What The Last Oricru Actually Is
The Last Oricru is a 2D tactical RPG developed by Nihon Falcom that came out in 2017. It runs on the Cross Reverie engine and plays like a turn-based strategy game with some real personality underneath the surface. If you haven't picked it up yet, you can grab it on Steam, GOG, or the Nintendo eShop depending on your platform. It also has a physical PS4 release in some regions. I'll be straight with you — this game does not hold your hand when it comes to its gear system, and most new players walk into the first few dungeons completely underprepared because they don't understand how the crafting loop actually works. Here's what nobody tells you upfront: the weapon and armor upgrade system is where most of your time will go, and it matters more than almost anything else in the game. The core combat is simple enough that you'll understand it in ten minutes. You control two characters at a time and switch between them freely during your turn. Each character has a skill tree, and those skill trees are where the real build diversity lives. The game gives you a lot of freedom in how you distribute skill points, but spending them randomly gets you nowhere fast.
Early on, your characters are going to feel squishy and your damage output is going to look pathetic. That's by design. The game intentionally gates you behind a resource grinding phase before things start clicking. Don't skip it. The Orichalcum material you collect from clearing maps is what you use to upgrade weapons, and there's no way around farming it early on. One thing I ran into repeatedly when I first played: the gear upgrade costs scale aggressively, and if you try to max out a weapon too early, you'll spend so much Orichalcum that you'll have nothing left for the late-game content. I learned this the hard way around the midpoint of the story when I realized my fully upgraded starter weapons were now mid-tier gear and I had zero materials to work with. The workaround is simple but counterintuitive — keep your weapons just one or two tiers above what you need and save your Orichalcum. Upgrade when you actually need the power spike, not when you feel like it. The party composition matters more than individual build optimization. This is a game where synergy between your two active characters determines your effectiveness in battle. Having two characters who cover each other's weaknesses — one with crowd control, one with burst damage — beats having two high-damage characters who both can't handle enemies with high evasion. I spent an entire playthrough running a support-focused build with heavy debuff application and it completely changed how I approached difficult encounters.
The Crafting and Upgrade System Explained
This is the part most guides get wrong because they treat it like an afterthought. It isn't. The weapon and armor systems in The Last Oricru are the primary progression mechanics, and understanding them properly will save you dozens of hours. Weapons have tiers — basic, fine, superior, and master grade — and each tier unlock new possible affixes. When you upgrade a weapon, you don't just add stats. You're rolling for new affixes and the pool of possible affixes expands with each tier. This means a weapon that looks mediocre at fine grade could become something serious at superior grade if you get the right rolls. The opposite is also true — a good-looking weapon can turn into garbage if the affixes don't stack well. The material cost for upgrades follows this pattern: early tiers are cheap, mid tiers get expensive, and master grade is brutally costly. There's a soft cap around the superior tier where things really start to hurt. I recommend focusing your resources on two or three weapons per character rather than spreading upgrades across everything you find. Full builds beat partial builds every time in this game.
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Armor is simpler but still important. Defense scales linearly and the upgrades are cheaper than weapon upgrades, so you can afford to spread your attention more evenly here. Don't neglect it though — a single high-damage enemy can wipe your party if your armor is sitting at base tier while the rest of your gear is at master grade. The game punishes imbalance.
Skill Tree Navigation
Each character has their own skill tree with multiple branches. The trees are large and there's no reset button for skill points, so spending them carelessly is a real problem. The skill trees are divided into categories like offense, defense, support, and utility, and each category has its own sub-branches. The mistake most players make is jumping between branches randomly. Pick a direction for each character and stick with it. If you're running a tanky build for one character, commit to the defense and support nodes first. Don't dip into the offensive nodes until you've secured your survivability. I made this mistake on my first run and spent twenty minutes in a random encounter because my tank character couldn't stay alive long enough to be useful. There are passive skills that affect the entire party, not just the character who owns the skill tree. These are worth prioritizing because they benefit both characters you switch between. Skills that increase Orichalcum drop rates, boost crafting success chances, or reduce upgrade costs are invisible wins that compound over time.
Combat Mechanics That Actually Matter
The combat system has a depth that most casual players miss because it's buried under a pretty art style. The key mechanic is the gauge system — each character has actions that fill or consume gauges, and managing those gauges efficiently separates good players from okay ones. Skills cost SP (skill points) which regenerate over time. The SP regen rate is fixed, so spamming high-cost skills will leave you empty-handed during critical moments. The effective approach is to use low-cost skills to apply effects — slows, weakens, barriers — and then finish enemies with higher-cost skills when they're already disadvantaged. This isn't theory, this is how the game's difficulty curve expects you to play. Switching characters mid-turn is free and doesn't consume a turn. Use this. The game encourages switching between your two active characters to chain skills and manage gauges, and failing to switch cost-effectively is one of the most common beginner mistakes I see. A skilled player can execute a full rotation of four to six actions in a single turn by switching between characters strategically.
Enemy positioning matters more than in most turn-based RPGs. Some enemies have area attacks, others have ranged attacks, and a few have abilities that target the character with the highest attack stat regardless of position. Learning to place your characters to minimize area-of-effect damage is essential for the harder battles. I spent an entire section of the game failing repeatedly because I was grouping my characters together and walking into cleave attacks every single turn.
Resource Management and Side Content
Don't ignore the side quests. They're not optional padding — they give you materials, skill points, and story context that actually matters for understanding the game's world. Some side quests unlock recipes or crafting options that you won't find anywhere else, and missing those can lock you out of certain upgrade paths. The fishing mini-game exists and it does matter. Fish and other materials from fishing are used in certain crafting recipes and selling fish is the fastest way to earn gold early on. You can make significant gold from fishing without it taking up much of your time. I usually set aside ten to fifteen minutes per play session for this and it covers my gold needs for the entire act. Story choices don't radically change the main narrative, but they do affect which side content is available and how some character interactions play out. The game has multiple endings based on choices made in the late game, so pay attention to dialogue options even if the game doesn't explicitly tell you they matter.
If you get stuck on a boss or a particularly difficult encounter, there are three reliable options: grind Orichalcum and upgrade your gear further, focus on a specific skill branch that counters the enemy's mechanics, or adjust your party composition. The game is designed to be solvable through any of these routes, and there's no single correct answer to difficulty spikes.
What This Game Does Well and Where It Shows Its Age
The Last Oricru is a solid tactical RPG with strong character designs and a story that improves as it goes. The skill tree system is deep, the crafting loop is satisfying when it works, and the combat has enough complexity to reward study without becoming tedious. The music by Falcom Sound Team jdk is consistently good. The problems are real though. The mid-game sags a bit, the UI can be cluttered and unintuitive, and some of the grinding is unavoidable if you want to be competitive in later content. The game also has a few bugs — I encountered a quest flag that didn't trigger properly, which locked me out of a side content that had useful crafting materials. There's a workaround where you can reload an earlier save and re-approach the quest giver, but it's annoying. If you're looking for a tactical RPG that respects your time while still offering depth, this is a reasonable choice. It's not perfect, but it's more complete than a lot of indie releases in this space. Play it at your own pace, invest in your craftin
