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Of Orcs and Men

2012-10-11

Platforms: PS3, PC, X360Developer: Spiders, Cyanide StudioPublisher: Focus EntertainmentGame modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operativePlayer perspectives: Third person

Genres:

Role-playing (RPG)

Themes:

Action

Fantasy

Stealth

Of Orcs and Men first puts the player into the role of an elite Orc soldier, Arkail, from the legendary legion of Bloodjaws. The legion is a league of warriors deeply involved in the war between the Orcs and the Goblins on one side and their persecutors, Humankind, on the other. As a veteran warrior who has seen the most brutal of battles, the player is appointed by the Orc commander to complete a mission that could change the course of the war, to kill the Emperor himself, the man responsible for the bloodshed. A Goblin, Styx, soon joins the player, an unlikely but indispensable ally.

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JonasB7Reviewed a game12 months ago

Of Orcs and Men

4 hours

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

Very interesting first game before Styx: Master Of Shadows. Very strange combat mechanics.

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WenqueReviewed a game12 months ago

Of Orcs and Men

23 hours

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

Неплохая игра с интересным сюжетом и боевкой "на любителя".

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K0range4

Of Orcs and Men

1 year ago

Stop it he's already dead 😭

1 reaction

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K0range4Reviewed a game1 year ago

Of Orcs and Men

14 hours

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

Watch my full play-through here - https://www.twitch.tv/collections/WwaCXI9ppBed2g D+ | The fantasy action role-playing game “Of Orcs and Men” was quite the peculiar experience. It had all the hallmarks of a game I felt like I SHOULD enjoy, but it ended up falling flat in a lot of different areas. Like all the other games I’ve reviewed that fall into this category, everything I liked about the game came with some kind of drawback, and some of the core systems had major flaws. The most positive things I have to say about this game relate to the look and design of the main characters, their characterization, and the sound work overall. I think Arkhail and the rest of the orcs have a unique stylized appearance that really works, kind of like overly muscular comic book characters. It’s an interesting choice that not everyone will like, but it worked for me most of the time. It did cause a lot of noticeable clipping issues with gear, though. Styx has a very cool bestial look. With his large hooked nose and beady yellow eyes poking out from behind a dark hood he really looks like the quintessential goblin, and his visual cool-factor is multiplied by his great assassin abilities. The armor and weapons you pick up seem to always enhance your look, with gear functioning and appearing different while being no less pleasing to look at. I don’t think I saw an armor set I didn’t like from a design or look standpoint. Everyone has great animations as well, and I particularly liked the ways Styx would assassinate different sized targets. Arkhail also had really awesome berserking animations like breaking enemies over his knee or swinging wildly into the crowd. And my last positive note relates to the sound design. I found the voice acting to be pretty good in general (except for Arkhail’s roar, that was kind of weak in my opinion), and all of the game-play sounds like clanging metal and squelching flesh worked well. The music especially was enjoyable to listen to, punctuated the right moments, and did a lot of heavy lifting for the emotional weight of the game. Unfortunately, just about everything else in the game came with some drawbacks. Even my positive notes should come with asterisks. While I liked the look, design, and voice work on the main characters, the humans were pretty bad by and large. They looked bad, and sounded bad. The weakest voice performances came from several of the human characters, and their mushy bland faces didn’t help at all. I liked the idea of them essentially being the “monsters,” especially since we’re playing the actual monsters, but the execution left a lot to be desired. For the most part they were just one-note slavers, corrupt zealots, mustache-twirling rich villains, or renegades who didn’t like what the rest of their race was doing. But, their characterization shortcomings were an unfortunate symptom of the overall writing feeling very amateurish. The game went for this dark and gritty tone, but never really stuck the landing with it. The ideas around the orcs being enslaved on a mass scale, the eradication of clans and traditions and meaningful tribal customs were neat ideas that were unfortunately relegated to a more secondary focus. The less interesting betrayal plot was pushed to the forefront. Arkhail being on a suicide mission to free the orcs and becoming a legendary hero along the way was cool! But a lot of the dialogue and development of that was left to side characters and side conversations, whereas the one-note zealot villain with the burned face and the corrupt king get a whole bunch of undeserved screen time. Outside of the lame villains, Styx often had these “witty” one liners that were rarely funny. I liked Styx’s overall vibe with the constant cynicism, balancing looking out for himself while wanting to help Arkhail, and using comedy to mask his insecurities, but… His actual attempts at comedy were, at best, mediocre. More often than not they were just flat or obvious. My least favorite bit of video game writing ever, came from this game. At one point your main characters rescue a mage who was imprisoned in a torture chamber and has fallen comatose. They bring her to a monastery to try and cure her, because she is the only person who can guide them to the final stage of their quest (killing the king who is obscured on a secluded island). The head of the monastery suggests your characters rape her. You read that right. He literally says that our characters need to rape her. After a very awkward pause, he clarifies we simply need to “psychically” rape her. What he actually means is they’re going to cast a spell on us, and we’re going to go into her mind to try and confront her greatest fears to lead her out of her coma, and if we don’t succeed we’ll all die. SO JUST SAY THAT!? I was flabbergasted that this scene was in the game. I couldn’t tell if it was a translation issue due to the French development team, but even if that was the case then the localization/translation staff dropped the ball. I’ve played so many games and watched so many movies/shows where people go into each other’s minds or memories to confront their fears or learn plot-relevant information. It's not exactly a new thing. But this was absolutely the worst, cringe-worthy, cheapest form of shock-value dialogue. I’m no prude, and while sexual violence is often uncomfortable I can recognize its place in dark narratives. But the story needs to earn it, and this didn’t even come close. Not only was the phrasing flat out incorrect for the situation, but I’m convinced they only used that word because our characters were dealing with an unconscious woman, as if this was some poorly-aged 80s comedy or something. If the game didn’t have some of its other redeeming qualities (and even then, that is no excuse for this awful line of dialogue) that I mentioned earlier in this review, this was the kind of writing that would sink it into F-tier territory, it was that appalling. Finally, I have to say the core combat system was a swing and a miss. Arkhail and Styx both have a couple of unique builds, and a lot of different abilities. But the combat felt discordant. On the one hand it feels like it wants to be a more strategic RPG – You have light, medium, and heavy attacks along with all sorts of different modifiers and status effects that will be better against certain enemy types. Kind of like if the game wanted you to feint or parry and knock people off balance before committing to more damaging attacks. But these “strategies” don’t really come into play because the most effective way to handle combat is to use Styx to instantly kill as many people as you can, then critical strike everything with a few abilities while Arkhail taunts and defends. The other part of the game seems like it wants to be a kind of action RPG with visceral combat. Again, it feels OK to assassinate people as Styx because of the entertaining animations and moments of big damage, but I’d be lying if I said it was the most engaging thing I’ve ever played. You pause the game, queue up a few moves, then watch them play out. This kind of game-play style is present in a lot of games so I’m not saying it can’t work, it’s just that in Of Orcs and Men there aren’t really any variables or other things I can do to display skill or understanding of the game mechanics. Target priority, maybe, but it’s just not really engaging to play. The worst part of the combat were the unforgiving moments of difficulty. Being pretty comfortable with RPGs I decided to do my play-through on hard difficulty. Most of the time things were pretty easy, and very few fights require much deviation from your normal methods. But when difficult fights came along, I really didn’t have many options to adjust my play style. You can’t readjust talents or go level up elsewhere, nor can you buy new gear or modify anything with consumables like in a lot of other RPGs. The only thing you can do in the game is whatever fight you're in, and that’s it. These difficult moments were also often points of artificial difficulty where the game took away one character or the other, or left you without equipment for a story reason. It didn’t quite feel fair. To top it off, the increased difficulty is simply more health and damage, and enemies often have frustrating abilities like multi-shot stuns and constant staggers that you just have to… survive. No real strategy, just run in circles and revive your characters until you can kill the enemies. My least favorite enemies/fights were the Orc Berserkers that are a mid-game boss fight, then reused in the final battle. Their whole theme is to do tons of damage, and have zero defense. You know, like most rage-based fighters in lots of different games. Except, they easily have some of the highest health AND best defense in the game while constantly stunning your characters. Throughout the entire game you fight all sorts of human enemies that have varying levels of armor, some with full suits of plate mail and very high defensive stats. So when I saw the Orc Berserkers that had 0 defense but high damage stats I thought, “Well, OK, they’ll hit hard but I’ll hit them just as hard back.” Nope. It’s a slow game as you whittle through their humongous health pools while they resist a huge portion of your attacks. And to make matters worse, they are the final wave in the final battle, and if/when you fail to kill them you get to watch multiple unskippable cut-scenes and fight a few relatively easy but boring battles to get back to where you were. Ugh. To recap, the game had pretty good visuals, solid music, and a neat concept. But, the tedious core combat coupled with the bad writing gave way to a problematic loop where you spend most of the time running in straight lines, doing mind-numbing combat to advance the boring story. The only breaks you get are the neat animations and some decent music. I don’t think I’d recommend this game to anyone. Fortunately, the game is rather short and goes by quickly, and it has some sequels that are reportedly more focused. As always I really appreciate the streaming audience going through this experience with me, and Vofolok for requesting that I play it. Even though I didn’t particularly enjoy the game, I really had a good time streaming it and the chat certainly made the medicine easier to swallow.

2 reactions

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TheEmperorsEyebrowsReviewed a game1 year ago

Of Orcs and Men

3 hours

Soundtrack

Visuals

Gameplay

Story

A great soundtrack trapped in a bad game

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JoezombieReviewed a game2 years ago

Of Orcs and Men

the 1st game in the styx series but is really the last game brutally hard an half rpg 👺

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deathy91Reviewed a game2 years ago

Of Orcs and Men

16.4 hours normal ⚔️ - 35/45🏆 + Interesting story - Odd combat

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KemeKemoReviewed a game3 years ago

Of Orcs and Men

El sistema de combate podría pulirse un poco más pero la trama lo vale.

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