This action role-playing game is a technical disaster with some bizarre design decisions, even if there is a lot of love in it.
I never like to beat around the bush: The Last Oricru is the worst game I”ve reviewed so far this year. The tech, the performance, the combat system, some story twists and very questionable design decisions, the list goes on and on. The game comes from a 40 developer strong studio in the Czech Republic. I played through it completely, biting the edge of my desk several times in frustration and despair.
As ugly, jerky, unclean and simply stupid as it is in many places, The Last Oricru is not complete junk. Behind all the many quirks and the sometimes very annoying design lies an interestingly told story with a few cool twists and turns and a game world that changes significantly as a result of your decisions, albeit often unintentionally and much more dramatically than you would hope. Despite all the problems, I felt the love here from a development studio that was noticeably overwhelmed with this project.
immortal hero with no memory
You start the game as part of a tiny group of humans who have been awakened from cryogenic sleep and are now being trained in hand-to-hand combat in a temple by flat-nosed figures in medieval armour, the Naboru. They regularly fight to the death, because you and your cryo-buddies have special belts that bring you back to life after exitus.
As it turns out a short time later, the Naboru are at war with several other aliens and factions and can make good use of well-trained, immortal fighters. Why they don”t just take your belts and put them on their most powerful warriors, however, is not explained.
Even in these first minutes of the game, various bad problems become apparent: Silver, your fixed protagonist, has a shrill, annoying voice and is so forcedly sarcastic and artificially funny that he is unbearable from the first moment. A person with no memory who is forced to fight to the death again and again. How does he react to this? “Holy shit, what a clusterfuck!”
In any case, the seriousness of his desperate situation doesn”t come across that way. There are also a few odd pop culture references and memes (Red Pill, Blue Pill). Such and similar sayings rain down in a qualitatively unsteady English voice-over with German subtitles, if you want them. But then be prepared for a few translation errors, missing descriptive texts and similar quirks. Above all, the story presentation suffers from its main character and the mood oscillates between depressingly gloomy and forcedly comical.
Didn”t anyone notice that?
If you play with the keyboard, you cannot change the key assignment. The controls are more comfortable with the gamepad anyway, but sprinting is only done with the analogue stick permanently pressed down, there is no toggle. When sprinting, the camera sways like in a heavy earthquake, which quickly causes seasickness thanks to the forced 3rd-person perspective.
The combat system is lousy: hits have no impact whatsoever, the animations are weak, the user interface, especially in boss fights, is embarrassingly ugly and the lock-on camera preferred to keep an eye on my enemies” feet during my playthrough. Enemies sometimes wield their melee weapons when they”re still three kilometres away from you, the AI is spectacularly dumb.
These are only the crudest and most obvious problems. Besides, the text in your quest log shrinks to an unreadable size if you collect too many missions, sometimes the dialogue camera gets stuck in some walls or heads, here and there NPCs float a bit above the ground, some cutscenes have sudden jumps and make no sense at all … the game could have used a few more months of development time.
But well, my job is to get through it anyway, so I struggle through my training and eventually ally myself with the downtrodden rat-people who are abused everywhere as cleaners, unwilling arena victims and sandbags. If only because I”m not at all keen on being bossed around by the Naboru.
Much grey area
My alliance with the rats is not compulsory. You can also fight for the Naboru or ally with a third, less obvious faction. In principle, this is exciting and, at least in part, very interestingly implemented: both the medieval-inspired Naboru with their fortresses, swords and knightly armour and the wild rats, who are more than a little reminiscent of the Skaven from Warhammer, have bloodthirsty warmongers and pacifists.
On both sides you can fight for the extermination of your enemies or try to find a peaceful solution. All have their ugly sides, none is clearly good or evil. In principle, I liked that very much. Unfortunately, this clashes with the strange Soulslike gameplay.
Yes – very high difficulty, loss of all “souls” on death (here: essence), level-ups only at rare terminals and above all no free saving. Every decision is therefore automatically set in stone. For example, when I accidentally enter a new area before completing an optional side mission and trigger a cutscene that irrevocably dooms an entire faction.
Or when my character decides to marry a main character in a dialogue without multiple choice dialogue or any way for me to stop it yet. Load save game and undo is not an option. I am forced to resign myself to a rather not-so-happy ending and a confusing marriage due to several mishaps and am allowed to start all over again if I want to correct my mistakes. Well, one run-through only takes about 15 hours. Not even because there”s so much in it.
Null comfort
The game areas in The Last Oricru are often huge, maze-like and very confusing. To compensate, there is no map or any quest markers. Hopefully you have a good sense of direction, otherwise you”ll often be traipsing around aimlessly for ages. Many enemies have ranged weapons, you can only attack by melee or a handful of weapon-bound spells. There is no re-specialisation of your attributes, instead there are rings that, for example, convert intelligence into strength or strength into dexterity.
When I try to increase my life or carrying capacity, a warning pops up in the game explaining that I”d better increase Strength, Dexterity or Intelligence. Every single time, for the entire playthrough. You then always have to click it away with “I know what I”m doing.
Some bosses will knock you out with one or two hits regardless of your stats and equipment. At least there is an optional story difficulty here. The one or other boss still has instakill attacks, others suddenly don”t react at all and remain standing until you kill them. There is no medium difficulty level, so you can choose between too hard and too easy.
Some enemy types simply never let you get up again after a hit, you remain stuck in some interactive object until you die or restart, or you lose all your stamina at once due to an enemy blow and then stagger forward in slow motion, always towards the enemy. It”s very frustrating.
Bad, but not a complete failure
Are you seriously surprised now when I report that there are severe jerks and hangs in places, even though the game”s graphics often look at least ten years out of date? That certain monsters look like the poorly costumed actors of a low-budget horror film from the 70s?
To be fair, there are also some visually beautiful areas in The Last Oricru and the story, despite some unpredictable, unwanted, often annoying and set-in-stone disasters, is genuinely interesting. I had unironic fun learning who Silver really is and what his mission is.
It was also cool to see how my decisions turned former enemies into allies and former friends into bosses. Despite all the problems, I had fun moments in places, a few cool surprises and a bit more depth in the plot than I would have expected from this game.
There are isolated situations where it shines through what the developers wanted to achieve with this game, where they show a spark of talent, good storytelling, partly clever world design with hidden shortcuts and a basically interesting mix of fantasy and science fiction.
But the weak technology drags it down, the forced Souls gameplay fails in balancing and the lousy combat system and at worst provides unwanted story progressions that you can never undo. In theory, the game even has splitscreen co-op and co-operative online multiplayer, but I didn”t invite my girlfriend to play because I love her.
Editorial conclusion
I”d love to know how The Last Oricru would have turned out with a bigger budget and more development time. Because the story may not be terribly original, but at least it”s interesting, has some great twists and exciting characters and moments. The rats are mercilessly oppressed, quite rightly have a hatred for their oppressors, but some of them are just plain disgusting, ugly or quite simply bloodthirsty warmongers. The medieval Naboru, meanwhile, treat the rats like dirt, but even here there are characters who yearn for peace. And then there is a certain third faction….
But what good is it when the fighting is disastrously bad, the camera and controls are lousy, the Souls elements only lead to more frustration and the forced autosave system makes a bad decision a mass destruction or forced marriage at worst? How do you get away with just having the main character say over the player, “Hey, let”s get married!” complete with ugly video game sex and an ending of “and if they didn”t die…”? Theoretically, you can play through it several times to wipe out each faction or make peace, but one playthrough was torture enough for me. The idea behind the game is not bad, but the implementation is sadly lacking.
