Orphen: Scion of Sorcery

Today I'll be reviewing Orphen: Scion of Sorcery for your reading pleasure. I'm currently playing Dead Space for the 360, so next time I do a review I'll probably have that finished and ready to review.

Orphen:Scion of Sorcery

Overall:

Orphen was a PS2 RPG released around the time the console came out. It's based on some anime that is/was relatively popular in Japan but never (to my knowledge) made the jump to America. The game sorta seems to rely on this nonexistent star power but American audiences are likely to not really have any background going in. You play as a guy named Orphen who is as the title implies: a sorcerer. You get involved in a boat wreck while on a journey to find some quick money and end up stranded on an island with your two assistants and one of three passengers from the boat. The game has three possible paths for you to take and you can switch to a different person later in the game. While the game is marketed as an RPG there are actually very few battles and most of the gameplay is focused on dodging environmental hazards and a little bit of simple puzzle solving.

Pros:

For its time it had fairly impressive graphics as this was one of the earliest PS2 games but it didn't add to the game to a terribly huge degree (the fight near the end on the falling rocks was sorta a cool effect so I'll give them that)(+0.25).



I did like the idea you could do multiple paths and if you didn't like the one you were on you could go back and change it mid story(+0.50). And while checking something for this game I found out that you get something at the end if you complete all three story lines (I never did cause the game just wasn't good enough to be worth it) so if you have the patience you do get a scene and a "final" boss battle for sticking it out but I doubt many will actually care enough to play it for that long.

+0.75

Cons:

For a game that is supposed to be a RPG it doesn't have much in the way of RPG stat growth or battles, sorta a bait and switch(-0.50). This wouldn't be too bad if the adventuring and puzzle solving sections were up to snuff but they really weren't. Combat when it does occur is slow and fairly boring with not much beyond "attack with magic sword" and "attack with magic blasts" and it all happens so slowly you'd think it was lagging(-1.00). The characters that help you aren't that useful and the battles serve as a break from the bland... I dunno what you would call it, exploratory game? You don't do much platforming but you don't really search areas for hidden stuff like you would in Metroidvania type of game either. You basically just dodge hazards throughout the level and maybe a few small enemies that just hurt you when they hit you instead of a battle so you really don't DO much in the game (-1.00). While the battles technically serve as a break they're not very good and don't do much to improve the game(-0.50).

The fact the vast majority of American gamers have never even heard of the anime series hurts the game when they don't go into much more detail then "Orphen is a slacker, the chick is a prissy bitch, and the boy is a timid scaredy-cat" for characterization. So you have no real characterization(-0.50) and that extends to whoever it is your choose to help. There is very little story here and you're just sorta doing stuff the game tells you to do(-0.50).

-4.00

3.75/10

This game would have been fine for a tech demo and learning how to program stuff for the PS2, but it really shouldn't have been made into a game. Not a terribly long review, but there isn't much to say about the game other then it was lousy and had few redeeming features. When I wanted to review a really bad game a while ago and picked Eternal Ring, this came pretty close as I consider them both really bad release PS2 RPGs that had little to nothing going for them.