[Review] Of Orcs and Men

Genre: Action/RPG

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

The storyline is great. It’s about an Orc named Arkail (pronounced “Arkai”) who is sent to kill the Emperor of the Humans. Other races are in the game such as Goblins, Elves, and Dwarves. The Human Emperor (Either I don’t know his name or I’ve forgotten it), wants to make a treaty with the Elves and Dwarves to wipe the greenskins off the face of the Earth for good. However obviously the Orcs don’t like this, so they send a small reconnaissance band of Orcs to eliminate the Emperor before he can make his agreements with the other races. Unfortunately Arkail ends up being the last of his trio of buddies from the Bloodjaw clan, (all of whom have a tattoo of a pair of black jaws located on their right pectoral (or breast whatever you wanna call it, you know the area), and that’s how people identify him as a Bloodjaw during some parts of the game) including him (who were each sent separate ways in the beginning) with a guide from the Resistance. Arkail’s guide is a Goblin named Styx. As you learn later one of your other brethren has a brunette chick/spy/Rogue person as a guide too, but they get into some trouble and he’s pretty much dead, but you save the chick. [It's a sidequest]. Also in this world, Mages are little known besides the High Mages (who are constantly being branded heretics) and most people don’t practice any magic.

Characters:

Styx is a great complement to Arkail. Styx is sly, cunning, and more importantly, witty. Very witty indeed. So much so that his tongue usually gets them into some trouble. But Arkail is not without his faults, as he also gets the duo into trouble also, a lot more than Styx does in my opinion, but maybe it’s just me. You run into multiple characters who play an integral part in the storyline, starting from your own clan chieftain to the resistance leaders inside the city, in the Mire where all the captured Orcs work.

However as I was saying, Styx and Arkail make a great team in both storytelling and combat. Styx is a, what everyone would know as a Rogue in most games. Dagger wielding, poison using, stealthy Rogue. Arkail on the other hand is the most fearsome Orc Warrior ever. He has a nickname that is known throughout the land as ‘The Butcher’, due to some past slaughtering he did during a fight. You learn a lot about both Styx and Arkail by just playing the game. There is no ‘introduction’ to the characters, besides the fact that Arkail has a rage problem and that Styx may or may not ever betray you due to his money grubbing nature, but it’s all laid out during the course of the game, not before. Which is definitely what great storytelling is supposed to do.

The Dialogue:

There is so much swearing in this game it’s ridiculous. I think they probably could have come up with some better words for swears. It’s an entirely new realm, new lands, different people. For example ‘Kwharsan’ I believe it was, means Human in the Orc language (or from what I’ve gathered anyway) and I believe it was a ‘Rakkat’ that Arkail calls Styx, which is a word for Goblin. So why not new swears? Though in all honesty, they don’t go COMPLETELY overboard with them, and they are placed in the correct situations, so it’s forgiven. And as I was saying in the Characters section, Arkail and Styx’s dialogue complement each other so well, it’s amazing.

Gameplay Mechanics:

Oh boy, the nitty gritty! Not really. The first I’d like to talk about is Styx’s Stealth skill. Well, before that, I should talk about NPC battles first. Battling NPCs is almost like a chess game in Of Orcs and Men, except that you can pretty much breeze through anything given that Arkail gets enough rage to go Berserk and pummel everything into oblivion. However his defense drops by 100% during that time, so he is more likely to die unless he has a lot of HP, which has happened to me and saved Styx’s ass more than once.

Anyway, about battles being somewhat like chess, it’s the fact that you have to identify who’s using a shield and who’s using a spear. It’s pretty much like that throughout the whole game, unfortunately. Yes there are boss battles, but for the most part you just ‘sic Styx on the spear wielders because they can’t block Styx’s quick jabs, and you put Arkail on the shield wielding guys because he can break their defense. That’s pretty much half the fight won right there. The other half is keeping Styx alive/keeping Arkail alive. They both don’t have a lot of HP, so Arkail can’t tank 10 enemies at once without dying, and Styx most definitely can’t take 3 enemies at once, unless you get his dodge rating very high with gear, then he can take all sorts while Arkail sorts them out.

Combat is… well, it gets fairly easy. I played on Medium for most of the game up until the Shaman fight (Sidequest again) and now I’m playing on Easy just to get through the storytelling, because the story is MUCH more interesting than the fighting, and I’ll tell you why.
When you get to upgrade certain skills such as Heavy Blow and Arkail’s Charge skill (I’ve forgotten what it’s called), where Heavy Blow does 150% damage and with an upgrade, cannot be interrupted, and the Charge skill can stun with an upgrade and has 200% damage, you’re gonna be one-shotting a LOT of things, if not 3 shotting. The most trouble I’ve had with the game so far is if I have to fight multiple Orcs, and the Shaman fight. And I’ll get back to what I was talking about with Styx’s Stealth skill here. The NPCs in the game have a VERY, VERY narrow and small cone of vision. You can walk almost perfectly around them and they will not see you. However of course if you attack one and it’s in a group, obviously it will alert the others. But anyway, this means using Styx’s Stealth is a BREEZE. Also, corpses do not alert the NPC’s in any way whatsoever so you can kill who you like and you don’t have to worry about it. I think this would have made for a slightly more challenging game, but you do still have to worry about patrols… MAYBE 25% of the time? Usually Styx and Arkail can handle anything, but with Stealth, especially with NPCs that can alert a group of other NPCs to their presence, it’s almost like a puzzle game to me. You have to figure out which one is the closest to the other group, and assassinate them. Chances are you’ll avoid a multi-group fight and not die, compared to dying. There’s probably a lot of other stuff I could go into, but this is the stuff that I have written down and sticks out in my mind right now.

The sidequests are quirky and fun, in my opinion, and very cool. I very much like how they designed the sidequests because they’re OPTIONAL. But if you do them, obviously you find loot and possibly get loot at the end for Styx or for Arkail. Plus they have a lot of witty banter between the two characters, so I haven’t missed one yet!

The models for the NPCs when they are being assassinated by Styx could be better. There are some guards that are sleeping and then they’re assassinated they just stand up and then Styx stabs them and they die. (It’s a lot more dramatic than that, but you get the message). The visuals are fantastic though, absolutely amazing. That is my one irk with Styx there is that though. But the armor detail is amazing, the skin detail, the mountains, the sky, the animals, including the dogs you fight, (also an interesting thing with the dogs was that they can smell Styx if he’s in Stealth and bring him out of it, thus ‘detecting’ him) The forests you’re in in the beginning of the game, everything looks fantastic and beautiful.

The following AI is a little weird. You press the Tab key to flip back and forth between Styx and Arkail (And Space is to pause a fight to issue orders to Styx/Arkail, it’s kind of like Dragon Age), but when you’re running with Styx OR Arkail, one of them lags behind and you have to Tab it and run the other one forward. I understand with Styx’s Stealth mode because Arkail can’t really just follow him while he’s sneaking around, but otherwise it’s slightly annoying leapfrogging between the two. Could be fixed but probably won’t be.

Also, I should mention they did a great job with Styx entering Stealth. It’s so fluid it doesn’t interrupt my gameplay at all.

Sound:

The music… could have been better? Especially for an AAA developer, but it does fit the game so I have no qualms with it. But I wouldn’t buy a soundtrack, or waste money on one for that matter. And speaking of sound, Arkail’s roars could have been much better. It just sounds so… fake. I get the meaning, but it could have been better, I’m sure.

Various Mechanics:

Targeting NPCs when you’re fighting is a little tricky sometimes. Sometimes I feel like I’m trying to target a square that’s a few pixels wide on the screen, and other times I can’t click the NPC that I want Styx/Arkail to fight because every enemy is in the way and I have to move the camera. Again, not the biggest deal but could be improved on.

Checkpoints are awesome. I save my game manually after large fights, just in case, but I also end up hitting a checkpoint anyway, so it ends up not mattering in the end. They did a superb job with this and the fact that you can save almost ANYWHERE at any point in the game. Its been awhile since I’ve seen a game that had that… it’s all wide, spaced out checkpoints now as far as I can tell.

The gear in the game seems very uniquely designed. I love the looks of Arkail’s weapons, and Styx’s are great too, even if they are just daggers. Also the armor is definitely great to look at and to run around in. Every time I open the character screens I end up admiring their armor for a few moments before I get down to business upgrading their points and continuing in the game. Great job guys.

Arkail’s Rage finisher he pulls sometimes on some NPCs is great, but there could have been some diversity there since you can’t control him in his rage state. Just saying. But the first time I saw it I was like ‘Daaayum. That guy got owned.’ And now I see it and it’s still amazing because he pulls it so infrequently. Maybe that’s why they didn’t use another couple finishers?

And last but not least, Achievements need to look more official on Steam. Uppercase letters, people!

It’s a solid 9.5/10. Minor graphical glitches and misspellings mostly.

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