The Last Oricu – PS5 Review

by Lord Badger

It has been a long six-month wait for The Last Oricu to land in my inbox. This was another game I discovered at WASD back in April and fell in love with immediately. Developed by Golden Knights, a Chezch development team consisting of 40 people. The Last Oricu is ambitious in its scope… but does it deliver on its promises?

Story

You are one of a group of Humans who have crash-landed on the alien planet of Wardenia and straight into the middle of a civil war. Every decision you make, and every action you take defines the narrative of The Last Oricu. Will you side with the Naboru and help them maintain power? or side with the Ratkin in overthrowing their slave masters and gaining independence?

Unfortunately, you have lost your memory so you have no context of Wardenia or its society. you can only go on the conversations you have with the residents you meet.

The Last Oricru is an action RPG, that puts you in the middle of ongoing conflict under the protective shield on the otherwise abandoned planet. Your decisions bring interesting twists into the gameplay as you can heavily influence the conflict and its outcome. You will experience hundreds of intense fights in a brutal medieval sci-fi world, where every action has its consequences.

Gameplay

The Last Oricu is a vast and ambitious game for such a small development studio. There are so many aspects to the gameplay that I could talk for hours about it. The combat, the weapon system, levelling your character. Honestly, I could go on and on.

The combat in The Last Oricu, of which there is a lot! is affected by multiple factors. The Souls-lite combat forces restraint and patience in learning the moves of each opponent. Combat mechanics are dedicated by which weapon you have equipped. God for slashing damage with swords, pure brute strength with hammers and polearms, or using magic to attack from a distance?

You can equip two sets of weapons. In all of my runs I have used different combos of weapons and shields or two-handed weapons but always revert to having a magic staff and mana-draining claw as my secondary loadout.

killing enemies drops resonance to level up your character. Once you have enough to level up you have to get to a terminal in order to do so. If you fail to do so and die, then you lose all the resonance (and the level-up) unless you manage to get to the location where you died and collect the resonance that you dropped.

If you do make it to the terminal, then brilliant, you can now level up and increase stats to compliment your playstyle. However all those enemies you killed to do so? Yeah, they just respawned. This is great for grinding out levels and building out your character but can inhibit exploration and advancement.

Speaking of exploration, there is no map. You have to learn each area of the game and find the best ways to navigate them to fit your goals. This can be frustrating at first but really does help to absorb you into the various landscapes of Wardenia.

Co-op Gameplay

I haven’t mentioned the co-op in this review (both online and couch co-op) because quite simply I haven’t had the opportunity to play with anyone who has The Last Oricu since I received my review code before release. I haven’t been able to try the couch co-op out due to being ill with covid so I honestly can’t attest to how much this impacts the game for better or worse. Although I did get some insight into the co-op mode when I interviewed Roxy at WASD back in April.

Final Thoughts

This review of The Last Oricu is in danger of becoming too long for most people to bother to read. Honestly, I could keep talking about The Last Oricu for ages. A game that is unique, ambitious and quite simply bloody brilliant!

I love every single aspect of The Last Oricu. The story, the combat, and the narrative choices. The fact that it has no manual save function so you can’t save and then reload to make a different decision. I can see myself playing The Last Oricu repeatedly just to see the difference made by alternate decisions.

Quite simply, The Last Oricu is the game of the year for me. (Sorry Arcade Paradise)

Final Score – 10/10