Along with the fantastic Shogun series, which deals with Japan in the 17th century, at the same time we received the new game Rise of the Ronin, set in ‘Bakamatsu’, i.e. the last years of the Edo period, which ended the Tokugawa shogunate in the middle of the 19th century. century. This alone is an additional bonus for lovers of Japanese culture and history, and the game actively follows the opening of Japan to the West, so you also have various historical characters, such as Commodore Matthew C. Perry, whom you meet right at the very beginning of this action RPG game. . In the game, you are a warrior who has been trained since childhood together with another warrior to become the practically unstoppable force of the ‘Veiled Edge’ group, and at the beginning of the game, your duo must go to Perry’s ship and kill him, but your ‘twin on the blade’ sacrifices itself so that you can win, and later the rest of your group is wiped out due to rebellion against the government. You then turn to the story yourself.
The first thing that bothered me at the very beginning of the game is that introduction/tutorial in which you get to know the characters through the initial missions, and that’s where the thing that people tell you is true, as with many series, “you have to swallow only the first three episodes, later things are much better”. And it is. Character creation is very detailed, once you get past that intro and get to Yokohama with Mt.Fuji looming behind, things change drastically. Your protagonist’s first encounter with Yokohama is fantastic. Classic architecture permeated with Western influences, excellently designed streets and buildings, and numerous characters on the streets give the city its charm, and this is where a lot of action and bloody battles with various katanas, sabers and other weapons begin. which was current in the middle of the 19th century. And political intrigues and wooing for one side and the other in conflicts and alliances.
Very often, your fights will end on the streets splattered with blood and with combinations of blows in which you will cut off the opponent’s arm, leg, head or all together. The same applies to the battles that will take you to the surroundings and to the mountains and numerous villages where you will have to restore order and drive away the gangs that have taken over there. If you don’t want to solve your current conflict with force and sword, you can also decide for a more stealthy approach and take down enemies hidden in the grass or by an elegant jump from a roof, tower or other heights. Namely, as befits the age in which the game is set, you can overcome long distances on horseback, but also with the help of ‘glider’. Yes, the game offers that too.
You will understand very quickly that the game is full of many familiar mechanics, if you have ever played Far Cry, Witcher or Assassin’s Creed. The map of the open world that you can go around will quickly be filled with various icons that will indicate the missions and tasks that you can do because as a single person you are suitable for doing any task, so for the inventor in the game you have to go around various locations and take photos, look for cats and temples to pray and treasure safes. A lot of the game is based on the ‘connections’ you build through missions. There, you will quickly discover through the story that things from the introduction are not exactly what you thought, and the smaller details of the story that you will discover as you build relationships with characters in various parts of the map are connected in a larger way. priču. It is basically similar to building factions in other games. This way, you will often free various parts of the map, and you will have to remember and set fire to the flags in order to return here in case of death. Death also brings you the loss of karma, which you can immediately recover in the next attempt.
The fights are quite simple, and even if you lower the difficulty level, the game will ask you to work hard because in addition to the attack, you also have the option of a counterattack, that is, here it is called ‘counterspark’ which you have to guess accurately to be successful. And that will be quite crucial in overcoming the enemies and bosses that will come across your way later. A successful counterattack takes a lot of their endurance (Ki), and to successfully defeat the enemy, you will need to watch their moves and when you have an opportunity to strike. The characters you met throughout the game will be ready to fight with you, and you can switch to them during battles. And it’s good that the game also offers a co-op option, so your friends can help you in missions that accompany the main story, not throughout the entire game.
As far as weapons are concerned, you have two main ones and you can put various katanas there, or even better two and some long weapons, and personally I was a favorite of various odachi, a type of samurai longsword. Historically, such weapons were two meters long, and one of the largest odachi had a total length of 377 cm. In addition to those two weapons, you can also equip yourself with a bow and Western pistols, rifles and – a flamethrower. However, if you want, you can also focus on a slightly less violent approach. And as a weapon, you can also use a hook with which you can climb on the roofs of buildings, because it can be a tool with which you can throw various objects at enemies, so that at least for a moment made the next attack easier.
But what you realize very quickly is that your inventory will fill up very quickly with dozens of different swords, sabers and other ‘loot’ so that you will spend a good part of your time selling it for what you really need. you need it in disassembly for other parts. This leads us to menus and submenus that offer a handful of options, so the skill tree itself has four main units related to strength, mobility, intellect and your charm (charm), which will enable you to influence. look at others in the game. The special moves are not complicated, but in the menus you will see that you have several fighting styles, related to various weapons, and they will have different effects on some enemies. With the not-so-clearest menus, the game and graphics are not at the peak of what you would expect in 2024. The world is rich and detailed, but the graphic characters don’t look so ‘crazy’ and overall it gives the impression of an older title. Often some details in the game look fantastic, and then you wonder why they designed other things just like that.