Tyranny is totally worth buying and getting into still in 2025.
Refreshingly Unique Experience
This game’s world and concept are so unique to any other game I have experienced. The world building/lore is very good and the rest of the game was designed around it. The depth that the developers put into the dialogue/story choices is amazing. Aside from some small conversations with background NPCs, 90% of dialogue and dialogue choices has some later impact on the game.
Play it Your Own Way
I will say this to anyone coming to reviews to look for info, even the rare in-depth guides about this game get things wrong or have "important" information that you can totally ignore and choose to play the game by your own intuition.
Though this game is older, it just doesn’t seem to have been popular enough for wiki sights or game-play guides to get extremely in depth details about most of the game. As an example, the game itself has an option to reveal what relationship effects your choices will cause and even that isn’t accurate on a lot of choices.
BUT, this a good thing tbh. It’s a rare experience to play a game where you actually can’t rely on the internet to tell you every detail about the game that you want it to. As you play the game again and again, you really feel like you are discovering new paths and choices nobody else has ever done quite like you. It turns this game into an experience where you get to truly enjoy exploration and experimentation by trying new character, story, and even combat choices that you hadn't previously attempted.
Difficulty and Combat
The main difficulty level options only seem to influence combat. Other than that, it may also influence certain skill checks.
EASY - easy makes combat so easy that not even beginners to this kind of game should be playing on this difficulty. I see easy as being for those who truly just want to experience the story lines. By playing easy, you should be able to breeze through combats.
NORMAL - If you have never played games with combat like this, play on normal difficulty.
HARD - If you have a good grasp on the depth of the combat system or have completed the game before, consider playing on hard. As far as I can tell, the a.i. seems a bit smarter as well as increasing the number of and types of enemies in certain encounters.
POTD - If and only if you are a sadist, play on POTD. If you’re not a sadist, what are you doing playing POTD? All jokes aside, POTD is the only way to be truly tested on your ability to master the combat mechanics of this game. I highly recommend that you do not simply follow the most extremely efficient strategies for success in POTD. Instead, find your own path through it, even if you struggle at times. Often, when I have struggled on POTD, all I needed to do was come into combat a bit more prepared by using items or reallocating the spell slots for my combat. In my experiences of Normal and Hard difficulty, I almost never needed to use items or rest to recover from wounds. In POTD, I found myself needing to not only hold onto consumables, but actually use them to prepare for fights.
Sale or No Sale?
As much as I have enjoyed this game, I still suggest waiting on a sale. I was able to get the whole game and all DLC for only $26. Just the game was $8 on the sale if you wanted to know. In my opinion, the quality of the game and DLC feels like it should be worth around $30-$40 (So maybe $20 would be a good price for just the game). The base game currently sells for $30 when it’s not on sale. So I personally think it’s worth the wait for a sale. This game can easily be your next 40 - 100+ hours of entertainment.
