I’m on Backlog Cleanup Duty this week. I’ve started playing some games that I never went around to finish and I need to actually do that, my disk space is getting concerning.
EDIT: This ended up almost as a full scale Rise of the Ronin review, so I’ll spoiler tag it in order to not take up too much space in the thread.
spoiler
First up was Rise of the Ronin. Eagle-eyed readers of these weekly threads will know I never gave a final opinion on it, because I played it months ago and then burned out on the open world and never picked it up again. Well, I did finally push through and get to the credits this week. And my first thought is: this game is way too long. There is too much game in this game. Actually, more like too much filler. I think a more sensible approach that doesn’t try to clear the whole map would be much better, although that is rarely how I play open world games. I guess this game does regularly emphasize that you can go back to previous areas at any time, and that seems to include the post-game. So maybe that’s what all those enemy bases and fugitives and whatever are meant for. Something to do after you’ve finished the story.
Which, speaking of the story - the story is an absolute mess. This is Team Ninja so nobody is expecting Shakespeare, but what strikes me is that the story is both somehow interesting and awful at the same time. It’s interesting because the game is based on the Bakumatsu period - which is fascinating - and everything is anchored in real events and real historic characters. The intrigue and factions and characters do genuinely have interesting elements and moments. And some characters end up being quite charming, like Ryoma.
The problem is that the way the story is told, and the way the protagonist is incorporated is truly horrendous. I’ve never seen anything more confusing and disjointed honestly. This is a game that was screaming out for actually picking sides and having branching storylines (which I guess was just too much work - which is fair, it’s why we rarely see it in games). But what ends up instead is that the protagonist just plays all sides of the conflict constantly, and everyone is just magically okay with it? You betray someone, then you’re friends the next mission. You build up a friendship with someone over several missions, then suddenly they’re the boss in the next mission. Then back to being friends! You fight someone as an end boss in one mission, then go back to giving them gifts in the extremely rudimentary relationship system in the hopes of dating them. You “pick a side” in the main story, then go back to the other side’s base in the open world and continue doing side missions for them and they barely comment on you having sided with their enemy. And this “picking a side” in the main story happens often, and always with zero consequences or permanence. You side with the shogun one main mission, then side against him the next and the rebels just welcome you with open arms.
And on top of this is grafted the story of the protagonist and their Veiled Edge counterpart, which is highly mediocre and contrasts very clearly with the historically based intrigue, and also resolved very abruptly and anti climactically in the ending (although maybe the time gap between me starting and finishing the game had an impact here). But it definitely felt to me like so much focus narratively was put on the conflict between Japan and the west and the shogunate and the rebels, and very little time was actually spent on your Blade Twin’s personal beliefs and motivations. So he ended up feeling very weak as an antagonist.
Also I have to mention graphics, simply because I found them profoundly strange. Ronin is not a bad looking game, but it’s also not a good looking game - it’s actually both at the same time. Sometimes it looks like absolute shit, sometimes it looks genuinely pretty great. I think something is wrong with the lighting in this engine, particularly outdoors, and this leads to a lot of places in the game looking very flat, uninspiring and just ugly. Indoor areas generally look better, and cutscenes and dialogue often look pretty good, despite being rendered in-engine. This again leads me to believe it’s mostly a lighting issue rather than textures and models.
Furthermore on the subject of this being a very strange game: the protagonist. This is the weirdest implementation of speaking/silent protagonist I have ever seen. It’s not a silent protagonist, but… it’s not really speaking either. For like 90% of the game it’s a classic silent protagonist - your dialogue choices are unvoiced and in cutscenes you mainly communicate in nods and grunts. Standard silent protagonist stuff. And then in like 5% of the cutscenes the protagonist actually… speaks? I don’t know, maybe they really didn’t have the budget to fully voice the protagonist but it gave me whiplash every time it happened.
Anyway, I have wasted enough of your time. Would I recommend Rise of the Ronin? It’s a weird one, this. If you’re a combat junkie, I would say yes. Especially since it’s often for sale at around €20. The combat here is absolutely excellent, and it will give you more than your fill. The parry-centric fighting works well to fullfil that samurai fantasy of standing your ground and clashing blades, while all the martial skills and the ability to chain them together and mix and match fighting styles and weapons give you a lot of creativity and ability to style when you’re on the offensive.
If you just want a pretty, cinematic open world game with a coherent narrative and good production values then you might get frustrated here. Sure, the open world is big and the checklists have a lot of items on them, but they’re more tedious than anything else. There is a reason Ghost of Tsushima took off in popularity and this didn’t, even though I personally had more fun playing Ronin than I did Ghost.
I’m on Backlog Cleanup Duty this week. I’ve started playing some games that I never went around to finish and I need to actually do that, my disk space is getting concerning.
EDIT: This ended up almost as a full scale Rise of the Ronin review, so I’ll spoiler tag it in order to not take up too much space in the thread.
spoiler
First up was Rise of the Ronin. Eagle-eyed readers of these weekly threads will know I never gave a final opinion on it, because I played it months ago and then burned out on the open world and never picked it up again. Well, I did finally push through and get to the credits this week. And my first thought is: this game is way too long. There is too much game in this game. Actually, more like too much filler. I think a more sensible approach that doesn’t try to clear the whole map would be much better, although that is rarely how I play open world games. I guess this game does regularly emphasize that you can go back to previous areas at any time, and that seems to include the post-game. So maybe that’s what all those enemy bases and fugitives and whatever are meant for. Something to do after you’ve finished the story.
Which, speaking of the story - the story is an absolute mess. This is Team Ninja so nobody is expecting Shakespeare, but what strikes me is that the story is both somehow interesting and awful at the same time. It’s interesting because the game is based on the Bakumatsu period - which is fascinating - and everything is anchored in real events and real historic characters. The intrigue and factions and characters do genuinely have interesting elements and moments. And some characters end up being quite charming, like Ryoma.
The problem is that the way the story is told, and the way the protagonist is incorporated is truly horrendous. I’ve never seen anything more confusing and disjointed honestly. This is a game that was screaming out for actually picking sides and having branching storylines (which I guess was just too much work - which is fair, it’s why we rarely see it in games). But what ends up instead is that the protagonist just plays all sides of the conflict constantly, and everyone is just magically okay with it? You betray someone, then you’re friends the next mission. You build up a friendship with someone over several missions, then suddenly they’re the boss in the next mission. Then back to being friends! You fight someone as an end boss in one mission, then go back to giving them gifts in the extremely rudimentary relationship system in the hopes of dating them. You “pick a side” in the main story, then go back to the other side’s base in the open world and continue doing side missions for them and they barely comment on you having sided with their enemy. And this “picking a side” in the main story happens often, and always with zero consequences or permanence. You side with the shogun one main mission, then side against him the next and the rebels just welcome you with open arms.
And on top of this is grafted the story of the protagonist and their Veiled Edge counterpart, which is highly mediocre and contrasts very clearly with the historically based intrigue, and also resolved very abruptly and anti climactically in the ending (although maybe the time gap between me starting and finishing the game had an impact here). But it definitely felt to me like so much focus narratively was put on the conflict between Japan and the west and the shogunate and the rebels, and very little time was actually spent on your Blade Twin’s personal beliefs and motivations. So he ended up feeling very weak as an antagonist.
Also I have to mention graphics, simply because I found them profoundly strange. Ronin is not a bad looking game, but it’s also not a good looking game - it’s actually both at the same time. Sometimes it looks like absolute shit, sometimes it looks genuinely pretty great. I think something is wrong with the lighting in this engine, particularly outdoors, and this leads to a lot of places in the game looking very flat, uninspiring and just ugly. Indoor areas generally look better, and cutscenes and dialogue often look pretty good, despite being rendered in-engine. This again leads me to believe it’s mostly a lighting issue rather than textures and models.
Furthermore on the subject of this being a very strange game: the protagonist. This is the weirdest implementation of speaking/silent protagonist I have ever seen. It’s not a silent protagonist, but… it’s not really speaking either. For like 90% of the game it’s a classic silent protagonist - your dialogue choices are unvoiced and in cutscenes you mainly communicate in nods and grunts. Standard silent protagonist stuff. And then in like 5% of the cutscenes the protagonist actually… speaks? I don’t know, maybe they really didn’t have the budget to fully voice the protagonist but it gave me whiplash every time it happened.
Anyway, I have wasted enough of your time. Would I recommend Rise of the Ronin? It’s a weird one, this. If you’re a combat junkie, I would say yes. Especially since it’s often for sale at around €20. The combat here is absolutely excellent, and it will give you more than your fill. The parry-centric fighting works well to fullfil that samurai fantasy of standing your ground and clashing blades, while all the martial skills and the ability to chain them together and mix and match fighting styles and weapons give you a lot of creativity and ability to style when you’re on the offensive.
If you just want a pretty, cinematic open world game with a coherent narrative and good production values then you might get frustrated here. Sure, the open world is big and the checklists have a lot of items on them, but they’re more tedious than anything else. There is a reason Ghost of Tsushima took off in popularity and this didn’t, even though I personally had more fun playing Ronin than I did Ghost.