Operencia: The Stolen Sun - Steam Release
 

The dungeon crawler Operencia: The Stolen Sun has been released on Steam

Thanks Kordanor!

More information.

This game reminds me a lot of the Bard's Tale 4, but it is better in many ways. It is about 25 hours long, but isn't repetitive like the much longer BT4. Each area, for example, has its own unique monsters. It has puzzles and secret areas, but they are fewer and more traditional. It has a very nice presentation, and charming fairy tale look and atmosphere, but the voice acting is uneven and the tone of the story is light and whimsicle. The character building is also relatively shallow, but each companion has a number of unique skills, which at least makes who you include in your party an interesting choice. I enjoyed playing the game enough to finish, but I won't be replaying it.

You played it at epic release? Played it now and found the voice acting to be quite ok.
Yes, it's not super professional, but also not cringy. The only moment when it felt really bad so far, was when rescuing the princesses, because you just hear them as if they were next to them. Some editing would have helped to make them sound like they are actually behind doors.

A developer also said that they redid the voice acting at some point. But ofc I don't know if thats before or after you played.

So far I find it very enjoyable. Especially because of all the dialogues and the story. While it's no Shakespear, it gives the game something more organic, something to look forward to and not just different dungeon levels with different puzzles and different enemy skins as in LOG for example.

I played it on the free weekend on Steam the other week and was pretty impressed. A little generic in some places but it plays pretty well. As long as your expectations aren't too high I think most people would enjoy it. I'll be picking up the full game at some point.

I am curious: What was generic on this game in your opinion?

Well, the characters were quite one dimensional and not a lot of depth to them. Same for the conversations. The levels are quite beautiful but still feel just sort of archetypal fantasy (though I do like the underwater motif… maybe there's more of that later in the game).

Sort of the same for the story and how it's delivered… though I only played the first chapter, so that might improve. I like the idea that they're drawing from some European folktales and lore… I just felt the delivery was kinda 'meh' from what I've seen so far.

This sounds rather negative but really, in spite of that, I enjoyed it quite a bit. It just feels like a lighter blobber with not as much meat to it as some deeper games. Still fun to play.

And it does look quite nice - that was a pleasant surprise. I think I enjoy BT4 more because it feels deeper - even though I too feel that BT4 is a bit padded in some areas with extra combat and puzzles.

Ah, alrighty. Yeah, I would say that it's actually quite different than other games.
Ok, the characters aren't super deep I guess, but deep enough and just think about other Crawlers with character backgrounds. There aren't that many. ^^
Stonekeep and Lands of Lore come to mind…but that's pretty much it.

The lore is a rather "atypical" fantasy setting I'd say. Yep, it's fantasy, but it's not the typical Orcs, Dwarves and Elves Stuff (at least so far) but as you mentioned Frogmen and in general it feels like it really has some influence of Ukranian folklore.
Maybe a bit similar to Witcher or Conan which are also rather atypical fantasy settings.

The density of riddles in BT4 was too much imho, but I liked them. I think the density in Operencia is just right. But until now (start of second chapter) they are super easy and could be harder.
And while BT4 combat system was completely broken due to overpowered abilities, Operencia didn't offer any challenging combats yet either (on hard setting).

Well, that's was maybe my biggest concern after playing Chapter 1. Combat seems quite easy, so I worry about it becoming boring.

For BT4, I enjoyed the combat and for me at least it stayed fairly challenging for the first 2/3 of the game or so.

I've looked forward to this being available on gog or steam for a while, I'm game-busy now but will be picking this up at some point.

The only battles which I found hard are the very last battle, and an optional (secret) boss battle that you can find late in the game, and I found those both very hard. In the last area I got party wiped twice, but that was mostly due to lack of caution on my part as I was unprepared for monsters which could do high damage quickly. There was another area in the late middle of the game that was fairly challenging, but in general the combat is on the easy side.

This looks really interesting.

I don’t remember fights being too hard either, and if there was a hard mode I would have definitely played on it (don’t remember if there was). Exploration was pretty linear but once in awhile there was an obstacle you could come back to later once you found an item that required to pass that type of obstacle. Sometimes these optional areas had harder fights that you might have to come back to after a few levels.

This is a good game…fun and colorful.

What bloober has more dimensional characters…most don't have any at all.

Sounds good to me. If I'm gonna play an old-school game with colorful, low budget graphics and basic fantasy? I don't need bone-crushing difficulty. I don't need a 50-hour playtime. I could use a fun, enjoyable light game right now.

I think we've gone so far into the "games must be difficult" zone that we can't see where we came from. I'm happy to see a game that's finishable even by a regular guy like myself.

Graphics are definitely not low budget…it looks quite nice, one of the nicest blobbers I have played.

Good to hear. I haven't looked into it closely, but I will now. I hadn't even heard of this one until just now.

I agree with @rune_74. Some of the levels are absolutely beautiful. I think it is indeed a low budget game, but kudos to whoever did the art direction and the level art.

Yep, art looks great.

Regarding difficulty: They added a new difficulty mode with this release. However…even with that it's not hard. Actually we had a fun misunderstanding in the forum were we were saying that we couldnt find this new difficulty option and the game was too easy as it was. In the end we found out we were already playing on that mode…

Ok, quick update: I just did a "Boss fight" against some ghost lady (not spoiling) in her tomb and well, there was definitely room for improvement on my side, but that was definitely not easy. So yeah, difficulty on his new mode apparently gets decent at some point. ^^

Buy it. Everything BT4 should have been.

The environments get more diverse as you go. Not cliched fantasy. Not even close.

Have my eye on this already some time. Was just waiting for Steam and GoG release.
Good to hear it also here that its decent and worth playing. Hope low difficulty wont be big problem. Sometimes, low difficulty can create feeling of pointless character progression, which has potential to kill the game for me. Last time it happened to me with Fire Emblem: Three Houses, which was rather unexpected and made me to put game aside for now.

I've played a couple hours. So far it's much more about puzzles, and there's not really any ticking timer. That's fine with me. But I'm not a huge fan of "Pull a lever here and a door opens somewhere way, way over there" stuff, because that means a lot of running around. I haven't seen that yet though.

Good news even with that it moves pretty smoothly….