Last Oricru, co-op Souls

[Paul_cz]

I hate that this shite looking shite is on the same publishing brand as Kingdom Come.

For the design and chosen voice of the lead protag alone I'd fire this company.

Also, fuck dark souls already

Did they cut out local Coop?

No there is still both local and online co-op.

But from what I read only the host progresses the story, the guest is there to just play non-commitally.

 

[cyborgboy95]

https://wccftech.com/the-last-oricru-preview-gothic-soulslike/​

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The Last Oricru Hands-on Preview – A Gothic Soulslike​

Chris Wray



A little over one year ago, we saw the announcement of The Last Oricru alongside Koch Media's (now Plaion) new label, Prime Matter. Developed by Czech-based developer GoldKnights, we also found out at the beginning of Gamescom that Plaion and GoldKnights will release the game on the 13th of October. My interest was piqued back then, being a fan of traditional "eurojank" games. Once allowed to get hands-on at Gamescom, I jumped at the chance, and here are my impressions.

https://wccftech.com/dead-island-2-hands-on-preview-hell/

Plaion and GoldKnights set up my time with The Last Oricru to highlight one of the few features you haven't often seen recently: co-op. Not online co-op, though that is an option; it's couch co-op in this case. My time with the game had me playing alongside one of the developers on a couch. However, I was quick to ask - and be reassured - that this would also be perfectly fine to play single-player - a good answer for somebody that doesn't like to associate with human beings. One nice little feature is that the co-op is hop-in and drop-out, not requiring long loading or separate modes.

One of the core elements of the game is a branching narrative, where your actions will have some consequences. The part I can talk about is where you'll be in the middle of an attack on a city. What side you're on will depend on the actions and choices you've made in the past. Are you on the side of the rat-people, attacking the city, or the strange elven-alien-human things defending? If the latter, when you beat the lead rat in combat, will you choose to spare its life or not? The developer told me the consequences of this latter decision and how it will impact the game later, but I won't spoil it here.

What you need to know is that it does. I'm not going to say that it has a branching narrative in the same sense as a Dark Pictures game. It doesn't. The Last Oricru is longer, predicted to be between 15 to 20 hours for a playthrough, and the dev told me that to get the three core stories, you could do three playthroughs. There are ways to move between them throughout the game, but if you think of them as three separate ones, it's easier. One important thing to note is that your co-op partner does not get to make decisions on your behalf, so you needn't worry about that.

Expect The Last Oricru to be a relatively narrative-heavy title. The developer told me that over 180,000 words make up the dialogue, with inspiration taken from titles like The Witcher, games developed by Spiders, and more. Though, granted, there is a more comical and less oppressive tone taken with some of the dialogue I've seen. It sat well enough with me, too many games are dour lately, and it didn't seem to go too far.

But what about combat? As mentioned, The Last Oricru is very soulslike but arguably more forgiving. From my hands-on experience, it's not easy - though there are settings to choose from, letting you make it easier and more accessible. You can also make it more challenging if you're masochistic. It's not wholly soulslike, though; it has some RPG sensibilities. You can jump, move a bit faster, and have a little more freedom. Don't get complacent, though. You will die.

What is interesting about combat is how co-op has been well and truly pushed forward. There are two mechanics you will not find playing alone. The first of these mechanics is the ability to lock onto your co-op partner and then fire a spell - if you're a spellcaster - which will then deflect off them and hit the enemy they are targeting, doing more damage than it would typically do. The second is creating an energy link between the two of you, damaging any enemy it crosses, letting you run around and do a severe amount of damage to enemies you place between you.

Combined with the general difficulty, these mechanics will undoubtedly make playing with another person valuable - though again, GoldKnights and Plaion stressed that the game is more than capable of being played solo. Another aspect I should mention is that you need to be tactical with your use of magical abilities. From what I could tell, there are no mana potions. You can regain mana through a melee tool that harvests mana from your enemy, but you are vulnerable when using it. Make sure you're good at evasion.

My takeaway from The Last Oricru is one of interest. I'm glad to see a game that isn't in an open world, but even then, the areas look large enough and offer some exploration. More interesting are the narrative options provided to the player and how all of these will play out. It feels like a AA "eurojank" game, which often adds to the charm. Thirteenth of October, we don't have long to wait, with GoldKnights now polishing what is already there. As I expected I would, I want to play it.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Inhabitants of Wardenia
Wardenia is a planet where humans are aliens. So who are the natives? Let's look at that in this next installment of our Dev Diary miniseries. This time with our lead writer Mikuláš Brian and our Art Director Lukáš Medek.

 

[Nikanuur]

Inhabitants of Wardenia
Wardenia is a planet where humans are aliens. So who are the natives? Let's look at that in this next installment of our Dev Diary miniseries. This time with our lead writer Mikuláš Brian and our Art Director Lukáš Medek.

Composing a world so that its elements are authentically intertwined. This is the way. A piece of art, really.

 

[cyborgboy95]

Weapons, equipment and builds
How do you use equipment to your advantage and not just for fashion?

So here we are. On the eve of the release of The Last Oricru we bring you this final dev diary, which will be super useful tomorrow. It's all about the game's weapons, magic and builds. How does it all work? How do you use equipment to your advantage and not just for fashion? Game director and lead designer Pavel reveals all this and more

 

[Nikanuur]

Weapons, equipment and builds
How do you use equipment to your advantage and not just for fashion?

So here we are. On the eve of the release...

 

[Cryomancer]

How is magic in this game?

 

[Paul_cz]

I feel so bad for the devs, so many years making it and I am pretty sure it will bomb completely. Hope I am wrong.

 

[Abu Antar]

The demo didn't impress me, and I was trying to be open minded about this one.

 

[Darkwind]

This looks like it could have some comfy Euro-jank to it like Gothic / ELEX though. I'm on the fence but it definitely has a weird ELEX vibe even if they bafflingly decided to jump on the Flavor of the Month bandwagon with "Souls-like combat" which I really wish would just die already. It reminds me of how everything was a Battle Royale game for a while, like, let it die already FFS.

EDIT: They (the Developers) seem to be huffing their own farts regarding pricing by not doing regional pricing so Europoors, Vatniks, and broke SE Asians are howling on the forum that the game is like 500-700% the price of AAA games in their region, can't really blame 'em for that.

 

[Darkwind]

ACG Review in Progress



If you can deal with ACG's ridiculous ADHD rapid fire style this is actually a very accurate summary of the game and echoes my own hot takes as well so rather than write it out here I'll give him 8 minutes to explain it. I was pretty on target about the ELEX vibe especially including 3 factions, you being an 'outsider' to all 3, having to manage reputation with them, etc. The game is very dialog heavy, not all of it good all the time but for that reason alone its better than the hack & slash fest that is Dark Souls. Lots of exposition and those Captain's Logs when you touch a "bonfire" are hugely important at filling out the backstory.

 

[GentlemanCthulhu]

Game looks mediocre at best. No regional pricing means i'll throw it in the bottomless "to pirate later" pit.

 

[toro]

Is this good jank or bad jank?

 

[Nikanuur]

Is this good jank or bad jank?

Neither. It's a Wizard Ninja Battle Red Panda.

Str 6
Con 12
Dex 17
Int 14
Wis 8
Char 15 (jinxed)

And it shoots 0,031115422 kW lasers, 3,141596 Mhz HPM MASERs and sometimes it's all quasar (very roughly calculated),
From its eyes.
After tossing a +3 Red Herring Spear.
Mynd you.

 

[flushfire]

Can you change the main character's hair style at least? Because it looks extremely gay.

 

[Darkwind]

Can you change the main character's hair style at least? Because it looks extremely gay.

Barely. Bald or that hipster half shaved side-cut. Bald with a beard is somewhat Viking-esque so I settled on that.

 

[Nikanuur]

Does anyone play? Do you also have the bug of the camera accelerating suddenly when you play on the controller?

 

[Nikanuur]

I've seen that one thing, grrrr. I mean, slow telegraphing at first, then a lightning-fast attack is perfectly ok. It comes naturally with larger weapons or to divert attention. But the delayed attacks, as in very fast telegraphing, nothing for a second, and then a very fast attack, is horrible. I'm not sure about others, but I believe this adds no new dimension to combat; rather, it destroys immersion and artificially forces the player to accept an inevitability (which is already prevalent, since we're playing "souls-like"...).
Darksiders III, for example, went over the top with this. In Oricru, fortunately, I've encountered only one creature doing such attacks after several hours of gameplay. I only hope that this will not become more frequent.

But all in all, the combat seems fine to me. A mix of fun, exploitation, underestimating, and digesting the frustration. As it's supposed to be.

 

[fork]

The lost art of art and level design exhibit no. 6729482269057
Zero atmosphere anywhere from what I can tell.

 

[Nikanuur]

The lost art of art and level design exhibit no. 6729482269057
Zero atmosphere anywhere from what I can tell.

It makes me sad to read such opinion, because I find it rather on the contrary. But well, what can I do.

 

[fork]

The UI design is the easiest example.
And I see that problem everywhere. No idea of colours, no verticality (no, a flight of stairs is no verticality), generic looking everything (armours, monsters, haircuts). Sorry, don't feel like this is worth another look or word.
Glad you enjoy it though.

 

[Darboven]

Well, the 2nd level (the castle) wasnt too bad, the rest was shit and/or seemed unfinished. Regarding the UI: the game would try to always display the entire questlog on one page until the font became so small i couldnt make out anything. Also, the installdir is named "lastoricu", not -cru

 

[Nikanuur]

You both said yours, I will say mine because it would seem to me, we are talking about a different game at times. I suppose other people will get what they need better, if more perspective is provided.

1. Traversing the world: Archers can shoot at the player from ramparts, the player can surprise someone by jumping on them from above with a strong overhead chop, walking to places means going up or down the structures or their parts, there are stairs to locations the player can also reach by traversing, or going the other way around the dungeon, and exploration elements such as dropping down at a "puzzle spot" to get to a path leading into a hidden room, or climbing something up to uncover a path to a secret, otherwise non-visible place.

2. Level design: This game doesn't advertise itself as an open world, and it is unfortunately not very heavy on the exploration, yet going to places isn't tunneled at all, and interesting stuff beyond the combat happens. Riding a cart in mines in various directions using the railway switch, sewer hub with several main branches, generally one place is accessible through two or three ways, 1-3 hidden places per the zone, an occasional puzzle here and there with a very good reward, optional sub-sub-quests one can miss, thus missing a unique reward, "how can I get there?" type of puzzles to pick up treasures.

3.Colors and atmosphere: While it's true the palette is somewhat bleak, surprising only here and there, the vibes are solid. A thick, medieval fantasy with believable scenes. Buildings, I must say, have this proper, functional, and atmospheric design. I wouldn't be surprised if Gold Knights hired a professional architect who is familiar with medieval architecture for this. A time to time, game presents one or two really breath-taking vista.

Clothing, gear, and armor seem rather sane and temperate, yet various in the very least. Hulking rat humanoids dressed in rags, sparse beastly armors, or fire-mage robes; tall, flat-nosed indigenous "people" with gold inlaid armor; rebels dressed in monk robes; or human medieval-fantasy armor sets mostly copying the body features; and weapons that look mostly semi-real (with some exceptions always present, such as a burning log being the strongest two-handed weapon for a time; a wildly dented Ratkin axe, or a halberd in the shape of a crooked sheet of metal). You can decide whether you like all of this or not, but I would argue that there should be more of this than the modern Asian-inspired wild shapes and color extravaganzas prevalent in the gaming nowadays.

 

[Fedora Master]

Janksouls Game #582227
How exciting

 

[Jürgen]

Not that anybody cares but I wanted to post my experience with The Last Oricru (on Xbox). I think it's a decent idea of a first post to make on the Codex.

Finished the whole thing a few days ago in online co-op with a buddy living 8000 km away from where I am. I connected to his game and it was nigh on unplayable. The lag comes in the form of when enemies get hit, not when your character reacts to your button presses. This felt like the enemies and world were 8000 km away while my character was local. Elevators were also annoying to use as my friend had to control them, otherwise the game and character would go spastic with sometimes ending in me falling off the thing and getting damage or just dying. We've played other games like Resident Evil 5 in coop without issues so the distance mostly is not a massive problem. However, if anyone comes to the great idea of this possibly being a fun online janky coop game, a word of warning here.

To pile on the negatives, the combat animations are all over the place which may make reacting, dodging and other such soulslike crap painful and relatively not enjoyable. Also, there isn't enough variety in weapons as most of what you get is two-handed. Also you can't really avoid the shitty combat through magic or ranged options because there aren't any really.

The game itself had something of a heart though I felt, as the world itself is pretty cool and the storyline quite interesting. There are tons of outcomes and choices but another word of warning here. At times, you make a choice and the game decideds to add some extra 'flair' to that choice. For example, my friend decided to rule over a country but then suddenly the main character was "goin' faggot" and started a speech declaring that women should be equal to men and times have to change. He didn't really make a choice to suddenly end patriarchy there but the game decided he did. Felt a bit disconnected there.

With all the negatives, after finishing the game though, I immediately had the urge to go back and see other outcomes of the story. I can't really explain why I had the desire to do that. My friend seemed to hate the whole experience deeply, it sounded like, from his bitching throughout. I don't know why anybody would play this game due to tons of other options out there but I fell into the trap because of those "hidden gem" Youtube videos and possible fun coop opportunities some claimed the game had. I do believe it has something to it though, some semblance of a heart.