Of Orcs And Men

A genuinely fun and lovable albeit messed up cast of characters in an oppressive, engaging dark fantasy world marred by mind boggling game design and occasionally spotty writing and voice acting. I want to get the positives out of the way first because I think Of Orcs and Men does some really good stuff worthy of high praise. It's writing, overall is relatively great, particularly in it's worldbuilding. I love the parallels to the real world that they are alluding to and they feel more fitting than ever in the current climate of the world. I think the atmosphere of the game perfectly matches the grim story, there is some downright horrifying and awful imagery in the level design that really sells the horrible life orcs and goblins have been handed in this world. Styx practically steals the show, and that's not even a knock on Arkail's character. He is so charismatic, the voice actor knocked it out of the park and a few of his one liners got a genuine hearty chuckle out of me, an especially impressive feat when I usually find myself unamused by comedy in games. Arkail is less of a comedian, but is fighting his own internal turmoil, and the twist on Orc "rage", and his desire to suppress and viewing it as a weakness was an intriguing and well done concept and he definitely becomes more lovable as the story progresses. A few of the side characters have questionable voice acting that can't seem to keep the same urgency and tone in their voice, definitely a fault of the direction of the voice acting rather than the quality of the voice acting itself. There is also a particular portion of the game that co-opts a particularly touchy word/concept to fit a different definition in it's own world, and it comes across as a bit juvenilely "edgy" and is overall pretty uncomfortable. The soundtrack also goes a long way to upping the emotion of the story, it is standard fantasy affair, but it's quite well done and placed sparsely enough to hit when it needs to and not be played out. The main theme in particular is pretty great. Where things start to really fall apart is the combat. I don't want to deep dive it because it would frankly be boring for both author and reader, so I will put it like this: It's frustratingly playable. The game wants you to have an archetype of a tank and dps, but then particular scenarios leave one of your characters alone and if you are not making a hybrid build, these become incredibly tedious and/or challenging when the crew being together is relatively breezy in difficulty. Hands down however, the most frustrating part of the combat is the game's insistence to play itself (incredibly poorly mind you). If you kill an enemy, all characters targeting that character will target someone else and do whatever the hell they want. Sometimes characters will decide to target a different enemy and do whatever the hell they want without a trigger. This becomes especially heinous when Styx decides to target somebody you don't want him to and all of a sudden he draws the aggro and gets one shot, all outside of your control because the computer decided it was time to screw you over. If you are going to give me a real time pausable tactics game, don't ever wrest control from me, like what the hell man! To top it all off, sometimes the computer WON'T do anything and your character will just sit there getting beat up unless you babysit them. If you're going be a pain in the ass, at least be consistent with your annoyances..... Finally, you cannot cancel actions.... if you input an action in the action queue (of which you can have 4 lined up) and then all of a sudden need to do a heal or accidentally input the wrong one or need to grab aggro with a character, good luck, you can't cancel it and need to wait for the animations to play out fully. Especially heinous with Arkail, who has painfully long animations. If these things weren't a problem, the gameplay would actually be pretty good and have a decent amount of depth, but the mechanical imperfections work against the depth and you will ultimately find yourself working alongside the imperfections and limiting the depth of your gameplay, rather than exploring that depth. I used the same 4 or 5 skills over and over my whole playthrough because it was what could be consistent. Despite the frustrations, Of Orcs and Men was not a regrettable playthrough, Styx is a character I have a new found fondness for, and I'm excited to play through his other games and see how the world of this franchise continues to be expanded upon. If you can put up with some serious jank for a lovable adventure, you will like this, but if gameplay matters most to you, you will probably have a bad time.

довольно годная тактическая игра

I really like this game. It's not perfect, it's essentially a B-category game, but it's now can considered an A-category because the quality of games is declining these days. The music is good, the art is good, the dialogue is funny, the animations are a bit rough, but that's just nitpicking. After 14 years, there's still no sequel. It's a shame they haven't made one yet (only some spin-offs), and it's a shame there aren't any games like it anymore.

its very funny and the writing is top tier

It's just alright and a bit generic, nothing is bad but I struggle to find anything that stands out, the gameplay is alright, the story is decent enough, the characters are okay, the world building is a bit generic. The only real standout element is the character Styx who was a genuine delight of a character which is probably why he got an entire spin off series of games.

Got this after playing the Styx trilogy. Worth it.

good

parfait, rien a dire de plus. ce jeu est une pépite.

Хорошая старая игра, интересная механика управления двумя разными персонажами в боях с активной паузой и примитивным стелсом. Как игра на один раз очень достойно. Есть прокачка, инвентарь и различное снаряжение. Прошел на Максимальной сложности на Стимдеке. Было интересно. Советую однозначно.

以 orc 和 goblin 为主角的 RPG 冒险游戏。 剧情十分精彩。大致是被奴役的 orcs 反抗人类暴政的故事。大框架有跌宕起伏的阴谋诡计，小细节有被奴役的 orcs 的细致心境描写。看到有 orc奸 助纣为虐的时候，真的有哀其不幸，怒其不争的感觉。此外，主角 Arkail 和 Styx 的互动很有意思，一个 orc 战士和一个 goblin 盗贼，一路上聊天都能把人笑死。 战斗方面，是类似《博德之门》系列的可时停战术玩法。从当今的视角看很老旧很不方便，但是习惯之后还是有战术乐趣的。有一些很有意思的技能，比如经典 orc 扔 goblin，砸高台上的敌人。 场景制作方面是勉强及格的水平。很明显越到后期场景越粗糙。前期地图有专门设计狭窄通道，只能由 goblin 通过，到后期就完全没有了。场景美术非常奇葩，比方说第四章出现了外表西式、内饰中式的建筑，令人难绷。美术资源似乎都用在了一些奇怪的地方，比如下雨时物体表面的流水效果，还有只出现了一幕的海浪效果。感觉工作室就是做着玩儿，根本没有项目管理。 总结来说，低成本，小制作，却能带来比一些大作更令人印象深刻的 RPG 冒险体验。