Operencia: The Stolen Sun

Genre: First-Person Dungeon-Crawler / Turn-Based RPG

Players: 1

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Review:

Operencia is a First-Person Dungeon Crawler with Turn-Based RPG combat and some light Graphic Adventure-stile puzzle elements. Originally released on PC and Xbox One in 2019, the game was brought to PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2020.

Graphically, Operencia is a good-looking game, with decent 3D graphics and some very interesting-looking environments that flesh out the game’s world, and although there are some nice touches like good lighting and water effects, you can also see the seams in some places too, with a little pop-in and some places where there seem to be cracks in the environment that shouldn’t be there. It’s still overall a nice-looking game, but it’s definitely not without its flaws.

The story here is a bit generic as far as medieval fantasy fare goes, although it’s helped by some decent characters with good voice work and some overall good sound design. This is paired with a soundtrack that’s not super memorable, but does a decent job enhancing the overall tone of the game.

As for the gameplay itself, despite the mixing of genres here, it all fits together fairly naturally. Unlike most Dungeon Crawlers, enemies in the tile-based corridors move in real-time, meaning that rather than carefully meting out your movements, you’ll want to rush at some points to get the drop on an enemy to gain the initiative in battle. The battles are mostly standard turn-based stuff but are given a bit of depth by the way enemies are sorted into three rows depending on their distance from you, and different attacks will have different effectiveness on different rows. Also, players must manage when to use their attacks, but to manage their recharges, as well as to maintain the energy it takes to use these techniques.

Finally, there are the aforementioned Graphic Adventure-esque puzzle elements which, while not as much in the spotlight as much as the other elements, nevertheless will require players to stop and think about things every now and then. These elements aren’t especially difficult, and thankfully tend to be fairly straightforward.

The Nintendo Switch version of the game is unique in that it does support touchscreen controls, but… well, those touchscreen controls aren’t very good, and honestly I prefer playing with standard controls. In addition, the text and map can be a bit small on the Nintendo Switch’s screen in handheld mode, and I’d say this is overall a game better played in docked mode.

All things considered, Operencia is a solid Dungeon Crawler with a good presentation and some unique gameplay elements that keep things interesting. It’s certainly not without its flaws, but on the whole fans of the genre should definitely give this game a try.

tl;dr – Operencia is a First-Person Dungeon Crawler with a good presentation and some interesting gameplay elements sprinkled throughout. It’s not as well-optimized for portable play as I’d like, and the story is a tad generic, but overall this is a solid entry in the genre.

Grade: B

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