Remember the Xbox 360’s peculiar assortment of RPGs? I’m not talking about the likes of Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, financed by Microsoft to help change the console’s destiny in Japan, but rather European-developed RPGs such as Two Worlds, Risen, Divinity II, Venetica, and Arcania: Gothic 4. They’re connected not just by genre, more often than not crumbling under their own ambitions due to their rock bottom budgets and small development teams.
Turns out this rare breed of RPG never really went away; they just have slightly high budgets and more exposure online nowadays due to the forever growing popularity of the genre. Check out Elex, Greedfall, Outward, and Disciples: Liberation and you’ll discover the modern equivalents of the Xbox 360 era RPGs originating from Eastern Europe.
2022’s The Last Oricru is another fine example, heralding from Prague and published under Plaion’s Prime Matter label. You’d be forgiven for not having heard of it before, as it wasn’t given a particularly big push at launch, and unlike other Prime Matter games (Scars Above, The Chant, Dolmen, etc) it failed to gain a retail release. Nowadays it’s regularly discounted on the digital storefronts. The low price point of £3.99 tempted me back in 2023, when it was barely a year old, but it was only within the last month that I finally got round to playing it.
It’s one of many RPGs in my back catalogue that I want to play but struggle to find time. After discovering that this is one of the shorter examples of the genre (an estimated 15 hours) I took the plunge between reviewing new releases…while also being quite wary of its 54% Metacritic score. It does however appear that it received additional work since those middling launch day reviews, with the version currently available subtitled ‘The Final Cut’.
Like the obscure European RPGs of yore, The Last Oricru does a few things differently in an attempt to standout. One of its biggest selling points is that it can be played in local split-screen – an uncommon feature for the genre. It also prides itself of combining sci-fi with medieval fantasy, with a storyline that’s certainly quite out there. My interpretation (dialogue is clumsy in places, while protagonist Silver is prone to making an ass of themselves) is that it involves space travellers returning to a planet they terraformed and colonised aeons ago, only to find that common rats have evolved and are on the brink of war with the pale skinned humanoids that call Warenia home. As an immortal, it’s your job to resolve this conflict by making smart decisions and choosing a side – which, of course, will greatly impact the storyline.
The ability to alter the narrative is definitely neat, as there’s even a chance to reverse some decisions – such as (literally) backstabbing key characters after choosing to assist, or throwing a citizen in jail only to later help with their escape. The approach however is very heavy handed. So much so that the first of many major decisions must be made within the combat tutorial, where you’re ordered to execute a Ratkin (as they’re known) which results in joining their ranks and storming a castle. Still, it certainly makes for quite a dramatic and action-oriented opening.
A few Soulslike elements feature, such as dropping XP when defeated and the ability to ‘reset’ the game world – which duly makes enemies reappear. Unlike Dark Souls though, The Last Oricru has an easier ‘story mode’ difficulty that makes it possible to play it like a hack ‘n slasher, more or less. Further lessening the burden, I made the smart move of crafting a sword with significant life steal, meaning I walked away from most enemy encounters with a full health bar.
I’d still hesitate to call The Last Oricru as a cakewalk though, as both its map and its quest descriptions are frankly useless. It probably has the worst map of any video game before it, being completely undecipherable. In the end, I had to rely on placing waypoints on key locations and heading in their general direction. That, and resorting to looking up guides online. Some quests are so vague that it isn’t even clear if they can be completed in the current area, prompting a wander back into previously explored locations.
My final playtime upon completion stood at, I kid you not, 10 hours and 1 minute. The game world is pretty small for RPG standards, consisting of just a handful of locations such as the opening monastery, a large city with a sewer network, the mines the Ratkin have been forced to dwell in, and an island with a spacecraft buried underground. It dabbles with boss battles too, but these are few and far between and the majority have action game style mechanics.
Over the past few years, I’ve played through most of Prime Matter’s games, developing something of a soft spot. None are classics, but they’re all well-meaning, falling into that elusive ‘AA’ camp where good looks meet underbaked mechanics. There was The Chant – a third-person horror based around a spiritual retreat gone awry – the sci-fi adventure Scars Above which featured Dark Souls-like level design, the distinctly middling cosmic horror Souls-like Dolmen, and the underrated slick space shooter Chorus – which boasted a Halo-esque storyline.
The Last Oricru falls somewhere between Scars Above and Dolmen, with Chorus being the best of the bunch, followed by The Chant. It does a few things differently with mixed results, yet the weight of the decisions and the mix of sci-fi and fantasy makes for a memorable trip.