Survival Guide #16: Orphen

by Awesome The Hedgehog (I love this game).

Oh boy, we’re here at last, yes, this is ORPHEN: SCION OF SORCERY! A lot of you may know, that I hate this game, because it is bad. Yeah, is that a shit excuse? Maybe, but it’s true. This game really pushed me to my gaming limits playing it, definitely one of the worst anime based games I’ve played.

Yeah, I’ll consider the fact it was one of the first PS2 games ever made, but the gameplay is so generic and uninventive, the battles seem like chores, you’re just walking for 50% of the game and the puzzles are there…well just to be there! They aren’t hard to work out, so they aren’t puzzles, but they are!!! The only reason you’d want to beat this game isn’t for enjoyment; it’s just to say to yourself “Damn! I beat that piece of shit, now let’s never discuss it ever again!”. Now, I’m gonna tell you how to get through it quickly.

1) Story Arcs

After Orphen crashes on the strange island, basically you’ll have to put up with three annoying characters for the game, each one having equal time throughout, pestering you constantly, getting lost and dying because they didn’t catch up with you in time. Some pink haired dancer, a strong warrior and a young musician who were on the boat with you when it crashed and need your help. Now I’m not so sure about the order, but if you want to do it in the canonical way, then I suggest you follow Magnus’ path while still on the boat instead of Cleo, that way you’ll meet all 3 survivors in the order I listed above. I’m gonna go ahead and warn you, the worst one is saved until last. There’s a point in the young musicians story where he must help and old lady through a maze, infested with flies. Prepare to die.

 

This game is really bad, in case I forgot to mention. Play it only if you’ve played it before, you know for nostalgia reasons.

2) Treasures

Haha, well a classic RPG element here: Treasure finding! The only thing that differs Orphen from the rest of them is that it’s a big part of the game, but it’s completely unimportant. I mean you can find treasures everywhere in this game, but lost of things aren’t needed, only basic necessities like health potions, etc. But, you don’t really need about 50 in one room. So basically, what I’m saying is, save your strength for boss battles, your thumb strength that is, don’t bother going up to every chest in the game, it’s usually worthless crap, don’t waste time.

Notice the awesome third character, controlled by AI, walking in the opposite direction? 

3) Walking

Like I said before, about 50% of this game is walking and it’s boring as hell, but this does require an important pointer, this game has one remotely hard puzzle, which involves a dancing frog, you can dawdle for that, but everything else in this repetitive game is pushing blocks and slicing bad guys in half, so there is no dawdling input needed here, you can just get on with what you’re doing and run, run, run to the edge of tomorrow and beat the boss of whatever story your on. Seriously, this is the only skill needed for this game (pushing the left analogue stick in the right direction: D) and that’s it. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but walking is actually the most relieving part of the game. I’m glad you get to do so much of it.

Slip and break your neck. You can actually do this in that part of the game.

4) Getting Lost

Now here’s the downside to walking, when you’re walking in big areas you will most likely get lost and the map will not help at all (because 3D maps are the most stupidest idea I’ve ever heard of, especially for a game like this). When I say you’re gonna get lost, I don’t mean small time, I mean you’ll spend about half an hour retracing your path, until you may get some idea of where you are. Unless, of course, you remember these words and don’t screw up like I bet everyone else has done before.

I really don’t know where he plans to go in that direction. Is he blind?

5) Battle Mode

This is supposed to be the fun part of the game, where you strategically move your players and use special moves in turn with your character and the enemy. Obviously something went wrong while this game was being made and what could have been something fun became a boring chore of button mashing. Honestly, I’m just gonna say this: Press X, over and over again, it worked for me about 90% of the time, but that isn’t a pointer. I mean, sometimes it’s fine to button mash, but some boss battles will really punish you for doing that, guarding is certainly an important button to keep you finger lightly placed on and timing is vital if you don’t want to repeat fights again and again because of accidental deaths. The other characters who help you fight seem to be on autopilot when they aren’t selected and will try to help fighting anyway, but they get little done and you will always end up doing their dirty work for them. Bastards.

I believe I did that to his face. Bastard.

6) Dying

This deserves a pointer, because I’m going to tell you how to avoid doing it. You will die a lot in Orphen and not because of your own fault, the game offers little explanation and what to do and when. Boss fights are a big example of this bullshit-ery, I mean one giant dude in the dancer’s story will continually keep pushing you back and eventually push you off the edge into a black hole. Now this sucks for two reasons: 1) No one ever tells you that thing can push you off a ledge and kill you, whoever made this game is a fucking dick, because nowhere in the game does I say that’s possible, it’s the last thing you expect in a long hallway, fighting a big boss with massive health. Why fuck people over like that. And 2) While in battle mode, the camera cannot turn round (but what difference does it make, the camera sucks anyway) and show you how far you are from falling off, so you’re constantly in fear of the inevitable and that’s the last thing you need while fighting this big…Yu-Gi-Oh monster clone…of DOOM!! Now take this terrible formula and repeat several times and times by three. No need for rinsing here, just keep squeezing more shampoo into your hair (I wonder how far I can go with that saying). Just be warned.

Now I understand if people see this as me just ranting on and on about how bad this game is, but don’t you see? Part of how bad it is links to how to beat it, if you still don’t get my drift, then please read the guide again and then look deeper into what it is saying. Another thing I want to mention about this game is (it sucks) the only redeeming quality is surprisingly the story, which I though was quite interesting once you encounter the final boss. Vote Awesome.

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