Rise of the Ronin [Review]

Rise of the Ronin starts strong with clear inspirations on its gameplay in an understandable and easy to start package, but as the game progresses, the story (including choices and relationships) start to become irrelevant and without real consequences.

There are three different open world maps, divided by chapters, and many missions to do, but they're not that different in activities one from another, and they get progressively smaller as I progressed.

Combat-wise, this is where this game shines the most, even with some weird animations. The builds are interesting and there's variety on fighting styles and weapons, even with the progression being a bit grindy if you want to unlock all the skills each style have.

The bosses are the best part, but starting on chapter 2 most of them are repeated. For some reason, killing a strong enemy in one big boss fight means nothing, since they return in a next boss fight, and this is terrible. The lack of compromise with the choices I've made and with the story it was presented to me made everything feel boring and without consequences.

On the technical side, it is a mess. It runs better than most of this studio's output, but still not great. The graphics are sometimes gorgeous, most in its light effects and clothing, but the facial animations and overall direction of cutscenes leave a lot to be desired. It feels that every aspect of the game gets worse as I progressed, and this feeling made me a bit sick of the game in the end.

I've decided to just follow the questline of the party members that I actually like and do some side activities. By the end of the campaign, I was a bit overleveled and somewhat bored. It was about 36 hours for me, but it could be less if you only focus on the main quest or more if you want to do every side story.

I can't say that I'm surprised by how I felt about this game, but I wasn't expecting to like the first chapter so much while disliking the other 2. In the end, it was a fun action game, at least.

6/10

Honestly, I had other captures of this game, like, combat and all, but it is not NEARLY as good as the collecting cats aspect of this game.