YMMV / Tyranny

• Accidental Innuendo: Tunon's line where he swears fealty to the Fatebinder comes off more like he's propositioning them. Even his voice actor noted it.
  Ray Chase: (as Tunon) Master. If you'll join me upstairs, I will pledge fealty to you in the lawful manner. (regular voice) I do not wanna know what that is.
• Alternate Character Interpretation: Kyros, particularly in regards to the Fatebinder's rise to power. Kyros implicitly set up the Edict of Execution to dispatch of Graven Ashe and the Voices of Nerat, but there's lots of subtext indicating they were also fine with Vendrien Well being taken and a civil war breaking out, as their empire runs on conquest and would fall apart in peace. It's even hinted they may have quietly permitted the player to grow in strength and challenge them, again so as to be an opponent for the empire to fight. However, once the Fatebinder declares an Edict on their own (something that challenges Kyros's image), Kyros suddenly becomes serious about eliminating them: they explicitly break the Peace by declaring the Archons must fight until only one is left in charge of the Tiers, trying to have Bleden Mark assassinate them even if they are found innocent in Tunon's trial, and marching their troops to the Tiers when the Fatebinder takes charge. So, how involved was Kyros in the Fatebinder's ascension? Was it simply an unexpected outcome when the Fatebinder survived reading the Edict of Execution, or did Kyros actually set it up without expecting the Fatebinder to become a real threat?
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome:
  • Players want to have everyone in their party using magic; even the martial-inclined companions can cast simple spells, allowing them to gain Lore. With sufficient Lore, they then graduate to healing spells. Also, spell slots are plentiful (especially with Lantry in the party), and spells work on cooldowns rather than "per encounter" or "per rest". Combined with the praised magic-crafting system that allows you to make a wide variety of custom spells, and it's just more fun and better gameplay-wise to have as much magic as possible.
  • Related to this, Lantry often occupies a permanent slot in players' parties due to his passives granting more spell slots to everyone in the group and allowing you to decipher certain runes in the Oldwalls (that only he can decipher).
  • During the Conquest, players usually pick according to material benefits, particularly Loyalty or Fear for whatever faction they plan to join. For instance, Rebels will usually go to Apex and persuade the Queen to surrender for the massive brownie points it gives with the Vendrien Guard, players who plan for the Disfavored or Scarlet Chorus usually go to Lethian's Crossing to put it in the hands of their faction of choice, most people pass over Azure since it gives practically nothing compared to the rewards one can get from the Vellum Citadel and Stalwart, and so on.
  • The Hunter background is considered a must-have for Beastmen lovers, and useful in the Stone Sea, as it provides options for dealing with the Stonestalkers Beastmen, including becoming their Prima. Ironically, becoming Prima to the Stonestalkers is less rewarding, as being tasked by Hundred-Blood allows the Fatebinder to travel to a location where they can improve their affinity with earth spells.
  • For the Anarchist path, players often choose to side with the Chorus first, then head over to the Burning Library, as betraying the Chorus after unlocking the location where Sages are hiding (and not visiting the place until after the betrayal) is the only way for Anarchist Fatebinders to complete a side quest given by a Sage there.
  • For the Rebel path, players tend to avoid recruiting the Stonestalkers, as they would then be unable to lift the Edict of Stone, and thus left with only one possible Edict to cast at the end of Act II. If they do visit the Stone Sea, it's to recruit the Earthshakers, and they tend to make Isadora the leader by killing Caedis and Radix, and then kill Red-Fang. This allows the Earthshakers to thrive at the end and grants the useful Azure Shield.
  • At Bastard's Wound, players tend to give Jaspos's tools to Wagstaff. Doing so with Eb in the party allows Wagstaff to give Eb an item used to create an Artifact staff. In any case, the tools don't belong to Jaspos in the first place, as Cassandra confirmed to the Fatebinder.
• Complete Monster: The Voices of Nerat, or simply "Nerat", is the Archon of Secrets who commands the Scarlet Chorus, one of the main armies of Kyros the Overlord. Under Nerat's direction, the Chorus engages in a campaign of murder, torture, and rape. The Chorus's favorite method of recruitment is the Culling, where captive villagers are forced to fight their families to the death for the right to live and join the Chorus. Nerat uses the power to steal the minds of those he tortures to Mind Rape his victims, leaving them in a state of an eternal agony. If the Fatebinder chooses to work with Nerat, Nerat will order them to bring certain people to him and when the Fatebinder does so, he has them impaled on a spike, subjecting them to his mind rape. If the Fatebinder continues working with Nerat in the endgame, Nerat will reward the Fatebinder's loyalty by attempting to steal the Fatebinder's mind.
• Cult Classic: Already on its way to being this. The game performed rather quietly and dropped without much fanfare, but those who did play it tended to praise it immensely and the game has since received quite a lot of positive word-of-mouth, with many regarding it as an underrated gem.
• Enjoy the Story, Skip the Game: Combat in Tyranny is generally an uninteresting slog-fest against the same enemies (either humans or Bane) with huge stacks of HP. The only thing about gameplay that gets praise is the magic-crafting system, which is genuinely innovative, but it's widely agreed that real draw is the story. From its very reactive writing, to an interesting custom world, to the branching paths, to the nuanced ways to read the characters, the game has a lot of Replay Value and a lot of themes and symbolism to pick apart.
• Escapist Character: Whether you're happy serving the bad guys or looking to usurp them by turning all of Kyros' minions to your side let's face it: Being the Fatebinder feels damn good.
• Game-Breaker: Sirin, with the right upgrades, can solo entire sections of the game, not to mention turning the rest of the party into unstoppable murder gods. She's also an Archon, on par with Graven Ashe, Nerat, and Tunon. Of course she's a Game-Breaker. That's not even taking into account what she nearly did in the past.
• Game-Breaking Bug: Several bugs which prevent quest completion remain in the final version.
  • The biggest is interacting with the Oldwall murals in Bastard's Wound before receiving the quest to find and interpret them for Reef-Talon.
  • Eisly's quest in Bastard's Wounds can bug out if the Fatebinder tells her that Toven has been helping Jaspos kill Beastmen as a counter to her protests against allowing Insipid Moniker's blood farm to continue. Lying to or intimidating her completes the quest.
• Genius Bonus:
  • At one point, the player can find the Voices of Nerat crouched on the ground, fascinated by something there. When approached, he explains that he's carved out a scale map of a battlefield in the dirt and is now seeking the counsel of insects. This may seem like simple random insanity, and Nerat is quite insane, by his own admission. But he's actually on to something.
  • The Disfavored and Scarlet Chorus' contrasting philosophies bear an uncomfortable similarity to the controversial theories of sociologist Robert Putnam about the distribution of human empathy in racially diverse societies. The Disfavored are a relatively small community of elitist, even racist, snobs who disdain anyone not of Northern heritage, but by the same token they share a deep bond with each other that makes them an extremely coordinated and devoted fighting force protected by supernatural healing magic powered by their leader's concern for their well being. The Scarlet Chorus, on the other hand, are a strict meritocracy who see any kind of discrimination not related to ability as wasteful and self-limiting and are even willing to let their recruits maintain some of their native cultural practices if they don't get in the way of their mission. Of course, since their focus on fighting ability is the only thing that unites them they're a disorganized Army of Thieves and Whores whose entire "society" runs on Klingon Promotion and Social Darwinism. Their leader sees them as nothing but disposable Cannon Fodder and everybody hates him and only follows him out of sheer terror. In short, the only way humans can see each other as equal, especially those who are very different from themselves, is to believe they're all equally worthless.
• Iron Woobie: Eb. Hunted and despised even before the invasion of her home, lost her entire family and mystical order, and watches helplessly as a minion of Kyros (read, you) crush all that remains of the resistance, at which point she realizes that the only real option she has to protect the Tiers is to become a part of the same empire that oppresses her people and influence it from within. And yet, she never gives up trying.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: The main criticism the game tends to is that it's feels quite short; it can be completed within 8-13 hours, and the ending feels more like the end of Disc One than an actual conclusion. However, the game has considerable replay value due to Story Branching.
• Jerkass Woobie: Thanks to her bitchy facade the Crapsack World has left her with, first impressions are not Sirin's forte. Even when she cools down, she occasionally acts like the immature fifteen-year-old girl she is.
• Memetic Mutation: [Glare Silently] has become popular with fans, due to its frequency as an option and the amusing results it sometimes brings. In different contexts, it can serve as a fearsome Death Glare or simply make the Fatebinder a Silent Snarker to whatever idiocy surrounds them.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • One of the undercurrents in the game is being loyal to Kyros just screws you over and that they care nothing for loyalty. Graven Ashe and Nerat are sentenced to an Edict of Execution, despite decades of service, the moment Kyros deems it necessary. Barik's reward for service is to be trapped, symbolically and literally, in his own armor with his own excrement, and is then forbidden by Tunon from having it removed to protect the myth of Kyros's infallibility. Lantry's decades as a spy and insurgent for Kyros and Nerat end with him being discarded and tortured. In the third act, Kyros begins gathering their forces to eliminate you because you have grown too strong and are a threat to their regime, no matter how loyally you served them. The fandom still clamored for an ending that allowed you to remain loyal to Kyros despite the game spelling out that doing so is chaining yourself to a tyrant who doesn't care and will reward you with death.
  • A portion of the fanbase roots for Kyros's regime, believing it brings peace and equality. The game emphasizes that this is untrue—slavery is legal, there are no consequences for racism, people can be killed on flimsy legal excuses, and so on—and that furthermore Kyros's Peace is a lie used to control the masses. The last point is best shown when Kyros themself throws it aside in Act III to try and kill the Fatebinder when they become too big a threat to Kyros's power.
• Moral Event Horizon: In a game tailor-made to allow the player to commit atrocities, feeding one of your companions to the Voices of Nerat stands out as especially evil. Yes, you can do so with the intent of having them take over Nerat, but their dialogue treats it as a betrayal, and people are still whispering about how horrible it was of you to do in the epilogue.
• Narm: Otherwise dramatic dialogues are somewhat undermined by the tendency for NPCs to really overuse the Face Palm emote.
• Rooting for the Empire: Technically, the Player Character is working for The Empire, but there are some fans who are are of the opinion that it's bringing peace and equality to a world that's been tearing itself apart with constant war for centuries, despite the game stating otherwise. These fans were very unhappy with the initial inability to pledge loyalty to Kyros in the ending, so much that the devs later patched that in as an option.
• The Woobie: Sirin. Though an Archon, there's no doubt she's essentially a slave to Kyros and the other Archons. With the possible exception of the Fatebinder, everyone regards her as a threat, weapon or curiosity first, and a human being a distant second, if at all. Most of her endings range from the bittersweet to downright tragic as well — the game is not kind to her.