Aurion Legacy of the Kori-Odan is a 2D action RPG made by Kiro’s Games and published by Plug in Digital Label. Kiro’s Games is a small indie game company which completed its African inspired indie game via its kickstarter campaign. Certainly, a more original concept story wise it was an interesting game to play. The game is only available to pc platforms making the experience a limited one which is a real shame.
The story starts with you being put in the shoes of Enzo Kori-Odan, the prince and the soon to be king of Zama. Introduced to this character as he is wondering about his future and whether he can meet the tasks and responsibilities of being a ruler we see him perform the ritual to become king of Zama and marry his soon to be wife Erine Evou. But, as these things go, in the middle of the ceremony a messenger arrives to tell the king that the village is under attack. Assuming that these are merely bandits the king rushes to protect his citizens to find that it is a little more than bandits hassling civilians for loot. In fact, it is a Cou organised by his brother in law to make himself king as he believes it is necessary to better protect the people of Zama. This finalises in both doing combat and with the help of his wife Zama’s king Enza manages to beat this rebel down. But, due to the drain of the fight both the Queen and King of Zama pass out and since the rebel army is still very conscious Enza and Erine are promptly dethroned and exiled. This is only the first forty minutes of the game. The rest of the game develops into the story of Erine and Enza and them finding themselves along with exploring the various cultures and world around them. This much deeper story thread becomes more interesting then the “re-claiming the throne” premise as you play the game placing a real enfaces on the interesting characters and cultures in the game. One issue I do have with the game however is the fact that its dialogue is not terribly great. By this I do not mean that it is poor writing as the dialogue is always good if not brilliant and is only represented poorly with strangeness in the grammar which is more of a localisation issue rather than a real dialogue issue. The game also boasts its unique African inspiration which caught me by surprise and took me personally a while to understand the game which was great. This was made even better as the game did not seem to do this in an obnoxious way in the sense of including different cultural influences for the sake of different cultural influences like most movies specifically made for a Bafta.
The Gameplay is what you expect from a 2D action RPG with a couple of interesting features. When fighting you have skills that can be used that consume AP points which re-charge by hitting an enemy or eating a consumable along with stamina which is used when blocking and attacking and re-charges when you are not doing anything. There is also legacy mode which works kind of like a brief buffed up state which allows you to deal a lot more damage and take more for as long as your AP is not zero. You can also use Enza’s wife to heal him during battle or perform other useful actions. Levelling is very simple as you get your stats boosted as per usual but also have skills that can be bought which are both active and passive. This gives enough flexibility to the games combat to make it engaging but there are issues with the combat. One is the fact that the combat does not actually take place in the world but as an encounter like in most RPG’s but since the scenery and space does not change it means it feels unnecessary. I guess the point is so that you can fight a large number of enemies easily but it still ruins any seamless feel. The second issue is the bizarre difficulty the game is to play with anything other than a console controller especially as it is a Desktop developed game. It is not so much optimised for a controller but more built for a controller user interaction experience. This by no means infers that it is an impossible game to play on a keyboard, just that its more difficult than it should be. But other than this the games combat is great and especially with boss battles which could be regarded as too long due to the massive amount of damage they take but walks that fine line between that and making each experience feel like a battle between two bad-asses rather than another crony.
Visually the game looks amazing with a lot of different places to visit in a game full of African influences in its style. This can also be seen in its sound track which fits the game to a T and the OST that comes with the special edition of the game is greatly appreciated.
Overall the game is a fine example of a game with an original influence and fine addition to fantasy RPG’s. The story is interesting along with very likeable characters which keeps you fully engaged with Enzo’s struggles. The combat also has enough depth and simplicity to make the encounters fun without being frustrating as long as you have a controller to play the game. But, this is not the main highlight of the game as the story and characters steals it. If you are a fan of RPG’s or fantasy orientated games or even just a very pretty, very original game then this game is definitely one that you should play.
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