Tyranny

KeenGamerNathan Wyckoff

9/10

Obsidian's new opus TYRANNY dumps you into a high-fantasy dystopia, mixing its Lord of the Rings style with a healthy dosing of iron-age Mad Max. You'll be backstabbing your friends and allies alike in this classic isometric RPG, where you can carry out your evil overlord's whims, or temper his wrath in an effort to keep an empire together. Whatever path you choose, your decisions have real consequences, and blood will be spilled!

Worth PlayingBrian Dumlao

9/10

Tyranny is a role-playing game that introduces players to an original fantasy world where a brutal clash between good and evil has taken place – and evil emerged triumphant.

COGConnectedLydia Tang

86/100

RPGs often give you a vague player character that is destined to have a hero’s journey and meet loyal companions in their fight of good against evil to save the world. Tyranny takes all of this and turns it on its head — evil has already won, and you helped them. In the game, you play as an arbiter of justice, and you are on the front lines to deal with a largely untold story: the aftermath of the great battle. With compelling characters and robust lore, Obsidian’s latest cRPG offering explores complicity and morality in an unkind, often cruel world.

Game InformerMatt Miller

8.25/10

Obsidian’s latest role-playing epic is true to its name. Tyranny is concerned with the nature of power, and the ways in which the concentration of that power invariably leads to oppression. Obsidian pulls no punches in its depiction of a world overthrown by evil, and players shouldn’t have any illusions that the protagonist is somehow a remedy to this world’s dilemmas.  This is a bleak and hopeless story, but one told with imagination, vibrant world-building, and dramatic choices that fundamentally alter the narrative as it unfolds.

GameSpewRuaraidh Dempster

8/10

Tyranny’s length does however mean the credits will roll before the combat becomes too wearying and that the choices you have made are actually important. I never felt as if there was a choice that the game should allow me to do as is so often the case in RPGs; instead, I had genuinely affected the world. I had risen to massive power with perfect pace; I had saved villages and towns from dreadful fates while damning others and I had destroyed entire factions that I could have played through as part of. Tyranny may have its issues and it may be shorter than other RPGs but it often means that, i...

GameSpotBrett Todd

8/10

Unsettling evil.

TheSixthAxisSteve C

7/10

Tyranny is in many ways the Hamlet of videogames. By which I mean it is a fascinating exploration of the ways in which human behaviour can descend into evil, featuring a lengthy middle section defined by delay and conversation, before everything suddenly ends in a flurry of violence and a disappointing final exchange. There is much to like about Tyranny, but the game itself doesn’t live up to its narrative strengths.

DestructoidPatrick Hancock

7/10

Tyranny is most certainly a tale of two halves. The first half is immediately gripping and combat starts off a bit challenging due to the lack of abilities and options. As the game enters its second half, the plot starts to feel rushed and gameplay becomes an issue of “been there, done that.” The world and lore built here are worth exploring and I anxiously await another excuse to return to this setting, but at the same time, I really hope it comes with improvements to the AI and combat in general.

Tyranny is an excellent RPG experience that has many of the hallmarks of great classic role-playing games while still making plenty of smart choices to modernise the experience for today’s audience. Refined systems and a story where choices can often have some real consequence made my time with Tyranny rewarding, despite a disappointingly abrupt ending that left me wanting for more.

TechRaptorRobert Grosso

7/10

Evil is a tough nut to crack, but Obsidian have made a few fractures in the shell surrounding it; the next step is to break it wide open with a sequel. Otherwise, Tyranny will likely remain a cult classic RPG in the vein of Arcanum or Suikoden; great ideas that ultimately fall short of their full potential.

RPGSiteBryan Vitale

7/10

How good does it feel to be evil?

MonsterVineDiego Escala

One thing I will applaud the game for is its difficulty modifiers. There are a host of options you can turn on and off to help tailor the difficulty just the way you want it. You can change the difficulty level whenever you want and adjust options such as how much info you see and whether or not the game will auto-level your companions. There’s even an option that allows the game to auto-pause whenever a specific action has taken place. There are over a dozen actions you can activate that will trigger the auto-pause such as a character taking damage, a spell being cast, an enemy being spotted,...