Tyranny was fantastic, it was the first game that gave me similar vibes to Planescape: Torment, which is a masterpiece. I loved the spell system, and playing on the hardest difficulty was actually challenging, which rarely seems to happen.
It's also cheesable in Path of the Damend, but yes you need to dive a little bit into spell crafting and look a bit more into item enhancement if you want to absolutely dominate in this difficulty level.
Man, I just want to say that I'm following u from the first(or second) video on ur channel and all of them are fantastic. I never seen such deep and meticulous analysis of every game aspects with a lot of examples and comparing to other games of the genre. Its always a pleasure to watch every new video on the channel(and even recheck old ones).I hope that with a such level of attention to details you can be not only a good reviewer and game lover but also a good game designer?! Thanks again for your content.
Wow thanks man! I was needing this! But no, I am not a good game designer (actually I suck at anything that has to do even remotely with design, unfortunately). I 'm trying to learn Twine to see if I can stitch together an interactive story, but that's going to take loooong. Thanks for your comment! I hope you continue to enjoy the videos!
Thank you for the very detailed and in-depth review of my most favorite CRPG to date! I also fell in love with the story, the lore, it's not your typical Dungeons & Dragons like setting with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. and is more inspired by cultures like Persia and Greece of the Classic historical era, not medieval. The fact that 'evil' has won but isn't morally black and white, and the player's role in the game. The art style is incredible. I liked many of the main characters in the game, like Tunon and The Voices of Nerat. Kyros him-/herself is also a fascinating villain despite never making an appearance in the game. But the overlord has a constant presence, always living rent-free in everyone's heads, making them terrified of him/her and whatever the overlord may do next. The Conquest mini-game is indeed one of the best things about this game, and something that I hope other developers would take notes of and do something similar with their own games. As long as it's fitting, of course. Never shoehorn anything in just because another game had it. And I love how your choices made not only during the Conquest mode but also in the game DO matter a lot. Tyranny may be a short game compared to its peers, but it's also one of the most replayable ones. And that's what I personally prefer in (C)RPGs: replayability over game length. But, of course, even I wasn't blind to the game's flaws. Battles felt repetitive since the enemy variety is rather poor. Plus I didn't use the magic system in depth since none of my mains were magic casters, although I plan to roll a sorcerer-like character next time. I especially found The Oldwall dungeons boring due to the fact that there's nothing but wraiths in there and nothing interesting to find from what I can remember. The ending felt too abrupt and there is no sequel coming to rectify that. But the biggest flaw of Tyranny in my opinion is the expansion pack, The Bastard's Wound. Dunno if you plan to make a separate video about that but in my opinion The Bastard's Wound did the opposite of Pillars of Eternity's White March expansion: Bastard's Wound gives us pretty much the same old same old, no new companions and no new DIFFERENT region to explore like the White March did with the snowy region that felt like a breath of fresh air after the base game of Pillars. In Bastard's Wound we just keep exploring more of the Oldwalls with more wraiths that we've already seen plenty of! The only good thing that may make Bastard's Wound worth it to people are the companion quests for Verse, Barik and Lantry IF you like those characters. Tyranny's base game is incredible and memorable, unlike Pillars of Eternity. But the expansion, Bastard's Wound, adds very little and doesn't bring anything new and fresh to the table and doesn't even have an interesting story of its own. Feels like cut content that they decided to repackage as an expansion now that I think about it. Polar opposite of The White March that gave us a whole new region, new companions and a great story, that in my opinion was even better than the base game's. Kinda side-tracked there but that's how disappointing Bastard's Wound was to me considering how great Tyranny was. Looking forward to watching you ripping it a new one. >:)
Bastard's Wound was made by people who looked at Tyranny's base game and apparently thought: "You know what would make this better? Spending _even more_ time in the Oldwalls fighting Bane!" I don't think I'll ever understand those people.
Highly recommend you check out Fallout New Vegas if you don't mind clunky combat, hideous maps and crafting mechanics and dated looks. That game is the absolute king of player agency.
It is indeed under rated but also incomplete. Clearly they were hoping for a Tyranny 2 but I guess it didnt sell as well as they hoped. Too bad though. I've never finished any of the POE games yet I've seen every ending of Tyranny. It is one of the greatest RPGs out there and it deserves so much more. GLORY TO KYROS!
Been doing cRPGs since Fallout back in the late 90s. I'd seriously recommend PoE II. While I enjoy the first game, it's too wrapped up in its own lore and setting (too in love with itself, IMO). That second game, kee-rhist. Embracing the swashbuckling, vaguely-Sid-Meier's-Pirates thing was the *correct* decision. Between the factions and freedom of choice, it feels a lot (to me) like New Vegas on the High Seas.
@@simondaniel4028 It's funny you say that because when I first tried to play POE it was too opaque and inaccessible for me to get into but after playing through POE2 I revisited the first one and enjoyed it a great deal more.
On the subject of archon's behavior, its heavily implied that there personalities and behavior can be...shaped somewhat by what people believe about them because of the nature of what makes them an archon. It is part of why the two youngest archons, whom have relatively little known about them are the most flexible, while the very oldest tend to be very nearly nothing but the embodiment of ideals. It is probably why Kyros herself is so very careful about decimating solid information about himself, as the less people 'know' for sure about him the more agency she has. The reason I bring this up is that the two primary sources of belief for Gravin Ashe and the Voices of Nerat are the Disfavored and the Chorus who hate each other and hate each other's archon. There nature as archons may have in turn amplified an already existing dislike during the war into full blown hatrid, especially as part of there natures were diametrically opposed, with Ashe being an archon at least partially built around, to be blunt, racial purity and Voices be an archon literally composed of thousands of races and people.
I have a small objection with the review, the game is not medieval inspired. Both artstyle and lore resembles the pre-classical east-meditteranean world. The artsyle gives me serious vibes of archaic art such as the Minoan; smooth curves, lively colors with high contrast, and symmetrical geometric designs. Furthermore, people are transitioning from bronze tools and weapons to iron ones. The empire holds the secret of how to forge iron, giving them a large advantage against the rest of the world. This got portraited in the game by having the rebels dropping bronze weapons, while the soldiers of the empire were dropping iron weapons. Finally, the overarching plot, the invasion of the Tiers, is a straight up rip-off of the Persian invasions of ancient Greece: * Bickering city states that united only after a greater common threat emerged, * a great empire spanning most of the know world with multiple autonomous armies of different ethnicities under the loose control of provincial governors (archons - satraps), * said governors often came from the ruling class of the conquered people (like Graven Ashe), * the unbroken are heavily inspired by the Spartans, * the name of the god-emperor Kyros, is eerily similar with the name of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the first Persian empire. The ancient Greek version of his name is Κῦρος, making the similarity even more noticeable. Probably there is more which I don't remember, last time I played the game was a couple years ago. Personally, I loved this. I 'm kinda tired of DND or Tolkien derivatives and clones. A different era with a low fantasy setting (no gods or planes) felt really refreshing.
Tyranny: good story, interesting idea, great variability, good music, good dialogs, bad combat, monotonous enemies, boring bossses and dungeons. This game had huge potential...8/10.
I tend to err on the "most underrated RPG ever" side of things. I was so impressed by this game that I had to completely restructure my favorites list to accommodate it. Like you said, it stands in a short list of games where I felt like my actions had real repercussions on not just my player or companions, but on the world as a whole. I had to take a step back and really consider numerous things in this game, knowing that in order to secure an alliance or execute Kyros' will, I would ultimately crush a companion or NPC. Thinking on it, I definitely see where you are coming from on character creation and progression and in hindsight have to agree - I fell into a horrible cycle of spells, abilities and strategies that just drowned out the uniqueness of my characters skills. I was absolutely crushed to find that by the time I had played this game. it was seeing no more support from Oblivion and the community because I craved MORE from that ending. However, your critique on the Archons is interesting. I looked at their failings as the inevitable outcome of winning - when there is no more war, we must make our own. Or even more so, that during the heat of conflict it is easy to ignore a friends failings only to have them become unbearable as time goes on (a painful thing in a romantic relationship to realize). The reputation they have as god-like warlords of untold experience - pure propaganda by the "divine warlord". In my playthrough, it was more or less confirmed that the entire foundation of Kyros' power was a lie - how else to propagate your own domination than to continue and exaggerate that lie when referring to your vassals. All this seems like an extension of "An Empire is easier to conquer than it is to rule". *Shrugs* Maybe I am filling in gaps with my own head cannon.
Thanks for leaving a comment, as always. My problem with the Archons has to do with their speech and demeanor, rather than with them being incompetent. Take for example Stannis Baratheon in George Martin's Song of Fire and Ice. He is stubborn and unbending to the point that he fails to adapt to the circumstances and ends up being the instrument of his own demise. But he doesn't articulate his speech as though he were someone in his twenties in modern day real-earth. The archons in Tyranny do and I have problems with this. I expected Graven Ashe to be something like Stannis. Also, after reading the short stories included in the Overlord Edition, I have little doubt that the game does not expect us to believe the archons are immature and incompetent, it expect us to believe they are fear-inspiring, conniving and ruthless (read the archon's voice and a Trial of Iron)... and I don't think they succeeded in this. I also think this because this immature lore-breaking bickering is not limited to the archons, it also happens amongst the leaders of the tiersmen factions. One particular moment in which you have to decide between the Forge-bound and the Bronze Brotherhood after liberating the leader of the latter after a boss fight is PAINFUL to listen to.
@@YeOldEntertainment See, I did not read any of the short stories, I will check them out. Seems like I may have been looking at this through a pinhole but that raises the question of why things either make sense or don't based on info not even located in the game. Not stepping in that one until I give them a read over. Might be interesting to read them all and then do another playthrough and see if I can pick up on this a bit more. I tend to hyper focus on certain aspects and its entirely possible that I was so spellbound by other aspects that it just didn't click with me. A second play through might make that a little more obvious. Thanks again man, another fantastic video.
-I'm not sure I understand the whole "I can't make a tank so it's bad". Not liking the choices on levelup is A-ok (I don't remember them as terrible nor as interesting), but DOS2 doesn't have tanks at all and you said you loved the combat...? -IMO the main problem of the combat is not that chokepoint and aggroing only one enemy at the time works, since it's the case in probably all RPG of this type (isometric perspective + real time with pause) but that there are only 3 types of enemies : humans, beastmen (and very few of these) and ethereal elementals (pretty boring) + the difficulty plumets fast once you can make fun combos of magic + all the abilities you get outside of levelup (items + companions + factions + I forget some maybe) -I think the archons and their underlings that are in a position of power behaving like spoiled brats is the POINT of the narrative. In a tyranny like this, the competent people are purged before they can become a threat to the overlord (think Stalin's purges or the terrible tactical decisions of Hitler towards the end of WW2 because every competent person was dead or too afraid to talk). The plan at the start was probably to kill the 2 factions and the rebels in one fell swoop with the edict before the PC manage to win. And the Tiers factions leaders are also terrible, as you learn through the game quests and talking to Ebb. Because it takes place in a worse version of antiquity. I usually don't like grimdark but the world of Tyranny makes perfect sense to me. Even the companions are mostly bad people, but you get that they're mostly the product of their terrible environment. Barrick is a perfect example if you manage to break his mental armor/prison a bit, you get a sense that he could be a hero in another setting instead of a bigotted brute because of his worship of his archon and faction. And even the psychopath Verse doesn't seem very happy despite her protests that she is oh so free... Sorry for the wall of text but I think this is why this game setting is so great, showing how the system breaks everyone or turns them into monsters or apathetic... but it's also why the game probably couldn't have sold well even if the combat and other aspects (more importantly the marketing) were much better . This game is the only RPG I've immediately played a second playthrough of after the first, but then again it's pretty short for the genre and combat is less and less important with each passing year for me ^^ It's also the only game I've played where the art style in the loading screens is SO much better than the in-game visuals. -what is the notable exception that has better choices & consequences ? New Vegas ? Witcher 2 has at least 1/3 of the game playing completely differently (and a huge spoiler at the end that you can miss) depending on 1 choice alone so it's both better or worse depending on how you look at it. ^^
Excellent as usual. I really want Obsidian to stay in this market and to succeed. One can only hope that someone on their staff is aware of your superb analysis. I say this with Avowed in mind. Much appreciated.
I always took the reality of the archons vs. their reputation as a commentary on how perception and reality rarely align, and in that sense didn’t have a problem with it. Which fits with the entire narrative: some serve Kyros, most serve their archon, their battle mates, themselves, etc.
But when you read the short stories that ship with the Overload Edition, which are all told from an omniscient perspective (that is, a narrator who is not part of the story) you can tell that the writers wanted the Archons to come off as larger than life. I just think they didn't pull it off. You could've written Graven Ashe for example like a Tyranny version of Stannis Baratheon... he still would've been lore-consistent and epic in his own way, but flawed and ultimately an instrument of his own demise. As it is... Graven Ashe (and The Voices of Nerat) feel a little too much like they were written by 20 year-old-ish writers who couldn't quite conceive characters outside the spectrum of personalities and archetypes that they are familiar with in real live.
The music in this game is so good! Probably my favorite game music of the past five years, except for maybe 40k: Mechanicus. I actually used the main menu theme as the music for my individual posing routine for a bodybuilding competition recently.
Hehehe. I'm proud to have you as a subscriber, friend. You absolutely nailed it. If I could afford to offer you a position here at YOE, I would. And it did give me an idea for a video.
I played it and i laughed so hard at the decision to throw someone of a tower. I did not thought that the game actually made it happen, and it got me there. For the Review i can agree. The Spells are quite powerful to the point that they kinda oneshot or can heal so much that your kind of invincible. But i still like it and it is not a bad game after all. Good Review and wish you a great time, life and overall experience.
Personally I really liked verse, because I didn't take her as that archetype at all. I saw her as someone who embraced the chorus as her family. In her story she talks about the family that raised her and how they treated her, and when she had to join the chorus they had her kill them and she felt good about it. To later learn barik was her relative and to be further shunned by him because she was a bustard child. So being rejected by her family twice, the chorus was there as her real family. As even the voices of Nerat says she Is everything the chorus embodies.
I just started Tyranny (thanks to you) and I'm about 5-6 hours into it. I'm loving just about everything about it. The art style, music, combat, inventory management, etc. The beginning part where you establish your character's feats was amazing as well. My initial feeling is that I'm enjoying Tyranny better than both Pillars I & II, but I'm sure it's because I'm in the honeymoon phase. I'm sure I'll have a more accurate outlook once I hit the 100+ hour mark like I have with the Pillars games. Regardless, I'm looking forward to experiencing my first playthrough.
Well this is a fantastic game. There is a good chance you might be singing a slightly different tune by the end of the game but this is still an RPG that you HAVE to play.
Finally! Been waiting for this one quite some time now, especially as I currently can‘t get back into the game, so it‘s nice to have one of your chef‘s kiss videos as a fix!
Why can't you get back to into the game? Your computer acted up or something? Chef's kiss! haha thank ypu for saying that. Chef is the last thing I'd call myself. Like I said at the beginning of the video, you'd be better off with a combo from Taco Bell than anything I cook.
@@YeOldEntertainment Haha probably true, if I recall correctly you referred more than once to your abysmal cooking skills. 😂 I couldn’t get back into it last time I checked because I‘m on a Macbook, and they didn’t update the game to run on newer versions of the OS. I‘m normally a filthy console gamer, Tyranny is actually one of just a handful of games I got on my macbook. There probably are some hoops I could go through to make it run, but that‘s currently not that high on my list, so nothing really dramatic. But thanks for asking!
Okay, got to watch this review today and I gotta say: Tyranny truly puts you in the driver's seat like no other RPG out there (I've played many of them). I usually tend to roleplay the diplomatic/cunning type of character and Tyranny provided me with so many options for intrigue and diplomacy that I was happy as a child when I was able to ally myself with the Disfavored at first, earn their trust by doing mission for them, get them to help me suppress the rebellion and kill Voices of Nerat, only to then turn on them, kill Graven Ashe, disband the Disfavored along with the Scarlet Chorus, to then come to Tunon and talk him into surrendering the province into my absolute control so I could try and stand against Kyros herself. Well, Tunon told me Kyros was a she, but nobody knows for sure... (God, I love this game's lore so much!) And that's exactly where the biggest disappointment with this game lies for me. When I was reading that endscreen, I was expecting it to be the turning point in the game, where everything comes together and we go toward the climax with an epic conclusion, but instead... I saw the credits roll. The first time I finished the game I just stared at them in disbelief. "Come on, the game can't just end like that, it was starting to get so good!" Alas, it was always like that with the best ideas Obsidian came up with (NWN2, KOTOR 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Tyranny). Their publishers never had faith in them and always rushed them to release half-baked games. But yeah, your channel has become my favorite source of RPG reviews. Watching your Expeditions: Rome review tomorrow for sure! Keep up the good work!
I don't think New Vegas was half-cooked! Not in it's narrative design at least. It had half-a$$ed combat and it was buggy, for sure, but it's the pinnacle of choice and consequence story-wise in my opinion. Thanks my man, I hope you enjoy the review on Expeditions Rome. That game surpassed my every expectation on the story end of things. And thank you for watching! Welcome aboard!
I have many, many (many) thoughts about this game. I'm not quite sure how to structure them, so I'll just follow your format. (Warning: very long comment ahead, broken into pieces because it seems like it’s too big to fit into a single comment.) Character Creation & Progression: I'm not quite sure what it is about this game, but it got me 'in-character' more so that any other RPG I've played. Most of the time when I'm playing video game RPGs, I either try to re-create one of my D&D characters (and usually don't have enough freedom to truly roleplay as them), or I just end up roleplaying myself, or I just make things up as I go along. For Tyranny, I did something else, something I almost always do for my D&D characters, but so far haven’t done for any video game other than Tyranny: I typed up a backstory for my character which informed his outlook and philosophy (he was "merciful"; he aimed to break the rebels' spirit of resistance, while killing as few as possible). And, to my surprise, the game actually provided a decent amount of freedom to play the kind of character I’d created; I was frequently able to make the kind of "merciful" choices my character would. And it worked. I was able to get in-character to the point where I was reacting emotionally to events the way my character would (i.e. the event that marks the shift from Act 2 to Act 3 wasn’t an awesome moment of empowerment for me; it was an "oh shit, I just made myself a huge target" moment). How did the game manage to get me "in-character", when so many other games have failed? Definitely a part of it is the fact that you're playing as someone with a pre-existing history and position in this world; it's kind of hard to get that invested in a blank slate. The excellent conquest minigame is definitely also a part of it. I think another part is the fact that the game treats "evil" choices as the default, in contrast to most RPGs. This helps create more distance between the player and character, and thus more freedom to roleplay. Still, I’m not sure if this fully explains it, and it may simply be the case that Tyranny’s world was so compelling that I wanted to roleplay a character in it. As for the mechanical aspects of character progression, I mostly agree with you; most of the talents weren't super interesting, and most of the good stuff was pretty deep into the trees. Still, if you do specialize, you can make a fairly unique-feeling character: I got a talent that makes your ranged attacks from stealth cause fear which, when combined with a large AoE ability, allowed me to incapacitate large groups of enemies before the fight even started. I've only played it once, though, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to make a unique-feeling character on my 2nd playthrough. The spell-creation system was both the best and worst part of character progression. On the one hand, the accents provide a huge amount of customization potential. However, there was a major problem that resulted from the fact that many of the available accents were just upgraded versions of other accents, with higher lore costs. This meant that I had to go through my spells every few levels to check if my lore had gotten high enough to swap out any accents for better versions. When you have multiple magic-using party members with several spells each, this process can get very tedious (and I will say that have a much higher than average tolerance for tedium in RPGs - I actually _like_ the kingdom management in Pathfinder Kingmaker - so if I think something's tedious, something has gone very wrong). As for the dialogue/exploration skill checks, they didn't really do much for me, because the game lets you use whichever party member has the highest score in that skill. As a result, I think there was only a single skill check in the entire game that I wasn't able to make. Combined with the fact that the dialogue options with checks are just flat out better than non-check options about 95% of the time, this meant that I was pretty much always picking the options with checks, which wasn't terribly interesting.
Gameplay: I found the combat fun and engaging…for the first few hours. However, after a while, it starts to drag. The lack of enemy variety means that, if a tactic works in one situation, it'll work in pretty much every situation (the first time I used my AoE attack from stealth to cause fear to a large number of enemies, it felt awesome; by the 20th time, it had lost its charm). Also, since there are very few abilities that have limited uses per rest, there's little reason not to use your strongest abilities every combat. This is a shame, because this game actually has one of the better systems to discourage over-resting. Sometimes when exploring, you'll get random events that give you a bonus until your next rest. This, combined with limited camping supplies, meant that I pretty much never rested in a way that strained suspension of disbelief. This game also has a pretty severe case of inverse difficulty curve. Playing on hard, I thought that Act 1 was well-balanced, but midway through Act 2, the difficulty fell off a cliff, and never really went back up (I even stopped spending the points you get on level-up at one point as a way to artificially increase difficulty; the game was still really easy). I find it funny that you talk about how easy it is to cheese the enemy AI, because the game got so easy that I never even felt the need to resort to cheese tactics. I also found that the lack of friendly-fire on abilities to contribute to the shallow feeling of combat. I found it really fun in Dragon Age Origins to try to place a fireball to hit the maximum number of enemies without hitting any allies, when both enemies and allies are moving. The lack of friendly-fire in Tyranny means you don't have to worry too much about positioning, and also that the accents that increase AoE on spells are almost always the best choices. Also, I found the companion AI to be infuriatingly stupid. If I wasn't micromanaging them every second, they'd do things like use fire spells on enemies that were immune to fire. As for exploration, I found the Oldwalls and its various puzzles to be interesting for a while, but after a while, I just wanted it to end, and I dreaded the thought of fighting more Bane. I can't believe that the Obsidian apparently thought that the one thing this game needed for DLC was _even more_ time spent in the Oldwalls fighting Bane.
Story and Lore: I agree that the lore is in general excellent (which just makes me sad that we'll probably never see any other stories set in this world). However, I don't really think that the way it was delivered was the best. I remember one time when I came to a new town and could ask three or four NPCs about the town…and they all gave basically the same answers. IMO, if NPCs aren't going to give different perspectives on somethings, then they should've made it so you could only interact with one of them, and don't waste time with the others. I also don’t fully agree that this game “puts you in the driver’s seat”. In particular, after you’ve picked which faction you’re supporting, the game seems to assume that you’ll side with them in most situations. There are a few instances where you can betray your faction and switch to the independent path, but not in any of the situations where I actually would’ve wanted to betray my faction (i.e. at the end of the Stalwart questline, I wasn’t even given the option to lift the Edict because I’d sided with the Scarlet Chorus). Also, I’ll just say that I find leaders in authoritarian regimes acting like petty teenagers to be actually pretty believable. Companions Lorewise: IMO: Lantry > Sirin >> Eb > Kills-in-Shadow >> Verse >>> Barik Personally, I did find Verse a bit annoying, but she wasn’t nearly as bad as Barik, who somehow managed to be both annoying and boring. Unfortunately, since he’s the best tank of your companions, I never really managed to make a workable party without him (if I play this game again, I’d probably make a tank just so I can afford to ditch Barik). I also think that the companions were limited by the fact that they could never turn against you. I know why Obsidian did that; since there aren’t that many companions, and since each fills a specific niche, potentially losing one could be pretty painful. Still, it does make their characters less believable (I’m always going to have a hard time believing that Barik would still follow you if you kill Graven Ashe, no matter how high his loyalty to you is). This is hardly an issue specific to Tyranny, though; in most RPGs, your companions are way more loyal to your character than they probably should be (Thronebreaker being an amazing exception, which consequently has some of the most memorable companions for me). The idea to have separate loyalty and fear meters for each companion was a potentially interesting one, although in practice, I found the logic behind which decisions would raise fear vs lower loyalty to be kind of unclear. Companions Gameplaywise: Yeah, I pretty much agree. Nothing to add here.
Secondary Mechanics & UX: The itemization in this game was kind of the worst of both worlds for me, where it was complicated enough to induce analysis paralysis when deciding on the equipment for each companion, but also not interesting enough to get much gear that felt truly unique. Also, 44:52. This. So much this. This will never cease to drive me insane in RPGs. Don’t take control away from me and make my character act like an idiot! I kept my ranged character back and in stealth for a reason! This also annoyed me to no end in Dragon Age Origins. Sound Effects & Mix / Music / Voice Acting: Nothing really to add. Graphics: There’s really only one element of the graphics that I don’t like, which is the character models they use as portraits in conversations. The models aren’t detailed enough to be looked at close up like that, and never seem to convey quite the right emotion. They seemed to me to always be slightly cartoonish, which robbed certain scenes of a bit of their seriousness. I kind of wish they’d instead had portraits for each character based on the hand-drawn style of the opening and ending slides. Conclusion: Well, this is definitely the longest UA-cam comment I’ve ever made, and possibly the longest individual comment I’ve made anywhere on the internet. I have some of the most complicated feelings towards this game of any that I’ve played. I really want to play it a 2nd, and maybe even a 3rd time to see what will change, but I kind of also dread having to play through the whole thing again. This is probably the most conflicted 7/10 game I’ve ever played.
And this made me beyond happy (that you took the time to put together these ideas in the comment section). I only have one question. Did you read theshort story collection? I suspect this --> "Lantry > Sirin" could change if you do.
@@YeOldEntertainment Yeah, I've read them. Sirin's story was good, but it didn't really change my opinion of her (I'm not entirely sure, but I think she'd already described that incident in game). Also, my ranking of Lantry > Sirin was primarily due to Lantry's companion quest (which was by far the best of the 3 companion quests). If Sirin had had her own companion quest (which she definitely should've; I would gladly give up Barik and Verse's quests if we could get a Sirin quest), that ranking easily could've been reversed.
It's great that you say it puts you in the seat like no other game does aside from Fallout NV. Obsidian make amazing games. KOTOR II was another gem of theirs for its story!
@@YeOldEntertainment Agreed, though to still put out that calibre of game when LucasArts give you a little over a year to produce is itself pretty astonishing.
I want to say it would probably be in one of my top favorite rpg games ever, if the ending wasn't so abrupt. Or if they ever made a sequel, which isn't any where in sight currently. It is a game that really needed a sequel and without it, I have to say the game suffers knowing you will never find out what happens after. If it wasn't for that though, it was an amazing game and the journey is great.
Having played a lot of this game, and having a surprising love of it despite many of the flaws, I'd personally pick on the Old Walls the most. In fact, I agree, it's the poor person's Od Nua dungeon experience. The walls clearly hinted at having a purpose but at the same time didn't really define what that was, how people made use of that space, or even answer why people drew magic sigils on walls and how those sigils got into the hands of people outside of them so that magic would be at least wide spread enough to be known about. Sufficed to say, they require more fleshing out than they received.
I still think that Tyranny is underrated. None of the more popular latest CRPGs (Pillars 1 and 2, Divinity OS 1 and 2, Tides of Numenera, Kingmaker) is flawless. Neither is Tyranny. However, all of these games have positives that outweigh the flaws. Including Tyranny. If I'm not mistaken, it was confirmed that Tyranny 2 is not in the works and won't be, in the foreseeable future. And that's a tragedy, I believe.
I really liked this game but yeah it's a bit rough around the edges. Still, the concept is fantastic, i hope in a second chapter, it's got potential! And for once choosing between being an evil bastard and an absolute sadistic psycho, is a breath of fresh air!
For a game that's unfinished, it has a lot more replay value compared to many other crpgs I've played. The amount of choices and consequences is staggering. And while some of the dialogue definitely felt a bit "millennial-esque", I don't think that it was that bad, at least for the most part. Very few characters ever felt annoying or poorly written to me. Even the Archons, as much as they might squabble have their reasons for it. As far as the combat goes, I found it decent, but nothing really mind-blowing. One problem I had is that fights at times felt like they were taking too long, and at there were some bizarre difficultly spikes here and there. I do have to give a special mention to the spell crafting system though. It's great and more devs need to add it to their games. A shame we'll never get a sequel, since Obsidian no longer owns the IP.
It's been on my radar but I never gave it a serious try. Gonna follow your recommendation, read a couple of those short stories and give this one a proper go.
My single favorite single-player RPG ever. And not just because, near the beginning, it has an elaborate reference to a notorious game (Corruption of Champions)
If any game ever deserved a sequel, it's Tyranny. First, because the story is not complete. Second, because, if its flaws were rectified, it would be a masterpiece worthy of the name.
@@spellandshield yeah, I am aware of that. Still, a man can dream. I've lived long enough to see some obscure and/or forgotten franchises get resurrected, so I'm patient in this regard. If it never comes, ah well, there's a ton of other good games out there.
@@spellandshield don't like Early Access, so I haven't played BG3, yet. Watched a friend play it for a bit, though. Saw some gameplay online, also. All in all, it looks decent, at worse. It has potential to be great. But I'm not familiar with the current state of the game to be sure.
Very good review, I mostly agree, though I think, some of the complaints are complaints on high niveau. One, ok, I admit, rather personal disagreement, is with Kills-in-Shadow - my favourite . I found her voice acting fantastic, especially, if you have the first conversation with her on top of a tower with everybody around - hilarious. This game is truly unique and outstanding in many ways, the graphics are great, yes, also timeless I´d say and I wished, those developers would get together and create another masterpiece like this one or Pillars of Eternity.
Just 6000 views, not only your retrospect/review but game deserves much, MUCH more and NOW I'm gonna make my personal quest to make some buzz so Obsidian, M$ or Steam(or whoever see's spike in sales so that they finally know what a lot of folks want, they just don't know it 🙃). I still think that isometric RTwP CRPGs is genre that could give a LOT to gaming landscape and did not showed it's full potential, it had a tuff luck being somewhat relevant precisely when consoles, mediocracy, shovel-ware, all AAA devs were forced to use gamepads while designing games(real fact, check it out...) and 3D graphics were bruteforced on whole generations of gamers. When you play Arcanum, Fallout1&2 or PS:T, you kinda get your expectations raised but then you get a decade of MP FPSes/MMOs/microtransactions or something utterly lowest tier denominator, it's hard to stay in this hobby, 2-3 good games per decade is just not enough. PS. Considering POE1 & Tyranny graphics were made with Unity back when Unity was really...well..shi**y engine, they did a lot with what they had.
Desperados III and Disco Elysium were also made with the unity engine and they look awesome. I think it's all about the art design and art consistenty. The Unity Engine is still the right engine for these isometric games (be them RTWP, Turn based or tactical) in my estimation, but I agree that we get very few isometric RPGS per decade and thar many of the ones that we do get could've been better. Unfortunately that's because it's not the juiciest market niche. I wish it weren't so... but that's life when your expections were set back in the day with games like Arcanum, Fallout and Baldur's Gate 2.
I SO loved this game! Finally a game where I can be evil and not be punished quite harshly. It was quite the contrary - I was rewarded! It was absolutely refreshing. I sided with the Disfavored and played something akin to an SS-Captain in the Third Reich or WWII. Uncompromising. Cold hearted. Efficient. It was truly a ROLEplaying game. In real life I'm quite the opposite - but I truly enjoyed to PLAY this ROLE. Not to think, what *I* would do but rather what would THIS CHARACTER would do. I, for example, would have spared rebels or even sided with them - my character wiped them out without even batting an eye. The only downside was the short playtime. During the final hour I felt like "That was a great Act I!" - but then it ended... But maybe it's better this way. It never overstayed it's welcome and I've had a great time and will definitely play it again with completely different characters!
The thing is that, since you are SO MUCH in the driver's seat... that final stretch is not as scripted as it is in other games so it lacks the crescendo that some other games do. Is it shorter in duration, for sure (although, if you throw in the plot-lines, locations, characters, etc that you did not see/meet because of your choices, the game has a lot more content that it seems) but it also lacks the narrative feeling of gravitas, though you ARE technically on fairly lenghty check-mating spree against everyone who opposes you.
@@YeOldEntertainment I totally agree! I didn't realize, that the game has put me so much into the driver's seat until you mentioned it in your video. I've always wondered what exactly made this game THIS different - THIS is it! Considering the tremendous amount of posibilities that exist, the amount of scripting you can do (without making it *feel* scripted) is quite limited (at least considering the limited amount of time and money). And yeah - I suppose the PERCEIVED lack of impact is what made it feel ... unspectacular the most. I tend to agree with many critics, who wished for a second part. The game ends with the lengthy check-mating spree who opposes you - and (if they had the money and the time) they could have made a great more open ended game, where YOU have the power and control. Maybe some base-building? Maybe some army recruiting? I don't know - but you know what I mean. Yeah, they could have made a second game, that picks the story up where the first game ended, but as a whole new game...? - I don't know... THAT could become either boring or - again - too short. I absolutely agree, that, even though the length of a single playthrough is not *that* long (considering BG 1 &2, Planescape Torment, Pillars of Eternity) but as you mentioned in your video, your playthroughs can vary EXTREMELY. Next time I'll play as a completely and utterly batshit-insane member of the scarlet-chorus. Or maybe trying to help the rebels as much as humanly possible. Or maybe...
I could not get into this one, luckily I got it in a deep sale a few months ago. It's the story that I can't get into. You have 2 factions one is lawful evil and one is chaotic evil, and you are a leader of the evil system and almost everyone you meet belongs to one of the 2 factions, so you have to choose to play Lawful evil, chaotic evil, or I guess you can try to balance it and play neutral evil. I don't mind an evil option but I felt shoe horned in, when all I wanted to do was avoid them all. It did have some unique story elements and lore but just not enough options for me to fight it...at least none that I got to in my play through attempts. The lack of an intriguing story really hurts my love for modern day RPGs Skyrim had a bit of one, with some lore, but you still need to go back to Morrowind or Daggerfall to for the best story or lore respectively. BG2 was kind of nice story wise, but a bit cliche that you are the child of a god. Troika and fallout 1 or 2 kind of ruined me on what to expect from story or lore. I tend to favor games with little story that leave me with room to make my own story...not quite an RPG, as it is a hybrid, but the game Kenshi is like that... a lot of lore and a good world, but you have no story other than the one you make for yourself. They are a bit basic game play wise but Avernum and Geneforge from Spiderweb software also offered interesting stories. With Pillars, Tyranny, Divinity Original Sin, Pathfinder Kingmaker. I tend to lose interest in the story, and either give up, the when the combat gets stale, or I grind through, not really caring about the story, just getting to the finish, which is not really as fun as the games that keep you invested in a story. I think that is a lot of why I am here to your channel I can relive the good games, find some love in games I played and did not get as into, and also maybe one day I could find something new that will have that gripping story, with great visuals and good combat and game mechanics. I often watch these videos of the new games and think wow what am I missing here, because you agree with the older games being great, but the newer ones I am just not as able to get into, no matter how hard a try. It could be too, that combat, and challenge are not really my focus. Combat is used to further a story, and can raise the stakes for me. And I think Tyranny is trying, but the writing is a little bland, and too on point a lot, as you pointed out...and it's just not the story I want to play that I am tying to take over the rest of a continent...I'd rather play the same game but I am a member of that last free area, and my goal is to fight them back. Maybe it is something that I'll revisit when I feel like a dark story, and not so much a good hero.
Well in Tyranny you can ditch both armies, join the Tiersmen and work against Kyros. But this option can be easy to miss because it is triggered in a very specific conversation. I actually missed it the first two times I played the game because both times I was trying hard to avoid gaining fear and losing loyalty with Barik and Verse. But in the conversation that is shown in 36:38 you can let these people escape and if you do. You are later contacted for a meeting (26:11 in the video) and from then on out, you start working against Kyros. And I think this is the most satisfying plot line.
@@YeOldEntertainment That was one of my things too I kept trying to please the companions...maybe I need to let them go and find others that fit better? I think that is one thing I dislike with premade companions, as you have to balance their personality with your needs. Like in Pillars Aloth is interesting to have around, but I often like to play a Wizard myself, Durance is grumpy and annoying but you almost need a priest.
@@colmortimer1066 Unfortunately Tyranny is a bit short on companions. But even making them fear you/dislike you can unlock interesting things gameplay and story-wise. And if you do not like walking about with people who dislike you (understandable) you can always leave them at the spire and bring Lantry, Eb or Sirin along instead of Verse and Barik. As for Pillars... You can ditch Aloth and Durance (but I love both of them!! So I'd never do that!) or simply never take them with you and create your own adventurers at the tavern. Actually that is a thing I would strongly recommend doing regardless of whether or not you decide to keep your scripted companions: create at least one adventurer at the tavern. If I play a pala for example, I like to create a rogue character, because there aren't any in the game until much much later (and even that one is an expansion character that is a very weird type of rogue). These new games have their own little thingies going on for themselves that make them enjoyable, I just think they came a little too late to the party bringing a bag of goodies that we had already seen a long a time ago.
with upcoming BG3 I am trying to ease the wait and catch up with RPG games that I missed and your channel is my new main source point...... I must confes tho, I really like the edgy types of women characters in games :D
This game is kind of okay prologue for the game we never see, So no, Not most underrated RPG ever. Actual story dont even start till the last bloody minute and when its over
I know I am in a minority here, but I felt the game was dated, the writing of dialogues often times poorly executed and I just could not get warm with the title. For a title that should either let me enjoy being an evil badass or juggle with moral dilemmas it just left me indifferent and bored by its combat and repetiveness. It was not bad, but besides it "you are the bad guy" twist, completely mediocre and forgetable. This is my subjective impression, I am happy that others got more joy out of it.
There is something I love about this comment. It's basically 100% in line with what was said in the video and yet, the conclusion/recommendation is completely different. It reminds me of ACG's review on "Bards Tale IV". I bought the game because of that review and after I finished it... I thought "Man how can I agree 100% with everything he said and yet feel so very differently about this game". I find this endlessly fascinating and that's the main reason why I started the channel.
@@YeOldEntertainment I believe it has to do with preferences and expectations. Maybe the game would have affected me differently at a different point of my life, who knows?! That's what I also find fascinating. 1+1 does not always equal 2 when it comes to subjective preferences. The content of the video was interesting. I think with games, even a slight shift in perspective can shift a lot in personal outcome, if that makes any sense. Keep on producing on that high quality, your thoughts are a fine addition to other gaming channels.
I love this game, but it actively feels incomplete. There's A LOT of the game that feels like they forgot to add it or were gonna make a sequel and never could.
I think that it is not medieval fantasy but bronce age fantasy. Remember that forging iron and steel in this game is considered almost like a magic art.
Yes, this is true. The world in tyranny is transitioning into the iron age. I just kinda lazily lumped together with other games in the genre. But yes, it's not medieval.
I normally like playing evil badd asses in games and going into this game I was excited to play a bad guy, however after a while I found myself questioning my past choices and ended up a good guy and taking every thing for myself and smiting any and all who stood in my way except the rebels of course.
Haven't watched the whole video yet, but I'd like post a comment anyway. Tyranny was, almost objectively, a very good rpg. It had everything that defines a good rpg and personally I enjoyed it a lot. However, it also showed me why an rpg can't be "sshort". I felt that a lot of things were missing, like the city the overlord is, that you visit only their palace and the towers you build that you don't have enough time to develop and feel the growth and all. I felt I didn't have anough time to feel the story and world development although it was talked by almost every npc and sometimes I felt I was rushing through it. RPGs, for me, need to be long games, for better or worse.
@@YeOldEntertainment pretty sure they advertised the game as a short rpg and being a plus because of that. I remember them highlight this in interviews. Don't know if that was the reason it didn't end up being a success, but for me personally it was, in the end, a big minus. I still enjoyed it and would buy a sequel if there ever was one.
I like this game a little better than both Pillars games. It's not a bad game, but could have used a little more development time and love. A game I feel like could have had an even better sequel which sadly we'll never get.
I'm not too sure about this one. I love strategy rpgs. I have been getting stuck into Diciples Liberation which is really good. This game doesn't seem to be as polished as Diciples which is a very deep strategy rpg. I wonder how deep this is and how consistent the graphics are throughout. From what I am seeing, it doesn't look promising.
Thanks for leaving a comment. This is not a strategy RPG, you should be aware of this. Its combat is the weakest aspect of the game. What you pay the price of the admission for in Tyranny is its lore and and story. And the unique thing about it is how much the game takes into account your story-based decisions to provide different situations, locations and people to meet. The graphics are excellent from the perspective of artistic consistency and originality, but technically, the aren't a triple A deal. If technically impressive graphics (dynamic shadows, polished use of particles, rich cinematics, etc.) and strategic depth are important categories in your criteria to choose a game, then Tyranny is probably not for you.
@@YeOldEntertainment Yeh, I looked a bit more into it. Its more like pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin. Yeh, I like those games. Now I understand the graphics and how it will play. I will look into getting it.
im here trying to decide which crpg to play next - Tyranny set such a high bar. I want a story and companions as good as tyrannys - but everything else seems unintresting to me. even PoE 1 & 2 don't intrest me. the world of tyranny so so good. I cannot decide on another Crpg. Everything else looks lackluster in comparison story-wise. Disco and Tyranny have just set the bar so high I can't decide on any other Crpgs to play - and im dying to play one that comes close to those games.
I admit the lore/story was cohesive and consistent....I just didn't like it. Oh your family was slaughtered? Oh you're stuck in armor that reeks of piss and shit? Of course, cause this place sucks. Edgelord Kyros has made sure of that. Pillars flirted with that kind of thing but has variety (Mins-I mean Eder likes animals). I like playing the paragon too much for a game like Tyrrany. Wouldn't you rather be Marcus Aurelius than Nero? Admittedly I didn't even like the inclusion of Neb the child killer in Baldurs Gate. Never seemed to belong with the rest of the story to me.
Well you can join the Tiersmen and ditch Kyros, Ashe and Nerat. But there is one very specific dialogue choice in one very specific conversation that opens up this path and it's easy to miss. (I missed it the first two times I played it)
@@YeOldEntertainment I actually did that. But the world is still a hideous place. Worse than the nuclear wasteland in Fallout. It's also filled with hideous Characters. Admittedly just not my cup of tea. But seriously though. Who wrote Neb into Baldurs Gate? Why would Minsc, or Ajantis not cut his head off immediately when he admits to killing children and even makes a riddle out of it?
@@patrickclark9430 Yes the world here is loads worse than Fallout's. In Fallout there is some cheerfulness, joy and good people amidst the grim circumstances. And I get what you mean and that made it hard for the game for me to connect to, but I eventually managed. Baldur's Gate has ALL types of character but yes... I suppose people like Xzar and Montarom or Edwin are the "brand of evil" that we can expect in a game like Baldur's Gate, because it is a world that doesn't try to be crude in its realism. It doesn't take itself awfully seriously and Neb... well... seems disruptive of this. (And paints gnomes in a poor light hehehe).
@@YeOldEntertainment Maybe I just gave up on it too early (one playthrough). Reminds me of the SNL skit with the Rock when he out-evils everyone at the evil convention lol. Here's a link if you haven't seen it. I'm sure you could work it into a review with misplaced characters/concepts. ua-cam.com/video/z0NgUhEs1R4/v-deo.html
Broccoli just needs to be seasoned correctly. It takes 5 minutes to make broccoli that tastes and feels amazing to eat and goes perfectly with any kind of meat you could pair with it. People just assume you have to eat bland raw or steamed nonsense and it's sad haha.
heya there, new to your content, quality content i must say, what do you mean on the 2016 "disease"? leftys pro woke content? my brain tends to eliminate that kind of things so i cant remember much of kingmaker on that, but it killed he man for me lol. thanks for the recommends on greedfall and tainted chalice, age of decandence and dungeon rats may not look charming but i love games with heavy story,
Thanks and welcome aboard! Tainted Grail, friend. That's the one I recommend. Production values in games such as Age of Decadence or Dungeon Rats aren't great but they take their tone and immersion seriously (and do a competent job with it) Also check out on Colony Ship. I played the early access and so far they are nailing it.
First of all I loved playing this game. BUT with more budget (which it had deserved) that game could have been a huge top tier RPG game in all aspects which it unfortunately isn´t.
This game came out in the year 2016. The worst this game has to offer is combat and in that respect, it is not good even when compared to the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale series (which came out around the early 2000s). Sound design is the only department in which I compared this game to its modern day peers, but that is one of the least weighty categories in the review system (you can check out the video in which the category system is explained).
Your critique sounds so negative, yet your rating is mostly quite good. I still need to play Tyranny, though. Then I can completely disagree with all you said about the game.
Why? I think I spoke pretty highly about the story, questing, graphics, music, spell system, etc. I Really think this is one of the best games to come out in recent memory. And I think that when it comes to putting you in driver seat of the story, it's second only to Fallout New Vegas.
Yes, but for whatever reason you seem to take more time explaining the things you did not like about a game than the things you did like - same with Expedition: Rome. Yet, I still like your videos and I usually know which games I'd like to play and which not. I'm watching your reviews because of their high entertainment value and not because I need buying advice. Didn't have much time to watch them recently which is why I'm a few videos behind.
i have 90hours and i never finished it, you know why? because the gameplay is mediocre. story is good but character creation and development is plain bad
Tyranny was fantastic, it was the first game that gave me similar vibes to Planescape: Torment, which is a masterpiece. I loved the spell system, and playing on the hardest difficulty was actually challenging, which rarely seems to happen.
It's also cheesable in Path of the Damend, but yes you need to dive a little bit into spell crafting and look a bit more into item enhancement if you want to absolutely dominate in this difficulty level.
Man, I just want to say that I'm following u from the first(or second) video on ur channel and all of them are fantastic. I never seen such deep and meticulous analysis of every game aspects with a lot of examples and comparing to other games of the genre. Its always a pleasure
to watch every new video on the channel(and even recheck old ones).I hope that with a such level of attention to details you can be not only a good reviewer and game lover but also a good game designer?! Thanks again for your content.
Wow thanks man! I was needing this! But no, I am not a good game designer (actually I suck at anything that has to do even remotely with design, unfortunately). I 'm trying to learn Twine to see if I can stitch together an interactive story, but that's going to take loooong. Thanks for your comment! I hope you continue to enjoy the videos!
Thank you for the very detailed and in-depth review of my most favorite CRPG to date!
I also fell in love with the story, the lore, it's not your typical Dungeons & Dragons like setting with elves, dwarves, dragons, etc. and is more inspired by cultures like Persia and Greece of the Classic historical era, not medieval. The fact that 'evil' has won but isn't morally black and white, and the player's role in the game. The art style is incredible. I liked many of the main characters in the game, like Tunon and The Voices of Nerat. Kyros him-/herself is also a fascinating villain despite never making an appearance in the game. But the overlord has a constant presence, always living rent-free in everyone's heads, making them terrified of him/her and whatever the overlord may do next. The Conquest mini-game is indeed one of the best things about this game, and something that I hope other developers would take notes of and do something similar with their own games. As long as it's fitting, of course. Never shoehorn anything in just because another game had it. And I love how your choices made not only during the Conquest mode but also in the game DO matter a lot. Tyranny may be a short game compared to its peers, but it's also one of the most replayable ones. And that's what I personally prefer in (C)RPGs: replayability over game length.
But, of course, even I wasn't blind to the game's flaws. Battles felt repetitive since the enemy variety is rather poor. Plus I didn't use the magic system in depth since none of my mains were magic casters, although I plan to roll a sorcerer-like character next time. I especially found The Oldwall dungeons boring due to the fact that there's nothing but wraiths in there and nothing interesting to find from what I can remember. The ending felt too abrupt and there is no sequel coming to rectify that.
But the biggest flaw of Tyranny in my opinion is the expansion pack, The Bastard's Wound. Dunno if you plan to make a separate video about that but in my opinion The Bastard's Wound did the opposite of Pillars of Eternity's White March expansion: Bastard's Wound gives us pretty much the same old same old, no new companions and no new DIFFERENT region to explore like the White March did with the snowy region that felt like a breath of fresh air after the base game of Pillars. In Bastard's Wound we just keep exploring more of the Oldwalls with more wraiths that we've already seen plenty of! The only good thing that may make Bastard's Wound worth it to people are the companion quests for Verse, Barik and Lantry IF you like those characters. Tyranny's base game is incredible and memorable, unlike Pillars of Eternity. But the expansion, Bastard's Wound, adds very little and doesn't bring anything new and fresh to the table and doesn't even have an interesting story of its own. Feels like cut content that they decided to repackage as an expansion now that I think about it. Polar opposite of The White March that gave us a whole new region, new companions and a great story, that in my opinion was even better than the base game's.
Kinda side-tracked there but that's how disappointing Bastard's Wound was to me considering how great Tyranny was. Looking forward to watching you ripping it a new one. >:)
Bastard's Wound was made by people who looked at Tyranny's base game and apparently thought: "You know what would make this better? Spending _even more_ time in the Oldwalls fighting Bane!" I don't think I'll ever understand those people.
Tyranny definitely belongs to my top five RPG games of all time. Thanks for this great review!
Thanks for watching!
Tyranny Was awesome, first RPG where I felt like I could truly change my mind at any point
Highly recommend you check out Fallout New Vegas if you don't mind clunky combat, hideous maps and crafting mechanics and dated looks. That game is the absolute king of player agency.
@jamesdeer3129???
It is indeed under rated but also incomplete.
Clearly they were hoping for a Tyranny 2 but I guess it didnt sell as well as they hoped.
Too bad though. I've never finished any of the POE games yet I've seen every ending of Tyranny.
It is one of the greatest RPGs out there and it deserves so much more.
GLORY TO KYROS!
Instead we are gonna get that idiotic avowed game and perhaps another helping of the outer worlds steaming compost pile
Been doing cRPGs since Fallout back in the late 90s. I'd seriously recommend PoE II. While I enjoy the first game, it's too wrapped up in its own lore and setting (too in love with itself, IMO). That second game, kee-rhist. Embracing the swashbuckling, vaguely-Sid-Meier's-Pirates thing was the *correct* decision. Between the factions and freedom of choice, it feels a lot (to me) like New Vegas on the High Seas.
@@simondaniel4028 It's funny you say that because when I first tried to play POE it was too opaque and inaccessible for me to get into but after playing through POE2 I revisited the first one and enjoyed it a great deal more.
The ip and publishing rights are with two different companies now too so there's no hope of tyranny 2 either
The conquest mode reminds me of Kings of Dragon Pass where you choose what your tribe's gods are based on lore events.
On the subject of archon's behavior, its heavily implied that there personalities and behavior can be...shaped somewhat by what people believe about them because of the nature of what makes them an archon.
It is part of why the two youngest archons, whom have relatively little known about them are the most flexible, while the very oldest tend to be very nearly nothing but the embodiment of ideals.
It is probably why Kyros herself is so very careful about decimating solid information about himself, as the less people 'know' for sure about him the more agency she has.
The reason I bring this up is that the two primary sources of belief for Gravin Ashe and the Voices of Nerat are the Disfavored and the Chorus who hate each other and hate each other's archon. There nature as archons may have in turn amplified an already existing dislike during the war into full blown hatrid, especially as part of there natures were diametrically opposed, with Ashe being an archon at least partially built around, to be blunt, racial purity and Voices be an archon literally composed of thousands of races and people.
I hope this video blow up and makes your channel more popular, I just discovered you and this is really fantastic work there
Thanks man! I'm glad you liked it! Let's hope so.
The worst thing about Tyranny is Baric shaving his beard off. Well, it's either that or my Arbiter's BFF smelling like dried up shit forever.
I have a small objection with the review, the game is not medieval inspired. Both artstyle and lore resembles the pre-classical east-meditteranean world. The artsyle gives me serious vibes of archaic art such as the Minoan; smooth curves, lively colors with high contrast, and symmetrical geometric designs. Furthermore, people are transitioning from bronze tools and weapons to iron ones. The empire holds the secret of how to forge iron, giving them a large advantage against the rest of the world. This got portraited in the game by having the rebels dropping bronze weapons, while the soldiers of the empire were dropping iron weapons.
Finally, the overarching plot, the invasion of the Tiers, is a straight up rip-off of the Persian invasions of ancient Greece:
* Bickering city states that united only after a greater common threat emerged,
* a great empire spanning most of the know world with multiple autonomous armies of different ethnicities under the loose control of provincial governors (archons - satraps),
* said governors often came from the ruling class of the conquered people (like Graven Ashe),
* the unbroken are heavily inspired by the Spartans,
* the name of the god-emperor Kyros, is eerily similar with the name of Cyrus the Great, the founder of the first Persian empire. The ancient Greek version of his name is Κῦρος, making the similarity even more noticeable.
Probably there is more which I don't remember, last time I played the game was a couple years ago.
Personally, I loved this. I 'm kinda tired of DND or Tolkien derivatives and clones. A different era with a low fantasy setting (no gods or planes) felt really refreshing.
Concur. The setting and lore was very refreshing. This alone puts it very high on my list of favorite RPGs.
Tyranny: good story, interesting idea, great variability, good music, good dialogs, bad combat, monotonous enemies, boring bossses and dungeons. This game had huge potential...8/10.
>bad combat
It has better combat than most turnbased with pause rpgs. and you can even shoot meteors with your attacks.
On the hardest difficulty with mage builds combat is actually good and challenging
Bad combat? Hell nah, it has the single best magic system in all rpgs
@@Malisa1990I think to
I tend to err on the "most underrated RPG ever" side of things. I was so impressed by this game that I had to completely restructure my favorites list to accommodate it. Like you said, it stands in a short list of games where I felt like my actions had real repercussions on not just my player or companions, but on the world as a whole. I had to take a step back and really consider numerous things in this game, knowing that in order to secure an alliance or execute Kyros' will, I would ultimately crush a companion or NPC. Thinking on it, I definitely see where you are coming from on character creation and progression and in hindsight have to agree - I fell into a horrible cycle of spells, abilities and strategies that just drowned out the uniqueness of my characters skills. I was absolutely crushed to find that by the time I had played this game. it was seeing no more support from Oblivion and the community because I craved MORE from that ending.
However, your critique on the Archons is interesting. I looked at their failings as the inevitable outcome of winning - when there is no more war, we must make our own. Or even more so, that during the heat of conflict it is easy to ignore a friends failings only to have them become unbearable as time goes on (a painful thing in a romantic relationship to realize). The reputation they have as god-like warlords of untold experience - pure propaganda by the "divine warlord". In my playthrough, it was more or less confirmed that the entire foundation of Kyros' power was a lie - how else to propagate your own domination than to continue and exaggerate that lie when referring to your vassals. All this seems like an extension of "An Empire is easier to conquer than it is to rule".
*Shrugs* Maybe I am filling in gaps with my own head cannon.
Thanks for leaving a comment, as always. My problem with the Archons has to do with their speech and demeanor, rather than with them being incompetent. Take for example Stannis Baratheon in George Martin's Song of Fire and Ice. He is stubborn and unbending to the point that he fails to adapt to the circumstances and ends up being the instrument of his own demise. But he doesn't articulate his speech as though he were someone in his twenties in modern day real-earth. The archons in Tyranny do and I have problems with this. I expected Graven Ashe to be something like Stannis.
Also, after reading the short stories included in the Overlord Edition, I have little doubt that the game does not expect us to believe the archons are immature and incompetent, it expect us to believe they are fear-inspiring, conniving and ruthless (read the archon's voice and a Trial of Iron)... and I don't think they succeeded in this. I also think this because this immature lore-breaking bickering is not limited to the archons, it also happens amongst the leaders of the tiersmen factions. One particular moment in which you have to decide between the Forge-bound and the Bronze Brotherhood after liberating the leader of the latter after a boss fight is PAINFUL to listen to.
@@YeOldEntertainment See, I did not read any of the short stories, I will check them out. Seems like I may have been looking at this through a pinhole but that raises the question of why things either make sense or don't based on info not even located in the game. Not stepping in that one until I give them a read over.
Might be interesting to read them all and then do another playthrough and see if I can pick up on this a bit more. I tend to hyper focus on certain aspects and its entirely possible that I was so spellbound by other aspects that it just didn't click with me. A second play through might make that a little more obvious.
Thanks again man, another fantastic video.
-I'm not sure I understand the whole "I can't make a tank so it's bad". Not liking the choices on levelup is A-ok (I don't remember them as terrible nor as interesting), but DOS2 doesn't have tanks at all and you said you loved the combat...?
-IMO the main problem of the combat is not that chokepoint and aggroing only one enemy at the time works, since it's the case in probably all RPG of this type (isometric perspective + real time with pause) but that there are only 3 types of enemies : humans, beastmen (and very few of these) and ethereal elementals (pretty boring) + the difficulty plumets fast once you can make fun combos of magic + all the abilities you get outside of levelup (items + companions + factions + I forget some maybe)
-I think the archons and their underlings that are in a position of power behaving like spoiled brats is the POINT of the narrative. In a tyranny like this, the competent people are purged before they can become a threat to the overlord (think Stalin's purges or the terrible tactical decisions of Hitler towards the end of WW2 because every competent person was dead or too afraid to talk). The plan at the start was probably to kill the 2 factions and the rebels in one fell swoop with the edict before the PC manage to win. And the Tiers factions leaders are also terrible, as you learn through the game quests and talking to Ebb. Because it takes place in a worse version of antiquity. I usually don't like grimdark but the world of Tyranny makes perfect sense to me.
Even the companions are mostly bad people, but you get that they're mostly the product of their terrible environment. Barrick is a perfect example if you manage to break his mental armor/prison a bit, you get a sense that he could be a hero in another setting instead of a bigotted brute because of his worship of his archon and faction. And even the psychopath Verse doesn't seem very happy despite her protests that she is oh so free...
Sorry for the wall of text but I think this is why this game setting is so great, showing how the system breaks everyone or turns them into monsters or apathetic... but it's also why the game probably couldn't have sold well even if the combat and other aspects (more importantly the marketing) were much better .
This game is the only RPG I've immediately played a second playthrough of after the first, but then again it's pretty short for the genre and combat is less and less important with each passing year for me ^^ It's also the only game I've played where the art style in the loading screens is SO much better than the in-game visuals.
-what is the notable exception that has better choices & consequences ? New Vegas ? Witcher 2 has at least 1/3 of the game playing completely differently (and a huge spoiler at the end that you can miss) depending on 1 choice alone so it's both better or worse depending on how you look at it. ^^
I would like to see more rpg's with this spell creation system
Excellent as usual. I really want Obsidian to stay in this market and to succeed. One can only hope that someone on their staff is aware of your superb analysis. I say this with Avowed in mind. Much appreciated.
Thanks man! I really appreciate it. I wouldn't hold my breath with Avowed... I think Obsidian has gone down a dark path...
@@YeOldEntertainment They've lost some great talent over the years, like Mitsoda and Avellone. Haven't paid attention to them in years.
@@raifthemad PoE 2 was pretty good, Outer Worlds was kinda okay. Kinda weird since it had a lot of same people working on it.
I always took the reality of the archons vs. their reputation as a commentary on how perception and reality rarely align, and in that sense didn’t have a problem with it. Which fits with the entire narrative: some serve Kyros, most serve their archon, their battle mates, themselves, etc.
But when you read the short stories that ship with the Overload Edition, which are all told from an omniscient perspective (that is, a narrator who is not part of the story) you can tell that the writers wanted the Archons to come off as larger than life. I just think they didn't pull it off. You could've written Graven Ashe for example like a Tyranny version of Stannis Baratheon... he still would've been lore-consistent and epic in his own way, but flawed and ultimately an instrument of his own demise. As it is... Graven Ashe (and The Voices of Nerat) feel a little too much like they were written by 20 year-old-ish writers who couldn't quite conceive characters outside the spectrum of personalities and archetypes that they are familiar with in real live.
Your videos are Ama-zing
Thanks man! and thanks for always sticking around and leaving comments.
The music in this game is so good! Probably my favorite game music of the past five years, except for maybe 40k: Mechanicus. I actually used the main menu theme as the music for my individual posing routine for a bodybuilding competition recently.
100% best soundtrack in years!
What is the 2016 disease?
Hehehe. I'm proud to have you as a subscriber, friend. You absolutely nailed it. If I could afford to offer you a position here at YOE, I would. And it did give me an idea for a video.
Tyranny was great for so many reasons. One of the stand out was the magci system. So Unique and empowering. It really felt like true power.
I played it and i laughed so hard at the decision to throw someone of a tower. I did not thought that the game actually made it happen, and it got me there. For the Review i can agree. The Spells are quite powerful to the point that they kinda oneshot or can heal so much that your kind of invincible. But i still like it and it is not a bad game after all. Good Review and wish you a great time, life and overall experience.
Thank you for another very high quality review.
You are easily my new fav video game reviewer. You’re so damn funny 😂😂
Thanks man. Hopefully for all the right reasons! cheers!
Finaly here:) Waited long for this one.
Personally I really liked verse, because I didn't take her as that archetype at all. I saw her as someone who embraced the chorus as her family. In her story she talks about the family that raised her and how they treated her, and when she had to join the chorus they had her kill them and she felt good about it. To later learn barik was her relative and to be further shunned by him because she was a bustard child. So being rejected by her family twice, the chorus was there as her real family. As even the voices of Nerat says she Is everything the chorus embodies.
I just started Tyranny (thanks to you) and I'm about 5-6 hours into it. I'm loving just about everything about it. The art style, music, combat, inventory management, etc. The beginning part where you establish your character's feats was amazing as well.
My initial feeling is that I'm enjoying Tyranny better than both Pillars I & II, but I'm sure it's because I'm in the honeymoon phase. I'm sure I'll have a more accurate outlook once I hit the 100+ hour mark like I have with the Pillars games. Regardless, I'm looking forward to experiencing my first playthrough.
Well this is a fantastic game. There is a good chance you might be singing a slightly different tune by the end of the game but this is still an RPG that you HAVE to play.
Just discovered your channel, very nice!
Thanks man!
Finally! Been waiting for this one quite some time now, especially as I currently can‘t get back into the game, so it‘s nice to have one of your chef‘s kiss videos as a fix!
Why can't you get back to into the game? Your computer acted up or something? Chef's kiss! haha thank ypu for saying that. Chef is the last thing I'd call myself. Like I said at the beginning of the video, you'd be better off with a combo from Taco Bell than anything I cook.
@@YeOldEntertainment Haha probably true, if I recall correctly you referred more than once to your abysmal cooking skills. 😂
I couldn’t get back into it last time I checked because I‘m on a Macbook, and they didn’t update the game to run on newer versions of the OS. I‘m normally a filthy console gamer, Tyranny is actually one of just a handful of games I got on my macbook. There probably are some hoops I could go through to make it run, but that‘s currently not that high on my list, so nothing really dramatic. But thanks for asking!
Okay, got to watch this review today and I gotta say: Tyranny truly puts you in the driver's seat like no other RPG out there (I've played many of them). I usually tend to roleplay the diplomatic/cunning type of character and Tyranny provided me with so many options for intrigue and diplomacy that I was happy as a child when I was able to ally myself with the Disfavored at first, earn their trust by doing mission for them, get them to help me suppress the rebellion and kill Voices of Nerat, only to then turn on them, kill Graven Ashe, disband the Disfavored along with the Scarlet Chorus, to then come to Tunon and talk him into surrendering the province into my absolute control so I could try and stand against Kyros herself. Well, Tunon told me Kyros was a she, but nobody knows for sure... (God, I love this game's lore so much!)
And that's exactly where the biggest disappointment with this game lies for me. When I was reading that endscreen, I was expecting it to be the turning point in the game, where everything comes together and we go toward the climax with an epic conclusion, but instead... I saw the credits roll. The first time I finished the game I just stared at them in disbelief. "Come on, the game can't just end like that, it was starting to get so good!" Alas, it was always like that with the best ideas Obsidian came up with (NWN2, KOTOR 2, Fallout: New Vegas, Tyranny). Their publishers never had faith in them and always rushed them to release half-baked games.
But yeah, your channel has become my favorite source of RPG reviews. Watching your Expeditions: Rome review tomorrow for sure! Keep up the good work!
I don't think New Vegas was half-cooked! Not in it's narrative design at least. It had half-a$$ed combat and it was buggy, for sure, but it's the pinnacle of choice and consequence story-wise in my opinion. Thanks my man, I hope you enjoy the review on Expeditions Rome. That game surpassed my every expectation on the story end of things. And thank you for watching! Welcome aboard!
I have many, many (many) thoughts about this game. I'm not quite sure how to structure them, so I'll just follow your format. (Warning: very long comment ahead, broken into pieces because it seems like it’s too big to fit into a single comment.)
Character Creation & Progression:
I'm not quite sure what it is about this game, but it got me 'in-character' more so that any other RPG I've played. Most of the time when I'm playing video game RPGs, I either try to re-create one of my D&D characters (and usually don't have enough freedom to truly roleplay as them), or I just end up roleplaying myself, or I just make things up as I go along. For Tyranny, I did something else, something I almost always do for my D&D characters, but so far haven’t done for any video game other than Tyranny: I typed up a backstory for my character which informed his outlook and philosophy (he was "merciful"; he aimed to break the rebels' spirit of resistance, while killing as few as possible). And, to my surprise, the game actually provided a decent amount of freedom to play the kind of character I’d created; I was frequently able to make the kind of "merciful" choices my character would. And it worked. I was able to get in-character to the point where I was reacting emotionally to events the way my character would (i.e. the event that marks the shift from Act 2 to Act 3 wasn’t an awesome moment of empowerment for me; it was an "oh shit, I just made myself a huge target" moment).
How did the game manage to get me "in-character", when so many other games have failed? Definitely a part of it is the fact that you're playing as someone with a pre-existing history and position in this world; it's kind of hard to get that invested in a blank slate. The excellent conquest minigame is definitely also a part of it. I think another part is the fact that the game treats "evil" choices as the default, in contrast to most RPGs. This helps create more distance between the player and character, and thus more freedom to roleplay. Still, I’m not sure if this fully explains it, and it may simply be the case that Tyranny’s world was so compelling that I wanted to roleplay a character in it.
As for the mechanical aspects of character progression, I mostly agree with you; most of the talents weren't super interesting, and most of the good stuff was pretty deep into the trees. Still, if you do specialize, you can make a fairly unique-feeling character: I got a talent that makes your ranged attacks from stealth cause fear which, when combined with a large AoE ability, allowed me to incapacitate large groups of enemies before the fight even started. I've only played it once, though, so I'm not sure if I'll be able to make a unique-feeling character on my 2nd playthrough.
The spell-creation system was both the best and worst part of character progression. On the one hand, the accents provide a huge amount of customization potential. However, there was a major problem that resulted from the fact that many of the available accents were just upgraded versions of other accents, with higher lore costs. This meant that I had to go through my spells every few levels to check if my lore had gotten high enough to swap out any accents for better versions. When you have multiple magic-using party members with several spells each, this process can get very tedious (and I will say that have a much higher than average tolerance for tedium in RPGs - I actually _like_ the kingdom management in Pathfinder Kingmaker - so if I think something's tedious, something has gone very wrong).
As for the dialogue/exploration skill checks, they didn't really do much for me, because the game lets you use whichever party member has the highest score in that skill. As a result, I think there was only a single skill check in the entire game that I wasn't able to make. Combined with the fact that the dialogue options with checks are just flat out better than non-check options about 95% of the time, this meant that I was pretty much always picking the options with checks, which wasn't terribly interesting.
Gameplay:
I found the combat fun and engaging…for the first few hours. However, after a while, it starts to drag. The lack of enemy variety means that, if a tactic works in one situation, it'll work in pretty much every situation (the first time I used my AoE attack from stealth to cause fear to a large number of enemies, it felt awesome; by the 20th time, it had lost its charm). Also, since there are very few abilities that have limited uses per rest, there's little reason not to use your strongest abilities every combat. This is a shame, because this game actually has one of the better systems to discourage over-resting. Sometimes when exploring, you'll get random events that give you a bonus until your next rest. This, combined with limited camping supplies, meant that I pretty much never rested in a way that strained suspension of disbelief.
This game also has a pretty severe case of inverse difficulty curve. Playing on hard, I thought that Act 1 was well-balanced, but midway through Act 2, the difficulty fell off a cliff, and never really went back up (I even stopped spending the points you get on level-up at one point as a way to artificially increase difficulty; the game was still really easy). I find it funny that you talk about how easy it is to cheese the enemy AI, because the game got so easy that I never even felt the need to resort to cheese tactics.
I also found that the lack of friendly-fire on abilities to contribute to the shallow feeling of combat. I found it really fun in Dragon Age Origins to try to place a fireball to hit the maximum number of enemies without hitting any allies, when both enemies and allies are moving. The lack of friendly-fire in Tyranny means you don't have to worry too much about positioning, and also that the accents that increase AoE on spells are almost always the best choices.
Also, I found the companion AI to be infuriatingly stupid. If I wasn't micromanaging them every second, they'd do things like use fire spells on enemies that were immune to fire.
As for exploration, I found the Oldwalls and its various puzzles to be interesting for a while, but after a while, I just wanted it to end, and I dreaded the thought of fighting more Bane. I can't believe that the Obsidian apparently thought that the one thing this game needed for DLC was _even more_ time spent in the Oldwalls fighting Bane.
Story and Lore:
I agree that the lore is in general excellent (which just makes me sad that we'll probably never see any other stories set in this world). However, I don't really think that the way it was delivered was the best. I remember one time when I came to a new town and could ask three or four NPCs about the town…and they all gave basically the same answers. IMO, if NPCs aren't going to give different perspectives on somethings, then they should've made it so you could only interact with one of them, and don't waste time with the others.
I also don’t fully agree that this game “puts you in the driver’s seat”. In particular, after you’ve picked which faction you’re supporting, the game seems to assume that you’ll side with them in most situations. There are a few instances where you can betray your faction and switch to the independent path, but not in any of the situations where I actually would’ve wanted to betray my faction (i.e. at the end of the Stalwart questline, I wasn’t even given the option to lift the Edict because I’d sided with the Scarlet Chorus).
Also, I’ll just say that I find leaders in authoritarian regimes acting like petty teenagers to be actually pretty believable.
Companions Lorewise:
IMO: Lantry > Sirin >> Eb > Kills-in-Shadow >> Verse >>> Barik
Personally, I did find Verse a bit annoying, but she wasn’t nearly as bad as Barik, who somehow managed to be both annoying and boring. Unfortunately, since he’s the best tank of your companions, I never really managed to make a workable party without him (if I play this game again, I’d probably make a tank just so I can afford to ditch Barik).
I also think that the companions were limited by the fact that they could never turn against you. I know why Obsidian did that; since there aren’t that many companions, and since each fills a specific niche, potentially losing one could be pretty painful. Still, it does make their characters less believable (I’m always going to have a hard time believing that Barik would still follow you if you kill Graven Ashe, no matter how high his loyalty to you is). This is hardly an issue specific to Tyranny, though; in most RPGs, your companions are way more loyal to your character than they probably should be (Thronebreaker being an amazing exception, which consequently has some of the most memorable companions for me).
The idea to have separate loyalty and fear meters for each companion was a potentially interesting one, although in practice, I found the logic behind which decisions would raise fear vs lower loyalty to be kind of unclear.
Companions Gameplaywise:
Yeah, I pretty much agree. Nothing to add here.
Secondary Mechanics & UX:
The itemization in this game was kind of the worst of both worlds for me, where it was complicated enough to induce analysis paralysis when deciding on the equipment for each companion, but also not interesting enough to get much gear that felt truly unique.
Also, 44:52. This. So much this. This will never cease to drive me insane in RPGs. Don’t take control away from me and make my character act like an idiot! I kept my ranged character back and in stealth for a reason! This also annoyed me to no end in Dragon Age Origins.
Sound Effects & Mix / Music / Voice Acting:
Nothing really to add.
Graphics:
There’s really only one element of the graphics that I don’t like, which is the character models they use as portraits in conversations. The models aren’t detailed enough to be looked at close up like that, and never seem to convey quite the right emotion. They seemed to me to always be slightly cartoonish, which robbed certain scenes of a bit of their seriousness. I kind of wish they’d instead had portraits for each character based on the hand-drawn style of the opening and ending slides.
Conclusion:
Well, this is definitely the longest UA-cam comment I’ve ever made, and possibly the longest individual comment I’ve made anywhere on the internet. I have some of the most complicated feelings towards this game of any that I’ve played. I really want to play it a 2nd, and maybe even a 3rd time to see what will change, but I kind of also dread having to play through the whole thing again. This is probably the most conflicted 7/10 game I’ve ever played.
And this made me beyond happy (that you took the time to put together these ideas in the comment section). I only have one question. Did you read theshort story collection? I suspect this --> "Lantry > Sirin" could change if you do.
@@YeOldEntertainment Yeah, I've read them. Sirin's story was good, but it didn't really change my opinion of her (I'm not entirely sure, but I think she'd already described that incident in game).
Also, my ranking of Lantry > Sirin was primarily due to Lantry's companion quest (which was by far the best of the 3 companion quests). If Sirin had had her own companion quest (which she definitely should've; I would gladly give up Barik and Verse's quests if we could get a Sirin quest), that ranking easily could've been reversed.
It's great that you say it puts you in the seat like no other game does aside from Fallout NV. Obsidian make amazing games. KOTOR II was another gem of theirs for its story!
Could've been a masterpiece but the final stretch feels a little bit rushed. The first one is awesome though.
@@YeOldEntertainment Agreed, though to still put out that calibre of game when LucasArts give you a little over a year to produce is itself pretty astonishing.
I want to say it would probably be in one of my top favorite rpg games ever, if the ending wasn't so abrupt. Or if they ever made a sequel, which isn't any where in sight currently. It is a game that really needed a sequel and without it, I have to say the game suffers knowing you will never find out what happens after. If it wasn't for that though, it was an amazing game and the journey is great.
Having played a lot of this game, and having a surprising love of it despite many of the flaws, I'd personally pick on the Old Walls the most.
In fact, I agree, it's the poor person's Od Nua dungeon experience.
The walls clearly hinted at having a purpose but at the same time didn't really define what that was, how people made use of that space, or even answer why people drew magic sigils on walls and how those sigils got into the hands of people outside of them so that magic would be at least wide spread enough to be known about.
Sufficed to say, they require more fleshing out than they received.
What's the game showed at 4:34? Is it Icewind dale 2?
Yes, Icewind Dale 2 indeed.
@@YeOldEntertainment thank you!
Spires are *above* the clouds... "What happens when it rains?"
I completed Tyranny several times and never completed Pillars of Eternity even once. I think this says it all.
This says all and nothing.
I don´t think that matters if rains in the spires, they are above the clouds.
Nice Video
Good Sense of Humor
Interesting Videos on the Channel (PoE)
Subbed
yay!!!
I still think that Tyranny is underrated.
None of the more popular latest CRPGs (Pillars 1 and 2, Divinity OS 1 and 2, Tides of Numenera, Kingmaker) is flawless. Neither is Tyranny. However, all of these games have positives that outweigh the flaws. Including Tyranny.
If I'm not mistaken, it was confirmed that Tyranny 2 is not in the works and won't be, in the foreseeable future. And that's a tragedy, I believe.
Thanks for the Video! I mean it.
Thank you for your videos, you're doing a great job and have an awesome channel!
Thanks man! I'm glad you're enjoying them!
I really liked this game but yeah it's a bit rough around the edges. Still, the concept is fantastic, i hope in a second chapter, it's got potential!
And for once choosing between being an evil bastard and an absolute sadistic psycho, is a breath of fresh air!
For a game that's unfinished, it has a lot more replay value compared to many other crpgs I've played. The amount of choices and consequences is staggering. And while some of the dialogue definitely felt a bit "millennial-esque", I don't think that it was that bad, at least for the most part. Very few characters ever felt annoying or poorly written to me. Even the Archons, as much as they might squabble have their reasons for it. As far as the combat goes, I found it decent, but nothing really mind-blowing. One problem I had is that fights at times felt like they were taking too long, and at there were some bizarre difficultly spikes here and there. I do have to give a special mention to the spell crafting system though. It's great and more devs need to add it to their games. A shame we'll never get a sequel, since Obsidian no longer owns the IP.
That Picture in the Bottom Right Corner looks so much like Horst Lichter it's eerie.
It probably didn't help that I kicked off things with a little food anecdote.
Story telling I loved
It's been on my radar but I never gave it a serious try. Gonna follow your recommendation, read a couple of those short stories and give this one a proper go.
Let us know how it turns out!
My single favorite single-player RPG ever.
And not just because, near the beginning, it has an elaborate reference to a notorious game (Corruption of Champions)
If any game ever deserved a sequel, it's Tyranny.
First, because the story is not complete. Second, because, if its flaws were rectified, it would be a masterpiece worthy of the name.
Never gonna happen because it flopped financially and Paradox published it; if it were Microsoft, it might be another story.
@@spellandshield yeah, I am aware of that. Still, a man can dream.
I've lived long enough to see some obscure and/or forgotten franchises get resurrected, so I'm patient in this regard.
If it never comes, ah well, there's a ton of other good games out there.
@@FelineElaj I agree. I dream of it too. Maybe Paradox will sell the rights to Microsoft, doubt it though.
@@FelineElaj What are your thoughts on Baldur's Gate 3 btw?
@@spellandshield don't like Early Access, so I haven't played BG3, yet.
Watched a friend play it for a bit, though. Saw some gameplay online, also. All in all, it looks decent, at worse. It has potential to be great. But I'm not familiar with the current state of the game to be sure.
One of the games I've replayed most for its different story paths.
Very good review, I mostly agree, though I think, some of the complaints are complaints on high niveau. One, ok, I admit, rather personal disagreement, is with Kills-in-Shadow - my favourite . I found her voice acting fantastic, especially, if you have the first conversation with her on top of a tower with everybody around - hilarious.
This game is truly unique and outstanding in many ways, the graphics are great, yes, also timeless I´d say and I wished, those developers would get together and create another masterpiece like this one or Pillars of Eternity.
I wish this game had sold better, because I doubt we'll ever get a sequel now. There's so much about the world that I want to know more about.
Yes... sort of ended in a "to be continued" way.
Absolutely love your videos. Do you have any plans to cover Divinity Original Sin 1?
Thanks man! Really appreciate it. Not any time soon. But maybe one day. There is still a long reviewing agenda ahead of us.
Do you have a pathfinder WOTH review
Found it
Just 6000 views, not only your retrospect/review but game deserves much, MUCH more and NOW I'm gonna make my personal quest to make some buzz so Obsidian, M$ or Steam(or whoever see's spike in sales so that they finally know what a lot of folks want, they just don't know it 🙃).
I still think that isometric RTwP CRPGs is genre that could give a LOT to gaming landscape and did not showed it's full potential,
it had a tuff luck being somewhat relevant precisely when consoles, mediocracy, shovel-ware, all AAA devs were forced to use gamepads while designing games(real fact, check it out...) and 3D graphics were bruteforced on whole generations of gamers.
When you play Arcanum, Fallout1&2 or PS:T, you kinda get your expectations raised but then you get a decade of MP FPSes/MMOs/microtransactions or something utterly lowest tier denominator, it's hard to stay in this hobby, 2-3 good games per decade is just not enough.
PS.
Considering POE1 & Tyranny graphics were made with Unity back when Unity was really...well..shi**y engine, they did a lot with what they had.
Desperados III and Disco Elysium were also made with the unity engine and they look awesome. I think it's all about the art design and art consistenty. The Unity Engine is still the right engine for these isometric games (be them RTWP, Turn based or tactical) in my estimation, but I agree that we get very few isometric RPGS per decade and thar many of the ones that we do get could've been better. Unfortunately that's because it's not the juiciest market niche. I wish it weren't so... but that's life when your expections were set back in the day with games like Arcanum, Fallout and Baldur's Gate 2.
It's not a medieval fantasy game, it's more like late bronze age fantasy game.
Yes this is true.
I SO loved this game! Finally a game where I can be evil and not be punished quite harshly. It was quite the contrary - I was rewarded! It was absolutely refreshing. I sided with the Disfavored and played something akin to an SS-Captain in the Third Reich or WWII. Uncompromising. Cold hearted. Efficient.
It was truly a ROLEplaying game. In real life I'm quite the opposite - but I truly enjoyed to PLAY this ROLE. Not to think, what *I* would do but rather what would THIS CHARACTER would do. I, for example, would have spared rebels or even sided with them - my character wiped them out without even batting an eye.
The only downside was the short playtime. During the final hour I felt like "That was a great Act I!" - but then it ended... But maybe it's better this way. It never overstayed it's welcome and I've had a great time and will definitely play it again with completely different characters!
The thing is that, since you are SO MUCH in the driver's seat... that final stretch is not as scripted as it is in other games so it lacks the crescendo that some other games do. Is it shorter in duration, for sure (although, if you throw in the plot-lines, locations, characters, etc that you did not see/meet because of your choices, the game has a lot more content that it seems) but it also lacks the narrative feeling of gravitas, though you ARE technically on fairly lenghty check-mating spree against everyone who opposes you.
@@YeOldEntertainment I totally agree! I didn't realize, that the game has put me so much into the driver's seat until you mentioned it in your video. I've always wondered what exactly made this game THIS different - THIS is it!
Considering the tremendous amount of posibilities that exist, the amount of scripting you can do (without making it *feel* scripted) is quite limited (at least considering the limited amount of time and money). And yeah - I suppose the PERCEIVED lack of impact is what made it feel ... unspectacular the most. I tend to agree with many critics, who wished for a second part. The game ends with the lengthy check-mating spree who opposes you - and (if they had the money and the time) they could have made a great more open ended game, where YOU have the power and control. Maybe some base-building? Maybe some army recruiting? I don't know - but you know what I mean.
Yeah, they could have made a second game, that picks the story up where the first game ended, but as a whole new game...? - I don't know... THAT could become either boring or - again - too short.
I absolutely agree, that, even though the length of a single playthrough is not *that* long (considering BG 1 &2, Planescape Torment, Pillars of Eternity) but as you mentioned in your video, your playthroughs can vary EXTREMELY. Next time I'll play as a completely and utterly batshit-insane member of the scarlet-chorus. Or maybe trying to help the rebels as much as humanly possible. Or maybe...
I could not get into this one, luckily I got it in a deep sale a few months ago. It's the story that I can't get into. You have 2 factions one is lawful evil and one is chaotic evil, and you are a leader of the evil system and almost everyone you meet belongs to one of the 2 factions, so you have to choose to play Lawful evil, chaotic evil, or I guess you can try to balance it and play neutral evil. I don't mind an evil option but I felt shoe horned in, when all I wanted to do was avoid them all. It did have some unique story elements and lore but just not enough options for me to fight it...at least none that I got to in my play through attempts.
The lack of an intriguing story really hurts my love for modern day RPGs Skyrim had a bit of one, with some lore, but you still need to go back to Morrowind or Daggerfall to for the best story or lore respectively. BG2 was kind of nice story wise, but a bit cliche that you are the child of a god. Troika and fallout 1 or 2 kind of ruined me on what to expect from story or lore. I tend to favor games with little story that leave me with room to make my own story...not quite an RPG, as it is a hybrid, but the game Kenshi is like that... a lot of lore and a good world, but you have no story other than the one you make for yourself. They are a bit basic game play wise but Avernum and Geneforge from Spiderweb software also offered interesting stories.
With Pillars, Tyranny, Divinity Original Sin, Pathfinder Kingmaker. I tend to lose interest in the story, and either give up, the when the combat gets stale, or I grind through, not really caring about the story, just getting to the finish, which is not really as fun as the games that keep you invested in a story. I think that is a lot of why I am here to your channel I can relive the good games, find some love in games I played and did not get as into, and also maybe one day I could find something new that will have that gripping story, with great visuals and good combat and game mechanics.
I often watch these videos of the new games and think wow what am I missing here, because you agree with the older games being great, but the newer ones I am just not as able to get into, no matter how hard a try. It could be too, that combat, and challenge are not really my focus. Combat is used to further a story, and can raise the stakes for me. And I think Tyranny is trying, but the writing is a little bland, and too on point a lot, as you pointed out...and it's just not the story I want to play that I am tying to take over the rest of a continent...I'd rather play the same game but I am a member of that last free area, and my goal is to fight them back. Maybe it is something that I'll revisit when I feel like a dark story, and not so much a good hero.
Well in Tyranny you can ditch both armies, join the Tiersmen and work against Kyros. But this option can be easy to miss because it is triggered in a very specific conversation. I actually missed it the first two times I played the game because both times I was trying hard to avoid gaining fear and losing loyalty with Barik and Verse. But in the conversation that is shown in 36:38 you can let these people escape and if you do. You are later contacted for a meeting (26:11 in the video) and from then on out, you start working against Kyros. And I think this is the most satisfying plot line.
@@YeOldEntertainment That was one of my things too I kept trying to please the companions...maybe I need to let them go and find others that fit better? I think that is one thing I dislike with premade companions, as you have to balance their personality with your needs. Like in Pillars Aloth is interesting to have around, but I often like to play a Wizard myself, Durance is grumpy and annoying but you almost need a priest.
@@colmortimer1066 Unfortunately Tyranny is a bit short on companions. But even making them fear you/dislike you can unlock interesting things gameplay and story-wise. And if you do not like walking about with people who dislike you (understandable) you can always leave them at the spire and bring Lantry, Eb or Sirin along instead of Verse and Barik.
As for Pillars... You can ditch Aloth and Durance (but I love both of them!! So I'd never do that!) or simply never take them with you and create your own adventurers at the tavern. Actually that is a thing I would strongly recommend doing regardless of whether or not you decide to keep your scripted companions: create at least one adventurer at the tavern. If I play a pala for example, I like to create a rogue character, because there aren't any in the game until much much later (and even that one is an expansion character that is a very weird type of rogue).
These new games have their own little thingies going on for themselves that make them enjoyable, I just think they came a little too late to the party bringing a bag of goodies that we had already seen a long a time ago.
Agree . One of the most epic and novel underated game.
with upcoming BG3 I am trying to ease the wait and catch up with RPG games that I missed and your channel is my new main source point...... I must confes tho, I really like the edgy types of women characters in games :D
This game is kind of okay prologue for the game we never see, So no, Not most underrated RPG ever. Actual story dont even start till the last bloody minute and when its over
Both, I would say, underrated. It is a great travesty...now to listen to the video.
Underpromotion LoL.
Great game, great magic constructor. Great fall from tower with latter 😂😂😂
9/10
I enjoyed the game. It does need a touch up though
I know I am in a minority here, but I felt the game was dated, the writing of dialogues often times poorly executed and I just could not get warm with the title. For a title that should either let me enjoy being an evil badass or juggle with moral dilemmas it just left me indifferent and bored by its combat and repetiveness. It was not bad, but besides it "you are the bad guy" twist, completely mediocre and forgetable.
This is my subjective impression, I am happy that others got more joy out of it.
There is something I love about this comment. It's basically 100% in line with what was said in the video and yet, the conclusion/recommendation is completely different.
It reminds me of ACG's review on "Bards Tale IV". I bought the game because of that review and after I finished it... I thought "Man how can I agree 100% with everything he said and yet feel so very differently about this game". I find this endlessly fascinating and that's the main reason why I started the channel.
@@YeOldEntertainment I believe it has to do with preferences and expectations. Maybe the game would have affected me differently at a different point of my life, who knows?! That's what I also find fascinating. 1+1 does not always equal 2 when it comes to subjective preferences. The content of the video was interesting. I think with games, even a slight shift in perspective can shift a lot in personal outcome, if that makes any sense.
Keep on producing on that high quality, your thoughts are a fine addition to other gaming channels.
this game was a banger
great choices, mechanics and companions
I love this game, but it actively feels incomplete.
There's A LOT of the game that feels like they forgot to add it or were gonna make a sequel and never could.
I think that it is not medieval fantasy but bronce age fantasy. Remember that forging iron and steel in this game is considered almost like a magic art.
Yes, this is true. The world in tyranny is transitioning into the iron age. I just kinda lazily lumped together with other games in the genre. But yes, it's not medieval.
Seeing as this is my favorite game of all time, yes, very underrated.
This game is so good and I wish it would get a sequel 😫
I normally like playing evil badd asses in games and going into this game I was excited to play a bad guy, however after a while I found myself questioning my past choices and ended up a good guy and taking every thing for myself and smiting any and all who stood in my way except the rebels of course.
I liked this game lot's of replayability
Haven't watched the whole video yet, but I'd like post a comment anyway. Tyranny was, almost objectively, a very good rpg. It had everything that defines a good rpg and personally I enjoyed it a lot. However, it also showed me why an rpg can't be "sshort". I felt that a lot of things were missing, like the city the overlord is, that you visit only their palace and the towers you build that you don't have enough time to develop and feel the growth and all. I felt I didn't have anough time to feel the story and world development although it was talked by almost every npc and sometimes I felt I was rushing through it. RPGs, for me, need to be long games, for better or worse.
I think that was supposed to come in Tyranny 2... but... I don't think we're going to get that any time soon.
@@YeOldEntertainment pretty sure they advertised the game as a short rpg and being a plus because of that. I remember them highlight this in interviews. Don't know if that was the reason it didn't end up being a success, but for me personally it was, in the end, a big minus. I still enjoyed it and would buy a sequel if there ever was one.
I like this game a little better than both Pillars games. It's not a bad game, but could have used a little more development time and love. A game I feel like could have had an even better sequel which sadly we'll never get.
10/10 best rpg ever
The only bad thing about Tyranny is that there is no sequel :P
I'm not too sure about this one. I love strategy rpgs. I have been getting stuck into Diciples Liberation which is really good. This game doesn't seem to be as polished as Diciples which is a very deep strategy rpg. I wonder how deep this is and how consistent the graphics are throughout. From what I am seeing, it doesn't look promising.
Thanks for leaving a comment. This is not a strategy RPG, you should be aware of this. Its combat is the weakest aspect of the game. What you pay the price of the admission for in Tyranny is its lore and and story. And the unique thing about it is how much the game takes into account your story-based decisions to provide different situations, locations and people to meet. The graphics are excellent from the perspective of artistic consistency and originality, but technically, the aren't a triple A deal. If technically impressive graphics (dynamic shadows, polished use of particles, rich cinematics, etc.) and strategic depth are important categories in your criteria to choose a game, then Tyranny is probably not for you.
@@YeOldEntertainment Yeh, I looked a bit more into it. Its more like pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin. Yeh, I like those games. Now I understand the graphics and how it will play. I will look into getting it.
im here trying to decide which crpg to play next - Tyranny set such a high bar. I want a story and companions as good as tyrannys - but everything else seems unintresting to me. even PoE 1 & 2 don't intrest me. the world of tyranny so so good. I cannot decide on another Crpg. Everything else looks lackluster in comparison story-wise. Disco and Tyranny have just set the bar so high I can't decide on any other Crpgs to play - and im dying to play one that comes close to those games.
I admit the lore/story was cohesive and consistent....I just didn't like it.
Oh your family was slaughtered?
Oh you're stuck in armor that reeks of piss and shit?
Of course, cause this place sucks. Edgelord Kyros has made sure of that.
Pillars flirted with that kind of thing but has variety (Mins-I mean Eder likes animals).
I like playing the paragon too much for a game like Tyrrany. Wouldn't you rather be Marcus Aurelius than Nero?
Admittedly I didn't even like the inclusion of Neb the child killer in Baldurs Gate. Never seemed to belong with the rest of the story to me.
Well you can join the Tiersmen and ditch Kyros, Ashe and Nerat. But there is one very specific dialogue choice in one very specific conversation that opens up this path and it's easy to miss. (I missed it the first two times I played it)
@@YeOldEntertainment I actually did that. But the world is still a hideous place. Worse than the nuclear wasteland in Fallout. It's also filled with hideous Characters. Admittedly just not my cup of tea.
But seriously though. Who wrote Neb into Baldurs Gate? Why would Minsc, or Ajantis not cut his head off immediately when he admits to killing children and even makes a riddle out of it?
@@patrickclark9430 Yes the world here is loads worse than Fallout's. In Fallout there is some cheerfulness, joy and good people amidst the grim circumstances. And I get what you mean and that made it hard for the game for me to connect to, but I eventually managed.
Baldur's Gate has ALL types of character but yes... I suppose people like Xzar and Montarom or Edwin are the "brand of evil" that we can expect in a game like Baldur's Gate, because it is a world that doesn't try to be crude in its realism. It doesn't take itself awfully seriously and Neb... well... seems disruptive of this. (And paints gnomes in a poor light hehehe).
@@YeOldEntertainment
Maybe I just gave up on it too early (one playthrough).
Reminds me of the SNL skit with the Rock when he out-evils everyone at the evil convention lol. Here's a link if you haven't seen it. I'm sure you could work it into a review with misplaced characters/concepts.
ua-cam.com/video/z0NgUhEs1R4/v-deo.html
It’s when the game ended that it opened up but then it ended….
Broccoli is a super food... Sir...!
You had me at they fucked up rice
Well they always do.
Broccoli just needs to be seasoned correctly. It takes 5 minutes to make broccoli that tastes and feels amazing to eat and goes perfectly with any kind of meat you could pair with it. People just assume you have to eat bland raw or steamed nonsense and it's sad haha.
Well, these guys at VIPS have not gotten the memo yet.
heya there, new to your content, quality content i must say, what do you mean on the 2016 "disease"? leftys pro woke content? my brain tends to eliminate that kind of things so i cant remember much of kingmaker on that, but it killed he man for me lol.
thanks for the recommends on greedfall and tainted chalice, age of decandence and dungeon rats may not look charming but i love games with heavy story,
Thanks and welcome aboard! Tainted Grail, friend. That's the one I recommend. Production values in games such as Age of Decadence or Dungeon Rats aren't great but they take their tone and immersion seriously (and do a competent job with it) Also check out on Colony Ship. I played the early access and so far they are nailing it.
I need this game on Xbox so bad… 😩
First of all I loved playing this game.
BUT with more budget (which it had deserved) that game could have been a huge top tier RPG game in all aspects which it unfortunately isn´t.
this is a good review but damn you are comparing this to newer crpg in most recent standard. some criticism are pretty harsh
This game came out in the year 2016. The worst this game has to offer is combat and in that respect, it is not good even when compared to the Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale series (which came out around the early 2000s). Sound design is the only department in which I compared this game to its modern day peers, but that is one of the least weighty categories in the review system (you can check out the video in which the category system is explained).
No DWARVES?!?!? 0 out of 10 😡
Dude. that's a hard thing to come to terms with!! It's like they robbed me of my fantasy gaming identity!
Underrated or undercooked? Yes.
this rpg system sucks. how did this game get so much praise?
Tyranny was rushed out far too quickly. It could have done with more time in development. Then it could have been something special.
Your critique sounds so negative, yet your rating is mostly quite good. I still need to play Tyranny, though. Then I can completely disagree with all you said about the game.
Why? I think I spoke pretty highly about the story, questing, graphics, music, spell system, etc. I Really think this is one of the best games to come out in recent memory. And I think that when it comes to putting you in driver seat of the story, it's second only to Fallout New Vegas.
Yes, but for whatever reason you seem to take more time explaining the things you did not like about a game than the things you did like - same with Expedition: Rome. Yet, I still like your videos and I usually know which games I'd like to play and which not. I'm watching your reviews because of their high entertainment value and not because I need buying advice. Didn't have much time to watch them recently which is why I'm a few videos behind.
Tyranny is not the most underappreciated RPG. Underrail is.
Unfinished. That was my impression.
i have 90hours and i never finished it, you know why? because the gameplay is mediocre. story is good but character creation and development is plain bad
xD