Tyranny

one of my top 3 games, and my top rpg. Great variety of choices/paths/solutions for all the problems presented and all make sense in-game and are consistent with the world

An absolutely amazing experience

Tyranny is by far, the most original universe I have seen in an RPG, the game is bold in it's proposal and it makes an tasty narrative experience with an excelent choice system and bold consequences. Although it is a little bit hard to catch up and it has a terrible combat system.

I really enjoyed playing it, cause the game didn't forced me to be the hero in any situation, it felt actually FREE. And the narrative is really original and so it is the worldbuilding, it's needless to say that it has amazing writting. That's the actual obsidian studios we want, not that generic souless thing they've shown us with their last 2025 game. Original, compelling, unique and with a really tasty season that makes people atracted to it, and with amazing art direction.

There is but a great problem, the game has a terrible combat system that made me almost give up more than one time, the learning curve extends til almost middle game and it can make you really annoyed towards it, it's easily the worst factor in all game, it can make some people give up the game faster than the overlord get's mad.

I can label it easily a 8.0/10. If the combat was better, and if it was easier to catch up, it could be one of the best CRPGs of all time, thiking right now it is one of the best modern ones we have.

Game seems fine... but the words are so damn tiny for no damn reason. I even increased the size but that didn't seem to change the in shop menu. Obnoxious. I don't know why this type of game loves to use excessive text without allowing for it to be large. I can read it but it's just too much. Too wordy and I don't feel like reading endless tiny script.

Good RPG, peak writing and nice accessibility. The only downside is the lack of graphic settings.

Nice game outside of combat, but fighting is not fun. Also didn't understand why there were so few portraits, and I see that instead of giving more choices for base game, they sell freaking portraits as DLC? Man. They don't deserve a positive review. At least the story and the choices are nice, but that's it.

An engaging cRPG with a compelling story and rich choices, game offers different perspectives and unique dialogues depending on your faction choice, this must me done in four separate playthroughs tho.

CRPG where you're the bad guy, good writing, novel concept

scratched an itch left by PoE, loved the impact that your choices made on the rest of the game and the magic system was an absolute breath of fresh air. bastard's wound dlc was buggy as fuck which was a bit of a late-game annoyance

Wow, I can’t believe I waited so long to play this. Finally a game where I have choices and where the villain path is actually fleshed out. I wish there was more games like this. Only con is I wish there were more fantasy races included and that the protagonist could not be human. But that’s just me, I prefer non human protagonist.

This was a good game, I enjoyed it. I heard about it after playing the Pillars series which became my new favorite series. This game has a good feeling when compared to Pillars but I think its in its own boat. There was only a few things I didn't like but thats with any game.

The game has excellent writing, worldbuilding and role playing mechanics. If it was a book or tabletop game it would be a 10/10.

But this game has some of the worst combat I have seen in a CRPG. Rtwp without any of the things that make that system fun and constant cutscenes which prevent you from being able to position your characters. No amount of good writing can fix terrible gameplay.

I liked the gameplay and the lore which was written by an industry veteran. The dialogue, however, is atrocious. The formerly great Obsidian started to go down here by hiring untalented fan-fiction writers whose dialogue, when spoken by a woman, needs to be spiced with curse words which don't fit what's being said at all. It's also painfully gender balanced; I honestly believe if you make a spreadsheet of male vs female NPCs, it's going to be very close to 1:1. I got no problem with female leads (my favorite Shepard was a gnarly FemShep, say), but it feels so forced.

a solid 7.5. great cRPG mechanics. great world building and atmosphere. bit of a weak 3rd act though.

A LOT of replay value out of this game as there are 4 different 'paths' you can take. The concept of the world is really neat as well.

One of the best cRPGs ever made, don't let my playtime fool you, I bought it here as a second copy just because I like it so much.

The writing on this is incredibly on point, and I hope one day we get a proper continuation to the story.

Great setting, great writing, great implementation. Probably one of the best CRPGs I've played.

I am bummed that this game didn't get more traction. It was such an out-of-left-field entry into the CRPG genre. I don't mean from a design perspective (because I think the design takes a lot of elements from other obsidian CRPGs and other CRPGs in general--which is not bad, just to be clear), but rather the timing of it and it being a brand new IP, kind of like the Pillars series to an extent. It isn't the first CRPG to dabble in being the villain or have a dark setting. But the way it was executed felt different when I was playing. There was a bleakness to everything that I really enjoyed--kind of a sense that I was choosing the best of a bunch of bad options all the time (or leaning into being a villain and choosing the worst of the worst).

If I were a very wealthy man, I would bankroll a sequel to it just so I could see where the creative minds behind it wanted to take it.

Oh, also the writing and voice acting were S-tier.

Fantastic story with morally gray characters. Surprising alliances. Hard choices and truly a smart examination of playing as an agent of the bad guy. Love it!

Most of the dialogues are not voiced, so it was a bit hard to keep myself invested in the story but other than that a very good game

A competent CRPG that turns the usual themes of the genre on their head. It was fun to embrace being the bad guy and decide the fate of terratus. The companion combos and faction/weapon abilities turn what would otherwise be stale combat into combat I looked forward to engaging with. The lack of enemy variety pulled it down for me a little bit, along with limited voice acting and visual flair with the characters. The lore and world building is the usual great work from Obsidian and kept me wanting to reach the conclusion. Easy recommend for fans of the genre.

I love setting of Malazan so I naturally also loved the setting of Tyranny. Disfavored faction really reminds me of Bridgeburners. One of the best examples of good writing in the genre. Features interesting characters (both archons and companions), very unique approach to magic system (creating your own spells from sigils) and choices which impact the story. Also music fits really well the theme of the game. People complain that the ending comes too fast - it's true that the 3rd act can be completed in 1-2h. I think the closest thing that can be compared to the last act is The Landsmeet from DA:O. And it might be even better executed in Tyranny. Personally, I wouldn't list it as a negative.

There are two negatives for me though - it's obvious that the game was released too fast (missing dialogue lines errors/empty lines, broken formatting of some UI, sound effects being glitchy). Second thing is that all DLCs are basically cut content from the base game, which should have been there in the first place. Made just to get more money and are not really expansions.

While I felt as though I was losing my grip on the story near the end, I really enjoyed this one.

This is a fun bite-sized CRPG. It just goes to show that not all of these games need to be massive.

Really interesting world, it felt like your choices actually changed things. I could tell that if I'd made different choices I would have had a very different experience, so I'm looking forward to playing it again someday. It did end abruptly, felt like maybe they were planning for a sequel that sadly didn't get made.

Original, compelling, and conceptually different in so many awesome ways. Frees you from some of the more tropey "Save the world / You're the chosen one / The power of friendship and love overcomes all" stuff in RPGs. If you like playing RPGs that truly allow you to be your own character rather than railroading you toward 4 or 5 versions of the same character, this is it. Obsidian, PLEASE MAKE ANOTHER GAME SET IN THIS UNIVERSE!!!!!

enjoy spending time alone play this if you wanna enjoy that time more

Are you tired of seeing the same fantasy tropes recycled in every rpg? Bored of seeing good and evil depicted in a black-and-white manner? Want to play a game that doesn't spell things out for you and actually treats you like the adult you technically are? Then this game is for you!
Don't go into this looking for a quick dopamine fix, or your typical (and rather stale) straightforward power fantasy/heroes journey arc. Don't expect to feel warm and fuzzy inside like when you feed an antelope at the zoo (incidentally, there are no antelopes in this world. Sadge).
That's what Tyranny is. Or, what it's supposed to be. Sure, this game doesn't quite deliver on the deeply fleshed-out dystopia that it promises, but that's mainly because the last 'act' of the game was rather rushed, and I wish the story was longer. The game seems to end just when things are getting good.
If you're looking for gameplay, this game follows a similar ruleset to other pausable real-time tactics CRPGS (only Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity 2, pretty much). The spell crafting system is unique, and spells are only limited by their cooldown, not by spell slots per day. Magic is king, but there's actually a lot of depth to combat as a whole, even on the purely physical side of things. You can make niche ideas work, such as a warrior who dual-wields throwing knives imbued with poison, or a heavily-armoured frontline spellcaster with a big shield, or a 'commander' who doesn't do much actual fighting, but is able to point to companions who are knocked out and tell them to get back up. Sure, there is a bit of a meta (light armour and deflection is considered stronger than heavy armour, magic is king, melee is kinda ass) but you can make anything work if you understand how recovery/penetration/hit rates/damage types etc. work.
People complain that nOt EvErYtHiNg Is VoIcE aCtEd, but who cares, you can piss people off and get them to say "fuck you", and that's part's definitely voice acted. Sirin's singing in combat is just lovely. When your weapon isn't very effective, Verse may remark that they are as useful as nipples on a man. When certain enemies set Sirin on fire, she will flail her arms and scream "PUT ME OUT! PUT ME OUT!"
If you still aren't convinced, this RPG lets you be a gigantic dickhead in a completely *believable* way!!! If someone doesn't listen to you, you can smack them around (and get xp at the same time) as a dialogue option, for example. I should stop. Just buy the game, seriously. Okay, it's a bit more expensive now than when I bought it, so maybe wait for a sale, or whatever. There are many games out there with far bigger budgets that aren't half as compelling.

One of the most interesting settings in an RPG out there with an fantastic magic system

For Kyros!

This game is CRIMINALLY underrated. Isometric RPGs are some of my favorite games of all time, and this one delivers a great story and has crazy good world building. You get to be a tyrant (or not). The spell crafting system is really cool. I want more games in this universe. Play this game to support Obsidian, they have the balls to make games that don't need to make AAA money but are in fact AAA quality.

Great RPG, amazing writing, voice acting, story, music, BUT I felt like combat is sluggish and uninteresting. Might be my dislike of "real time, but with pause" mechanic in general, but it always feels like either you can leave the party to kill all enemies in sight in real-time mode on their own (so what's even the point of having the combat in the first place if you can just sit back and watch it happen) OR you need to min-max all the actions of all the party members by constantly pausing and un-pausing the game, which slows the combat a whole lot and defeats the purpose of having "real-time" combat at all. Haven't been able to make myself finish the game, but not including combat, it was good experience.

Good idea. Would like to see more variability in the progression of the scenario. Anyway good game.

Great game mechanic to set the stages for the game changing the route and people you will experience based on the beginning questions planning the invasion.

Greatest magic system in CRPGs, also very enjoyable evil play through

Story was enjoyable, some game mechanics took learning but were easy enough to get used to. Prepare to read a lot of lore in these games. If you have played Pillars of Eternity you would find this similar, though the spell system is very different. Has a some replay-ability to it as well

People tend to overhype the le evil aspects of the game; Like the Empire is just the Persian Empire with some aspects of quiet authoritarian but with how people act you would assume the Empire is committing a shit ton of genocides, instead of you know what normal empires throughout history do. I liked the game tho

Good; 7/10.

Ever wanted to be evil in an RPG? Tyranny has you covered from the very beginning.

A great 'starter' RPG with choices that matter, a decent reputation system, and companions you'll grow to enjoy, it tells a tale of personal growth and political intrigue in equal parts.

Its setting - unexpectedly so - ends up fairly fascinating, and with player-friendly dialogue that isn't overly bloated with meaningless 'fantasy' words that let the mind wander.

Combat occurs in real-time but with pausing available, and therein lies one of the game's truest gems; its 'spellmixing' magic system, which was a joy to interact with.

However, the game ends up feeling too small for the grandness of the story it sets up, ending on quite the cliffhanger.

It remains great for what it is, however.

This game is amazing if you *enjoy* games like *this*. It's a great story, dynamic game mechanics, and a lot of fun to play! I haven't checked out the DLC and plan on reading reviews before investing. Worth the 50hrs of fun and definitely replayable!

I have to wonder what happened to the dev team after the release of the first Pillars of Eternity. Such a good game. I've finished both Pillars of Eternity and Pillars of Eternity II (have to update my review for the second still) with over 500 hours in those games. And now, trying Tyranny, I'm starting to get a clearer picture here. I bet there was some overeager manager trying to advance his/her career by coming up with all these clever ideas on how to change a combat system (of a successful game mind you) that did not need changing at all. And that's why we have the dumbed down (compared to Pillars I) combat system in Pillars of Eternity II and this complete mess in Tyranny.

The combat system in Pillars I was by no means flawless. But these follow up games are trying to fix existing mess by introducing an even bigger mess. One example for many: bows. In the old RPGs, eg. Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, the characters were able to carry huge amounts of ammo (we're talking 100s of arrows, darts, bullets for slings, ...). So somebody thought that's wrong. And it is! But then they thought: "Let's not deal with that." and introduced infinite ammo in Pillars I. But guess what? That introduced the ability for characters to kite the enemies forever. If your character is faster than the enemy, you can just run around a house and shoot 100s of arrow at the poor soul chasing you unable to catch you. So for Tyranny they thought: "Let's prevent that by pausing recovery/reloads while the characters are running". But guess what? That crippled the ranged engagements altogether! Reality check: A fighter in heavy armor chasing a nimble character in light or no armor with a bow and not being able to catch them is a legit situation. Though not in Tyranny. Your archer runs away from the tin can to a decent distance and you'd expect to shoot at the approaching warrior but no. Your recovery timer after the first shot did not move a pixel in all that running. Even when you run around a house for minutes, it does not move a pixel, unless you stop and wait in one spot. In fact, your character, stuck in place right after shooting, reloads an arrow immediately (you cannot move while that's happening!) and then the recovery timer starts (but stops as soon as you move). Why?!

A sane person would pause, thinking: "Wait, have we actually achieved what we tried to achieve?" And then they'd go back to the root cause and rethink the solutions, picking one of the many available options. For example: reintroduce ranged ammo, but limit the amount to realistic numbers (e.g. a quiver for 5 or 10 arrows only, same as in real world shooting) - no more running around and shooting for hours if you only have 10 shots, right? Or let's say that if you reload an arrow while running, you have a chance to lose the arrow (having to start reloading from scratch). Or add a small chance to trip and fall, going prone because your character did not notice that little rock on the ground while focusing on reloading while running. Or make running while reloading slower. Or make reloading while running slower. Or any combination of the above. So many saner, cleaner solutions. Sadly, that overeager manager did not think nearly hard enough.

At least the story and writing in Pillars I were excellent. And the main story still very good in Pillars II. Here? I've only been at it for a few hours and there were already so many plot holes and missing dialogue options. Sometimes the game straight out lies for the sake of torturing you. One example from many: crossing the river over the rope. You're supposed to get help from the Scarlet Furies crossing with you, so that you can take down the guards and lower the second bridge. How many you get on the other side? Just one. ONE. From a large brigade known for their numbers.

The devs boast about the game having many choices that matter. Wrong! In the initial campaign prelude, all the choices I made were directed towards preserving as many of the civilian lives of the locals as possible, also preserving the land itself as much possible. Some characters even mentioned that (so this is tracked by the game). But is it done properly? No. Because right in one of the first locations I get a task to go to a village and recruit the people there under the banner of our army. Refusing means death (we are the bad guys!). I took the quest thinking: "Surely since the game tracks these decisions I made and even the enemy faction characters recognized my previous deeds in conversation before, I will have the very obvious option following my character's conscience so far, to tell them to disperse into the woods, hide there and save their lives (or some such thing). And then I'd report to the camp leader that the village was abandoned, therefore I couldn't conscript anyone". There was not even a hint of that. Three variations on the "get conscripted or die" conversation (with various degrees of friendliness and aggresivity), a followup fight killing all the enemies and quest was over.

Not like this. If Avowed is made in the same way, I don't even want to try it when it comes out.

Conceptually very compelling: basically it’s like “what if Baldur’s Gate 2 / Pillars of Eternity, except you are working for the bad guys from The Black Company (or Bungie’s Myth if you prefer).” I got kind of over it mechanically fairly quickly, but the dialogue trees are pretty well executed and the game has a surprising amount of plot reactivity to user choices. Be aware that the amount of actual game here is basically the first ~60% of what you’d expect and the game kind of ends abruptly. But it’s still worth it for the somewhat novel worldbuilding and unusual commitment to “you are a medium-level bureaucrat in an evil army.”

Highly highly recommend for CRPG lovers, especially those looking for a successor to the two original Baldur's Gates.

Pros: very cool story, really ingenious magic system, lots of world-building and excellent writing, no class system more like Elder Scrolls' "use it to level" system
Cons: occasional bugs or dialogue choice errors, game just kind of ends, Act 3 is really short and it doesn't feel like there is a big payoff

Overall I have really liked it, there is plenty of replayability. VERY TEXT HEAVY. If you don't like reading you are going to skip a lot of the payoff of the game.

Tyranny evil setting's was really refreshing for me. After ditching Pillars of Eternity mid journey due to losing interest in the main quest, the lore and the dialog, I was reluctant to give Tyranny a try, but it does deliver on creating a more interesting experience. The lack of morality is almost liberating, in a genre that is often suprisingly restricting for people who are trying to not play as a needlessly mean character.

I say 'almost', because the game itself is fairly lacking when it comes to the actions you can take. Morality may not restrict you, but the route you arbirarily choose in the beginning of the game would. This is not as a very deep / very long RPG, and the budget restrictions do show. Still, I think the game ultimately worths it.

Story of this game is rather depressing, but at the same time it can be cathartic.

There are moments where you are faced with a choice between cruel obedience and disobeying an unstoppable force, which might result in even more suffering.

Impact on the world of the game is very well presented in terms of how people react to you. You make important choices even before first dialogue.

The best aspect of this game is perspective of the conqueror from oppressive nation. You're in the position where you're executing cruel laws of the distant tyrant, but your interpretation of them leaves you some room for flexibility and in the end you might be regarded as positive person even by the very people you are invading. The fact that you have to face the consequences of your actions no matter what you chose to do is very well-depicted, because there's just a lot of people who can react to your decisions.

Most importantly - the suffering of a nation which lost most of its hope is presented in a haunting way. I really recommend playing it for the story if you can stomach cruelty.

Like the Pillars of Eternity series, this game is exquisite in its making. With well-crafted character mechanism, story-rich content, dialog options, and interesting side contents such as upgrading your bases of operations (Spires in this game) and random events, you feel that the developers really put their efforts into making a quality CRPG.

And I also noticed that players have the option to play the game in a completely different story, increasing the replayability of this game. That is a good game design, in my opinion. For example, you can choose to betray alliance in the early game. I guess that would turn you from a Kyros follower into a Kyros challenger. Not that I encourage betrayal, but I'm not quite used to invading other countries despite I played as a Kyros follower throughout the game. In the future, I will likely be replaying the game as a Kyros challenger to try to put a stop to his invasive deeds.

My two disappointments are the majority of combats being challengeless and the compulsory ideology of Female Protagonist:

• There are only three combats which made me feel challenging (the boss fight in Vendrien's Well, the fight in Timbervale Village, and the fight with the Archon of Shadow). The rest of the combats were simply challengeless and were like hack and slash. I played as a War Mage and my companions were Barik, Verse, and Lantry, by the way. I also chose the peaceful solutions whenever possible. And I set the Difficulty to Normal. Maybe I should have set it to Hard instead. But I set it to Normal in the Pillars of Eternity series as well and didn't feel challengelessness. So this probably has something to do with the number of your party member being limited to 4. With such a small party, the game cannot give you larger scaled, more challenging battles.
  
[*] While I understand some developers and players might be interested in Female Protagonist, that's not my cup of tea. And I'm disappointed that experiencing the ideology in the game is not optional and is compulsory. But fortunately, the ideology hadn't gone too far in the game, because the Archons you meet in the game are all male. In the future, I hope the developers would consider making the ideology an option which you can switch on and off before starting the game.

Overall, I still find this game worth recommending to CRPG lovers. If you enjoy classic 2D CRPG such as the Pillars of Eternity series, the Icewind Dale series, and the good-old-days Baldur's Gate series, this game is definitely worth a try.

Very good but way too short. Could have taken this concept alot farther and its a shame. 45 hours isn't enough.

I just beat this one for the first time on normal difficulty and I loved it. It's got some issues (the ending feels pretty rushed, stats are kind of confusing, and most boss fights are a little bland), but overall I loved this game. The magic crafting system might be the best I've seen in any game. It's simple, but very powerful with loads of choices for different effects. If you like Obsidian RPGs, you'll probably like this.

tried multiple times over the years to get into the game and story, jut can;t get into it.

the story is interesting enough, its a crpg but it feels like a power fantasy for me

honestly to much fun, combat it fun. i just love the series and there combat system.

Really good rpg

Combat

I have never seen a game actively try to stop you from having fun. Every time that I start to fall in love with this game, it just layers on the most boring, inconsequential side content. If you plan to play this game focus on the main quest and ignore everything else, you are not missing anything good. Could not finish the game, deleted about 2/3 of the way.