Zen Studios is not new when it comes to video games. Their latest project Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a first-person classic, dungeon-crawler set in a fantasy world inspired by Hungarian folktales. The game was originally released last year in March 2019 on Epic Games Store and Xbox One however now the title has made its way to PC via Steam and GOG, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. For our review, we picked Nintendo Switch because we really wanted to see how the game performed on Nintendo’s flagship console. This is our review of Operencia: The Stolen Sun on Nintendo Switch.
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is set in the world which is based on the unconventional fantasy world by a faraway land referenced in a lot of Hungarian folktales. You play as a character who has been dreaming about a white deer who is trying to show him a path. Upon deciding to follow the path, you eventually end up seeing the Sun in the sky gone for good. Now it is your goal to bring back the Sun to the sky and end the evil darkness from creeping all over the world. With its gameplay, Zen Studios has tried to bring back the classic first-person dungeon-crawling back to life.
Operencia: The Stolen Sun begins really strong. The first level in the game which also serves as the tutorial of the game has you fighting against a three-headed dragon at the end. It is excellent and really sets the tone for the game. After completing the intro of the game, you are allowed to create your very own character and set on your own journey. The character creation is pretty basic and there are no complex mechanics here to worry about. You pick a class from Warrior, Mage and Hunter. These three are exactly like any other RPG you’ve probably played with Warrior boasting strength, Hunter boasting agility and Mage specializing in spells.
You then choose your gender and look of your character, followed by Origin which give you a boost to certain stats depending on your choice. After this, you are given 10 points which you can assign to your choice of Attributes such as Strength, Agility, Intelligence and more. You are given a choice of two talents to start with out of three however you can later purchase the third one from the Talents screen so you do not have to worry about missing any of them. When you are happy, you are all done and you begin your game.
One of the most unique mechanics of Operencia: The Stolen Sun is its movement mechanic. Although exploration is done in the first-person mode, you can move in tiles. This means that each movement can be up, down, left or right. This is similar to chess but there are no diagonal movements here. All you can do is up, down, left or right from your current tile if nothing is blocking in the direction you want to move. As you move around in the game, all your team members move along at the same time. You do not have to move each of them individually.
With movement locked to tiles, you can freely move around your camera around to check out your surroundings. This unique mechanic will take some time getting used to because this is not a very common mechanic for dungeon crawlers or RPGs in the first-person view. If I am honest here, this is the first tile-based movement RPG that I have ever played so this mechanic is completely new for me. It took me around half an hour of gameplay to get used to it however sometimes I still find the movement a little bit awkward because my mind still wants to treat it like The Witcher 3 or Skyrim.
Combat is one of the most prominent and strongest features of Operencia: The Stolen Sun. It is turn-based however it requires quite a bit of strategy to win. The combat screen might look like it card-based, however, this is not a card-based combat game. All your moves are listed in the tab below with a move sequence represented on the left side of the screen and your party members on the left side of the screen. All the buffs and debuffs are shown under the names of your party members. As you explore and play the game, you will meet more people who will join your party and bring their unique set of skills to your party.
On the combat action bar at the bottom of the screen, you can see all the commands that you can issue to your party member during that particular move. These could be the first three slots that are the same for all party members. These include normal and ranged attacks along with a Guard. After this, you will see your advanced attacks, spells, and skills. These advanced attacks, spells, and skills will come with a cooldown timer and after each use, they will become unavailable for a certain number of moves. Until they become available again, you cannot use them in combat. In addition, combat is not just clicking on abilities until you win. Even on medium difficulty, you will need to use a good balance of support abilities as well as offensive abilities to ensure that you survive as the enemies become a real threat in later parts of the story.
To counter these enemies, you will also become stronger and powerful as you acquire better gear from defeated enemies and bosses and find loot in random chests all around the world as well. As you level up, you will earn both Talent Points and Attribution points. Attribution points will help you increase your party members’ basic strengths such as strength, agility, and intelligence while Talent points will help you purchase more Active Abilities as well. Leveling up will also unlock Passive Abilities for your character. Since I prefer tank builds, my main character was I was mainly focusing on improving my character’s strength and damage absorption. Operencia: The Stolen Sun allows you to build your character just the way you want it to be.
Then comes items. Most of the enemies drop items that you can use however you will find confirmed loot after killing bosses and every boss at the end of each level drops quite decent items. However, you must divide these items among your party members equally. The decision rests in your own hands. Each item can only be equipped with a certain character. You cannot have two characters equip the same item at the same time so this is the tricky part when it comes to equipping items. Since all party members play an important part in your story, you need to ensure that none of the characters are lacking behind when it comes to items. Pressing up brings up the inventory which allows you to manage items and skills.
Some of the items are locked away in chests and you will need to find them hidden around in levels. This is where level exploration comes into play. Each level will have a main quest however you are free to explore the entire level at your own pace. You will solve puzzles, find hidden objects, interact with your party members and learn more things about the location you are currently exploring. Exploration in Operencia: The Stolen Sun is pretty rewarding and you will find some enemies to kill and items to collect. Some of the items are pretty well hidden so you will be required to do a thorough sweep of the location before you find them. The game also warns you when you are about to leave the level for good so you can stay as long as you want in a location.
Visuals are one of my favorite aspects of the game. Every level is really well-made and even on Nintendo Switch, the world looks amazing. The level design is brilliant and you will notice small details everywhere. Along with the actual in-game world, the cutscenes and visual art of the game are really pretty as well. The beautiful visuals do take some toll on the Nintendo Switch’s limited hardware as I noticed quite a few stutters in some fights and graphical heavy locations while exploring. This was particularly more in areas that were inside and there was a lot of lighting involved. However, these were not too bad and the overall execution of the game is really good.
Audio is yet another excellent feature of Operencia: The Stolen Sun. The soundtrack of the game is brilliant and soothing, perfect for exploring the eerie and desolated world of the game. Yet different audio cues always keep you on your toes as you hear the grumble and thunder of approaching enemies. Interacting with different objects also gives out distinct sounds that show that the developer has really put in a good effort when it comes to the audio of the game. There are very little reused audio sounds and nearly everything has a unique sound in the game.
When it comes to audio, I will put special emphasis on the dialogue delivery of characters which is excellent. As your characters interact with each other as you explore the world, they maintain a really good balance of humor and seriousness. The audio delivery is brilliant and up to mark with many AAA RPGs currently available in the market. This really immerses you in the game and really makes you believe that the world you are playing in is alive and kicking. These dialogues and interactions never bore you as you play the game and during the campfire stories, you get to know tons about character backgrounds and the world itself as well.
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a fully narrated game and has both cutscenes and audio narration immersing you deep in the lore of the game. As you slaughter the forces of evil and progress in the game, you will see different cutscenes which are essentially beautifully rendered pictures with audio narration accompanying them. Throughout the gameplay, you also get different audio narrations at certain points which further add to the immersion and keep you updated on the current happenings around you. Sometimes they also give you hints on what you have to do next in the game.
I am a relatively new player when it comes to turn-based combat RPGs and this is literally my first game when it comes to tile-based movement. It certainly took me a little time to get used to this movement mechanic but I absolutely loved spending my time with the game. From the very first level, the game builds on a very high note and continues to impress even after investing quite a bit of time into the game. I can say that I can look forward to more tile-movement based RPGs after playing this. This is a solid addition to Nintendo Switch’s library of RPGs/dungeon crawlers and I will easily put it next to some of the best RPG/dungeon crawlers on the console.
Final Verdict:
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is one of the prettiest RPGs/dungeon crawlers that I have played on Nintendo Switch. Although there are a few stutters in some visually heavy places however they seem to be very few and they are not something that ruin your gameplay. The combat is solid and satisfying and the exploration is even more rewarding. The audio design is excellent as well. However, I am not much of a fan of the tile-based movement mechanic and this coupled with the freedom of movement sometimes really confused me to the point that my head went spinning. Apart from this, I loved every bit of my time spent in Operencia: The Stolen Sun. The interaction of characters with each other, how they interact with each other during battles and normal exploration and the artful cutscenes, everything is executed perfectly on Nintendo Switch. I can easily say that this game is one of my most-pleasant surprises on Nintendo Switch of 2020 so far. I will highly recommend that you get this game if you own a Nintendo Switch and want to delve into a beautiful world with an equally good narrative.
Final Score: 8.5/10
