Tyranny - Standard Edition

Haven't enjoyed a game like this since Planescape: Torment. The story, art, atmosphere, and depth of the game were all great. They've certainly pushed the story-telling and lore beyond Pillars of Eternity for this one. The game ran smoothly on my mac. Games like Mass Effect with it's binary choices seemed like a design constraint that really took away from thinking creatively about solutions. Whereas with Tyranny, you have to be careful where you tread, as there will be consequences down the road, and it's not this cliche good or evil choices (which seems like lazy design) Some dialogue options were limited more than others, which seemed out of place. Hopefully they can do updates to create a wider web of interaction with some characters, in particular Lantry. I would have expected more info about Vellum Citadel. Some situations confused me where I was given only one option, involving the life of a baby that seemed like you should have had several options. Perhaps this was a bug. I still haven't played all the missions thoroughly. For me, they didn't leave me at some cliffhanger, and they've certainly created a world for some epic crafty story-telling. If they make an expansion or sequel, I'm on board.

It's always hard to make choice, when you know that all your words can bring you down. Perfect game about choices :)

I really, really don't get why this game has such high ratings. It does dome things really well, but it ultimately it utterly fails at its promise of "play and rule as evil with consequences." The game starts promising, and really, its first chapter is without a doubt the best one, but it all goes downhill from there. Tyranny gives you a promise of building a new world order in great evil overlord Kyros' name, but you don't actually do that. What you do is you do a bunch of fetch quests, and solve bickering between two generals of Kyros, who both behave like total morons - one mass-enslists defeated, bitter enemies, so that they can betray him, and the second one straight up executes them and then complains that his army doesn't have enough soldiers. Then, they both argue instead of fighting. There are moments where you can completely indulge yourself as an evil mastermind, yes, but I would expect a game with its main promise of "playing evil" to have more of them. Also, would expect much more opportunities at playing real evil instead of just "kill or don't kill". The game is full of illusionary choices - it straight up tells you that choices "matter". Well, that is a lie - yes, they matter to the point of what allies you are going to have, but ultimately, no game does really give you a choice where to steer the story. This one certainly doesn't, as you are ultimately a servant of someone else. For example, you can kill or spare a prominent political figure, but sparing her only results in her committing suicide. The game is also very rushed past the first chapter, and it shows. Short, with tons of filler combat. Boring for most of the 2nd half. Really unsatisfactory and abrupt ending. If you want a game where you can role play as an evil tyrant, play Pathfinder: Kingmaker as an evil character. That playthrough will do a thousand times better job than this game.

I gave 5 stars. It is good game. but... MAJOR ÍSSUE: Graphic is awful. Everything is BLURed. Characters looks extremly BAD and wierd. Movement looks like they got some movement DISEASE. Combat is total MESS, it is not posible to know, who is who, what is he doing and where he stands. User interface is EXTREMLY BAD. Everything is MESS. BORING uninspiring loot. No romances, relationship, or friendship. Character leveling system doesnt make sense. To be honest, much much older games got better graphic, better user interfece, better characters etc... The GOOD stuff: Story is very nice. It is (warning) very childish, but it is GOOD. Combat mechanic itself is VERY GOOD and fun. Companions are very UNIQUE and more alive then in other games (similar to Dragon Age). Very COMPLEX storyline. Very complex. Choices matters! HAND MADED combat scenes (not generated}. Complex character skills and very nice SPELL creation. Actually it IS funn to play this game, even if it is not perfect, it is definitely worth of time and buy.

A great game, but only worth about AUD$20