The Last Oricru Review

The Last Oricru is a third-person, soulslike, and RPG title in which you play as Silver (and, if you play in co-op, his Hologram) on a strange planet in search of something named "The Cradle".

The Last Oricru's story starts off with a character named Silver as he awakes with no memories and goes through some combat training. In this short tutorial section on how all of the mechanics of the game work, you'll get to know how the story works, the factions, and the combat experience. Our protagonist is a treasure, but if you must know one thing about him, it's that he's dumb. I've seen some pretty stupid protagonists throughout my years of playing — look no further than Kratos thinking his blades can solve every issue in God of War (2018), Tidus throughout the entirety of Final Fantasy X, and pretty much every horror protagonist ever — but The Last Oricru's Silver really, really tested this threshold... and I loved it. His stupid lines, oftentimes with him acknowledging his own lack of intellect, made it actually fun to listen to the story, and although I grew fond of Silver, it deterred and significantly hindered the otherwise morally-taxing narrative that The Last Oricru tries to spin.

In this war, you have to choose sides between the two warring factions, and you don't often get a lot of information, as both sides are very biased and keep speaking horrors of the other, making it incredibly difficult to make an objective decision — I didn't know who were the bad guys, but I went with my gut. Whether that was right or not was part of the fun, as I sincerely enjoyed not knowing who was in the wrong and making decisions based on hearsay from numerous characters throughout the story. And although this was a pretty charming choices-matter element, Silver's stupid comments — albeit funny — felt severely out of place and dragged the story down heavily. As a satirical title with a funny protagonist, The Last Oricru actually has enjoyable dialogue, but as a story-heavy title with moral choices... not so much.

Gameplay-wise, you'll experience The Last Oricru either alone or with another player — if you decide to explore this bizarre world with a friend, player two will take control of the Hologram, and will have essentially no choice in any matter in the narrative. As Silver and the other characters enter dialogue, you'll be able to run, jump, and attack stuff while you wait for it to run out, which I often took as an attempt to distract my wife. The experience as Player 2 wasn't as enjoyable as I was hoping it would be — although you get to make a decision on your build, weapon, and the like, you're essentially invisible to everyone else in the story... literally.

This wasn't the worst experience, however, because I managed to actually fight with my wife throughout the world and encounter the bosses, but the combat was extremely unsatisfying. Our idea was simple: she would build full health, wear heavy armour, and play as the tank whilst I built full strength and dexterity, and I'd try to kill everyone before they killed her. This plan was infallible, or it should have been, were it not for The Last Oricru's enemies focusing on me because I dealt the most damage and ignored her and her toothpick-worthy damage. If I was felled in any battle, she was essentially worthless and failed to finish the encounter, but she also didn't work as a full tank because of faulty aggro systems. This was, however, if I died, and this is yet another quarrel I had with The Last Oricru: it was far, far too straightforward.

Build variety is essentially non-existent — you can't play a tank without having to essentially give up because you can't deal damage. Meanwhile, I ran nearly naked throughout the entire game, armed with only my beginner clothes, an obscene amount of points slotted into strength, and a criminally-large axe that had life steal. After that, I was essentially immortal — I one-shot all enemies, and I could heal myself by chunks at a time, effectively trivialising healing flasks. Bosses were a breeze too, and we wouldn't have died to any if it weren't for the game's shoddy dodging mechanics that felt highly unpolished.

Perhaps, my greatest quarrel with The Last Oricru is the terrible guiding system that lets you find your quests — I was unable to activate it, and to this day, am still unsure whether it really exists. A lot of the playtime I had with it was me running around looking for where we had to go and my wife running around like a chicken without a head, hoping to magically stumble upon the objective (this was often fruitless). 

The story was terrible, the writing and voice acting were awful, the build variety felt non-existent, the guidance system was shoddy at best, the soulslike signature difficulty wasn't present... the issues go on. Although I had a lot of fun with The Last Oricru, that doesn't necessarily absolve it of its problems — I only enjoyed it thanks to the co-op aspect and because of its co-op experience. Playing single-player for a while for the review, the game feels contrasting and as if the developer didn't know which direction to take the narrative. While Silver delivers funny and wholesome dialogue, the battlefield is adorned with dead ratkin and gore; this was jarring and definitely didn't fit with either of the themes the game tried to portray.

The Last Oricru is an enjoyable co-op experience in a world where these are becoming few and far between, and even then, I'd recommend you have a friend you can have a good laugh with. The combat isn't polished, as the soulslike experience feels incredibly unbalanced and unenjoyable, the dodging is terrible, the narrative and setting don't agree with each other... I could complain about it endlessly objectively, but subjectively, it was pretty fun thanks to the experience it offered for me to have with my wife. Don't pick it up as a single-player experience and expect a polished title — you won't get that.