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Am I just here to play clones of Legend of Grimrock, FTL, and Dark Souls? Maybe. I don’t know any more.
Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a charming little adventure game in the same vein as Legend of Grimrock. I should probably get my niggle out here: like many Grimrock-likes (and very much un-like Grimrock itself), the default is a free camera rather than fixed. In overworlds, this can be frustrating. A niggle easily fixed by using the keyboard and turning on the in-game grid. But without that grid, moving around is almost nausea-inducing.
Once you get past that, though, the adventure starts in earnest. After one of the cheesiest introductory missions (due to the dialogue) I’ve ever played, you start on your quest in a sunken castle. Water hangs from the ceiling and pours down in certain squares – a fairly entertaining first map. Otherwise, it seems to be fairly standard Grimrock fare, with the notable exception of the combat.
Combat, you see, is handled entirely separate from exploration. It is turn based and works based off of “rows” (the yellow, green, and blue lines above). I haven’t had terribly much experience with it yet, but it seems serviceable enough. The high level abilities you get to try out in the introductory mission may indicate that standard attacks don’t scale well, but hopefully that was either accounted for in the main game or a misunderstanding on my part.
My hour was entirely pleasant and I look forward to finishing off the campaign. Tier One.