nerdSlayer Reviews: Tyranny

the year is 2016 the age of virtual reality is already among us no longer do you need to go outside appear over buildings and have sensations of falling down all right well virtual reality isn't exactly where people want it to be yet but we are quickly moving into what some would call the newest age of gaming some companies however don't seem to think making these large graphical leaps and wearing goggles on your face is better than focusing on more tried-and-true methods of gaming instead they focus on highlighting stories characters in the narrative behind them this is refreshing in an age of extremely large oceans with only puddles and death obsidian was one of the companies who didn't get the memo about the next generation of gaming No tyranny is an ode to the past to what some people consider one of the greatest games of all time Planescape torment and an extension of their previously released game pillars of eternity and there's nothing wrong with that pillars of eternity which launched not long ago was another game by the obsidian franchise and was obsidians returned as the RPGs this game was met with an unbelievable good reception still a bit crazy to think about in the big scheme of things what with how the landscape looks these days although it was happy that it had success as obsidian his favorite company of mine and I definitely enjoyed how the story of the game came to life what was the successful crowdfunding and all I was simply not a fan of the game frankly I found it to be boring regardless of the gameplay or any of the common complaints of C RPGs my issues were with what I saw as a weak story perhaps it was the attempt of pillars of eternity to be a religious or theological sort of story that felt frankly dry and lifeless much like my experience listening to sermons as a child even the characters are mostly lifeless it just seemed like a random bunch of people plug together for some journey for over 400 years the armies of Kairos the Overlord have swept across the known world all who stood against them fell before their might even the archons women and men of immense power were forced to kneel chained to the overlords will now Kai Rose's final conquest has come to our corner of the world and two of the overlords armies compete for the honor of taking our lands the elite disfavored and the teeming horde of the scarlet the voices of Narada spymaster an Archon of Secrets guides the fierce and undisciplined masses of the Scarlet chorus with each battle the Scarlet chorus grows stronger as the defeated are given a simple choice serve or die gray van - Archon of war and the overlords most loyal general leads the disfavored though small and number CAI roses I include Legion has never met true defeat in open battle watching over the two generals is tuned on the adjudicator Archon of Justice eldest the Kairos is minions - nan brings Kairos is lost - newly conquered lands aided by the fake boxers judges and executions of the overlords you are among the youngest of the court of fate binders wen-chi roses armies came to our lands how could we have known that the fate of thousands would rest in your hands tyranny however alleviates most of those issues by providing a very interesting premise that catches your attention from as early as the prologue or the conquest phase of the game the conquest phase is a part of the game early on where you make decisions as a general of the overlords forces decisions that have ramifications and shape your story this happens before you even step foot into the game I'm a fan of choosier adventures coming from my childhood reading those cya books and I think this is a feature that other RPGs most certainly could take inspiration from you've seen glimpses of this sort of thing in games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age Origins in the form of backgrounds and the origins but tyranny takes it a bit further and lets you actually make active decisions to shape a more personal background experience instead of just choosing a background on having it assumed though you can still do that too however that's just an extra features of the game and not the main attraction when it comes to building your background or character as those options only really affect the dialogue part of the game I would prefer that the decisions you make in the conquest portion of the game have a little bit more apparent consequences and meanings but some would argue that they prefer to have more mystery in the story or at least more subtlety this feature is much more in-depth than the background in histories you choose at the start of character creation and far better executed the backgrounds and histories seem to noticeably have favorites if the point of the game is to allow you to customize your history or origins as a general and Kairos is army and have great choice over your decisions over the course of the game then having backgrounds or histories that specifically only cater to certain story branches doesn't really seem like the most brilliant of ideas backgrounds or histories or a choice you make and character selection this is before you reach the prologue conquest portion I mentioned above these backgrounds are before your time is fate binder and Kairos is force you have the choice between around half a dozen options ranging from adopted by beasts the story of a diplomat or that I've a war soldier my first plate there was a mage with the guild scholar background my idea being I was some prodigy mage who was hungry for more knowledge and power naturally I chose the story branch that let me take control of the spire and Bop the other two parties The Scarlet Crusade and disfavored on the head wait a minute you're letting me to find my history through options in a prologue that's great but you're telling me that background title I chose means I should have allied with the old sages in the library instead of burning them all in a minute your choice is paramount why are you forcing me to make certain choices before I even know that I need to make them while I'm sure some min matches we did their characters after learning of that not all of us have that level of patience or desire to Wellman max their characters the year is 431 and Kairos is invasion has shattered all major opposition in the tears the younger realms the bastard tear the Free Cities all who defied Kairos lay broken by battle or bowed in surrender the two armies of the overlord the disfavored and the Scarlet chorus now control our lands but our will is not yet extinguished not entirely in the valley of vendor Ian's well those of us unwilling to bow to Kairos have banded together in defiance violating an oath of surrender from two years prior we have staged a bloody uprising murdering the disfavored and Scarlet chorus Garrison in a midnight assault with their main forces spread across the tiers the disfavored and scarlet chorus redeploy to bend Rian's well to crush the resistance but months pass with no definitive battle as disagreement and discord paralyzed the archons we bide our time and wait for our message of insurrection to spread across the tiers the Overlord is not amused and Kairos has one message for the archons crush the oath breakers or die Kairos backs this threat with an edict a magical commandment that can slay all in the valley should the order be ignored the honor of proclaiming this edict fell to you make no mistake though the story and tyranny is strong it's about 30 to 40 hours of enjoyment which might seem like small for an RPG let alone see RPG but tyranny has a shorter story merely because it's more incentive to want to go back and play through the story changing your decisions I think this is a smart decision there's no point in adding pointless filler to just make the game seem more like a complete game especially when the biggest feature of the game is your ability to choose different paths of the story games that only last hours can be considered finish products they just can't get away with being sold for a $60 price tag tyranny was sold out at a forty dollar price tag which seems to be the sweet spot for obsidian after beating the game the first thing I did was had a thought of playing through the game again I wanted to try different options I wanted to see how the game differed and the options I was able to make on my second playthrough we're most definitely different than the ones I initially made this is a very strong feature of the game this goes beyond the idea of only major decisions really mattering in the big scheme of things I call this the illusion of choice and tyranny you can attempt to get information or an object of power from an NPC but if you handle it wrong you end up losing their help no matter how much you try and fix it after in games like Mass Effect you can end up forcing or charming them almost no matter what in most situations Mass Effect in the newer Dragon Age had the illusion of choice where you feel like your decisions are mattering but in reality there's only really two options and if you pick one it's rather obvious to see what the other option would be those options also lock out other options so once you choose your path you're almost stuck with it that's not how real choice works rural choice is a fluid thing tyranny has multiple arcing storylines and they are never sagging it like in the previously mentioned games you can decide to help the Scarlet Crusade most of the way through the game then decide to go tell them to eat sand or blood or whatever the scarlet crusade eats it seems more like well real choice choices when you get to be on the straight and narrow and then decide it just tell everyone to screw off and write on a unicorn this is a refreshing take on the storytelling in video games and hope one that others can take inspiration from I would even say the sheer amount of choice and tyranny is borderline overwhelming but I'm someone who enjoys the amount of control over my character you have dialog options that are not only affected by your history as I previously stated but also prologue options you chose you then have certain dialog modifiers like subterfuge athletics and lore lore would be you demonstrating awareness intelligence athletics was mostly you jumping over things and bashing people in the head with rocks and subterfuge was a lot of bluffing or calling people out on their bluffing these different features add a lot of flavor to the dialogue in the game and make it seem like your characters dialogue options and personality were shaped by actual choices you made in creating your character compared to games where you could just say certain things but they didn't really feel like they were coming from the character that you created because they were just some pre dialogue thing but more the character that someone else created this is fine if the game is a narrative driven game but when you tell someone they have the ability to make their own character and shape their own story they should actually have the ability to shape their story and that goes beyond the one or two major decisions that climax points of the game this includes this small dialogue options like ability to use your lower modifier to tell people that they're dumb or use your subject fuge to call people out of their bull or to use may be decisions from your prologue that you made in the early conquest phase of the game to tell people hey remember that time I helped you that actually feels like you're playing the game the setting of the game is very obsidian they have always been a company who likes to throw out the prim imperfect settings for more dark and bleak looking sometimes overly so like my critique on the setting in codes or two but tyranny doesn't suffer from that and tyranny of the evil forces have one or at least that's what the advertisements say it's a bit more complex than that especially when there are sex in factions within the evil forces that are particularly morally evil why maybe another is more evil by association some would be maybe a chaotic evil while others would be what's called lawfully evil which lawfully evil is sort of the idea of following rules and having order but not just like random killing and such morality is typical in obsidian games isn't some simple to understand concept no you might go into the game thinking there's no way I would support the Scarlet Crusade they seem like bad guys and then get blindsided by the sheer stupidity of the disfavored in certain scenarios and want to rethink your opinion you play as the fate binder sort of Cardinal like characters sent out by tune on the arcon of judgment aka the supreme judge to deal out Kairos the overlords justice under the guidelines of law the plot begins when you are sent out to deal with the squabbling archons which are near mythical figures who serve as leaders for their specific domain or armies you can deliver justice however you see fit especially with the help of a magical edict which is a powerful spell in the form of a scroll or text that makes the squabbling archons respect your wishes just know your actions have ramifications and real ones I'm not talking about the ones where your text pops up and says so-and-so will remember this no like you tried to screw us over Dies hyperemic vacations or they can be more subtle ones which eliminate a companion for being part of your party although the model of the game is the evil forces have won the game is not about being evil not necessarily by all means you can be the chaotic evil person who kills people on a whim but you will find that there is some story paths that allow you to help those that were crushed by KY roses forces okay you just some extent these are the rebels these groups can hate you due to your previous actions against them or you can try and convince them to be on your side which can sometimes be done through force or through charm however helping them isn't about being good necessarily you can rationalize that helping them also help you and then therefore could be done due to selfish reasons but your rationalization isn't restricted to just what they're good guys so I have to help them these rebellious characters aren't what you would call traditionally good anyway because traditionally good doesn't really exist in this game take for example one of the first groups you encounter before two non attempted to have them bend the knee they were still very much a warlike infighting amongst each other type tribe but apparently when one evil overlord decides to take control of everyone that's where they draw the line still I really enjoy that although you are helping the rebels which seems like the good option you can still rationalize it in a completely selfish and even possibly evil way the archons are major characters in the story of tyranny there are a number of them as Kairos the Overlord appoints them to reign over certain assets in particular like grave and ash the Archon of war voices of Nia the Archon of Secrets then there's the are kind of justice to nan who sends you on your journey and some lesser known archons but you can't forget the are kind of shadows who seems to be the possibly most deadly of the archons the one who also seems to be the least known unfortunately for some he's only available if you choose to neither a sister - nor the voices of naira he's the wild card in the story he really gives you that opportunity as a player to shake things up that's part of the beauty of the game though you only really know about them if you choose the correct story path and this is another reason the game has so much replay value to it because each story path is unique and brings you to new locations and introduces new characters tyranny is a sea RPG the gameplay is top-down and you can pause whenever you one pick the abilities you want your characters or your companions to use you build your characters why putting skill points into a set of skills and talent points into the talent tree you want to focus on this is all pretty commonplace however divinity original sins prove that you could take the typical boring C RPG combat making exciting by adding combo elements with characters in the environment tyranny attempted to add some combo ability but it seems very bare-bones why are the animations the same for certain combo abilities when I am a mage versus playing a warrior the context doesn't really make sense if you watch them the animations it would have a nice of tyranny added more of these gameplay aspects and flesh them out just think of the stereotype of C RPGs and how they have this boring combat I think this is a lazy stereotype for companies like obsidian to keep telling people C RPGs are old yes they've been around for two decades if you want to make a CI RPG can you at least create some unique mechanics to make it not so boring the game doesn't need to be Arkady to be fun but give it a new breath instead of the same ol same ol then again the same ol is consistent and it works so you won't run into many gameplay flaws as long as you're fine with the same pause and click combat present and most of if not all C RPGs once I was able to get the taunt abilities for bear and heal abilities for Lantry i was able to keep my companions both healed and protected quite easily miss allowed the third companion and myself to deal out damage rather safely after that point which is around the level 15 range the game was a breeze of an on hard mode the wound system seriously the system is an abomination any system that penalized is you from playing the game is a flawed system when you or your companions get to a certain low level of health you get hit with a wound at least on Hard difficulty on easier difficulties you only get them if one of your characters falls unconscious you have minor wounds and then they kind of stack and you have major wounds the more the wounds stack the more severe they get of course the major wound doesn't really allow you to get your health past a certain point unless you use your camp fire to stop the amount of times you get brought to low health are pretty common early in the game which means you constantly have to recover from being wounded by resting this means you spend more time not playing the game and allowing your wounds to dissipate this is a fantasy universe with magic in it why are we forcing pseudo real as among players tyrannies combat also suffers from its monsters being redundant and overused when you are in certain areas you were finding the same glowy wisps over and over again and it makes the already boring combat even more boring although I was playing the game on a harder difficulty headed to the point after a while I wanted to play on an easier difficulty because I thought well the story world and characters were what I was enthralled by I thought the gameplay was more fun than pillars of eternity was however I really didn't think it was anything worth writing home about as most experience I kept getting the load screen bug where the game takes 5 to 6 minutes to load a map that's smaller than a map you can near instantly load and neverwinter nights this is typical of obsidian games but hopefully something is fixed in the upcoming patches or expansions I found the companion characters to be more fun than my character was for example Abe a tide caster mage which is a school of magic that focuses on harnessing the pull of the moon and the ability to manipulate water is able to suspend herself in midair and rain death and healing down upon her enemies she can also ricochet her abilities and another skill tree and teleporter on the battlefield draining her enemy's life force or how kills in shadow can pounce on foes and wield a two-hander like a one hander Tierney does a fantastic job of giving you very useful and customizable companions like most C RPGs but in tyranny the place Isles really fit the personality of the characters which adds to the authenticity of the game not to mention the voice acting of the companion characters are surprisingly good at your service fate binder what do you need now if you insist I'm a scarlet fury that should raise some flags for you it means that I'm good at killing and more importantly that I enjoy it what until then what is it you need I'm still amazed we survived the Edict of execution the course may outnumber us and the disfavored seem to grow more aggressive every passing span but we've endured our neap days the struggle now turns in our favor at your service of course how can I help are you asking for an objective assessment or is this your way of saying you want to gossip you must have some leverage over him as I would have thought he'd lead us into a disfavored trap long ago or maybe the Legion is just that blind when they were voice-acted of course which is not all of the dialogue obviously far more than pillars of eternity did which is an upgrade I found playing a mage to be quite possibly one of the most underwhelming roles of the game the whole premise of a mage is essentially start with bare-bones spells and have to discover and learn how to craft certain spells the spell crafted mechanic is a cool one and lets you add certain effects to spells but the system much like the combat system that I mentioned previously they just don't seem completed really they are at least half fleshed out if you let me choose the type of spell an accent or pattern that it fires why can't I mix and match things if you let people mix accents or spell effects you could have more interesting experiences instead you have a fire school mixed with a line accent you shoot a fireball sure you can add a shorter cooldown or more damage but you can't really add much more to make it exciting why can't I do like a tied caller propel myself in the air and rain down fire or breathing fire out of my mouth I'm a powerful mage after all in game as a mage consisted of me just raining down AoE but I found myself microing as verse more since I found her style to be more exciting to play I even thought lantry's offensive tree was more interesting when the main mechanic would class like a mage is finding the right spells accent types to create powerful spells what you have is a mage using the same abilities over and over again until mid to end game where you can finally get the spells that you want but then you realize the spells that you thought you wanted are as boring as the previous spells they just do more damage and maybe they have more AoE effects this is a category where divinity original sin just makes other RPGs look ancient even though the game has more of a turn-based style the combat is very exciting in divinity because you can combine the elements and have incredible combo potential when you have to resort to being a damaged turret as a mage like in tyranny you're taking away the soul what makes a mage exciting a mage is exciting because you are essentially creating magic and matter out of thin air able to rain down elements or turn people into frogs it's almost an endless set of possibilities I've seen very few games get this right and Tierney flat-out just doesn't I didn't find anything particularly notable but the arts are in the game it's good enough to not take away from your immersion however if you play a male character I would advise keeping a helmet on and China to zoom in on their character models the in-game model look fine from a distance but when you look at your character on the character panel you look like some sort of Frankenstein monster with your chin being the size of a granite block female characters look much better however which is why I chose to go with one the armor styles are lacking but this is sort of expected in C RPGs I haven't really seen many C RPGs give you enough variety and coolness in the armor and looks C RPGs tend to focus more on the customization of your actual character not the things that he or she wears and fights with I found the ability to customize your characters look in the game to be just severely lacking I can live with my character creation options not being out of this world but not having a set of armor I can feel cool wearing Mike mage always seemed like he was wearing some Weasley handed down rubes damnit Weasley's while beric in the game gets to wear some nightmarish cool-looking armor set it might not be your style but at least its distinctive and it's cool to look at if you look at most obsidian games however they typically lack the ability to customize your appearance well if you don't count the mods and never much choice if you can get past the mostly forgettable combat and tyranny in the at times repetitive monsters you have incredibly well crafted game every character has their own motivations and they make sense companions are member although enough and have play cells that fit their personalities factions are at war and it's hard for you to choose sides but the best sort of choice is when you can say neither to the two main options given tyranny gives you the chance by allowing you to separate story branches than assisting either the Scarlet Crusade or the disfavored the political intrigue and tyranny is well intriguing you really have the potential to shake things up the setting makes sense it's not glitz and glamour some scenes or stories are brutal but the game gives no illusions about it being some superhero archetype of a story no tyranny is a game of deception death in depth although the ending is what some would call abrupt and certainly is set up in a way to sell an expansion or some major patch I don't think it was particularly bad it's not like we won't see more tyranny content and the game already lasted three acts at that point if they were going to end it somewhere I made sense for them to end another point that made you eager to play the game again the art style is shaky in close-ups but it looks good enough from a distance that it doesn't take away from the gameplay tyranny gives you the ability to really customize your characters backstory the way you handle both dialogue in the story as the game progresses at all points of the game you have plethora of options and decisions to make or take certainly some stories are a bit more exciting than others but the beauty of the game is that your decisions and how you want to handle things is very vast you have tons of opportunities and with a short game time thirty to forty hours you have plenty of time and opportunities to replay the game you don't have to slog through too much introduction to be able to get to the meat of the game which is conversing with characters companions and making decisions that affect you your companions and the entire story if you are playing this game expecting some revival of combat in the C RPG I would hold out for the sequel of divinity original sin but if you know obsidians titles like fallout new vegas and kotor 2 and enjoy their ability to craft well thought-out stories and characters i would most certainly buy this game as always guys thanks for watching the video if you liked it please like and subscribe comment why you did like it maybe you didn't like it if you disagree let me know in the comments below and as always nerd Slayer out

Channel: nerdSlayer Studios

Views: 59,465

Rating: 4.6420455 out of 5

Keywords: video games, video gaming, videogame, tyranny, tyranny game, tyranny the game, obsidian ent, obsidian, paradox interactive, paradox, rpg, crpg, gaming, new, hd, nerdslayer, review, story, ambience, setting, analysis, entertainment

Id: xiEkhZtPeMw

Length: 23min 23sec (1403 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 01 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Redeemed01]

pretty good!