Tyranny - Standard Edition

I have mixed feelings about this. The story and setting sound very appealing and it is very good. The characters are interesting. The game technically worked fine for me and ran fluently. I liked the game system a lot more than pillars of eternity, too. I especially liked the combat system and character development system. By learning by usage, the character really felt "growing" and did not feel too limited. Level-ups were also not too impactful, but everyone mattered. The first chapter is everything promised and i second all 5 stars reviews for it. But... ,,, from the second chapter onwards my experience slowly went from "excellent!" at the end of chapter 1 to "annoying" when i stopped even playing after a big reveal. The advertised "choices with consequences" are really that...just not as i expected.. Once you made your choices in the first chapter, you can only change them either by "doing everything as told" or "complete betrayal and killing every friend you made". This was too much "bad roleplaying and out of character" for me. Especially annoying was that it all was forced upon you without even being necessary...explaining it would require spoilers, but just play the beastman chapters as non-rebel and you might understand.. If you expect "evil" or "cunning" decisions and stories of intrigue and betrayal as for example "fallout", you will be disappointed. The second disappointment came with realizing how the game system handles encounters. It was not as bad for me as in pillars of eternity (where you could get stuck storywise for lack of progression), but i really hate scaling enemies. And this game has them, so better include it in the cons. Especially if you advertise your game as "return to the old-school"... So here the game system and mechanics loose a star for me. Combined with the roleplaying flaws (5 stars in first chapter to 0 in the last one i played), i can't see more than a three star from an old-school (played almost every RPG from ultima, bard's tale, wasteland to fallout 3, pillars and tyranny) perspective. I bought it on discount and i had a lot of fun (and hours of gameplay there alone) during the first chapter, so that i my moneys worth and if you don't get annoyed by the third chapter, you might enjoy the game till the end.

This game is just amazing. You play in a world where evil has won, the godlike figure Kyros the overlord controls every aspect of society and rules with fear - and you are one of her enforcers. Through out the game you'll experience what it means to live in a world void of morality. You get to pick a side, but none of the choices are truly "good". The combat is fun and engaging. The spell making system is a lot of fun to explore and the world is very well done. I regard the complaints of game length as being misunderstandings. If you really want to explore and try everything you will need to play it through multiple times from different angles - choosing different sides, different allies, different options. Now i do have two complaints **Spoilers** The neutral path where you are advised by the Archon of shadows (Bleden Mark) is a bit boring since your only choice is to kill everyone. The ending leaves you as a contestant to Kyros him/her self. I would much have preferred that Kyros remained an untouchable godlike figure as i think that makes the world more interesting from a moral perspective.

Lets get this out of the way first, this is not an open world RPG. It's more like a choose your own adventure RPG. Second, this game is shorter than an open world RPG like Pillars, but it's not as short as some reviews claim. My first game clocked in at 150 hours (according to the save file). I spent a lot of time reading the lore entries on my first time around, but even without that, I don't see how people are getting through this game in 20 hours. If you're finishing the game in under 50 hours you're missing out on a lot of content since not every quest shows up in the journal. Right after creating your character, you play the conquest. The Conquest is a short choose your own adventure mini-game which you decide how your character participated in the conquest of the Tiers and set up your initial faction influences. You will be presented with two locations, with each location having you chose between two battles and each battle having two outcomes. The last part of the conquest has you choosing between three locations where you will cast one of the three edicts in effect at the start of the game. You can skip this and chose between one of three presets (I don't recommend this). The rest of the game plays out in a choose your own adventure style as well, but on a larger scale. The main quests will generally present you with two or more initial paths. Sometimes you will be able to complete all of them, but the others may change depending on the order you decided to take them in. Other times, picking one option will close off the other, or it will present a third option after completing the first and you can only pick one of those two. Unlike an open world game, it is impossible to see and do everything in one play through. I enjoyed Tyranny a lot. It's a new take on the old-school isometric RPG formula, and I hope to see a sequel and/or more games like it from Obsidian.

Very well written and there's sooo many different choices to make throughout the game that the replayability for this game is very high! I already finished the game three times and there are still so many differents things to do/see! I wish more games would be like Tyranny, where your choices REALLY matter!

a lot of times when games want to be edgy the narrative becomes too cumbersome and pretentious for me. and that includes a lot of classic titles that people really LOVE. i dont need edgy stuff in my games. im fine with reading a book if i want to ponder some philosophical notion and have an existential crisis. if a game is good at being edgy that usually means its only good for videogame standards. the mediums of literature and film will always be better at telling meaningful and challenging stories. if you really want to learn something or think about something really hard you read a book. you dont play a videogame*. and you all know its true! but tyranny did it well. really well. the most fun ive had with a modern rpg in years. THIS game right here should become a franchise. its edgy and moody but the writing is not hamfisted and preachy and forced. its actually rather natural and people talk like real people. they dont talk like pretentious characters in some pseudointellectual exposition. its like the best type of novels. it starts when its interesting and stops before it gets boring. the game offers a lot of roleplaying. and a lot of choices with some real consequences that actually are really game changers when it comes to the MAINPLOT. yeah you read that correctly! combat is a bit simplified or "streamlined". but it has offers enough depth to still be competent. character customization is satisfying. exploration could have been handled better. this game is by no means perfect. its certainly not a jack of all trades. but its a master of narrative design and reactivity. i would play the game with both of the story dlc because they tie into the game rather well and make the game a bit longer without feeling like filler content. a modern classic and better than most modern crpgs out there and actually better than some of the old ones imo. its not too short, it just doesnt waste time. and its highly replayable. it also has a sense of humour.