For a game released in Oct. 2012 this game feels like it could have come out nearly a decade earlier (aside from its graphics). This is a painfully linear game. The vast majority of it is spent running through brown and gray winding corridors with evenly spaced groups of enemies to encounter. What choices you are able to make, both in moving about the world and within the story, ultimately don't have much real impact. The voice acting for the two main characters, Arkail and Styx, is high quality but the remaining cast ranges from bad to atrocious.
The major selling point for this game, playing from the greenskins' perspective, is implemented with mixed success. The character arcs of Arkail and Styx are both enjoyable. Their personality's balance each other out with Arkail being the brawn and honor type and Styx being the brainy and cautious one. Unfortunately the game follows a lot of stereotypes in terms of orc behavior and in a storyline centering around slaves revolting against power hungry evil rulers. Change the orcs into humans from a warrior tribe led by shamans and very little would change. That makes the story feel more human relatable but also cheapens the greenskins' perspective feature, making it seem like more of a surface change or gimmick.
A lot of reviewers have commented negatively on the excessive use of foul language and I'm inclined to agree. It's not that I am offended by the words but that it feels forced, like a misguided attempt to make the game more dark and gritty. The script is otherwise decent with Styx's dialogue being the best it has to offer ranging down to some of its one dimensional villains being its worst.
I enjoyed the combat during the middle hours of the game but not in the remaining hours. At the start your options are limited before you unlock more attacks and there is a bit of an awkward learning curve. Later on, the repetition got to me as the same strategy that worked early in the game worked all the way through, making most fights feel the same. Styx's ability to stealth assassinate enemies before you are spotted was a feature that I eventually stopped bothering with. I found it wasn't necessary to win most fights, slowed things down and wasn't particularly fun.
Of Orcs and Men's biggest success in my opinion is its soundtrack. It stands out with a unique style that features a lot of cello and drums. As soundtracks often go, not every track is interesting but on the whole I found it catching my ear numerous times throughout the game.
There are situations where I would recommend Of Orcs And Men but overall I didn't find this game to be good enough to recommend to most people. For example, diehard action RPG fans who have already exhausted the higher rated games in the genre might find something worth playing here.