Rise of the Ronin: Initial thoughts- 3-4 hours in
Rise of the Ronin starts off unsure of what it wants to be. It tries to dip its hands in multiple pots but won't commit to any of them. There are clear elements of soulslikes in this game throughout my playthrough of the admittedly short time I have spent in this game.
The Combat
The combat is very soulslike, in the worst way, I say this as someone who is not a fan of souls combat, its clunky movement and poor control layout simply cover up what it is at its core, boring combat. Souls like combat creates synthetic difficulty, it's not difficult because its a well thought out, complex combat system that forces you to adapt to each fight or a combat system that teaches as you go, so you are always learning something new, its a basic hit and block combat system that disguises itself as difficult through the covers of a poor control layout that employs outdated and unusual button mapping and combines this with enemies that take little damage but deal a lot and a character who deals little damage but takes a lot.
The worst part of the combat is by far the “parry”, although in this its referred to as a counterspark, it is a slow move, so the timing is a mess, this makes the “parry” practically useless outside of bossfights, and the game expects you to almost rely on it in bossfights, expecting you to rely on the most unreliable move you have, meaning you spend the majority of the combat simply moving around the fight area waiting for the enemy to do a red move^. And to make it all worse, this game employs the feature of a stamina bar/meter, now, that isn't a problem if that's all it is, a stamina bar, but this stamina bar is decreased by six things; running, dodging, combat rolls, parrying, attacking and blocking. Essentially there is nothing you can do in this game during combat that doesn’t use your stamina, which caused me to be in too many situations where I was unable to avoid or block attacks. The game does this for a reason, and I'm pretty sure i know that reason, because this issue is easily avoidable, if you spend the boss fights with a great distance between you and your enemy, only briefly going closer for attacks after parrying a red move then regaining that distance, which practically doubles the amount of time it takes to finish a bossfight. This is a problem for two reasons; A) it's a lazy attempt at lengthening the game, and B) it's mostly Katana like combat, which should be quick, turning that into slow drawn out combat damages the feel of combat that this game needs.
After more time spent in the game, you get used to the combat “system” more and it becomes easier, but is still held back by the clunkiness and poor control layout, so even after becoming more adept at the controls, it's still quite weak.
The Movement
The movement, for lack of a better word, is rough. It's clunky and like the combat this causes it to feel slower than it should be, again, this is reminiscent of soulslikes. The already clunky and harsh movement is worsened by its control layout, again. The key example of this, is, to dodge you press circle, to combat roll you double press circle, and to run you press circle for slightly longer than to dodge, so a lot of the time when you are trying to run your character dodges, or when you're trying to dodge, instead they run. But despite all this, the character’s movement on foot is perfection compared to the horse movement. I am not exaggerating when I say that this game has some of the worst horse mechanics that I have ever used.
The World
The world is ok, it's not bad in design but the graphics do hold its visuals back (I will explain later). I had multiple occasions where items in the world, whether they were walls, rocks, fences etc, had no collisions whatsoever, so there were times where I would fall off of the edge of a cliff (a low cliff so I did not die) due to there being nothing to collide with, and times where I was able to pass through what should be solid surfaces. However, there were other times where the items had very clear collision, for two reasons; sometimes the hitboxes were higher than the item so I could stand, floating above the surface, and other times the hitboxes were made clear by the fact that instead of my character walking over a slight slope or a low rock, he would clip on top of the surface, changing the movement of my character from clunky to powerpoint slide. The world seems to be mostly made up of enemy bases and small collectables, very reminiscent of the stereotypical problems people have with another game developer, who I think yoU will Be understandIng aS tO why this review won’t aFfirm The name of said developer.
Visuals
Not too much to say about the game visually, it seems to borrow a lot of visual style from soulslikes, but from a visual quality side, it’s honestly pretty weak. The game offers 3 presets for visuals, and then allows you to change settings individually, the 3 presets are; Prioritise FPS, Prioritise Graphics and Ray Tracing.
Irrelevant of which you pick the graphics do not really change that much, there is the slightest difference between using ray tracing and not, but other than that nothing else that noticeable, however the fps is really noticeable, going from prioritise FPS to Graphics is very jarring, seeing the framerate drop significantly, to the point where i recommend everyone play it on prioritise FPS as the other presets, to me, were unbearable.
Overall
Rise of the Ronin doesn't know what it is. Throughout my time playing, I noticed elements of games like; Ghost Of Tsushima, Star Wars The Force Unleashed, The Assassin’s Creed Series, Sekiro Shadows Die Twice and Devil May Cry. But none of these styles were fully developed so it just resulted in a game that feels like a poor, improvised mashup of all of them rather than its own entity.
There were positives I found, although not many; as simple as it sounds, the fact that this game has dismemberment was a positive to me, I respect that. The character customisation, it's more than I expected and it's pretty well done. The theme and setting, Japan in 1863 is a cool setting, and an era of Japan we haven't really seen much of in media. The HUD, I'm a fan of the HUD and most of the overall UI. It's not too busy, shows you just what you need to know and fits the style very well, this includes the map, which is pretty nicely detailed and easy to use. Unfortunately, that is where the positives I found end
^Red move: a move that can only be parried, unable to simply block it and typically cannot dodge it.
Rise of the Ronin starts off unsure of what it wants to be. It tries to dip its hands in multiple pots but won't commit to any of them. There are clear elements of soulslikes in this game throughout my playthrough of the admittedly short time I have spent in this game.
The Combat
The combat is very soulslike, in the worst way, I say this as someone who is not a fan of souls combat, its clunky movement and poor control layout simply cover up what it is at its core, boring combat. Souls like combat creates synthetic difficulty, it's not difficult because its a well thought out, complex combat system that forces you to adapt to each fight or a combat system that teaches as you go, so you are always learning something new, its a basic hit and block combat system that disguises itself as difficult through the covers of a poor control layout that employs outdated and unusual button mapping and combines this with enemies that take little damage but deal a lot and a character who deals little damage but takes a lot.
The worst part of the combat is by far the “parry”, although in this its referred to as a counterspark, it is a slow move, so the timing is a mess, this makes the “parry” practically useless outside of bossfights, and the game expects you to almost rely on it in bossfights, expecting you to rely on the most unreliable move you have, meaning you spend the majority of the combat simply moving around the fight area waiting for the enemy to do a red move^. And to make it all worse, this game employs the feature of a stamina bar/meter, now, that isn't a problem if that's all it is, a stamina bar, but this stamina bar is decreased by six things; running, dodging, combat rolls, parrying, attacking and blocking. Essentially there is nothing you can do in this game during combat that doesn’t use your stamina, which caused me to be in too many situations where I was unable to avoid or block attacks. The game does this for a reason, and I'm pretty sure i know that reason, because this issue is easily avoidable, if you spend the boss fights with a great distance between you and your enemy, only briefly going closer for attacks after parrying a red move then regaining that distance, which practically doubles the amount of time it takes to finish a bossfight. This is a problem for two reasons; A) it's a lazy attempt at lengthening the game, and B) it's mostly Katana like combat, which should be quick, turning that into slow drawn out combat damages the feel of combat that this game needs.
After more time spent in the game, you get used to the combat “system” more and it becomes easier, but is still held back by the clunkiness and poor control layout, so even after becoming more adept at the controls, it's still quite weak.
The Movement
The movement, for lack of a better word, is rough. It's clunky and like the combat this causes it to feel slower than it should be, again, this is reminiscent of soulslikes. The already clunky and harsh movement is worsened by its control layout, again. The key example of this, is, to dodge you press circle, to combat roll you double press circle, and to run you press circle for slightly longer than to dodge, so a lot of the time when you are trying to run your character dodges, or when you're trying to dodge, instead they run. But despite all this, the character’s movement on foot is perfection compared to the horse movement. I am not exaggerating when I say that this game has some of the worst horse mechanics that I have ever used.
The World
The world is ok, it's not bad in design but the graphics do hold its visuals back (I will explain later). I had multiple occasions where items in the world, whether they were walls, rocks, fences etc, had no collisions whatsoever, so there were times where I would fall off of the edge of a cliff (a low cliff so I did not die) due to there being nothing to collide with, and times where I was able to pass through what should be solid surfaces. However, there were other times where the items had very clear collision, for two reasons; sometimes the hitboxes were higher than the item so I could stand, floating above the surface, and other times the hitboxes were made clear by the fact that instead of my character walking over a slight slope or a low rock, he would clip on top of the surface, changing the movement of my character from clunky to powerpoint slide. The world seems to be mostly made up of enemy bases and small collectables, very reminiscent of the stereotypical problems people have with another game developer, who I think yoU will Be understandIng aS tO why this review won’t aFfirm The name of said developer.
Visuals
Not too much to say about the game visually, it seems to borrow a lot of visual style from soulslikes, but from a visual quality side, it’s honestly pretty weak. The game offers 3 presets for visuals, and then allows you to change settings individually, the 3 presets are; Prioritise FPS, Prioritise Graphics and Ray Tracing.
Irrelevant of which you pick the graphics do not really change that much, there is the slightest difference between using ray tracing and not, but other than that nothing else that noticeable, however the fps is really noticeable, going from prioritise FPS to Graphics is very jarring, seeing the framerate drop significantly, to the point where i recommend everyone play it on prioritise FPS as the other presets, to me, were unbearable.
Overall
Rise of the Ronin doesn't know what it is. Throughout my time playing, I noticed elements of games like; Ghost Of Tsushima, Star Wars The Force Unleashed, The Assassin’s Creed Series, Sekiro Shadows Die Twice and Devil May Cry. But none of these styles were fully developed so it just resulted in a game that feels like a poor, improvised mashup of all of them rather than its own entity.
There were positives I found, although not many; as simple as it sounds, the fact that this game has dismemberment was a positive to me, I respect that. The character customisation, it's more than I expected and it's pretty well done. The theme and setting, Japan in 1863 is a cool setting, and an era of Japan we haven't really seen much of in media. The HUD, I'm a fan of the HUD and most of the overall UI. It's not too busy, shows you just what you need to know and fits the style very well, this includes the map, which is pretty nicely detailed and easy to use. Unfortunately, that is where the positives I found end
^Red move: a move that can only be parried, unable to simply block it and typically cannot dodge it.
2 Comments
ive played more since and i think the game shouldnt have been open world, it would have been so much better if it was linear, and maybe leant into more of a ridiculous feel like devil may cry. but i admit the counterspark becomes more useful later onm in the game, but it is still a poor excuse for a parry, and i spend most fights dodging rather than parrying. the game starts weak, and doesnt show off its strongest parts until youre like 6 hours in, and the first 5- 6 hours are long, so you have to REALLY want to like it to force your way through that
niflheimm
1 month ago