Rise of The Ronin Review

Can you handle this combat?

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Platform: PS5

Reviewed on: PS5

Developer: Team NINJA

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Release: March 21, 2024

Time Played: 20 Hours

Genre: Adventure RPG

ESRB: M

Intro:

Rise of The Ronin is an open world action game full of fights, blood, and political powers at play. You may be familiar with Team NINJA and their games from the past, there were some similarities between those games and this one, but a few new things to watch out for. With a large world to explore and an interesting combat system to figure out this game may be right up your alley, but before you run out and try it for yourself, please, stick around and allow me to explain what the game has to offer before I rate it and place it on the shelves behind me.

Where it starts

During the late 1850s in Japan, there was a lot of talk about opening commerce with the United States causing a rift between major powers in Japan. During all of this you play a nameless Ronin with your own goals in mind but still forced right in the middle of those world changing events. You’ll meet important people from history, help them with their goals and hopefully get some assistance for your own mission. The actions and choices you make may shift how Japan ends up.

Can the kids watch

The combat in the game was very flashy and cool, but there was a lot of blood flying everywhere with every hit, and you end up taking some limbs or a head off when finishing a fight with someone. You may run into some animals to fight, but most of the combat will be with other human characters. The language was fairly clean, but the gore was awesomely over the top, I loved it, but preferred my kids not to be around while I played it.

Big Open World

The open world was broken up into smaller sections for you to find collectibles and assist locals. It started off feeling big but quickly got smaller as I explored with the few collectibles in each area and the ability to fast travel to any banner I’d already found. On the map you can see how far along you are with finding everything in a zone, giving you rewards after you’re done. The small sections didn’t have much to find so you could cash in for the rewards quite fast and move onto the next zone.

Surviving Combat

At the start combat seemed simple with just a few different button combos to use, but when you find the plethora of different weapons to play with, each with their own distinctive moves, and multiple fighting styles to choose from, things started to get a little overwhelming. When fighting enemies, depending on their style, yours may be super effective or not effective at all, in those cases you can swap to a secondary equipped weapon or change your style on the fly during the fight. There was a definite learning curve for the combat system in this game.

Weapon Proficiency

Rise of The Ronin has plenty of weapons for you to choose from and gain experience with. The more you use a weapon the more proficient you become, unlocking new moves, stat boosts, and overall effectiveness using the weapon. You even learn from your enemies, taking them out can give you a little proficiency experience for the weapon they were using. On top of in game stat boosts you will learn the small nuances involved with the weapons, making you better overall.

Political Story

Based off real historical events the story in the game was very politically charged between Shogunates and anti-Shogunates. You’ll meet real people from history while trying to navigate your own story through the mess everyone is making. It is fun to learn about history, but I doubt a lot of what you experience in the game is realistic. Although there was a lot of entertaining combat and such, there were plenty of boring scenes of important people making important decisions about things completely out of your power.

Picking a Side

While playing there were a couple choices to be made during missions, usually implying a side of the whole story you want to join, gaining renown with one of the sides with garner rewards and titles. However most of the time it seemed like I was playing for both sides, making friends in one mission and fighting them in the next. It was a confusing process trying to figure out who I was really helping all the while working on my own personal mission. I’m sure the choices made in the game effect some parts of the story, but shortly into the game you gain access to replay any mission, making different choices and changing things up a bit.

Creating Bonds

While on your own mission you will meet a lot of different people on both sides, befriending some while fighting others, sometimes even both. The important characters you create a bond with will have their bond increased through certain actions rewarding you with items and better fighting skills. Some of your bond mates can be selected to take on missions with you while others ask that you accomplish specific tasks to increase your bond. Some abilities and gear are locked behind bond levels, you can view your bonds and possible rewards in the menu.

Small tasks, big rewards

Part of exploring a big open world is the small collectibles or activities scattered about to distract you. In every minor section of the world you can find cats, take pictures, and hunt down some unruly fugitives. Most of the collectibles are connected to a character you have a bond with who will sell you special items needed for the skill tree or gear that was part of a set. Depending on what type of character you build these will be important things to check out.

So much loot!

Something that is common in most Team NINJA games is the procurement of so much gear everywhere you go. Equipment will be dropped by enemies and found in chests with varied rarities and stat boosts. It could get a little overwhelming trying to manage all of it, but once you figure out what specific gear pieces your looking for, you can ignore the rest by selling it or dismantling to get parts to upgrade your own gear. Thankfully there is an easy way to filter and select all the gear you want to get rid of at merchants so your not stuck for hours managing your inventory.

Outro:

I’ve been a big fan of the Team NINJA games since Nioh 2, I put a lot of time into that and other titles like Wo Long and had certain expectations for this game. Their games usually take place during actual historical events and are full of real people from history. The games are so fun I go out and do a little research of my own to learn what was really happening during that time, it’s cool that a game makes me want to learn a little more history. However this was probably the most realistic game they’ve made, no scary Yokai fights or supernatural events happening. It still had that almost souls like feel with checkpoints I would respawn at and the loss of experience on death I could go back and retrieve, and a difficult to grasp combat system, but this game had a difficulty setting making combat less rigorous if you wanted to change it.

When I started the game I was having a hard time with the combat, it didn’t feel like I had any i-frames when dodging, and I’m a big fan of i-frames, and the enemies moved so fast I couldn’t comprehend or keep up. Early in the game I ran into a boss that just felt mean, she moved so fast and it seemed like if I messed up a block or counter I was doomed to take hits for her entire combo. I eventually beat it after leveling up a lot and getting new gear, but it still felt like a fluke. Eventually I started to get better with my timing as I learned new fighting skills and fought a lot of different enemies, but I still don’t feel like I’ll ever really understood how to take full advantage in the combat. It’s fun and frustrating.

Most of the story was very political and boring. I’m not very good at remembering names and there were a lot of names dropped during cut scenes, so and so doing this or we have to stop that person, I couldn’t follow and just wanted to get back into the fights more often than not. Don’t get me wrong there were a couple intriguing spots, but overall, I found the story not to be very engaging.

Rise of The Ronin was visually appealing, with the over the top blood splatter and flashy combat scenes, but out in the world it did feel a little lacking considering the price and times we’re in, and that’s only if you really start to look close. The game didn’t stutter or freeze anywhere, that was nice, and it wasn’t terrible to look at, it just seemed to not meet expectations.

After figuring out how to fight I did start to enjoy the game, but there were still plenty of frustrating fights. The kind of frustration that makes me want to quit, not the kind that makes me want to get better and succeed. Some fights just felt unfair, but not many. There were plenty of tough fights that gave me a hard time but felt like I could succeed if I tried a little harder or tried some new moves.

There is a little replayability with the multiple choices you can make while playing, but not restarting the whole game, with the ability to go back and replay missions there is no need. But the game is quite large, it might be all I can handle getting through it once, maybe trying it out again years down the road if I wanted a little more abuse.

Have you played any Team NINJA games or tried out Rise of The Ronin yet? Let me know in the comments and while you do that, I’m going to get these ratings underway

The visuals came out to a solid three out of five

The story, although fascinating and based off of true events, had a difficult time keeping my attention, I’m giving it a two

The gameplay was unique and interesting, I kind of enjoyed figuring it out, it’s getting a three

Replayability was so-so, I’m handing out another two

With all the varying levels of frustration and elation, I’m feeling a three.

Giving Rise of The Ronin a total score of two point six out of five, earning it a spot right there on the mid shelf.

I would say do not get this game if your looking for that Team NINJA souls like itch, it doesn’t quite meet that. It does have some complex difficulties to figure out if you really want a challenge and many ways to get through a fight. I really miss the fun supernatural twists they throw in their games.