So, about a year of finally getting my hands on “The Order: 1886,” we get to see how much does it take to go up against an ancient evil. Set in an alternate 19th century in Victorian London with some nifty Steam Punk tech, there is an elite force known as the Knights of the Round Table waging war against Lycans (werewolves) and Vampires. You play a knight name Sir Galahad with your fellow mates Percival, Igraine, and Marquis keeping werewolves and some random human rebellion at bay while finding out some conspiracies within the order coming to fruition as you progress through the game.
Game-play wise, it’s basically a third-person shooter somewhat similar to “Gears of Wars” mechanics. You will be running around rushing to cover to cover with guns blazing, and it’s actually a good thing. You get a good variety of gunplay with some sophisticated steam punk weapons made from the great inventor Nikola Tesla. But unfortunately the enemy A.I. (artificial intelligence) is a bit of a letdown though. They tend to be trigger happy so much to the point you will be ducking behind cover and then popping out to shoot them over and over again. So they tried to balance out the game-play by bringing in QTE. That’s right; the dreaded Quick Time Events has arrived. But surprisingly there weren’t a lot of QTE to get on my nerves.
Graphic wise, it’s a gorgeous game. You will tell most of the developers work they put in is mostly in the graphics department. There is so much highly details within the environments and objects, that I almost thought I was watching a movie. Literally, most of the cut scenes you will go through is actual real time game-play, it’s ridiculously stunning. Soundtrack is strong and solid to help with the story.
And now the bad part! Yes, all the rumors are true about how short the game is. Gamers have been beating the game roughly around 5 hours long. However I beaten it around 7 hours, and its mainly because I took my time inspecting details on objects you pick up and also took my time looking around the scenic environments in between combat scenarios. Another reason why you will go through this game quickly is because the game is not hard to play. I started off this game on the hardest difficulty and the enemy A.I. was no challenge for me. As for the werewolves, they are a big disappointment. You only go up against them 2 or 3 times through out the game, and the only fighting strategy these damn creatures perform is charge you down, but they’ll regularly run from the exact same direction each time that they approach, and while upping the difficulty adds a little more variety, you can often simply ready up, easily roll away from their attack, and wait to pull the trigger (seriously that is all). What’s even more frustrating against werewolves is that the final boss is an elder werewolf, and you battle him out in freaking Quick time events.
But what really irks me the most is an incomplete story-line to play. Just when you uncover most of the conspiracies going on within the Order and the pace of the story-line is getting really good, in comes the credits. Seriously, that’s it. The final boss battle is not even the main villain of the story-line and there is so many plotlines that hasn’t been explained yet. This means there will be a sequel. Heck, the mixed reviews I’ve seen from other critics, I’m not even sure they will make a franchise out of this or not.
Too sum it all, “The Order: 1886” is remarkably beautiful and the soundtrack is orchestrated strong. I actually enjoyed the story-line, especially mentioning people like Nikola Tesla as well as Jack the Ripper and I wanted know more info on some side characters that they could’ve explained into the story. This game has a lot of potential to work with, but Ready at Dawn studios just cut us short. For a full price game (around $60 bucks), it sort of feels like playing a tech demo that’s trying to let us know how much power the PlayStation 4 can run. But the thing is we already know how powerful the system is cause of all the other games we’ve played. I wouldn’t feel so disappointed if the price was cut in half at least.
Overall, I give this game a 3 out of 5 rating scale. There is so much aspiration, but lack of content to work with.