Tyranny

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.

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.

I think it is a really good game, but this game does seem a little decisive. If you like PoE, or CRPGs in general, you will probably like this game. If not you still might like this game.

A compelling story from a unique angle, a flexible magic system, an interesting setting in a transitioning bronze/iron age, a unique reputation system, a skill system that improves skills utilized, and a serviceable combat system make this a compelling acquisition for any fan of the crpg genre. Please keep in mind that most of the dialogue isn't voiced, so there's lots of reading which can slow your pace down. For downsides, the characters in combat can get wonky at times and some of the sarcastic dialogue options ended up resulting in permanent consequences that didn't seem obvious at the time. Definitely not fleshed out as Pillars of Eternity or Baldur's Gate, but still worth a romp.

This game is incredible. 10/10

I love the story with all the choice to manipulate it along the way is absolutely perfect.

Lots of replayability.

The RPG elements are fantastic.

The combat is really good.

Exploration was very satisfying. I was always rewarded for exploring the maps.

I finished the game wanting the story to keep going.

Was pretty shocked by how small of a team made this game. The devs were clearly very experienced, passionate and hard working.

Its decision making at its finest and can be deeper than i thought. One thing is its around 20-40 hours depending on what you want to do. I've done 3 playthroughs and have enjoyed them all, Nerat is brutal and uhhhh have fun working "with" him. so many little details and stuff i missed every time, another cool feature is depending on early chouces it can actually change map locations, one changed a whole town.

Excellent RPG. Ridiculous amount of in-depth dialogue and branching story options.
The create your own magic system is such a winner as well, I've never experienced anything like it, so much fun.
If I didn't have a huge list of CRPG games on my list I would replay this game.

Way more BG than Pillars of Eternity ever was. Instead this time you play part of the evil army who has defeated good and now rules the world crushing rebellion and resistance wherever you go. However, you can subtly and very carefully undermine the evil folks you work for and work as a good guy if you wish, that option is there.

A cRPG that asks what you’ll do when the world has already fallen—and then lets you do it. Its writing is sharp, like glass cutting through ideology. Questions without easy answers. Characters who refuse to be mere tropes. Each conversation feels like a duel, your wit the blade you wield.

A masterpiece of writing, choice, and consequence.

It's a good time! Cool mythology, interesting characters, neat environments. Suffers a bit from the fact that the reputation system and ethical dilemmas turn almost every conversation into "who are you going to accidentally make mad by saying the wrong thing???" or "choose between this rock and this hard place, AGAIN!" but once I learned to roll with that I still had a good time.

I LOVE this games lore, backstory, and worldbuilding, plus the positioning and perspective of your character is super unique. Magic system is fun to, and is steeped pretty heavily in the lore to boot.

I do, however, have one major complaint about this game, and that it that it feels like it should be a lot longer, because it leaves so many questions and plotlines rather unresolved depending on the ending you take. That is the only thing keeping it from a five star for me. For most people that might not be a problem, but I love the worldbuilding of this game so much that when I learned where it ended, I won't lie, it kinda pissed me off.

God, I wish this game had a sequel, but it doesn't so I have to wallow in unexplained and unexplored lore, no matter how much I despise that fact.

an instant classic rpg. loved the writing and the choices felt like they really mattered.

Another great cRPG by Obsidian, relatively short for a cRPG (30-35 hours) but it does some amazing stuff with factions, reputation and player choice. The premise is fairly unique, you're part of the invading force and a trusted servant to a tyrant named Kyros.

There are plenty of paths you can take and choices to make that can drastically change quest/story outcomes and a lot of them are in the grey area, not strictly good/evil. You can also play a short narrative prologue to set up the initial state of the world or skip it and use a quick start option.

I really enjoyed it and some of the lore/exploration areas were quite intriguing. I think Deadfire is still Obsidian's best (this review is prior to Avowed release), but Tyranny is a good cRPG with an emphasis on hard choices.

I played this game because of pillars but liked this game much better. Despite some frustration flaws with the real time fighting, I played through twice.

So, I am giving this game a positive review because it has an interesting story to tell, and plenty of branching options to give you the chance for a solid replayability, which is very desirable IMO. On top of that, it doesn't take 100 hours to run through one playthrough like some RPGs, so replayability is actually reasonable with this story. The setting is well thought out, and built on thoroughly as you progress.

All that said, I have some significant issues with the game:

1: While the world building is pretty good, the writers had a tendency to just put SO MUCH INFO on characters that do not matter. A prime example is a pair of soldiers that happen to be brothers. Your with them for all of 10 minutes, but they have text options that go way to deep on their personal interactions. There is plenty of chaff that could have been cut here, and towards the end of my playthrough, I just got tired of reading about things that didn't apply to the greater world or the main plot, and started skipping sections of conversations. I don't need to know intricate details about one-off characters.

2: The combat is rough, and not in a difficulty type of way. I am not a big fan of RPGs that limit the party number below 6 characters, and this game does it. I just feel like there could team options with 6 compared to 4. This limited what I felt like I could do in regards to my team composition and so I tried to use the terrain to my advantage where possible, and it forced me to abuse chokepoints to prevent my weaker characters from just getting targeted down.

Add to that a janky movement system that will sometimes get a character stuck on nothing in a fight, or have them run around a teammate the long way to at the last moment realize the other way was shorter, and then turn around, and I just got frustrated and turned the combat to easy. The system itself is not intuitive IMO. I wasn't a huge fan of it in Pillars of Eternity, and after returning to it having played more solid systems based off of DND, it's weakness shows.

Overall, I do think it worth the time, considering that 30 hrs can see you the whole of the main story. Some of the companions have some deep expansion onto the world, and the most of the Archons have interesting interactions with the player character. Just stick it on easy, and don't get caught in the vortex of unnecessary character development.

Excellent game. I think the writing loses a little bit of steam after the halfway point. You'll find random contradictions in some of the writing. NPCs will tell you you've only got 2 of X when you have 3 etc.

Quite fun. Very replayable.

One of the best written rpg out there. A fresh air from all the dndesque settings that are usually found in fantasy rpgs, Tyranny's world has his own original twist inspired (I believe) from the Black Company universe.

Combat is fun and engaging, and the spell creation system offers lots of flexibility.

It's a shame that such a game has been rushed and offered such few additional content. Even like this, it's still a masterpiece of crpgs, imagine what it could have been with a continued support...

Really liked that one, personally I find Pillars of Eternity very generic and boring, while Tyranny feels like it does present something new to the genre. It has some unique moments and cool choice mechanics that "shape" the world (alter the world a bit). Still choices present in Tyranny feel like they do have an impact. Amongst kickstarter era rpgs (wasteland, pillars, new torment, etc) Tyranny is the most fun

is good although the story makes me feel like a monster

good game, i actually pulled of going by myself instead fighting with either Archon.

First time was on hard, going to run PoTD as there is many choices i didn't make the first time around so looking forward to NG+.
I had fun so lets go again.

I really wish this sold more. A sequel with a more enjoyable turn based combat system coupled with an equally good soundtrack would've been a great experience.

On its own, it's a really good RPG with great dialogue and atmosphere. I'd say the atmosphere was top tier compared to other crpgs based on its soundtrack, colors, and choices alone.

Give the game a shot. It's not too long
(which is great, by the way. Why do we want so many long games these days. Who has time for that?)

Probably the last truly original and experimental Obsidian game.

4.4 hour of gameplay.
4 hours was that of reading through everything I could find while playing normally.
.4 hours was a mix between me figuring out where to go and a tiny bit tutorial of combat.

ill keep trying the game but honestly I found light novels more fun than this.
I was trying to play a video game not read text with multiple choice options that lead to the same result.

to be honest I mainly got the game cause I thought it would be something like baldur's gate series.

but at least baldur's gate had cool looking combat, it could be just that it was the tutorial but it felt like it was just a combat animation next to a combat animation and see whose health bar dropped to 0 faster....

If you like good RPGs that are well written, then this is a must-play. More so if you are even a little worn out on the tiresome do-gooder hero trope that plagues this genre (though I think you can still be a boot-licker in this game if you try hard enough.)

wanted to be evil. ended up yawning during combat because I have no idea what im doing.
kinda ruined the mood for me because i had no urgency or excitement to open the game up just to watch it combat JUST so i can get to the end and say I've completed it. honk shoooooooooooo

Have been playing this for quite a while. Great game - Multiple paths to explore. Sad that it doesn't have a sequel.