Operencia: The Stolen Sun

Operencia is a pretty neat little dungeon crawler that's well worth the price if you're into these types of games. The exploration aspect is not complex by any stretch of the word, but there's a lot of nice items that add some variety to the areas and have you returning to old dungeons to open new areas and secrets. Crafting your own potions through the various recipes discovered in the world is also a nice puzzle addition.

The graphics are arguably the greatest aspect of this. The world is quite frankly stunning, with each area having it's own theme and a decent, if not mind-blowing, fairytale story running along in the background. The game is fully voiced, and while the acting isn't the greatest out there, it's clear that those doing it were having a lot of fun.

Where the game falls down slightly is probably going to be in the combat. The encounters have been designed to test the player in each area, but many of them are extremely punishing if you don't have the right characters/stat/ability attributes assigned to deal with them. The game does, refreshingly, allow you to respec/reorganise your group at any point, but that's of little consequence if you're not fully understanding how the stats interact with abilities. In short, half of the talent trees are worthless, and the other half are heavily reliant on stat allocation that isn't always obvious, such as Int on the Rogue character for their poisons, Str for their backstab, while Agi affects one crossbow shot you probably won't even take. There are some secondary abilities that come over time, many of which interact with specific spell types that are not clear because the games hint system doesn't explain them. And the loot is just as confusing, with much of it in the middle and endgame being completely worthless and often downgrades to more powerful items that came before. These issues are then compounded in the later game with encounters that seem like they are designed for chance on instant kill abilities/mass party AoE attacks, with enemies that, if left up, are either locking down your entire party with ridiculous long stuns/sleeps/charms, or doing crazy AoE damage because all of them share the same cooldowns and it's being spammed by 2-3 of them all in a row right at the start of the encounter. That said, when you understand the abilities and equip the group appropriately, the fights become extremely fun as you start blowing everything out of existence, but that's something you have to work for and will likely suffer a huge amount of frustration in the journey getting to it. In short, the combat is guaranteed to be universally hated at the start, and will either grow to be loved as it's understood or else the player will just quit. You decide which type you're likely to fall into based on your own patience levels.

All in all a solid 4/5 from me. If you go full achievements it'll be a good 50-60 hours of gameplay. It's nothing you'll likely remember once it's done, but if you can come to grips with the combat then you'll have a fun journey while you're there.

A surprisingly good entry into the DRPG subgenre. This game feels like a really well-made B movie: it’s not groundbreaking, but it’s genuine, and it kept me entertained from start to finish. It’s especially impressive considering it was developed by a Hungarian company best known for making physical pinball machines. As a debut in this style, it’s a surprisingly strong effort. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a first-person dungeon crawler with turn-based combat.

The positives:
- Pretty faithful use of Hungarian folklore
- Beautiful environments
- Great music
- Fully voiced
- Serviceable characters
- Really well-balanced puzzles (they are mostly on the easier side but solidly designed)
- Excellent choice for trying a forgiving DRPG (free respecs anytime at save points)

The negatives:
- The VA quality is a bit of a mixed bag
- The combat is a bit too simple and slow
- Some characters are a bit one-dimensional
- Small amount of backtracking (pet peeve of mine, I just don't enjoy doing it, too much mental load, but for a 20-25 hour game it's fine)
- Very derivative of the genre (if you played 10+ DRPGs this won't offer any new mechanics)

All in all great effort, give it a try if you are interested.

Everything is great, the gameplay, equipment, map, skills, stats, perfectly balanced.

Fun blobber with an uniquely Slavic focus on characters and narrative. It's not doing anything groundbreaking in terms of gameplay but the combat and puzzles kept me engaged all the way through.

Only downside is that the game has some weird UE optimisation issues where the CPU gets flooded and sets my fans off randomly, but this doesn't happen often.

Oh, and Jóska is a king ♥♥♥♥ as well.

This is by far the greatest love letter to Hungarian folklore in video game form, even if that list isn't particularly long. Game manages to juggle both combat and puzzles in a very fun and balanced way, while the you are sucked into the lovely atmosphere that's reminiscent of the Hungarian Folk Tales animated series from the 80s. It's all so magical and I'm sure even those not familiar with the cultural backdrop could absolutely enjoy this newbie friendly dungeon crawler.

Absolutely wonderful, and I'm curious to see if they can tie the wider central european themes into a possible sequel if it ever happens.

old school, great controller support. recommended for fans of the genre.

A good old school CRPG with fun exploration and interesting levels. The only thing that mars it is the lack of enemy variety in levels and some of the sameness thats between enemies. The game is fairly easy and straightforward until the final boss where there is a sharp difficulty spike.