Tyranny - Combat Guide

PC Invasion have a beginniners guide to combat for Tyranny.

If you've not played Pillars of Eternity, or haven't touched a more traditional isometric-ish RPG before, then Tyranny's combat system may hold some mystery. These are the basics that should help you triumph on Normal difficulty, and give you a solid grounding for stepping up to higher levels of play if desired.

Our full Tyranny review is still in progress (contrary to early reports, this game is quite long), and will be up on the site in the next few days.

Positioning

Primarily, the early moves Obsidian's more recent real-time-with-pause combat systems are about smart positioning. Tyranny has an ‘engagement' system that means once a couple of parties are in combat, they're basically locked that way until one dies or tries to break away (suffering a ‘disengagement' penalty and some free hits).

Make use of custom formations (the square with dots for corners to the left of your party portraits will lead you there) once you have three or four members in your party. That way, you can mostly make sure that your front line are the tougher, ‘tankier' members of your team (Barik, Kills-in-Shadows, Verse if she's been equipped for it).

Also, consider visiting the menu options and choosing a few auto-pause options. Having the game pause by default whenever you get into combat is a very helpful way to give you time to consider the layout of your opponents. Make frequent use of pausing in combat too, in order to suss out where the most danger and damage is coming from, and how to put a stop to it.
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More information.

OK, I'll admit the one real gripe I had with Tyranny. (Well, one of two.)

Combat AI is… horrible. The descriptions of what various "personalities" will do for each character - like "healer" or "archer" - are… not at all what your people will do. One of my characters was quite fond of simply standing and doing nothing with her AI on, so don't plan on relying on the AI unless you're playing in story mode.

(Edit: Story mode is *really* story mode, as in the combats are basically impossible to lose. Normal is still pretty easy. Difficulty seems way, way scaled down from PoE.)

Other minor quibble, I wasn't horribly fond of some of the "find multiple gemstones in a large ruin and then slot them into multiple slots" puzzles; they just aren't my thing. They're not mind-challenging so much as boringly time consuming while you try to figure out where to click; there were several places that were hidden by NPCs or terrain that weren't quite obvious places to click on. (Last yellow gemstone, you were kind of a pain to find.)

The "dot coloring rune puzzles" were OK but honestly I find most CRPG puzzles to be on the annoying side. I play CRPGs for character generation and advancement, story, dialogue, plot, combat system - pretty much everything but what developers think are "logic puzzles" and really are more point and click until you hit the right spot exercises.

These two minor quibbles aside, the game was fantastic imo. Oh, the spellcasting system is... interesting. You need to "find" pieces of spells and make them though I found several modifiers in the game for spells that I never found, like armor and weapon modifying spells; which supposedly exist but I never uncovered. It's quite possible I missed a few spots which is frustrating for a completionist like myself; though it could have just been my in-game "choices" that didn't lead me to the right areas. I found almost too late that you need one specific skill from one specific party member to even be able to find/decipher the spell pieces you find in dungeons.

the game was fantastic

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Sadly pathing is still k*k. Even with a party of size 4, which should make it less crowded, I have a engagement attacks because a character that should be able to move through a person size "slot" cannot or choose some silly path...happens to the enemy too, but less so. ["No, you fool!!!! Not that way! #$*@!!!"]
And yes, the AI does seem rubbish - I have it turned off, but sometime characters don't seem to continue auto-attacking the same target? Unless it just looked like that.
I also feel that combat drags a lot...waiting for cooldowns to reset. But the same could be said of PoE really.

I do like puzzles in RPGs, in fact they've been staple of RPGs since like the first ones. I only don't like puzzles when there are random encounters (older games).

wolfing said:

I do like puzzles in RPGs, in fact they've been staple of RPGs since like the first ones. I only don't like puzzles when there are random encounters (older games).

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I agree. But then it has to be actual puzzles and/or riddles, what Gnome describes sounds more like collecting stones and putting themy in their obvious place. That's not a puzzle, that's a fetch quest.

ElderGnome said:

OK, I'll admit the one real gripe I had with Tyranny. (Well, one of two.)

Combat AI is… horrible. The descriptions of what various "personalities" will do for each character - like "healer" or "archer" - are… not at all what your people will do. One of my characters was quite fond of simply standing and doing nothing with her AI on, so don't plan on relying on the AI unless you're playing in story mode.

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Combat is short lived.
Coll downs on skills are very high.

It means that a healer without enough skills to use wont do much.

booboo said:

Sadly pathing is still k*k. Even with a party of size 4, which should make it less crowded, I have a engagement attacks because a character that should be able to move through a person size "slot" cannot or choose some silly path…happens to the enemy too, but less so. ["No, you fool!!!! Not that way! #$*@!!!"]

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No. Pathing is appropriate. That is a case of a desire for being second guessed.
People have grown too used to be served. The bit of news is that AI are very bad at second guessing human beings. Actually, this part is reversed: when human beings use AI, humans must second guess the AI.

An AI cant second guess if the player desires to bypass by the right or the left.

The interface supports a solution: queueing orders (shift click)
Giving a specific path is done by shift clicking.

Usually, though, the pace in Tyranny is so slow, it is possible to do without shift clicking. Simply clicking the path is enough.

I also feel that combat drags a lot…waiting for cooldowns to reset. But the same could be said of PoE really.

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No. Combat is brutal and short lived. A combat dragging a lot is the symptom of an improper approach. Primary targets should be done in the first two or three rounds. Combat usually does not last long enough to call the use of the same ability by the same character more than two times.

ChienAboyeur said:

No. Pathing is appropriate. That is a case of a desire for being second guessed.
People have grown too used to be served. The bit of news is that AI are very bad at second guessing human beings. Actually, this part is reversed: when human beings use AI, humans must second guess the AI.

An AI cant second guess if the player desires to bypass by the right or the left.

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From what I remember, pathfinding in Drakensang did a lot better than in Pillars or Tyranny. So I guess there is room for some improvement, even considering that Drakensang was Full3D.

Pathfinding is meh; it's not horrid and it's not the best I've seen in a point-and-click game like this.

Combats are fast, though - I don't get the "slow combat" comments at all. When I have the bard in my party I can almost never even store up enough "Breath" to do more than an Aria or two at most because the fights go down pretty quickly. There are so many options, you really just need to pay attention to the foe and the damage types. My longest fight I think was the one against ... well, I'll leave spoilers out.

OK, has anybody played for long enough to be able to tell me if you can play as anything else but evil?

zahratustra said:

OK, has anybody played for long enough to be able to tell me if you can play as anything else but evil?

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My take: once you are far enough into the game you'll start to wonder if those "good actions" you have been doing in other RPGs aren't actually evil.

zahratustra said:

OK, has anybody played for long enough to be able to tell me if you can play as anything else but evil?

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You don't have to be evil, you are part of an 'evil' empire, but you're just a judge, you decide situations however you want.

wolfing said:

You don't have to be evil, you are part of an 'evil' empire, but you're just a judge, you decide situations however you want.

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"Just" a judge?!

I can't believe you just said that!

azarhal said:

My take: once you are far enough into the game you'll start to wonder if those "good actions" you have been doing in other RPGs aren't actually evil.

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I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been wondering such things ever since I played Ultima IV. If this game can reach that level of ethical inquiry, I'd be very surprised indeed.

Sounds like it's trying to achieve some level of subversion of moral perspectives at least, which is interesting.

zahratustra said:

OK, has anybody played for long enough to be able to tell me if you can play as anything else but evil?

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There are 4 main paths in the game. One of those is supporting the rebels.

zahratustra said:

OK, has anybody played for long enough to be able to tell me if you can play as anything else but evil?

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Being evil in a virtual world and good in real life might be great fun. Even though, following the vid industry, being good in a virtual world and evil in real life might be more appreciated.

Pessimeister said:

I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been wondering such things ever since I played Ultima IV. If this game can reach that level of ethical inquiry, I'd be very surprised indeed.

Sounds like it's trying to achieve some level of subversion of moral perspectives at least, which is interesting.

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Shows players' expectations. Porting moral decisions from one virtual world to another world means nothing, different worlds, different moralities.
Or players expect a kind of universal morality code, one that could be a port from the real world.