Developer: Zen Studios
Publisher: Zen Studios
Platforms: PC, PS4, Xbox One, Switch
Tested on: PC
Operencia: The Stolen Sun – Review
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a perfect combination of a classic first-person dungeon crawler and an RPG with solid turn-based combat. The moment you start playing, it feels as though you’re playing an old-school game, while it also has an amazing storyline and wonderful companions, while also looking much better than those old school games. The interesting story triggers you to keep on going to find out what will happen next.
Story
The game starts with a prologue that puts you right in the middle of the most historical event in the history of Operencia, namely when King Atilla beat the dragon Thaid to save the world from despair. After a short, but interesting intro, you start to create your character. Guided by the returning dream of a white deer leading you to a sunken castle, you go out on a journey to follow that vision. After finding the lake with the sunken castle, you see a pathway has already opened up. After you leave the sunken castle, the sun has disappeared and you and your companions get the quest to try and return the sun to the sky.
The game’s story will progress as you complete objectives. While completing these objectives, your party will constantly communicate with each other in a fun and humorous way that lets you get to know each individual more and more. Interacting with a campfire will constantly trigger more conversations that can be really interesting, so try to do this as much as you can until nothing pops up anymore. There’s also a lot of lore available to read if you’re interested in this.
Graphics
While the game offers a classic static first-person experience, the graphics of this game do look pretty good. For example, the sunken castle is designed amazingly with the floating water above you and the many secrets that are perfectly integrated into the environment. The various enemies you encounter on your journey look good as well, with different designs for each different class of a specific enemy type.
The character’s portraits in conversations are drawn beautifully with a lot of detail put into each character, but unfortunately, they only used one for each character, so all emotions in conversations can only be heard, not seen. The cutscenes between locations are drawn in a beautiful way that is very interesting to watch. The opposite of the amazing environments are the effects during battles. They are quite static but this also contributes to the retro feel of the game.
Sound
As the game doesn’t use a lot of video content to accompany the conversations, voice-acting is one of the most important aspects of the game to make the story more interesting. We can say that the voice-acting in this game is perfectly performed. Each emotion that is meant to be expressed can be heard perfectly and each character has its characteristic voice that fits each character’s characteristics. In the background, you’ll constantly hear music that has been made for that specific area. The music won’t get dull at all and it just feels like it’s part of the whole environment you’re in.
Gameplay
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a first-person RPG that features classic turn-based combat with a very interesting story. After completing the prologue, you can create your character. You can choose between the warrior, hunter and mage class, where the warrior focuses on physical skills, hunters prioritize ranged attacks with extra effects like damage over time and the mage that specializes in casting spells that have great power and can hit multiple targets. What the game doesn’t explain is that companions of the warrior and hunter class will join your party, but a mage doesn’t. You are free to choose which class you want, but the mage class will definitely bring the most variation to the game.
As you continue on your journey, your party of companions will grow and each character will gain experience with each battle fought. Enemies won’t respawn in this game so the amount of experience earned is limited to the number of enemies available at some point. Fortunately, you won’t miss out on any experience as characters that have been knocked out will still gain experience.
Each character has three skill trees that grant you stat bonuses and new skills as you invest talent points in each tree. Each three talent points invested in a specific tier will unlock the next tier below it, which will provide you with stronger skills and more stat bonuses. You can freely respec your character whenever you want, if you made a mistake in building your skill tree or a different strategy is necessary for specific enemies. With each level-up, you also earn three attribute points that can be invested in strength, agility, intelligence, wisdom, and vigor. Each of these attributes grant boosts to multiple stats that are obviously connected to these attributes. The way you distribute these points depend on the character’s strengths and weaknesses. For example, a warrior benefits more from the strength attribute than the mage would as that class relies on magical prowess, which uses intelligence to get stronger. Most attributes will also boost your health slightly so you won’t have to spend all your points in vigor to gain more health.
The turn-based combat is perfectly executed in this game. The order of attacks is defined by the amount of initiative each character has. Characters that have a high initiative stat will sometimes get an extra attack before the enemy gets their attack turn. Each character has a physical, and a ranged attack that won’t require energy, a guard action that will replenish your energy by five to 20 percent and character-specific skills that consume energy when used. The guard action and the skills have a cooldown after using it, so pay attention to these for effective use of the range of skills available. The skills that require energy to be used are stronger attacks that also have additional effects that can inflict damage over time and inflict control effects that make enemies unable to move, like sleep, stun and more.
From the start of the game, you will find campfires spread around each area where you can save your game and rest when your health is low. Resting costs one firewood to be activated, but these will be found a lot throughout each area so you won’t have to be afraid of using them. As you progress through the game, the campfire will get expanded with a store, a cauldron to brew potions that can be used in battle, lets you fast travel to campfires in other areas and change your party as your group will eventually be expanded with a total of six companions, while you can only have three others with your character.
Conclusion
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a great RPG with classic turn-based combat that is really fun to play if you’re into this type of combat. The story of the game is very interesting and the conversations are also filled with many funny interactions between your party members that really make the game even more amusing to play. the characters have a lot of variation in their skills which makes it possible to make your combinations of team members that work the best with your strategy. The ability to respec characters with a press of a button is great for trying out new combinations and adapt to the enemies that will oppose you when you continue. For those who like turn-based games, this is a must-have as it will definitely keep you entertained for tens of hours as the game also has an unexpected long storyline to go through.
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