Tyranny review

Graphics

Games like XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Dishonored show that companies can make 3D animation beautiful without spending too much money. This is a lesson that I wish Obsidian Entertainment had taken to heart. Tyranny uses an isometric perspective and the camera stays zoomed in enough, so they could have gotten away with less detail on their character models.

It becomes a problem whenever the player interacts with an NPC and is treated with a zoomed-in image of the speaker gesturing wildly. Each looks dated and cheap, and it’s hard to take serious moments when the overlord’s right hand is represented by a small smoky puppet in the corner of the screen.

There are some excellent artwork in the cutscenes and I love the character portraits used in the party selection and stats interface, so why couldn’t they be used in conversations?

Final verdict

Tyranny could have been a great game. Its fantastic characters and excellent world construction are let down by slow and repetitive gameplay and dated graphics. The writing is pretty good, but it doesn’t make up for the problems in the game. Longtime CRPG fans may appreciate Tyranny’s retro sensibility, but chances are they already have something much better in their bookshelves.