There's a lot to love in this game, in my opinion—more than I feel I can say in 3,000 characters.
Character creation includes a prologue in which you can make a variety of choices that can significantly impact your options and what different people think of you in the main game (said prologue can be skipped, though I've never done so). Player choice continues to be meaningful throughout the game, though I will grant that there are some times when I was denied a choice at times I wish I had a choice—or, failing that, the choice I wanted was not among the choices I was given. Such instances are few and far between, though.
I also consider the characters to be quite well-written, and I was capable of sympathizing to some extent with just about everyone despite evil being the norm in this setting—though I'll grant that most of them are people I would probably want nothing to do with in real life. They play a crucial role in what I find to be Tyranny's main appeal, though: a thorough look at just what evil is.
Not everyone has the same reasons for serving Kyros. When you're the good guy, it's common to disregard why any of the Mooks you kill are your enemies. Their reasons for serving, however sympathetic, don't excuse their actions, but ignoring such things also makes you ignorant of what might convince decent people to become your enemies. While Tyranny has no shortage of cruel sadists who gleefully serve Kyros because he/she gives them excuses to harm people, there are also plenty of otherwise decent people who serve Kyros out of self-preservation, a desire to protect people they care about, a belief that Kyros' rule is preferable to the alternatives, or any of a number of other sympathetic reasons. Even some—though not all—of the more sadistic characters could show signs of empathy or caring about other people from time to time. Bad people are still people; they're still capable of human emotions, including those we might otherwise see as limited to good people.
Far more interesting to me, though, was what reasons I ultimately gave myself for my character's actions. Yes, the game's programming forced my hand on multiple occasions, but when given a choice, why did I go with that particular choice? Even though I prefer to be good, circumstances often left me in situations in which no matter what I did, someone suffered. Ironically, the very fact that the game often made my choices so meaningful also helped me see just how powerless I really was. I could often do what I felt was the best thing to do out of all my options, but simply having those options in the first place hinged on things that my character had no realistic control over. I can always just stop playing if I can't bring myself to harm anyone in-game, but my character doesn't have that luxury. They have no choice but to make a choice and hopefully do what good they can with the options available to them.
A Thought-Provoking Examination of Evil
There's a lot to love in this game, in my opinion—more than I feel I can say in 3,000 characters.
Character creation includes a prologue in which you can make a variety of choices that can significantly impact your options and what different people think of you in the main game (said prologue can be skipped, though I've never done so). Player choice continues to be meaningful throughout the game, though I will grant that there are some times when I was denied a choice at times I wish I had a choice—or, failing that, the choice I wanted was not among the choices I was given. Such instances are few and far between, though.
I also consider the characters to be quite well-written, and I was capable of sympathizing to some extent with just about everyone despite evil being the norm in this setting—though I'll grant that most of them are people I would probably want nothing to do with in real life. They play a crucial role in what I find to be Tyranny's main appeal, though: a thorough look at just what evil is.
Not everyone has the same reasons for serving Kyros. When you're the good guy, it's common to disregard why any of the Mooks you kill are your enemies. Their reasons for serving, however sympathetic, don't excuse their actions, but ignoring such things also makes you ignorant of what might convince decent people to become your enemies. While Tyranny has no shortage of cruel sadists who gleefully serve Kyros because he/she gives them excuses to harm people, there are also plenty of otherwise decent people who serve Kyros out of self-preservation, a desire to protect people they care about, a belief that Kyros' rule is preferable to the alternatives, or any of a number of other sympathetic reasons. Even some—though not all—of the more sadistic characters could show signs of empathy or caring about other people from time to time. Bad people are still people; they're still capable of human emotions, including those we might otherwise see as limited to good people.
Far more interesting to me, though, was what reasons I ultimately gave myself for my character's actions. Yes, the game's programming forced my hand on multiple occasions, but when given a choice, why did I go with that particular choice? Even though I prefer to be good, circumstances often left me in situations in which no matter what I did, someone suffered. Ironically, the very fact that the game often made my choices so meaningful also helped me see just how powerless I really was. I could often do what I felt was the best thing to do out of all my options, but simply having those options in the first place hinged on things that my character had no realistic control over. I can always just stop playing if I can't bring myself to harm anyone in-game, but my character doesn't have that luxury. They have no choice but to make a choice and hopefully do what good they can with the options available to them.