Operencia: The Stolen Sun Review

Operencia: The Stolen Sun is a dungeon crawler from Zen Studios, a developer known primarily for pinball games. Originally a 2019 Xbox exclusive, it was recently released on PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam and GOG.

Made popular by classic franchises like Wizardry and Might & Magic, grid-based dungeon crawlers have slipped out of the limelight in recent years. Many of the subgenre’s modern additions simply regurgitate the fundamentals without bringing anything innovative to the table. If poorly executed, dungeon crawlers can be unbearable.

Operencia: The Stolen Sun is guilty of many of the same criticisms aimed at the subgenre’s lower offerings. Combat, locations, and weapons wouldn’t seem out of place in Dungeon Master. And the seven playable characters fit perfectly into conventional fantasy roles of knight, thief, archer and sorcerer. From the very first second of play, Operencia: The Stolen Sun looks familiar. Still, the game is more than the sum of its parts.

History

Tropes of the subgenre appear faithfully in Operencia: The Stolen Sun. But Hungarian developer Zen Studios adds a touch of personality by adopting their own cultural background as inspiration. Hungarian folklore is prevalent throughout the narrative. It offers a refreshing change of pace from the typical topics explored by most Western RPGs.

This is not to say that Operencia weaves a particularly bizarre story. In general, the simple story is based on a proven narrative formula. A farmer is summoned by the gods to embark on a mission in search of a missing MacGuffin. During his journey, the bespoke protagonist meets six other strangers on the road. Everyone for one reason or another decides to lend a hand. As tends to be the case, this adventure involves killing dragons, a couple of vengeful spirits, and lots of fire jokes.

Presentation

There is the occasional footage. But Operencia: The Stolen Sun tells its story mainly through an omniscient narrator, extraordinary interludes presented as a picture book and static images of the characters chatting about everything and nothing. The narrator and the interludes do an admirable job promoting a sense of wonder and mystique typically associated with fairy tales. Unfortunately, static images suffer from inconsistent voice acting. Many performances lack the charm of convincingly delivering the more ironic passages of the dialogue.

A dungeon crawler is nothing without memorable places. Hence, Zen Studios deserves props for creating detailed and diverse areas congruent with the established world. Whether it’s traversing a dark forest or a fairy castle, Operencia’s 13 maps are nothing short of stunning. A comparable level of healing has been extended to enemy designs, especially the myriad of exciting bosses.