I could not help but compare Tyranny with a old French comic I liked when I was a teen, The armies of the Conqueror , 1977. I still remember years later how the image of a powerful "evil army" conquering the world was set up in direct and effective terms, with a blend of visual style and narration. The opening was simple (pardon my rough translation):

First Page said:
The Armies of the Conqueror march forth to conquer the world. No one knows from where they come from, or where they are now: it's merely known that someday they will be here. Many times they were stopped, sometime even repelled, but they were never defeated. And the losers swelled their endless ranks.
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Why I am rambling about "setting" "lore" and comparing it to both historical and comic book fiction? Because Tyranny's lore is boring and trite. You get endless lore dumps from every character and from every dialogue with the hyperlink system, and I dread to think that someone had to write so much stuff that has no meaning and no value. I started after a bit to ignore all the details because they were redundant (the eleventh time someone repeats basic trivia on the Chorus or on the Disfavoured I can get a tad bored, pardon me). After a while , they got me to say the dreaded "I don't care about this setting, I don't care about those characters, and this seems silly and childish". Most of the characters are simply random NPC n.567, with a trait taken from the usual DM's table of NPC traits (the young soldier, the commander heir to a great family). I found distasteful that a good number of female NPCs but no male NPCs tried to hit on my character, but that's a small thing.

Art design is outright atrocious. Nothing is pretty, nothing is memorable, weapon, armour and character designs are MMORPG level. I can't point this enough: there are games with subpar design (Disciples II, for example) that can keep you hooked merely to see the next creative piece of unit design or map. Tyranny is fugly, and the art direction was beyond poor.

+ Combat: Combat mechanics are boring. They aren't bad, they are simply completely and utterly boring. Magic system is nice, but it's useless in the end. The apex of combat complexity in Tyranny is juggling an endless amount of cooldowns or "I win" abilities, while the enemies are the same generic mob number 56. Even "bosses" feel nothing but trash mobs. There is not a single combat in Act 1 that show some skill in design: even a rookie DM with a good monster manual could do better. JRPGs do better. I could do better, because placing group 16 of Archer, Two handed guy, Mage, Shield guy is not design.

+ Exploration: Press button. Highlight loot crates. Traps are automatically found. Secret caches are automatically found. No free roaming, no hidden goodies. No limits either, as a party can get everything easily. That's it. Boring.

+ Character building: Someone will be excited in optimizing, but I can't see why. I hope people like unlocking endless % bonuses, abilities that all look the same and that are in the end meaningless as combat is a uncreative slog. You can't create a unoptimized character, as far as I can see. Why I am playing this again?

+ Companions: There is nothing meaningful to say about them. They are nothing and their writing is mediocre. Sure, I did not pick up three of them, but I hope 50% was a good sample.

Tyranny is a game with boring lore, ugly art design, incredibly uninspired combat and mediocre writing. This feels like a indie studio first game. Vogel did better. Eschalon is better. JRPGs are better (and it pains me to say so!). Reactivity is great, but it can't save a game where everything else is outright mediocre.

Maybe the next one will be better.