Tyranny (PC)

[Danimal]

I put in several hours last night with Tyranny the new CRPG from Obsidian and I’m really torn about the game. I would say if someone asked me if they should get it, I would say at this point wait for a steam sale. Having said that here are my thoughts.

I loved Pillars and the concept of playing the bad guy really sounded different. The UI in Tyranny is fantastic and an upgrade from Pillars. Also unlike Pillar’s your character is skill based and not class based. Part of Pillars steep learning curve is you were learning a new rule set. Here things are much easier, you used 1 Handed weapons your skill goes up. While you do select thing during character creation which shape what you’re good at, you're not a class per say. As you play you can do anything and improve it.

As the game starts you will be lead on a little text adventure to determine decision you made during Kyros the overlords conquest. You can quick start this and skip this step and the whole thing takes about 10 minutes. It is clear that this section is where the game replayability will come from. Once you get done with this the game starts and the little things in the UI immediately show the improvement. Key terms in conversations are colored gold. Hover over them to get info or right click on them to read them fully. Instead of having to back out to a glossary or Journal it is at your fingertips. I can’t express how much I like this system because seeing the same name and hovering over it several time made the information stick.

What you do and have done effects everything. You have favor and wrath with every faction and major character you meet. Do thing along their lines of thinking and they like you, don’t and they won’t. You’re interactions can cause them to fear you etc. You’re the fatebringer, sent to the front to get the overlords two vastly different armies in line. People will remember what you did during the conquest, these show up as green line in the conversation and you can hover over them for details.

If you don’t like conversation based rpg’s then run away from this one. You will be spending lots of time in conversation menus and only major ones are voiced so you will be reading a lot. You can see how much time went into the interactions and choices. This is one of the most involved interaction based rpg’s I’ve ever seen.

Combat to this point has been fairly easy. I had a party of 4 before I knew it. If a character goes down during combat they are revived at the end of it. So only losing all 4 of your party leads to a reload. Some systems from Pillar’s carried over like wounds but in general the rule set is easier to understand. The party AI is fairly good, they use their abilities and so forth.

My main issue with Tyranny thus far is I feel like it is a condensed rpg. Maps / Areas are very small so there isn’t a lot of exploration or walking around. I also feel that despite the depth of interaction with NPC’s that I’m being led by the nose from place to place. Of course I think I’m early on having only seen 4 areas which took a lot of time with all that reading so things could change.

Finally being evil is being evil. There are different level of evil but I found myself having people killed, it really took some thought on what to do. There is usually a kind of not full on evil option but your party will start to question you and you will lose their favor.

A few people asked me to save a stream so I may do that tonight.

[MizzouRah]

I preordered it some time ago and haven't been able to set aside a few hours to sink my teeth into it yet.

[MizzouRah]

Played through the conquest and into the game a little bit... so far, I'm engrossed into the world.

[Danimal]

This game gets a lot better after the first 2 hours or so. Talking about it pretty much spoils the story but I can't think of another RPG where I had my party kick a NPC off a tower to his screaming death.