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
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