The game in the following years after it's lukewarm reception has gotten a cult following and there a number of people who enjoy the game and wished it got a sequel since the game ended on a cliffhanger, after all this rambing, what do I think of the game after replaying it years later?
It's...okay, not the bad game I remember it for being but not a great or even good game. It's middle of the road and for a game that was supposed to be a PS4 killer app, a console that didn't have many worthwhile exclusives at the time outside of maybe Infamous Second Son, and it didn't have backwards compatablity to PS1, 2 and 3 games, a "middle of the road" game was not really in the cards for Sony. That is the thing with the Order, a lot of people like to say a sequel could improve the game and maybe it could've and the game could've gotten that potential sequel if it came out back in the mid 00s and early 10s back when cinematic cover shooters were more widely accepted. Games like Uncharted Drake's Fortune and especially the first Gears of War would get lambasted if they were to come out today and the Order feels like that kind of game but with much better graphics.
The review will split into various parts, one being graphics, the other being story, and the final part being gameplay.
I will start with by far the best aspect of the game, the very thing even the game's detractors will agree on that it does well. That is of course, the graphics and visuals and they are very good, in fact so good that I am dedicated an entire section of the review to it. I don't normally care about a game's visuals unless if it enhances the gameplay or as long as they do their job and don't hinder my experience with the game like say having environments that look samey making it hard to navigate levels, objects in the level that I can easily tell can be interacted with, being able to see with camera what I am can and cannot do etc. However, the Order is a special exception, the game to this day still looks fantastic, the character models, environments, weapon models, facial expressions look as richly detailed now as they did when the game first came out.
The vaious London streets look meek and depressing and they do a good job at establishing the tone the game has. This is supposed to be a world ravaged by poverty and class inequality and how gritty and dark everything does a good job at establishing this even the brighter less poverty filled levels look great like the level on the blimp.
The character models and performances still look good and convincing and for a game where a good number of the chapters are basically just watching cutscenes, it's rather impressive that the devs were able to make the characters' animations and expressions look beliveable.
A lot of work was clearly put into the visuals and Ready At Dawn still did a great job and it still holds up even today.
Now the story, it's not terrible and I don't think the Order's story and writing is as repulsive as say, a David Cage game since the cutscenes are decently directed, the writing generally serviceable and voice acting is directed well enough to engage me on the material. However when I was playing this game, I can't help but feel like the game was better off being a TV series instead of a game.
To the story's credit, I do think it is far more engaging of a first entry to a franchise than something like the first Gears of War and Halo games. The Order does at the very least give more characterization for it's cast, have more twist and turns, better foreshadowing and better world building than those games do.
I also can't help but think would the game have been better off being a TV show. It already begins with a painfully dull opening sequence that even mimicks those aforementioned repulsive David Cage games with excessive QTEs, and barely non existent gameplay. Like I mentioned before there is multiple chapters of the game dedicated to just watching cutscenes.
What I mean is this since this game is esstentially a 3rd person cover based shooter, you are basically following Greyson the whole time, so aspects like his relationships with Malroy and Lucan, Layfatte's realization that Greyson might be in the right, Malroy's exploits and his backstory, Devi and her relationship with Lakshmi, Nicola Telsa being a spy, all of these things feel undercooked and doesn't feel as fleshed out as it could be because the whole story is from Greyson's perspective. All of these concepts would be better suited for a TV show where all these things can get fleshed out and following different characters and exploring backstories per episode. This would potentially make for a better live action TV show than Last of Us and Twisted Metal.
More credit to give the story, some of the characters are decent like Malroy and Layfrette but they aren't fleshed out enough for things to be impactful. Lucan and Greyson's backstory is barely even explored for the former's betrayal and death to be remotely impactful and while the twist with the vampires is interesting, not enough is done with it from both gameplay and story perspective to really stand out from being service level. It's just revealed that there are vampires the whole time and since it's an action game and a shooter at that, it's not like you see Greyson try to deal with or have an existential meltdown over this relvelation.
What also doesn't help is that much of the character interactions are very dry. The voice acting is very good and it's well directed, but much of the character interactions to say even something like Uncharted can feel dull. I am not asking for the characters to quip and crack jokes but considering how short the game is, and how you join the rebels side halfway through the game, the character interactions are going to have to really land and the most you get is Igraine chastising Greyson about how old he is, Layfrette being the optimistic, arrogant and somewhat resourceful memeber of the team and Malroy doing stuff behind the scenes while this isn't outright bad, it's not enough to make me feel like, "oh man Greyson is going to have to butt heads with characters I don't want to see die". It's more like, "oh Greyson joins the rebels". It also doesn't help that Uncharted games tend to feature much better and more engaging opening sequences than the Order does. Much of the information is told rather than shown and I am not against that style of storytelling, maybe the Order being a TV show could make it easier to see the backstories of characters like Igraine, Layfrette and Malroy. I was already starting to ask questions when Igraine's name was revealed through the objective screen.
Finally, the gameplay, this is what I mean by when I kept on saying the Order would've been a servicable game in the mid 00s to early 10s. The game very much feels like a bog standard cover shooter you would find in that time period and while the Order does some things better than Gears of War 1 and Uncharted 1 and 2, it also does other things that are worse.
The guns in the Order feel much more satisfying to shoot and enemies react much better than the first two Uncharted games which is a huge point to put in their favor since it took Uncharted a while to get weapon sounds and damage animations right and for a game where at least 60% of the game is spent shooting and killing enemies, the Order manages to better than I remember because of this. I was able to beat the game again at all because the game nailed the game feel in terms of combat. The rifles especially feel great to shoot and hit enemies with.
What it also does better than Gears of War 1, the whole GoW series, and even games with sci fi settings like Halo and Destroy All Humans is that the game actually has some creative weapons, where in Gears of War, the most creative weapons got were the Lancer and the Hammer of Dawn, the Order has the Thermite Gun, an Electricity Gun, an assault rifle that can push enemies back with it's alt fire, and fire shotgun. The fact that the game features alt fires for some of it's weapons at all is already a step above, Halo, Gears and Destroy All Humans' arsenals.
What lets the game down however is the enemy roster. You get these creative guns but all you fight are generic human enemies for 90% of the game, it's like if you got a game like Resistance Fall of Man which gave you a wide array of creative guns just for the game to waste them on having Call of Duty's enemy roster or lack their of any. Most of the enemies with the exception of armoured enemies can be taken down with headshots, you also get a Red Dead Redemption and Splinter Cell Conviction style "mark and shoot targets" but this is unnesscary since enemies can beaten easily with just aiming and shooting reguarly. Sometimes enemies can take more than one headshot too but aforementioned solid feedback prevents the game from being a total slog even if human enemies taking more than one bullet to the head can kind of take me out of it.
The Warewolve fights are terrible, and what annoys me is that I have seen these encounters done better in another game called Dead Space 2. The Warewolves fights are much like the Stalker battles in DS2 where with the Stalkers, you have to be super quick, hear their loud screaming barks, and react fast enough in time with stasis or well place shots to the limbs to kill them. The Warewolve battles is basically a game of running around while the Warewolves try to attack you with barely having any audio cues and waiting for the x button to pop up and hold they get out of the way. The Warewolves only take a few hits and while the idea of needing to stake them in order to kill them is great, it takes such so few bullets to get them down and since the stake animation can't be interrupted means that they are even easier to kill.
The game eventually has a twist in about the middle point where vampires are the enemy, and it might mean the game will pull an Uncharted Drake's Fortune and the player will be fighting vampire monsters instead of human enemies. That never happens and as a result, the game's weak enemy roster stands out as being even more weak with some potential to break up the monontony but that never happens.
The QTE style fighting game "bosses fights" are also terrible but they are few to really annoy me much like the stealth sections. Both are "servicable" if can be easily derided. The stealth is also few and the game checkpoints well enough and you get a crossbow in a later extended stealth level. It can get frustrating since guard vision is binary in that level but as long as you can get a headshot before they can see you, it's generally simple if offputting at first.
While I did praise aspects of this game over games like Gears and Uncharted, there are things it does worse than those games. First being that whenever you are in cover, the camera zooms up close to what piece of cover you are hugging rather than giving you a traditional above cover view of the action meaning that if you are in cover, you can't see the enemies unless you aim out of cover. It can be pretty annoying since the camera has no reason nor is it beneficial to not give the player a proper view of the action. Enemies could throw grenades or use grenade launchers and since you can't see above cover, it makes it hard to tell where they are coming from even with grenade indicators.
The second is that evading and dodge rolling in the Order is entirely contextual. Where Gears would map sprint, cover and roll to one button, and Uncharted would just map cover and roll to one button. The Order has one button dedicated to just climbing, and the climbing sequences are too few compared to combat so the Order could've just done the Uncharted thing of having cover and rolling be in the same button and while this system is flawed, it would've given Greyson more moves to do and more mobility during combat than the alternative that is offered.
The final aspect of gameplay that I will cover is the non combat sections and this what annoyed me about the game when playing it the first time and still does now, and that when during "exploration" parts Greyson doesn't have his typical movement speed in combat, it's basically the dreaded walking sections that get derided so much nowadays. I don't mind "walking sections" when used sparingingly Last of Us did a good job with this since Joel has a light jog he can do during the exploration and the slow movement makes sense since you have to move slow observe the environment and gather supplies, so it's fine to move slow in that game.
The Order? It takes the Uncharted approach where it relies on superficial specticle during the non combat sequences but even Uncharted had more going during these parts. Uncharted gives you a decent run speed to traverse levels with and while the "platforming" is superficial to anyone who plays a lot of games featuring the concept, for someone that doesn't, these sections could provide some thrills since Drake is constantly falling off hand holds, it creates the illusion of tension and depth. The Order's traversal doesn't feature this and it's just pressing x and holding the stick to move where Greyson wants to go there is no specticle or seeing how Greyson barely make it out of a situation, it's just Uncharted without the superficial thrills.
Also, the game can also be too scripted even for my tastes at times. For example there is a part where you need to destroy a part of a scafolding with the Thermite Gun, and I aimed for it with just shooting it normally but it turns out you need to activate a scripted sequence and then you can destroy it. Another section involves you to push back an oncoming warewolf attack with the pushback assault rifle and I did the alt fire early and he didn't react but then I did when the game prompted me to activate and then he did it.
I also feel like Greyson having a slow as molasses walking speed feels like a rather pretentious way for the devs to pad out the game since it's already not that long, and while I don't mind it being short, the fact that the devs gave the non combat sections a slow movement speed while having sprint during combat does really tell me that Ready At Dawn felt quite insecure that their game without multiplayer shipping at full price can be beaten in 4 hours so they added this to potentially drag it out to 6 or 7 hours.
Overall, I don't think the Order 1886 is the "bad" game that I remember it for being. At the same time, I do feel like the people who strongly dislike the game are overly harsh on it, and the people who really like the game are overly kind towards it. The game to me is very middle of the road, and perhaps maybe if the game came out in from 2006-2013, it could've potentially spawned a greatly improved sequel but by 2015, it just didn't offer enough different from other cover based shooters outside of high fidelity visuals and the setting to really stand out for being a typical game in the genre. I'd say try it out for the short length and that is cheap to find now and don't expect anything mind blowingingly good or bad.
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