All Bark and No Bite – The Order 1886 Review

When it comes to exclusives, I usually judge a game more harshly. Something about this game has made the console developer invest their own money to the game, so there has to be something that’s special about it. This is the thought that I had walking into Ready At Dawn’s The Order 1886, a new third person Shooter exclusive for the PS4.

First introduced to wonder and amazement during E3 2013, fans were excited for a new IP, something fresh out of the gate for a new console, from a well known and loved developer (Ready At Dawn previous made the God of War Origins series, Dexter for PSP and the Wii Port of Okami.) While the trailers for the game did look great there were very little actual gameplay shown, this should have been our first warning sign of things to come.

The Order 1886 follows Galahad, one of the new Knights of the Round Table in an alternate Victorian London in which the Knights take up the duty to fight werewolves called Half-breeds. Galahad and his team of knights are tasked with finding out the connection between the half-breed sightings and recent Rebel terrorist attacks which have been occurring around the city. This leads them on a tale full of twists and turns…

That will just leave them exhausted. The Order 1886 is a game that should have been a movie and even that would leave watchers scratching their heads at what exactly is going on. It is unfortunate that nothing is explained in the main story (not including the history reports found around the levels) that we are left with wondering how the Knights are able to live longer and cheat death? or why the Half-Breeds are causing the trouble they are. It ends up becoming tedious, mind-numbing and exhausting.

Part of the problem comes from the game’s presentation, while being a naturally short game, clocking the completion between 5-7 hours, very little of that has been actual gameplay. It feels like we go though a lot of unskippable cutscenes that occasionally will have an instant death quicktime event laced somewhere in the video, giving you the illusion that you’re playing the game.

Combat in the game is lack-luster at best, characters stick to cover and don’t fluidly move to other areas when locked in, making stealth moments needlessly difficult. Guns are clunky and in some cases hard to control, some of which have a secondary fire that are completely useless. Finally all the fights feel like a copy and paste, with no real memorable battles.

There are some good out of the game and that is it’s graphics, The Order 1886 is probably one of the best looking games on the PS4, the game’s backdrop and characters are gorgeous to say the least, while its acting and music is spot on, possibly the game’s saving grace.

It seems like The Order 1886 has a giant problem with Pacing, focusing on telling too much story and not giving players enough to actually do. While it sadly had so much promise, it ended up becoming a tedious and worst of all Boring shell of what it could have been.