Tyranny

Somehow March is almost upon us, and I still haven’t written about Tyranny, the other free game I got from the Epic Store oh so long ago now. It was the next in a burst of isometric CRPG games that I played around Christmas time, which started with Wasteland 2 and then Pillars of Eternity.

Tyranny is another Obsidian game from the makers of Pillars of Eternity. It’s the exact same “Infinity engine” style with real time combat that you can pause and unpause to make strategic decisions.

I found Tyranny interesting because it’s an entirely different type of setting from your standard high fantasy in these kinds of games. It’s a bit of a spin-off from an Ancient Roman setting, with magic. And you’re playing roles within the army of the Evil Overlord who recently defeated the Good Guys. I found it to be an engaging worldbuilding setting.

Typical of Obsidian, it has a very complex character creation at the beginning. It also has an additional layer of character creation called “Conquest” that builds your character’s backstory and the prologue to the events of the game in an inventive and interactive way. I found it quite fun. The first time, at least. The second time I skipped it, because it’s quite lengthy.

Also typical of Obsidian, it’s hard. I didn’t get very far. First I played a Hard Trial of Iron (permadeath) game, and died within minutes of walking down the first stairs in the game. Because I wanted my video series to be longer than two videos, I tried again with a Normal difficulty Trial of Iron game, and made it a bit longer, but still my game ended abruptly after nine videos.

I haven’t been back to play the full game yet, because I wanted to go back and finish Pillars of Eternity. Then I started Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire, and then real life got really busy. But someday I want to get back to Tyranny, because it was quite fun.