Tyranny - Review @ GameSpew

Indeed. Simple minded people are used to sticking to conventional definitions of words without looking elsewhere while superior minds are in the urge of redefining everything.

I think RTwP with too many active abilities to manage may not be the direction I'd like to see that system go.

Setting AI scripts can be cool, but for the most part I want to control my party. I just want to give basic scripts like BG had. I.e. if you're an archer, stay away from the scrum. But overall I want to control who my party attacks, etc. DA:O was really cool in that it had that programmable AI script thing, and while that was quite fun to tinker with and set up some really unique scripts, in the end I'd like to control my party members more and not just rely on AI scripts. That makes it more like a single-character game if all your characters are just doing their AI scripts.

I still think the BG/IWD style of RTwP is the best. No, it doesn't have nearly the same amount of active abilities or combat abilities to manage, but somehow it stays really fun and interesting without them. I think that is because the encounters are unpredictable at times, there is a challenge level and you still have to really manage the magic users, which is some of the most fun in the game. Also, the combat is more about "okay, let me quickly attack this mage with my dart thrower. Oh! Let me equip this special dart I found that silences the mage, then I'll run my Paladin in there and get right in his grill to interrupt his casting. Meanwhile, you, you and you attack this other guy to get rid of him quickly, and this character will stand back and use these magical arrows…", etc. Combined with the fact you can get very creative with the spell system, it just leads to an engrossing combat system that doesn't rely on having every character with a hotbar of 5-10+ skills that you constantly have to manage. And I do feel that combat abilities in the hotbar style make the game feel different and reminds one of an MMO rather than a pen-and-paper style PC RPG.

I think developers believe that not having a bunch of active hotbar abilities in combat wouldn't be as interesting to people since people are very used to that style now. But most are used to it because they played an MMO or some other single-player RPG that had hotbar style combat. When you make it a party-based game, now you have 4 times as many hotbars and active abilities to ponder. I think in the long run "less is more" when it comes to this specific issue and it will have to be examined by anyone who wants to really capture some of the magic of the Infinity Engine games. Just some thoughts.

It fits a "ugoigo" pattern: decisions are made on the fly, as the fight evolves.

RTwP demands another pattern: acquisition of information, planning and execution.

In Tyranny, acquisition of information is done through scouting.

Once the enemy is scouted, the information feeds a planning process to determine the location of the engagement, the primary targets and how to down them quickly.
The plan is executed.

The loadout of each character is likely to modify from one encounter to another as the terrain, the enemy make up call for different strategies and tactics.

The hot bar (ten spots) is never used fully, only 3, 4, 5 each. Combat is short lived in Tyranny.

There are options. Part of the preparation of an encounter is to reduce them to a small number.

Players, though, conformly to "ugoigo" mindset do not plan ahead, they do not prepare and step into encounters, relying on pausing to make up for their lack of preparation.


There is not that many skills involved in a fight. There is a large pool to select from.

Of course, this is undermined by the exploit of spamming pause. Players run head first and are short of any plan, any order to shape the battlefield. Hence pausing.