Team Ninja’s penchant for delivering ambitious action gameplay has rarely ever wavered. Despite a few hiccups (Ninja Gaiden 3), the team has always found ways to one-up themselves with each new project. FromNinja GaidentoNiohto, most recently,Wo Long, Team Ninja has crafted some of the best-feeling melee combat in any game. So it’s unsurprising that their next game is even more ambitious.Rise of the Roninaims to continue the developer’s legacy of stellar combat but in a new, ambitious way. With a heavier emphasis on storytelling set in an open world,Rise of the Roninis a significant shakeup of Team Ninja’s linear-focused projects. Can Team Ninja’s DNA and ambitious vision merge into a fantastic new vision for the studio or doesRise of the Roninfall apart due to its ambition?
Rise of the Ronintakes place during the final days of the Tokugawa Shogunate, known as Bakumatsu. It’s a time of great upheaval and strife with the arrival of Western nations in Japan, pitting the pro-foreigner Shogunate against the anti-foreigner forces of the anti-Shogunate. Caught in the middle, you play as a Blade Twin who, after a mission gone wrong, sets out into the heart of Japan seeking answers and revenge. Pulled into the conflict between the Pro and Anti-Shogunate forces, you’ll make allies, confront enemies and help shape the future of Japan.
While previous Team Ninja games have always had stories, none have placed an enormous emphasis on them likeRise of the Ronin. A work of historical fiction,Rise of the Roninstrongly emphasizes the events, characters, and locations of the period, and it succeeds. Team Ninja has crafted an engaging story filled with political intrigue, daring plots and spectacular battles. It’s the most engrossing narrative Team Ninja has ever put together and easily its best written.
Much of that is helped by the various characters. Some are charming, some are detestable and some are downright wicked, yet they’re all well-written and expertly play their part in the story. As a neutral figure, you can interact with both the Pro and Anti-Shogunate forces and forge bonds with all characters. There are fantastic characterizations and real emotion behind the performances, but it comes at a cost. This neutral nature of your Blade Twin ultimately dilutes the effectiveness of your choices in the story. One moment, you’ll be working with the Pro-Shogunate forces to raid an Anti-Shogunate base, and the next, you’ll be partying with the Anti-Shogunate forces. While you’ll forge outstanding bonds in a single playthrough, your choices feel insignificant.
The weakest element of the story is you, the Blade Twin. Despite your high level of importance to each character, you rarely feel connected to the game’s events. You’re essentially a silent protagonist, an avatar through which to witness events unfold, but with little personal investment or stake in what happens.Rise of the Ronin’sstory is good and its characters are well-defined; it just doesn’t do the best job integrating you into its story.
Exploring Japan
Rise of the Ronin’scampaign may be open-world, but it rarely loses itself in the weeds. Despite having a mound of side quests, collectibles and other activities to pursue, the story manages to maintain excellent pacing and rarely drags. Taking about twenty hours to complete, there’s plenty of story to enjoy across its three chapters and three main locations.
Rise of the Roninmarks a significant change in Team Ninja’s design philosophy. While all their previous games were linear play spaces,Rise of the Roninis a true open world. Broken into three sprawling locations, you’ll visit Yokohama, Edo (known as Tokyo today), and Kyoto. All three locations are beautifully realized and provide unique terrain to explore. As a port city, Yokohama incorporates Western and traditional Eastern architecture. Edo, the seat of the Tokugawa Shogunate, feels the most natural with its beautiful estates, sweeping hills, and traditional elements. Finally, there’s Kyoto, a sprawling Japanese city and cultural heart of the country with plenty of districts to explore and rooftops to run across.
The game’s open world is beautiful and sprawling, but Team Ninja’s linear design elements remain. Main story missions are reminiscent ofNioh, where you’ll be dropped in a sequestered play space with an endpoint. How you get to that endpoint, whether brute force or stealth, is up to you. Various gadgets like the grappling hook, glider and detector can be used to gain height advantages, take down enemies from above or find better placement.
If there’s one downside to the story missions, it’s their lack of variety. Missions always boil down to infiltrating a space, fighting or stealthing your way through enemies, and defeating a boss. It’s in other activities like the Bond missions, which focus on building bonds with various characters, where you’ll find greater variety. For main missions, however, creating variety relies primarily on players and how they setup a mission. It’s the weapons you take in, the ranged weapons you equip and the allies you choose that ultimately spice up missions. It’s also great fun bringing in up to two friends for some co-op action. Even with all those options, it’s still hard to ignore that you’re doing the same thing in the first mission that you’re doing in the last.
Clashing swords
Team Ninja games have always excelled in creating engrossing combat experiences, andRise of the Roninis no different. Like their most recent games,Rise of the Roninheavily emphasizes dueling enemies. Much likeNiohorWo Long, you’ll attack and parry enemies to deplete their stamina (Ki), all while maintaining your own Ki. Parries inRise of the Roninare called Countersparks and are executed by carefully watching and parrying enemy strikes at the right time. There are also opportunities to block and dodge incoming attacks, though at the cost of Ki.
Rise of the Ronin’sgameplay looks and feels spectacular in these smaller moments against a few opponents. The systems create an intricate dance that is cinematic to look at and satisfying to pull off. Unfortunately, the systems break down a bit when battles become chaotic or forced into tight spaces as neither the camera nor Counterspark feels suited to these types of encounters. The personal feeling of the Counterspark and the way the camera angles itself during battles makes it easy to get attacked from off-screen. If the game employed an indicator system like the Batman Arkham games, it could offset some of these issues. Alas, it doesn’t, so the game can get frustrating when you find yourself in chaotic battles.
Luckily, the game’s allies and difficulty options offset some of that frustration. If you choose to forgo online co-op, you can bring in two allied characters that you can instantly swap to on the fly or immediately if your character is downed. This creates an interesting dynamic where you can use this swapping to gain advantages in battles. Is your current character facing too much heat? Swap to another to help them reset. The other factor is the difficulty. While there is an option to make the difficulty feel likeNiohorWo Long, there’s also a more accessible option for those wanting to focus on the story. The game still puts up a fight, but those who have ever found a game likeDark SoulsorNiohtoo difficult won’t face similar issues inRise of the Ronin. It’s not only Team Ninja’s most ambitious game yet, but it’s also their most approachable from a difficulty perspective.
Like most modern open-world action games,Rise of the Roninlayers in a healthy dose of RPG elements to mixed results. Mainly, this is accomplished through Bonds and relationships with allies, ever-improving gear, various items, gadget upgrades and skill trees. The game throws a lot at players, and it’s often a lot to keep track of, particularly the Bonds with allies since you forge a bond with nearly every named character. Even the skill trees are too much, with stat bonuses thrown in among more valuable skills to pad out the trees. It’s too much and distracts from where the gameplay truly excels, the combat.
Rise of the Ronin Brings Exciting Visceral Combat During Edo’s Twilight
Rise of the Ronin brings Team Ninja’s signature combat to the open world.
Rise of the Roninmay have some issues with its swordplay and goes too far in the RPG direction, but it’s ultimately a fun game to play. The combat is satisfying to perform and look at, and the game does an excellent job of creating the right scenarios to engage in that combat. The game has all the brilliance ofNiohandWo Longbut also remains approachable for those intimidated by those games.
A presentation that isn’t full up to current-gen standards
Rise of the Roninemploys Team Ninja’s proprietary Katana Engine to power the game on PS5. A current-gen exclusive title,Rise of the Ronin’spresentation does a decent job of bringing a dense, open world to life with some great-looking foliage and beautiful animation work. Where the game most succeeds is in the animation department, thanks to beautifully-choreographed movements. The rest of the game looks good, though if you’re waiting for a game to truly flex the power of the PlayStation 5 hardware,Rise of the Roninisn’t it.
What matters most for a fast-paced action game is performance, but that is unfortunately a mixed bag. While the performance mode targets 60fps, the game frequently dips into the 50s. Meanwhile, the graphics mode, which can be left unlocked or locked to 30fps, suffer from frame pacing issues. Oddly enough, it’s the raytracing mode that delivers the best performance at the cost of image quality.Rise of the Roninis still playable and fun with the performance issues. It’s just unfortunate these issues couldn’t be smoothed out.
Closing Comments:
Team Ninja’s most ambitious project today is a successful one, albeit not a flawless one.Rise of the Roninaims to deliver an epic story filled with well-rounded characters, an open-world adventure, action-filled combat and a presentation taking advantage of current-gen hardware. For the most part, it succeeds. The story is indeed epic, with plenty of intrigue delivered by well-rounded characters, even at the cost of the player character. Exploring Japan’s famous cities is a real treat, with plenty of activities to interact with. Combat is fast, fun and inventive, even though sometimes things can get too chaotic for the mechanics to handle. It’s easily Team Ninja’s most approachable game, providing both a story-focused experience for casual players and a hardcore experience forNiohandWo Longveterans. The presentation may not live up to or run at the current generation’s standards, but the game looks decent enough and performs well enough to remain fun throughout. Team Ninja shot for the moon and delivered a fun open-world action game that, despite its faults, is an excellent experience.Rise of the Roninprovides a fantastic new vision for Team Ninja.
