The Order: 1886 had been difficult to nail down before launch, only showing snippets of gameplay and not revealing the bigger picture. It looks good visually, but nobody quite knew what to expect. Debate raged online in the days before release when it was revealed that the campaign clocks in at a relatively short 5 hours--is that worth paying $60 for, people asked, does length matter if the experience is good? Should that impact reviews?
Regardless of which side of that argument you fall on, it may not matter in this particular instance. Reviews are in, and for the most part they have not been kind to The Order. Here are some (harsh) excerpts from around the web:
Kotaku, No [You Shouldn't Play]: "Do you like movies? Do you like video games? If you answered "yes" to either of those questions, you should probably skip The Order: 1886. The PlayStation 4's newest action game is a dull and lumbering thing. It's a brief, drab adventure starring a group of characters who all seem to dislike their lives and one another, and if it managed a single new gameplay idea over the course of its runtime, I didn't catch it. The Order: 1886 is one of the most depressing games I've played in a while."
Polygon, 5.5/10: "Galahad's story, such as it is, concludes so rapidly and with so few loose threads tied off, it's hard to shake the feeling that someone somewhere decided that it was time for the knight and his cohorts to get out into the world whether they were ready or not. Though it nails some of the fundamentals, The Order: 1886 has been released without answering the essential question of what it offers that other games aren't already doing better . Everything about the game's final shot screams "sequel set up," but unless The Order finds some non-aesthetic reasons to justify its existence, it's hard to imagine coming back for a second adventure."
Giant Bomb, 2/5: "There are things here worth checking out, but the action feels half-cocked and you'll be finished with it in an afternoon. I won't pretend to guess at how much $60 means to you, dear reader, but I will say that The Order is a middling experience with a couple of bright flashes that only serve to remind you that this could be a more interesting game if more of its ideas were fully formed. If you're bent on seeing The Order for yourself, you should probably rent it.
Eurogamer, No Score: "It's shallow fun while it lasts, but The Order feels dated before its time. Despite being the PlayStation 4's new poster child, the latest pretty face for the new generation, Ready at Dawn's truncated epic feels like a product of the year of its inception - a time when the world was in thrall to Uncharted 2 and Heavy Rain, and before the prescribed dramatics of Quantic Dream turned sour with Beyond: Two Souls. The result is an earnest game, sometimes disarmingly so. There are no levelling weapons, no branching narrative decisions, no litany of unlockables - and there's absolutely no reason to return once it's all over.
"The Order: 1886 isn't a disaster, nor is it a particularly good game. It's a hollow diversion, entertaining but outmoded and caught somewhere between a medium it repeatedly fumbles and one it fails to effectively embrace."