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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