Tyranny

Worth buying? What 300 Steam reviews say.Worth buying? Here’s what 300 Steam reviews actually say.

Very Positive · 87%Very Positive · 87%2016

$29.99

US Steam price, checked 6 h ago

The verdict

A short, story-driven CRPG where you serve the evil overlord, with great writing, reactive choices and spell crafting. Skip it if you dislike heavy reading, weak combat or an abrupt, unfinished ending.

Great for

Story-focused CRPG fans who love reading, moral choices and replaying different paths

Main risk

Combat is dull or frustrating and the game ends abruptly, feeling unfinished

What players love

Excellent writing and worldbuilding

Mentioned in ~2 in 5 positive reviews

“Great writing, and in my opinion a CRPG lives and dies on writing quality.”
Steam review · 258.5 h played ↗

“Excellent world-building and storytelling. Its rare for a game to figure out how to implement moral decisions without a reductive blue-red alignment counter”
Steam review · 50 h played ↗

“I can't tear myself away; everything is written beautifully, and reading and studying the world is a pleasure.”
Steam review · translated · 25.1 h played ↗

Choices and consequences that matter

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 positive reviews

“the choices you make actually matter. ALOT. I truly love that about this game, helping out one faction pisses off another.”
Steam review · 26.5 h played ↗

“Every choice matters and the variety of endings you can get is truly amazing.”
Steam review · 38.9 h played ↗

“awesome roleplaying options that globally affect the outcome”
Steam review · translated · 26 h played ↗

Fresh premise of serving the evil side

Mentioned in ~1 in 4 positive reviews

“Its the only game I know of that takes the idea of a villain protagonist seriously, giving both sides of the morality argument strong positions with pros and cons.”
Steam review · 57.7 h played ↗

“Rare CRPG that has you acting as part of the distinctively Lawful Evil conquering empire, written (almost entirely) without moustache twirling insane villainy”
Steam review · 28.5 h played ↗

“Tyranny is an unreal dark fantasy where evil has already won and you work within that world.”
Steam review · translated · 24.1 h played ↗

Creative spellcrafting system

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“I adore its magic system; you don't have predetermined spells, but craft your own by combining effect-symbols.”
Steam review · 157.1 h played ↗

“The magic system is excellent (you can build your own spells with a point based system).”
Steam review · 119.7 h played ↗

“the magic system really clicked (literally a spell constructor)”
Steam review · translated · 55.8 h played ↗

Short length and high replayability

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“Tyranny is the perfect length for an RPG.”
Steam review · 45.5 h played ↗

“Very unique plot/rpg that frankly has high replay value as there's four main routes.”
Steam review · 30.4 h played ↗

“I finished the game - twice, and I rarely do multiple runs in games.”
Steam review · 50 h played ↗

Memorable companions and characters

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 positive reviews

“it also has, in my opinion, the best companion characters in any rpg I've yet played”
Steam review · 38 h played ↗

“One of the most interesting sets of companions I've met.”
Steam review · translated · 15.9 h played ↗

What players complain about

Boring, clunky or punishing combat

Mentioned in ~1 in 3 negative reviews

“I can't believe how bad combat is in this game.”
Steam review · 33.4 h played ↗

“Combat here is bad, really really bad. It's hard to understand what's happening, to control your characters, they often got stuck doing nothing”
Steam review · 10.5 h played ↗

“The combat system doesn't work... I have no idea who made it, what it is or how to use it.”
Steam review · translated · 21.6 h played ↗

Abrupt, unfinished ending and rushed Act 3

Mentioned in ~1 in 5 negative reviews

“Tyranny does not "end": it stops.”
Steam review · 48.6 h played ↗

“This is Tyranny, a great book - half-full of blank pages.”
Steam review · 42.8 h played ↗

“A promising game that seems unfinished and breaks off halfway through the story.”
Steam review · translated · 48.3 h played ↗

Walls of text and slow, lore-heavy start

Mentioned in ~1 in 7 negative reviews

“Ask one simple question and it opens 8 lines of dialogue, which of course opens 8 more lines of dialogue”
Steam review · 11.8 h played ↗

“It's a storybook.”
Steam review · 8.7 h played ↗

“You should add the genre 'visual novel' to the page.”
Steam review · translated · 52.1 h played ↗

Choices feel limited and railroaded

Mentioned in ~1 in 9 negative reviews

“For a game that prides itself on its choices, you are constrained to being a mindless stooge way too often.”
Steam review · 8.3 h played ↗

“But you don't actually have any choices, and your hard won reputation with a faction gets easily wiped out by things.”
Steam review · 17.3 h played ↗

Game-breaking bugs and corrupted saves

Mentioned in ~1 in 12 negative reviews

“At one point I encountered a bug that made it literally impossible to progress the main story.”
Steam review · 78.1 h played ↗

“When you trade out party members, there's a chance they will lose their talents”
Steam review · 27.2 h played ↗

“The Third Degree quest bug has been known since 2017 and still nobody has bothered to fix it.”
Steam review · translated · 97.8 h played ↗

DLC content cut from base game

Mentioned in ~1 in 19 negative reviews

“Don't play Tyranny without the two main-DLCs!”
Steam review · 39.5 h played ↗

“Extra minus for the failed attempt to return content cut from the base game in a PAID DLC.”
Steam review · translated · 166.7 h played ↗

System requirements

From the Steam store page

Steam Deck: Playable

Minimum

OSWindows 7 64-bit or newer

ProcessorIntel Core 2 Quad Q9505 @ 2.80 GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 840 @ 3.10 GHz

Memory6 GB RAM

GraphicsATI Radeon HD 5770 or NVIDIA GeForce GTS450 with 1GB VRAM

Storage15 GB available space

Recommended

OSWindows 7 64-bit or newer

ProcessorIntel Core i3-2100 @ 3.10 GHz / AMD Phenom II X4 955 @ 3.10 GHz

Memory8 GB RAM

GraphicsRadeon HD 6850 or NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 with 1GB VRAM

Storage15 GB available space

OSWindows 7 64-bit or newer

ProcessorIntel Core 2 Quad Q9505 @ 2.80 GHz / AMD Athlon II X4 840 @ 3.10 GHz

Memory6 GB RAM

GraphicsATI Radeon HD 5770 or NVIDIA GeForce GTS450 with 1GB VRAM

Storage15 GB available space

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