Suicide is Painless
Of Orcs and Men (2012): 4 out of 10: There are games that fail because they have no ambition, and then there are games like Of Orcs and Men that fail because they had too much of it. This 2012 RPG from Cyanide Studio and Spiders has all the ingredients for something memorable. The graphics are perfectly respectable for their era, the world-building is surprisingly rich, and the story is far better than you might expect from a game whose title is a paronomasia.
Better yet, it introduces Styx, the sarcastic goblin assassin who would later go on to headline his own excellent stealth series. If this had simply been a rough first outing before the developers found their footing, I would have happily called it a promising start.
Instead, I spent most of the game wishing I could skip every combat encounter and get back to the dialogue.
The Good
The biggest surprise is the setting. Rather than casting you as yet another noble human destined to save the kingdom, Of Orcs and Men flips the script and puts you in the boots of the oppressed races. Humans are the expansionist empire, while orcs and goblins are the ones fighting for survival. It’s a refreshing perspective that gives the story a bit more bite than the average fantasy RPG.
The relationship between the hulking orc warrior Arkail and the cynical goblin Styx is also the game’s greatest strength. They play well off one another, and Styx in particular steals nearly every scene he’s in. It’s easy to understand why the developers decided he deserved his own franchise.
The writing is consistently engaging, and the lore feels like the product of writers who actually cared about building a believable world instead of stringing together fantasy clichés. I found myself genuinely interested in what would happen next.
The Bad
Then combat starts. Of Orcs and Men uses a real-time tactical combat system where you’re expected to juggle both protagonists, switch between offensive and defensive stances, activate abilities, manage cooldowns, and spin plates while enemies happily beat your face in.
Even the tutorial feels like homework.
Playing with a keyboard and mouse is merely awkward. Playing with an Xbox controller borders on self-inflicted punishment, which is remarkable considering the game originally launched on both the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. I’ve played far more complicated RPGs on a controller, Dragon Age: Origins immediately comes to mind, and while those games demanded attention, they never made me feel like I was wrestling with the interface itself.
The real villain isn’t even the controls. It’s your AI partner.
Whenever I switched to control one character, the other seemed determined to audition for the role of “First Casualty.” Styx, whose entire identity revolves around being a stealth assassin, apparently believes the best tactical approach is to aggro every enemy and introduce himself to their swords.
Meanwhile, Arkail, who is supposedly the tank, has an alarming tendency to collapse the instant you stop watching him. Leave either alone for five seconds and you’ll probably be reaching for a revive ability.
You’re not managing a party. You’re babysitting two adults.
The Ugly
I’ve bounced off difficult control schemes before. The Witcher 2 certainly wasn’t known for being immediately accessible. Geralt had two swords, multiple Signs, alchemy, oils, bombs, and enough mechanics to keep track of that newcomers often needed time to adjust.
The difference is that you only had to control Geralt. He wasn’t wandering off-screen to commit suicide while you were applying poison to your silver sword.
And yes, The Witcher 2 also had another incentive to keep pushing through: I was going to say an excellent story, not shall we say mature content. But still my point stands.
Of Orcs and Men has an excellent story too, but the juice simply isn’t worth the squeeze. Every interesting plot development is separated by another exhausting combat encounter that feels more like work than entertainment.
This should have been a satisfying hack-and-slash RPG you could enjoy from the couch with an Xbox controller. Instead, the game fights the player every single step of the way.
In Conclusion
This is one of the more frustrating disappointments I’ve played in quite some time because the potential is obvious. The writing is good. The world is interesting. Styx is charismatic enough that he would eventually become the face of a much better series. All the pieces are there.
Unfortunately, none of that changes the fact that a video game lives or dies by how it plays. And Of Orcs and Men simply isn’t fun to play.