I had never heard of Immortals of Aveum until it dropped on Playstation Plus. I decided to check it out based on a quick trailer. The idea of a mage based FPS did sound like fun and for AAA budget and it being free why wouldn't I at least try it.

Immortals while not spectacular was decent fun for a good bit. The only real drab elements for me was that for one the game was too long for my liking and quickly lost it's luster halfway through with most the game elements already at your disposal and the story I found to be very dull. I appreciate the attempt of making a massive fantasy world for what is essentially a FPS shooter but I found the world and logic a bit too fantastical and overly complex to really get into. While there is a good bit of lore and story building all throughout, the plot is rather simple and straight forward. It just didn't hold my attention. I really don't have much to say about it except for "meh" honestly.

As for the gameplay you have three different colored kind of magics that you can use at any time. Blue magic which is a more precise straight forward shot, Red Magic that explodes in a wide space and Green Magic that shoots many small projectiles in a single path. While that may sound limiting, I really didn't find it to be that in practice. You can switch between them at anytime like a gun in any other FPS. You constantly find new bangles that change the properities of your magic that change their stats such as damage, range, and number of shots. You can really choose which style you want and roll with it. The game does a pretty good job at rolling out gold, upgrades and secrets and really encourage exploration. You can pretty much back travel to any point at any time and find something that will help you solve an old puzzle or get further in an area. Theres a good number of side activities that you can do and I never felt like I was required to do them but if I wanted to I could.

One of the things I really like about Immortals of Aveum is that the magic does feel really good to use. Yes at the end of the day they do kind of feel like guns but the visual and audio design of the magic attacks looks and feels good. The constant particle effects from both player and enemy can really light up the screen and be a visual wonder. However having said that the other side of the coin though is that, that same splender and visual noises does dillute your view of what is happening all around you. I have never played a game as much as Aveum that I really can't tell what is hitting me or what I'm taking damage from. There are so many times that I just see my health drop from 100% to 10% in a blink of an eye. Thankfully you can heal instantly and heals are plentiful but so many encounters that I have lost or took damage from felt so cheap and confusing as I didn't even know why it was happening. I'm taking it up to visual clutter but I'd be lying if I felt like some enemies just hit fast, quiet and hard and I just don't notice it. Enemies usually go down very easily or can be quite tanky. Some enemies I feel like I shoot like 50 times before they are taken down. The combat felt unbalanced.

Immortals of Aveum really was a middle of the road game for me. Held my interest in wanting to finish it but by the halfway mark I was ready for it to be over. It's fine just not spectacular.

Lords of Exile caught my eye awhile back. It wears it's Castlevania inspiration on it's sleeve. From the look and even gameplay it's clearly obvious this is what it wanted to be. The graphics are quite good, having that nostalgic 8 bit horror feel and typical vania soundtrack to go with it. On paper Lords of Exile is exactly that and what you expect, however while playing it, it felt pretty mediocre and then after finishing thinking back on it I think slightly below average retro platformer. The fundementals of a good game are there but there are so many half baked ideas and mechanics that the game feels unfinished. Not to say it's not polished or glitchy but on a concept level.

It's a classic 2D sidecroller with about 8 levels about 7-8 min average playtime. It has the standard vania sub weapons that you can collect and use with limited resources. You have your dagger, the classic vertical axe throw, bomb and a homing boomerang and thats it. There is nothing original there. 90% of the time you only find daggers and axes and the weapon refills are so plentify I wonder why they even made it a mechanic in the first place. I can understand having the classic archtypes if you wanna be a spiritual successor but create something of your own as well. The game is actually pretty easy. You will not find the classic vania difficulty here. Most everything dies in a single hit and bosses are the only thing that pose a real threat. To make matters worse most of the bosses are too poorly designed and you can simply outpace their damage output from mindless slashing or stand in one spot to avoid most damage all togather. The final boss is the only boss that posed any real challenge and the only one that I thought was above average.

There is no exploration this is a pure sidescroller, so no metroidvania replays or alternate paths nor secrets to discover in the stages. There is a simple shop where you can buy items or health but the game is so easy and has such little options it feels completely unessesary. Even more head scratching are these slot machines in each level to get more gold or items. Feels like an unfinished idea for a bigger game. It makes no sense here. The worst of all though is the spirit helper mechanic. You can unlock a spirit that helps as you play the game. Which is a neat idea to add functionality to the game but the problem is that there is only two of them the entire game and they only serve a single gimmick function. One for clearing blocks and one for grapple hooking fixed jump gaps. Totally worthless mechanic. Would make sense if they served some platforming passive upgrade or make a unique attack or something. There is a small upgrade for your character as you beat each stage and while the first half of the game was quite nice they just got lazier and lazier as the game went on. Another half baked idea. There is no lives system and checkpoints are plenty. Die on a boss you can infinitely try again. I think a larger emphasis on story or alt paths and endings would have helped flesh this game out better. This is only a intro and ending scene and they are quite genaric.

After beating the game once you unlock another playable character, boss rush and a speed run mode. While nice does feel like rather light and standard. Lords of Exile looks nice and sounds good so it might catch your attention but after playing a couple of stages quickly loses it's shine. Worth it for a single playthrough if you can get it cheap cause it's easily beaten in a single sitting.

As a massive fan of the Nioh franchise and seeing the inital trailer for Rise of the Ronin a couple of years ago, I couldn't help but be excited for the game. Even though Wo Long was very disappointing for me, I still had faith in Team Ninja. In a lot of ways Rise of the Ronin was a disappointment for me. If I can can simply sum it up, Rise just has too much bloat and repitiveness even though the combat does save it, ever so slightly.

The gameplay of Ronin to me is slightly above average. It has a counter heavy mechanic where a lot of the fights are about whittiling down stamina meters in order to do big damage. Weapon variety is pretty good and each weapon has several different basic set of attacks and is very easy to mix and match them up. It can be overly complex for gamers who aren't great at action games but there is some depth there. It's nothing flashy or combo heavy but weapons do feel good to use and countering is always satisfying, especially if you counter a enemies entire attack string. My only problem with the countering that while it does feel good to counter a whole attack string it's really only useful for countering the final attack or a red charge attack as those are the ones that really cause the enemey to stagger and get some hits in. It's too much risk and not enough reward trying to "daigo parry" a whole multi-hit combo and best to just block the string and parry the last hit. Enemies can be tanky and tough but there is enough items to beef your character up at anytime to give you a real edge. I found that health items and temp stat boosters come aplenty in Ronin compared to most common souls style games so I feel like you can always outlast most struggles with items alone. The only thing that I really dislike about the combat is the blood mechanic. Hitting enemies soaks your weapon with blood and each consecutive hit gets weaker and causes less hit stun. You constantly have to wipe it off by pressing R1 after a combo string to clean it. Sort of like a Ki Pulse from Nioh or a stamina regain from Wo Long. Except in ronin it's much more slower and much more delayed on the input. It always felt sluggish to me and a lot of the time it never came out when I wanted it to. I hated having to clean it after killing an enemey. So many intentional whiffed attacks just to clean. It got really annoying. Even worse in boss fights. I also feel that stamina runs out very fast in this game, much more than others that play like Ronin. Getting hit back and forth by multiple enemies from both sides, blocking and trying to get an attack string going only to be put into stamina regen after getting knocked down and then as soon as I get up be put in that cooldown animation to only get knocked down again. Really annoying.

As for the open world Rise of the Ronin has a lot of content. Like a lot of stuff populates on the map. Outside of the main missions you spend a lot of your time slowly uncovering the map. Everytime you clear an area with bandits or unlock a fast travel spot you uncover all the collectibles on the map. I really do like when open world games show me exactly where things are after doing a clearly marked thing on the map. However the things to collect are extremely dull and very uninteresting. They feel like Donkey Kong 64 collectibles at times. Collect 100 cats, pray at 100 shrines, take 100 pictures and take out 100 bandits. Feels very by the book and honestly is just busy work. The rewards are pretty small but getting every collectible in any given area does net some usually good rewards. It's just after about a dozen or so hours it really gets old. There are some side missions that have you tasked to do small meager tasks with little reward like other open world games but weirdly they aren't as numerous. There are also randomly generated temp missions that feel completely useless unless going for the trophy for doing 50 of them. Total time wasters. Then there are bond missions. Rise of the Ronin does have a mechanic in place where depending on your character choices and how you talk to characters you can improve their bond with you and passing certain benchmarks will unlock a side mission related to that character. These missions usually have a bit more to them and they do flesh out a character much more. Most characters have about 3 or 4 of them throughout the game bringing the total to about 85. So yea there are a lot of characters and missions. It seems neverending at times. I will give the game props that at times it does feel like your choices do matter and have an impact on your initial playthrough.

As for the story of Rise of the Ronin, I will preface it by saying that a clear amount of effort is shown here and it's massive character count and real life events does lend to a indepth story. If your paying attention and appreciate the historical aspects or period setting there is a lot to like here. Now having said that, the bloat of this game and is story is very very overbearing. I feel what is a pretty simple story does feel like it gets over explaned and constant new character introductions and stakes that seemingly come and go on a whim make it a really frustrating experiance. There is a lot of dialog in this game and cutscenes are very explanation heavy. About 10 hours into it, I kinda gave up with it to be honest. It's not something I ever do but I started skipping all the dialog and just watched the few animated cutscenes. It wasn't that much harder to follow. There is like no character develpment here and hardly any characters are in the story for very long outside of a couple. Just not engaging in the least bit. And I really loved Nioh's story and most people hated that one I feel. Being honest though, as much as the prerelease was bringing up how much the story was the focus with this one I was really let down. It also could not have ended on more of a wet fart as well. I do like being able to create a protaginist and antaginist in the create a player. That's a novel feature. Just wish the antaginist had more of a role or character and not just somebody who shows up for five seconds here and there.

Overall Rise of the Ronin has some strenghts and it's really not bad but it's bloat and length really sour the experiance which other wise has a pretty decent combat experiance by most accounts. The fun factor sadly wasn't higher than some of my frustrations. However after putting so much time into it and my progress with the game I still really wanted to see it through to the end. But aww man, by the end, if I had to run into one more storage hut that's locked only for the window on the opposite side of the building to be open and you have to jump up a nearby low haning tile wall and glide into the window, I just might scream. And people complain about the pallets and ladders in The Last of Us.

Platinum #205

As a massive fan of the Nioh franchise and seeing the inital trailer for Rise of the Ronin a couple of years ago, I couldn't help but be excited for the game. Even though Wo Long was very disappointing for me, I still had faith in Team Ninja. In a lot of ways Rise of the Ronin was a disappointment for me. If I can can simply sum it up, Rise just has too much bloat and repitiveness even though the combat does save it, ever so slightly.

The gameplay of Ronin to me is slightly above average. It has a counter heavy mechanic where a lot of the fights are about whittiling down stamina meters in order to do big damage. Weapon variety is pretty good and each weapon has several different basic set of attacks and is very easy to mix and match them up. It can be overly complex for gamers who aren't great at action games but there is some depth there. It's nothing flashy or combo heavy but weapons do feel good to use and countering is always satisfying, especially if you counter a enemies entire attack string. My only problem with the countering that while it does feel good to counter a whole attack string it's really only useful for countering the final attack or a red charge attack as those are the ones that really cause the enemey to stagger and get some hits in. It's too much risk and not enough reward trying to "daigo parry" a whole multi-hit combo and best to just block the string and parry the last hit. Enemies can be tanky and tough but there is enough items to beef your character up at anytime to give you a real edge. I found that health items and temp stat boosters come aplenty in Ronin compared to most common souls style games so I feel like you can always outlast most struggles with items alone. The only thing that I really dislike about the combat is the blood mechanic. Hitting enemies soaks your weapon with blood and each consecutive hit gets weaker and causes less hit stun. You constantly have to wipe it off by pressing R1 after a combo string to clean it. Sort of like a Ki Pulse from Nioh or a stamina regain from Wo Long. Except in ronin it's much more slower and much more delayed on the input. It always felt sluggish to me and a lot of the time it never came out when I wanted it to. I hated having to clean it after killing an enemey. So many intentional whiffed attacks just to clean. It got really annoying. Even worse in boss fights. I also feel that stamina runs out very fast in this game, much more than others that play like Ronin. Getting hit back and forth by multiple enemies from both sides, blocking and trying to get an attack string going only to be put into stamina regen after getting knocked down and then as soon as I get up be put in that cooldown animation to only get knocked down again. Really annoying.

As for the open world Rise of the Ronin has a lot of content. Like a lot of stuff populates on the map. Outside of the main missions you spend a lot of your time slowly uncovering the map. Everytime you clear an area with bandits or unlock a fast travel spot you uncover all the collectibles on the map. I really do like when open world games show me exactly where things are after doing a clearly marked thing on the map. However the things to collect are extremely dull and very uninteresting. They feel like Donkey Kong 64 collectibles at times. Collect 100 cats, pray at 100 shrines, take 100 pictures and take out 100 bandits. Feels very by the book and honestly is just busy work. The rewards are pretty small but getting every collectible in any given area does net some usually good rewards. It's just after about a dozen or so hours it really gets old. There are some side missions that have you tasked to do small meager tasks with little reward like other open world games but weirdly they aren't as numerous. There are also randomly generated temp missions that feel completely useless unless going for the trophy for doing 50 of them. Total time wasters. Then there are bond missions. Rise of the Ronin does have a mechanic in place where depending on your character choices and how you talk to characters you can improve their bond with you and passing certain benchmarks will unlock a side mission related to that character. These missions usually have a bit more to them and they do flesh out a character much more. Most characters have about 3 or 4 of them throughout the game bringing the total to about 85. So yea there are a lot of characters and missions. It seems neverending at times. I will give the game props that at times it does feel like your choices do matter and have an impact on your initial playthrough.

As for the story of Rise of the Ronin, I will preface it by saying that a clear amount of effort is shown here and it's massive character count and real life events does lend to a indepth story. If your paying attention and appreciate the historical aspects or period setting there is a lot to like here. Now having said that, the bloat of this game and is story is very very overbearing. I feel what is a pretty simple story does feel like it gets over explaned and constant new character introductions and stakes that seemingly come and go on a whim make it a really frustrating experiance. There is a lot of dialog in this game and cutscenes are very explanation heavy. About 10 hours into it, I kinda gave up with it to be honest. It's not something I ever do but I started skipping all the dialog and just watched the few animated cutscenes. It wasn't that much harder to follow. There is like no character develpment here and hardly any characters are in the story for very long outside of a couple. Just not engaging in the least bit. And I really loved Nioh's story and most people hated that one I feel. Being honest though, as much as the prerelease was bringing up how much the story was the focus with this one I was really let down. It also could not have ended on more of a wet fart as well. I do like being able to create a protaginist and antaginist in the create a player. That's a novel feature. Just wish the antaginist had more of a role or character and not just somebody who shows up for five seconds here and there.

Overall Rise of the Ronin has some strenghts and it's really not bad but it's bloat and length really sour the experiance which other wise has a pretty decent combat experiance by most accounts. The fun factor sadly wasn't higher than some of my frustrations. However after putting so much time into it and my progress with the game I still really wanted to see it through to the end. But aww man, by the end, if I had to run into one more storage hut that's locked only for the window on the opposite side of the building to be open and you have to jump up a nearby low haning tile wall and glide into the window, I just might scream. And people complain about the pallets and ladders in The Last of Us.

Platinum #205