Polygon’s recent piece on Baldur’s Gate 3’s best evil playthrough replacement pushed a game plenty of CRPG readers had missed the first time: Obsidian’s 2016 CRPG Tyranny, where the evil empire already won and the player is one of its judges. The game sits at 82% on Metacritic and around 92% positive on Steam, but it never got the mainstream push its stablemates did. If Tyranny already lives in the Steam library and the credits are done, here are seven Tyranny alternatives on PC that keep that “morally black” CRPG lane running.
Quick comparison
| Game | Best for | Free plan | Starting price | Standout feature |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire | The direct Obsidian follow-up | Free demo | Around $30 | Same engine, more polish, huge companions |
| Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous | Sheer ambition and moral scale | No | Around $50 | Mythic Path system rewrites the whole campaign |
| Divinity: Original Sin 2 | Chaotic freedom in every fight | No | Around $45 | Elemental combat, four-player co-op |
| Disco Elysium | Words as combat | No | Around $40 | Every skill is a voice inside the detective’s head |
| Wasteland 3 | Post-apocalyptic squad tactics | No | Around $40 | Two-player online co-op with independent morality |
| Rogue Trader | 40K flavor, deep tactics | No | Around $50 | Space, ships, and heresies |
| Planescape: Torment EE | The all-time text-driven CRPG | No | Around $20 | Weird, philosophical, forever quotable |
What Tyranny does that few others do
Tyranny opens with the Conquest, a prologue that decides which parts of the world already burned before the player ever moves a character. The setup is unusual because the moral choices matter before combat starts, and every Fatebinder decision downstream compounds on a base state that isn’t neutral. Reddit’s r/CRPG regulars keep three specific things at the top of every “why do people love this?” thread: the anti-hero framing where playing evil is the default assumption, the party dynamics between characters who all outrank the player, and the writing that trusts the player to sit with morally black choices.
The picks below hit at least two of those.
The alternatives
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire, the direct follow-up
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire is the Obsidian CRPG closest in DNA to Tyranny. Same engine (Unity), same isometric infinity-engine reverence, same writing team pedigree, and a full turn-based option added post-launch for players who bounced off real-time-with-pause. The Deadfire Archipelago is a more open sandbox than Tyranny’s linear terrarium, and the companion writing is Obsidian at its most confident.
Where it falls short: Combat can drag on in real-time even after the turn-based patch. The empire-building metagame around ship travel is optional and easy to ignore.
Pricing:
- Free: A demo is available on Steam periodically
- Paid: Around $30 base, plus three DLCs
- vs Tyranny: Bigger, longer, more mechanically dense
Migrating from Tyranny: No save carryover, but the UI and hotkeys are familiar within an hour.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: The default recommendation. Play this next.
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous, ambition and moral scale
Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous is the CRPG that best matches Tyranny’s opening premise on a larger canvas. The Fifth Crusade against a demon-run wound in reality gives players a Mythic Path (Lich, Trickster, Devil, Aeon, Legend, Angel, Demon, Azata) that rewrites the campaign around that moral identity. The evil Mythic Paths are especially close to Tyranny’s Fatebinder framing.
Where it falls short: The Pathfinder ruleset is dense. Owlcat expects the player to enjoy character building for its own sake.
Pricing:
- Free: No
- Paid: Around $50 on Steam
- vs Tyranny: Much longer (100 hours easily), much crunchier
Migrating from Tyranny: No carryover. Menus are heavier.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: Buy this for a hundred hours of villainous fantasy with real moral weight.
Divinity: Original Sin 2, chaotic freedom in every fight
Divinity: Original Sin 2 is the CRPG most Baldur’s Gate 3 players finished before BG3. Larian’s design language rewards experimentation with the environment. Poison the water, ignite it, throw a barrel of oil. Rain becomes ice becomes shocked pool becomes stun. Tyranny fans coming for the “moral black” territory will find DOS2 more even-handed morally, but the freedom to solve any encounter three different ways is the closest match on this list for the freedom of Tyranny’s Conquest.
Where it falls short: Story ambiguity gets cleaner and more heroic in the back half. Tyranny stays gray until the end.
Pricing:
- Free: No
- Paid: Around $45 on Steam, Definitive Edition included
- vs Tyranny: More gamey, less bleak
Migrating from Tyranny: N/A.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: The best pick for a party that wants combat to be a playground.
Disco Elysium, words as combat
Disco Elysium is the CRPG that swaps swords and spells for internal voices. The detective’s skills are 24 named parts of his psyche that argue with him, contradict him, and shape every conversation. Nothing else on Steam feels like Tyranny in the “the choice you already made two hours ago has weight now” sense the way Disco Elysium does.
Where it falls short: No combat in the traditional sense. Players who want fights should look elsewhere.
Pricing:
- Free: No
- Paid: Around $40 on Steam, often 40% off
- vs Tyranny: Half the runtime, twice the writing
Migrating from Tyranny: N/A.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: The one CRPG on this list that will change how a Tyranny fan reads text in games.
Wasteland 3, post-apocalyptic squad tactics
Wasteland 3 is inXile’s post-apocalypse CRPG set in a frozen Colorado where the surviving factions are all somebody’s flavor of monstrous. Every faction ask puts the player in Fatebinder territory. Two-player online co-op lets partners run independent morality, which turns some decisions into real negotiations.
Where it falls short: The combat encounters are more grid-tactics than Tyranny’s real-time-with-pause. Some players find it slower.
Pricing:
- Free: No
- Paid: Around $40 on Steam
- vs Tyranny: More combat-forward, less writing-dense
Migrating from Tyranny: N/A.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: Best pick for a Tyranny fan who wants a co-op partner along for the ride.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, 40K flavor with deep tactics
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader is Owlcat’s other big CRPG. It swaps Pathfinder’s fantasy for the grim dark future, hands the player a warrant to run a whole trading empire, and lets them approach every colony as a benevolent patron or a heretical warlord. The 40K setting is bleaker than Tyranny’s, which is saying something.
Where it falls short: Ship-to-ship combat is a separate mini-game some players will love and some will skip. The launch was buggy, though most of the systemic issues have been patched.
Pricing:
- Free: No
- Paid: Around $50 on Steam, plus DLC
- vs Tyranny: Longer, more system-heavy, same appetite for moral compromise
Migrating from Tyranny: N/A.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: Best for a Tyranny fan who was ready to leave fantasy behind.
Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition, the all-time text CRPG
Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition is the game every Tyranny writer has cited as an influence. It’s older, uglier, and heavier on reading than combat, but the questions it asks (what can change the nature of a man?) show up in Tyranny’s DNA. Beamdog’s Enhanced Edition adds modern resolution support, controller support, and quality-of-life fixes without changing the writing.
Where it falls short: Combat is the worst part of the game. Everyone knows this. Save the fights for when they’re forced.
Pricing:
- Free: No
- Paid: Around $20 on Steam, often on deep sale
- vs Tyranny: Cheaper, wilder, and the writing hits differently
Migrating from Tyranny: N/A.
Download: Steam
Bottom line: Required reading if the pull of Tyranny was the words on the screen, not the swords.
How to choose
Pick Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire if the Obsidian house style did the work in Tyranny.
Pick Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous if the Conquest was the best part of Tyranny and the goal is a whole game of it.
Pick Disco Elysium if the words were the reason to keep clicking.
Pick Wasteland 3 if a friend is asking to co-op through the next CRPG.
Pick Rogue Trader if the fantasy setting had run its course.
Skip Fallout 2 unless a modern Steam patch is already in the mix. It’s a classic, but the UI friction alone loses casual Tyranny fans.
FAQ
Is Tyranny still worth playing in 2026?
Yes. Steam reviews stay around 92% positive. The Bastard’s Wound DLC extended one of the game’s weakest chapters, and the game is regularly 75% off, putting the whole package under $10.
Does Tyranny run on modern macOS?
The Steam page lists macOS, but Tyranny is a 32-bit build and does not launch on macOS 10.15 Catalina or later. Windows and Linux (via Proton) are the reliable paths in 2026.
Which CRPG is most like Tyranny?
Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire on engine and studio pedigree. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous on moral scale. Disco Elysium on writing weight.
Are any of these free to play?
None of these are free, but Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire and Planescape: Torment Enhanced Edition go under $10 in most Steam sales.
What about Baldur's Gate 3 as a Tyranny alternative?
BG3 is the elephant in the room. It’s an excellent CRPG, but the tonal fit for Tyranny fans is uneven. BG3 lets a player be evil, but the story is fundamentally hopeful. Tyranny’s whole premise is that hope already lost.
