Have you ever cooked a meal without using salt? If you haven’t done a lot of cooking before, it’s easy to forget to salt things properly, especially when salt doesn’t really have a flavor of its own. Saltiness is just a component of the sense of taste in itself, so it’s hard to pin down how much you really need, but experienced cooks will tell you that if your dish feels incomplete and the flavors aren’t as vibrant as you wanted, the first thing you should do is add salt.

Tyranny is a game with no salt. All the ingredients for a great RPG are here, with fun companions, an interesting world with a unique story to tell, an involved magic system, and thought-provoking decisions to make, but it still feels incomplete. I can’t point to a core flaw or to any specific feature that should have been added or removed, it’s just… it’s missing something. The flavor isn’t popping. Some people want their RPG’s to have a big, cathartic, emotional climax, others love quiet moments among trusted companions, and I can’t tell which of the many possibilities would have made Tyranny stand out. The game feels unfinished, not in the way that it barely runs or only has half the content it promised, but in that it’s missing some kind of moment that would tie the whole thing together. It’s still perfectly enjoyable, and fans of Obsidian certainly know how to appreciate an undercooked game, but it breaks my heart that they keep putting out these beautiful concepts without the refinement to make them unqualified classics. You could even say that it makes me feel a little...

Witnessing a story that actually unfolds and shifts based on many different decisions you take from the very character creation screen is certainly impressive. What makes the game far from being memorable or interesting to explore is the lack of a strong writing that keeps the player hooked. Thorough the story the main drive is almost always chasing different magical mcguffins to make your character over powered and renowned, doing quests from people you choose to be friendly with as opposed as those you antagonize, which is a very cool concept.

The issue with this is that there is a clear lack of depth since, once you betray or antagonize a member of a faction in some occasions, you are going to fight that same faction thorough the rest of the game, making someone willingy to play like a smart villain who carefully plays factions against each other very hard to do since there are few occasions and with very little consequences where you can actually manipulate the people around you, even with high stats in this game version of speech check. For example, at some point my character made a sound argument, recognized by most of his allies, which had the consequence of winning a huge battle but while downplaying other important allies who were reasonably acting like daft twats and not helping the war effort at all. In return, these allies got so pissed that I was never, ever, allowed to attempt a meaningful strategy with any of their troops, no matter how reasonable the situations were they just acted like I murdered their families instead of doing the right (in perspective) thing.

So the story shifts based on your decisions but also the minor decisions you don't take are gatekept hard from you in a manner almost inconsistet in a game where you play for a faction of cunning evildoers. In fact, there were multiple instances where two armies battling each other decided on the spot to make a truce just to attack my party because I was nearby and my existence was more important to them than the actual war they were fighting. Bloody hell.

This sounds way bigger than it actually is, the game is still pretty fun to explore but the real deal breakers come in the form of: 1. bland character writing, none of the members of your party (with the exception of maybe two who were not really interesting but at leastly smartly written and very idiosincratic) have any sort of humanity or meaningful interaction with the player character of among themselves, nothing like dragon age origins, baldur's gate, even persona and mass effect...; 2. there is just no hook, the whole game revoles around lore, worldbuilding and magical shenanigans, which might be fine for people deep into studying fantasy stuff for their own reasons but it lacked the quirkiness, the mystery, the symbols, the characters and the themes that make actually great fantasy stories memorable. It played like any standard fantasy world you are expected to know with very few little twists and none of that weird enough to function as the hook for the whole game (Kyros and Tunon certainly kept me interested but I got bored with the Spires and Oldwalls and Banes and Edicts and Archons and Beastmen pretty fast.)

It certainly an improvement over Pillars of Eternity 1, at least the writing is a little more focused on characters rather than just worldbuilding, but it still falls far from the heights of masterfully written rpgs.

Edit: Oh yeah also lots of character's quests and important stuff about the world are in DLCs because Paradox.jpeg

you know, it's weird. i played all the way through this, and then kept playing a little bit more to see how some things can turn out differently. i thought the core concepts were quite strong, and the weird bronze age fantasy world unusual and interesting.

and yet i can barely remember if it evoked any emotions in me at all. one thing i do recall was that the concept already mandated that your party members not be very nice or likeable people, which is a hard sell if you're meant to spend like 20 hours with them -- and then the story still seemed to lean the hardest on the least likeable ones and neglect the ones that i found at all compelling.

my thought on why it's so unsatisfying to me is: it's meant to imitate a tabletop campaign of an "evil", or at least antiheroic and morally flexible party of adventurers, but then instead of your group of friends pretending to be scheming wizards and hired killers to have a fun time together, it's a somewhat lonely experience hanging out with already-written scheming wizards and hired killers, whose capacity to delight and surprise you with interpersonal antics is limited by what the writers came up with. if you start finding the style, or the tone, or the characterization, or the direction things are going grating or boring or unpleasant, you can't really figure it out together with the group and the DM and correct your course. either you're all in, or it just kind of sucks. i find that this is a common problem with crpgs that try to imitate a tabletop campaign, and a major reason why i slowly gravitated away from infinity engine style games that favour this style, and towards other, differently told stories.

other than that, i couldn't tell you a single thing about this game today. it is neither hot nor cold, and i shall spit it out of my mouth.

At first I was not expecting much with this game, but I really grew invested in it. The setting is quite interesting, using something similar to a late Bronze Age/early Iron Age setting, and the main plot revolves around you being a representative of a high ranking official in the army of an evil Overlord, tasked with finishing the conquest in one of the last places untouched by the Empire.

The gameplay is typical of cRPGs, and there's a variety of playstyles available, however theres some stats and skills that are inherently better than the others, which came as kinda disappointing. Dodging, parrying and lore are essential to the gameplay, as the first two allow you to avoid damage altogether, and lore helps you create powerful spells and read scrolls containing spell parts. When you level up, you get to put points into your stats and into your skill tree, opening new passive and offensive abilities for use. Different enemies and armor types have types of thamage that they are incredibly effective against, and damage that they cannot protect against, so planning your attacks in battles is your biggest priority, specially in the harder difficulties. Your party members can also gain cooperative skills with your main character, depending on the actions you choose in conversations with them or the different facions in the game, so conversations also become an important part of the gameplay.

The story, without spoiling, revolves around the last of the unconquered lands, the Tiers, and how the army generals are too busy fighting each other instead of getting the job done. Your job is to solve the dispute by whatever means necessary, or not, the game is very open with its factions and how you deal with each of them through the game. The biggest downside is that once you choose one of the two factions to lead an assault in the beginning, you're locked out of helping the other one, and every time you skip the option to betray the faction you chose, you're locked into the quest that you got there for. However, there is not one singular absolute ending, each faction and companion character has a possible ending, aside from the standard ending you get. The story does end up rather abruptly, so much so that I was left expecting something more after it, like a final confrontation or something.

Overall, I believe Tyranny is a pretty good game, I enjoyed my time with it, carefully going through the plot, making sure I wasn't making too many enemies along the way, and planning how each character would fit in the party.

Flawed, but with great stuff too. The story and setting are both interesting and I absolutely love the way that character setup is used to change how you interact with the rest of the world. There is some genuinely great stuff at play here, but the combat, looting, and dialogue were never enough to really make the great material seem worth it.

If you're more used to these top-down rpg style games than I am, maybe the flaws wont be as big of a deal and you can properly enjoy the good stuff. But that just wasn't the case for me so I have a more difficult time giving my full endorsement.

I should have known what to expect from a modern Obsidian game: shallow mechanics, horrible party members and boring combat, but at least your decisions matter and the writing is good because that's the only thing they are still good at. Well, it turns out I was wrong because the setting and story are mediocre, but the way it's presented in is even worse.
I'm not gonna lie, there were parts of the game that I enjoyed, such as spell crafting and some battles, but these sections were few and far between and not nearly enough to justify playing the entire thing.
The introduction is simply horrible, the first act and part of the second are filled with exposition like they were trying to cram a wikipedia article about their setting into the game as fast as possible. It feels forced and unnatural when every NPC needs to tell the player their life story and the lore of the land.
Imagine you meet someone from Mexico and after exchanging greeting the first words that come out of his mouth are a detailed chronicle of the Mexican Revolution that lasts 30 minutes. That's how it feels to interact with NPCs in this game, and the cherry on top is that they rarely say something that's actually interesting.
I enjoy reading, but I don't like it when writers try to jam the entire setting down my throat as soon as the game starts, especially in the fantasy genre which tends to be super generic and exposition heavy.
At the end of the day, I believe Tyranny is a mediocre RPG, even though I went in with diminished expectations, and life is too short to play stuff like this.

The first CRPG I've played, I was enthralled from start to finish. I've never really picked to be the 'bad guy' in RPGs (or most evil in this case), but I'm glad I did because the Scarlet Chorus path was fantastic.

I do need to point out that the ending feels incomplete, and the combat is pretty basic, though.

★★★½ – Great ✅

Tyranny is a game I enjoyed a bunch. It has a strong setting, being set in a fantasy early Iron Age based period, and has an interesting premise. The story is also intriguing, and there is much opportunity for role play and immersion. The graphics are good, being stylized, and your adventures will let you explore very interesting and diverse regions and locations.

You’ll get to recruit 6 followers, each with its own quirks and characteristics, but you can only have three of these with you while exploring. Followers have a lot to say and talk about, and, sometimes, they will comment on current missions or decisions you make, which can even shift their Loyalty or Fear meters, both affecting some dialogues, abilities and endings. They don’t talk a ton, though, and there was a time during the game where I rarely heard them talking about what was happening.

I played on normal difficulty, and the combat is more slow paced, which I like; it is also more small scale, where you’ll rarely fight more than 4 or 5 enemies at a time, even when your enemies could easily overwhelm you by sending everyone at once. In some parts of the story, I found it distracting how your enemies would only send enemies in waves. There aren’t many different types of enemies to fight, with most being just humans with different abilities, weapons and armor, but it didn’t really bother me.

The music and sound design were pretty great, generally fitting the more grim atmosphere this game posses, but also sounding pretty mystic or glorious when needed.

The story DLC (Bastard’s Wound) is pretty mediocre. I found it much less interesting than the base game’s regions. And this DLC has harder combat encounters (even harder than the last combat situations before the ending), which is no fun.

The story, although having a strong premise, and, in my opinion, being good, is clearly unfinished. This game could really have a sequel, to expand the world and resolve main conflicts left unfinished. Unfortunately, this game did poorly on sales, the developer is owned by Microsoft and the IP is owned by Paradox, which means a sequel will never come.

Overall, Tyranny is a CRPG that has lots of strong points, and, even with its flaws, is still worth checking out. It is not as long as many other CRPGs, taking around 30 hours to finish, and I would totally recommend it to friends.

i don't think i can say anything about it that hasn't already been said. it is indeed an obsidian classic - a fantastic well-written story that digs deep into the meaning of power an authority that has a lot of promise and potential, and that is obviously unfinished because they ran out of budget midway. it hurts to even think about. it's incredibly short for a CRPG, and i think anyone should just go and do a stab at it. the writing is well worth it. small details like being able to circumvent kyros' time limit in the edict and such are so fun lol. the gameplay is heavily biased towards lore and magic, but i prefer speech/magic classes so it was not an issue for me. i liked the companions, and i liked their relations with the main factions, and how they gained different skills depending on how they viewed you. idk there's a lot of good in it.

unfortunately, it really just Ends midway with no clear resolution or explanation. it feels like act 1 of a much bigger game :( it is also quite buggy, and it's easy to lock yourself out of all routes other than rebelling because some of the levels - for me it was always the library - just leave you with no other choice due to bugs. the enemy variety also sucks. i also think that throwing players into the conquest part right away is quite a hurdle because you already have to read a lot and engage with the game world right away, and the choices you make there play a big role - but the game is so short that it hardly matters. it does have a lot of replayability thanks to all the background and conquest options. i really should try and play it again myself

Somewhat underrated CRPG and really one of the best modern representatives of this genre. The writing was finally something different than "Chosen One fights the Big Bad" :D, there were super interesting factions and understandable motivations for pretty much every character you meet. The mystery surrounding the ruler of this world (Kyros) is also super interesting and well written. My favorite part was the ending. I don't want to spoil anything, but for me the world only got more interesting here. It's a shame that there wasn't a sequel following this.