YMMV / The Order: 1886

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Alastair. Was him attempting to soften Galahad's trial outcome just a cynical way to add insult to injury, or did he genuinely try to keep the knight alive out of respect/love for his sister? Though from Galahad's expression, he at least considers it the former.
• Awesome Music: Even those who don't like the game admit the OST is awesome, especially the moody, evocative main theme.
• Complete Monster: Jacob van Neck, better known as Lord Hastings, is the head of the United India Company and revealed to be a Master Vampire, as well as the source of the "half-breed"—lycans and vampires—attacks in London that have claimed many lives. Using United India as a front for his operations, Hastings organizes the lycans into an army, having them launch attacks that kill and infect humans, mostly those of lower class, sowing chaos so that he can operate behind the scenes. Hastings uses his public status to use the Order itself to protect him from retaliation of the Rebellion and to help crush the rebels. When the knight Galahad discovers the truth, he learns Hastings is sending half-breeds all over the world, and is sending vampires to America, enough to conquer an entire city. Hastings soon casually reveals himself to Galahad as the infamous Serial Killer Jack the Ripper, before framing him for betraying the Order to get him killed. In contrast to his sympathetic and well-intentioned partner, Alastair, Hastings's only apparent motives are power and enjoyment.
• Critical Dissonance: Despite the game’s reviews being mostly mediocre, the public view of the game is almost universally negative for its short single-player experience and third act that abruptly stops when it's only just started.
  • Even the developers at Ready At Dawn have since admitted they’re not proud of the game’s reviews and shortage in content, and hope to improve more in the future with plans such as revisiting The Order in a sequel and make it into a potential new franchise. However, a sequel may be difficult to make since Ready at Dawn has since split from Sony and while they own the RAD Engine that runs the game, Sony owns the rights to the actual IP.
• Demonic Spiders: Shotgunners. Since shotguns in this game function like, well, shotguns, the strategy of shotgunner enemies is to Zerg Rush your position and run circles around you while blasting you with extremely powerful shotgun blasts (said shotguns are also incendiary). Since the camera moves slowly this quickly becomes a nightmare. Honestly, the shotgunner A.I. in this game is probably the first to turn charging into a challenge for the player.
• Disappointing Last Level: The game's final boss fight is, different scenery aside, lifted wholesale from an earlier part of the game. Storywise, there is no resolution of the various character arcs, no comeuppance for the true villain of the story and an incredibly-short stinger with a vague Sequel Hook.
• Fan Nickname: The Rental: 1886 due to its extremely short length and lack of any multiplayer or replay value whatsoever. Others have started calling it "The Order: $18.86", which is pretty apt for a game many will pick up when it goes down in price down the line.
• Fridge Horror: A slight one of these when Lakshmibai talks about facing Elders in Jhansi. Before this, two full knights have one hell of a fight against just one Elder, two full fledged immortal knights that have been fighting for centuries. Let alone the numbers she implies she faced. What happened in Jhansi must have been terrible...
• Funny Moments:
  • The entire brothel scene.
  • The genius inventor Nikola Tesla doodles all over his rival Edison's picture on a flyer like a six year old.
  • Better even, picking up said flyer triggers this exchange:
  Galahad: Nikola, how fares your friend Edison these days?
  Nikola: Thomas and I...are not on speaking terms. (Beat) The man is an idiot!
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The game has a following in Brazil, owing to how the price cuts following the commercial underperformance led it to being very affordable.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Chapter 8 takes place on Westminster Bridge, where Galahad must fight through rebels who have attacked Lord Hastings' carriage. The image of an attack on Westminster Bridge, especially by assailants that very closely fit the bill of modern terrorists, is exceptionally uncomfortable in the aftermath of the 2017 Westminster terrorist attack, during which several civilians were run over and killed on Westminster Bridge by an attacker.
• Heartwarming Moments:
  • Lafayette is a stable source of those, especially in his last scene.
  • The Lord Chancellor's grief for and devotion to his son, despite Alastair being a Lycan, is pretty heartwarming.
• Ho Yay: Most likely very unintentional but there is some between Galahad and Lafayette. Somehow Galahad seems more worried about/friendlier towards the Marquis than even Igraine and Lafayette seems to think Galahad to be the best of the order, even more so than his own mentor.
• It's Short, So It Sucks!: A main complaint of the game by some critics, especially due to the lengthy and unskippable cutscenes taking a solid chunk of the game's playtime.
• Obvious Judas: Attentive players will be able to see the traitor coming from a mile away. Let's see: Alastair is something of an underdeveloped fifth wheel among the main cast, is the son of perhaps the dodgiest-looking authority figure since Hitler, the level that Galahad partners with him takes place so late in the game you'll be on your toes for the inevitable event that lands you in the Flash Forward, and, oh yeah, his name is Lord Lucan. What may be unexpected, however, is that his sister never makes a High-Heel–Face Turn, and his father comes off as a heavily flawed but somewhat sympathetic character.
• Older Than They Think: Yes, werewolves actually are a part of Arthurian lore.
  • Lord Hastings very clearly stands in direct sunlight perfectly fine, despite being a vampire. Classical vampires were unaffected by sunlight the way modern vampires are, and suffered no ill effects beyond losing their powers.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: The Order has Nikola Tesla as its armorer. The same guy, who in real life, was famous for his radical inventions and rumored to have built a death ray and earthquake machine. And what does he do in this game? He puts a scope on a rifle and builds a couple of special weapons that you barely have the opportunity to use.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: As mentioned of how short the game is, people who liked the game loved the lore and wished the game explored more about it.
  • The game was advertised as a secret order of semi-immortal Arthurian knights battling werewolves in a steampunk Victorian England setting, with the later revelation that vampires are also involved. However, 90% of the game consists of battling generic human enemies with the player encountering werewolves two or three times and never actually fighting a vampire.
  • A minor plot point, but still: after Galahad escapes from imprisonment, he loses his Blackwater, and you might be expecting for him to never recover it for the remainder of the game; after all, it'd not only be a fine example of Gameplay and Story Integration, but it also raises the stakes both in terms of gameplay and narrative, and emphasise Galahad's new status as the underdog. Don't worry, none of these potentially interesting elements are explored since Telsa gives him the Blackwater back before the next level starts.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: Even people who disliked the presentation and heavy cutscene-to-gameplay ratio admitted that the animations and graphics were incredibly well-made, and were almost like playing the game fully in cinematic cutscenes. In one behind-the-scenes trailer, the developers talk about how they put a great deal of effort into making sure the half-breeds' (Real Time) transformations looked plausible.

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