Making players the hero of a story is a usual setup for action-heavy games, but what if you don’t know which side is the good one? This is the dilemma that developers GoldKnights and publisher Prime Matter are putting players through as The Last Oricru awakes with no memories and only a static-filled message to work with. In the midst of hard times, big choices have to be made and it seems everybody wants to leave them up to you, so what will you do?

Story

After awakening with no memory of what happened before, or even so much as your own name, you find yourself standing before human-like creatures. In a rash tone, you’re briefly described of your circumstance and aggressively sent off to training. It isn’t long before you come to learn that these human-like creatures are known as Naboru and they are actively in a war with the Furkins, which they refer to them as Ratkins.

Thanks to the mysterious belt around your waste, every time you die you will be reborn. This makes you a prime warrior in this fight and thus you are given missions to carry out. Through these missions, you will have to decide which side you want to be on and earn a reputation amongst the two parties. You will also come across a few other actual humans that are similar to you, but each will have their own path and beliefs which will either bond or separate the group from each other.

From all the information you have gathered and heard the different messages from an AI that claims to be your spaceship speaking to you, you know one thing is for certain; you need to investigate the ‘Cradle’ and make the appropriate steps to do the right thing from there.

Gameplay

Just as you would expect from most action games, you are given a starting gear set but will find plenty more as you roam the map. This game uses a weight system, so while you can carry however much you want in your inventory, what you are wearing will be calculated and applied. The more weight you have on, the slower you go and the more stamina things like attacking will take.

Weapons have a primary and secondary attacks. Some of the secondary attacks are elemental damage buffs and simply require powering up the weapon to use, but other than that the secondary attack will be stronger and likely cost some mana to use. I like using one-hand weapons because I like to have a shield as well to block attacks, but you can also use energy to dodge out of the way if you prefer.

This game also uses the action-centric stat system to level up your character. As you kill enemies, you will gain essence and with enough essence, you can level up one of your many stats. You will need certain strength, dexterity, and intelligence levels to use certain gear, so place your points accordingly. The only other way to affect your stats is with rings, but instead of just having rings that give a bonus to a specific stat, all of their rings that affect stats will swap the points around. For instance, you can find a ring that will take two of your intelligence points and put one point into strength and one point into dexterity for as long as you are wearing that ring. Keep in mind that your character level is also based on your stat score.

To be able to level up your character, you will need to find a very sci-fi-looking sphere. Once you find it, which isn’t too hard since there is a blue shield around it that makes it easy to see, you can activate it. Upon the first activation, it will play the captain’s log that is attached to it and give you a cryptic message regarding the world and its recent events. After the lore bit, you will see some options to use. Leveling up will let you apply your essence to your stats, the upgrade will let you improve your weapons and gear as long as you have enough gold and material to do so (maxing out at tier 3 upgrades) while dismantle will let you break down items you have in your inventory into material, and then you can turn essence into gold if you want to do that. The option to upgrade and dismantle is available at most shops as well.

You can set this game to either Dark or Story Difficulty and this is changeable at any time. The Dark Difficulty actually isn’t incredibly harder than the Story Difficulty, so if you are good at timing your shield blocks and/or dodge rolls, you should be fine either way. There is also the option to play this game with co-op, be it split-screen or online with a friend, but it doesn’t have a way to search for random players to team up with.

Other than combat itself, you will spend a good chunk of time exploring the map. It isn’t an open-world type of game but rather just has very large sections of the game. There is no map to pull up so memory does play a role in your progress. To this, my suggestion is to save once you reach a new area or get to a point in your quest where you know exactly where to go. Otherwise, it might be a bit easy to get lost.

These times when you are exploring the map, you may be looking for a specific item or a specific location, but along the way, you will find a bunch of enemies. Of course, just as you have to decide which side of the war you are going to be on, there will be decisions to make in regard to a few other scenarios that you will come across. Always be ready to make a decision, one way or the other.

Audio and Visual

The aesthetic of the game is pretty interesting. I like how most of the game has the medieval fantasy aspect with different species fighting each other, classic steel-made weapons, archers, and mages all in action. Then it gets into a sci-fi style with the spaceship section of the game and the different things you do within and for this point of the game.

Unfortunately, I could have done better audio quality. The music in the game is pretty dull and the voice acting is just not that great. I like the effort they put in to make characters sound different to the point that they have different speech types, but I couldn’t take any part of the game seriously. I could tell they wanted to have some humor in the game, but it seemed like everything going on was constantly taken as a joke by the main character and even some of the NPCs.

Replayability

Since the game has quite a few choices to be made and you can literally choose a side in the war, there are sure to be differences in the events that lead players to the end of the game. For that reason alone and how effective these choices actually are, this game definitely holds some replayability.

What It Could Have Done Better

There were a number of bugs, or perhaps badly programmed, sections of this game. An easy example is something that really irritated me and that is the quest log. In the beginning of the game, everything was big and easy to read but as you complete more and more quests, the boxes end up getting smaller. It got to a point where I couldn’t actually read any of my quests anymore because the list was so big and I don’t understand why it wasn’t kept the same size at all times and the scroll option, which is programmed and in the game, isn’t utilized better.

Combat in the game felt a little too easy. While I appreciate games giving options to players, I don’t know why the Dark Difficulty wasn’t harder than it turned out to be. I tried the difference between the two difficulties and it seemed like your hits just didn’t do as much damage. It still did plenty of damage though but I just feel like there should have been more to increase the difficulty.

The animations could have used a little more work as well. Some of them just came off as silly or weren’t put at the proper speed so they were comically fast.

Verdict

The Last Oricru is an interesting game with a handful of flaws. While it is fun to play and even better with a friend, I just wish it could have taken some parts of itself more seriously. If you are going to aim for full comedy the whole game, then it should be purposely set that way, but if you are aiming for serious moments with comic relief, then there should be some heart in the proper moments. It definitely felt like this game needed some heart at a few moments as it wanted to be taken seriously. At least the action itself was pretty good and the enemies are pretty diverse in their fighting styles.

The Last Oricru is available now on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.