Operencia: The Stolen Sun Catch-all

Made it to the Great Forest. So far feels like a sibling of Bard’s Tale IV, but with less filler and wandering, better voice acting and more interesting characters. I’m not going to get any of them confused with those in The Witcher 3 or anything, but they are good enough.

So far it’s been pretty easy.

Noticed this is leaving game pass, so I decided to purchase it today. The PC version (game pass ultimate) was working flawlessly until I bought it, and now it launches with no sound. Weird bug I guess, no other game I own on any PC digital platform does this, and I've reinstalled the game, the Xbox app, sound drivers, Windows drivers, etc., and no similar reports on the publisher's forums....oh well, what a bummer. Fun game.

It also launched today on the Switch. I was tempted because I bet it would be fun to play on the go but it was $30. I played but never finished the Xbox Game Pass version so it seemed a bit silly to spend $30 on the Switch one.

I've had my eye on Operencia basically since this thread was started, and yesterday I saw it was 50% off on Steam. I had some funds in my Steam wallet, so away I went! This is probably a foolish call, as I'm working through two other very long RPGs (Trails of Cold Steel 2 and Three Houses), but I've been craving something relatively shorter.

I have to say, it's a lot of fun so far. The sunken castle is a pretty distinct environment, especially for a first map, and I love that my character and the first NPC clearly don't trust each other and snark back and forth a bit.

I played about 2/3 of the way through this when it was free on XBOX gamepass. Good atmosphere, very little story, reasonable combat, skill trees and itemization that allows you to choose how your party will play out. The combat is turn based Bard's Tale style. I certainly would have finished it if it hadn't gone off gamepass. I don't finish many games. A solid 7.5/10.