One of the first games I got sent in the new year was ORANGEBLOOD. And if I’m being honest, not a bad way to start off the new year.
I’ll be upfront about this; the story may as well be mostly impenetrable. That’s okay, though, since your objectives are clear: fuck up everything that gets in your way. Since it’s set in an alternate reality, there’s a lot of stuff about the CIA, Yakuza, crazy flying cars, Russians, and crazy gangs on a man-made island.
If you have to have a deep, meaningful story in your RPGs, this might not be the game for you. Because deep down, this is Smug-Ass Anime Girls, Guns, And Hip Hop: The Game. Chances are that that is the thing that sells you on it. If not, then I’m not sure what else will.
As for gameplay, well, it’s mostly a standard RPG. Mostly. The majority differences aren’t really all that different; notably, certain skills refer to your party members as “homies”. Rather, the largest departures are ammunition and the gear system.
Since this is all about guns, you’d expect to have to buy ammo (which sucks ass in most RPG’s that do that). instead, you start each battle with a full “ammo points”bar on each character, the maximum being based on weapon. So a shotgun, for example, fires a single shell per attack and might carry a maximum of 6 shells, whereas an assault rifle can carry up to 30 rounds, but use up to 6 of them per attack.
Reloading when you’re out is important, and there is gear that opens up abilities like tying a partywide %heal to doing so, which means you’ll want that piece of gear on someone with a low mag size, since they’ll reload far more often.
The second major difference is the gear system: all gear is randomized, and its various effects are color-coded on the gun icon, with rarity being the color for the entire title. For example, gear with the cryo attribute has a blue icon, and the general effects are listed in the name, which is colored according to rarity (from least to most rare: white, green, blue, and pink).
Since the more attributes, a gun or shoes or other items have, the longer its name, you can wind up with a name that’s mouthful just for a pair of athletic sneakers. And the gear is randomized; what you get out of chests (which refill when you leave the area) or from stores is seemingly randomized after each battle you fight. The major pitfall here is that sometimes you won’t get the gear you really need to move forward without getting destroyed by enemies, but such is life.
You are introduced to this gameplay loop almost immediately: get into fights, return to “town”, buy new stuff, heal, and go back to fighting. Personally, I like the fact that the inn equivalent here, buying meals, isn’t unreasonably expensive ( a single battle can provide several of them, so you’re never at risk of being unable to heal up unless you’re an idiot). But chances are that this already tells you whether the game is for you or not.
Graphically, the game looks pretty nice. It runs terribly on my potato, but I’ve stopped really caring about that at this point. The spritework is pretty damn good, and they give you multiple display modes. Notably, this is one of those games that, for whatever reason, doesn’t enable the Steam overlay by default.
As gauche as it may be, someone else’s Steam review included the fix for that: right-click the game in the library, hit properties, click launch options and paste in “–in-process-gpu” without the quotation marks. I’m a sort of dim bulb when it comes to this stuff, so I felt the need to include it.
The soundtrack is also a pretty big draw. It kinda gives me those Jet Set Radio vibes, and I like that about it. I have noticed that either there’s no actual battle theme (i.e. it doesn’t play when it’s supposed to), or it simply doesn’t loop the way it’s supposed to. I don’t know why, but I figured this was the place to mention it.
As an aside, apparently, a bunch of people complained that Vanilla was too crap for a main character. Notably, that people thought her skill Deadeye, which fired 6 randomized shots at a guaranteed 100% accuracy, with the added bonus % chance of stun, was crap. The devs responded by patching the game to make it 8 shots, and also included this video to expand on why these people are idiots:
So, end of the day, I’d argue ORANGEBLOOD is a pretty decent game. That said, it’s probably not for everybody, and my score is going to reflect that.
On the whole, its highlights are definitely its artistic direction, though. The game looks and sounds really good.
And it provides some decent novelty when it comes to dialog. But I’d argue it’s best played in somewhat shorter chunks.
“ORANGEBLOOD is a pretty game that’s more of an acquired taste, but definitely worth looking into if you feel the draw”
Final Score:
3.5/5
Title: ORANGEBLOD
Platform: PC
Genre: RPG
Developer: Grayfax Software
Publisher: PLAYISM
Release Date: January 14, 2020
*We were provided a copy of this game for review*
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