Rise Of The Ronin Review — As Wonky As A Walmart Katana

It’s tricky to describe exactly what Rise of the Ronin is, because it tries to be everything all at once. Part Souls-like, part stealth game, part RPG, it throws everything from Ghost of Tsushima to Persona 5 into a big mixing pot and comes out with a jumble of ideas that sometimes work in isolation, but often don’t gel together.

Set in the late 19th century, Rise of the Ronin puts you in the shoes of a wandering warrior caught up in a changing Japan. The country’s opened up and foreigners have brought new technologies and new culture, but also the threat of invasion and cholera. Caught between the Shogunate who want the advancements of the West and to maintain control, and the Expulsionists who want to end the tyranny and close Japan off again, you’re on a journey to find your long-term partner, your ‘blade twin’.

The open world is easily the best thing Ronin has to offer. There are multiple massive, sprawling maps to explore, each full of side-missions to uncover and world events to take part in. I could spend hours just running around, taking in the scenery and seeing what trouble I could get into.

Once, I found an enclave of bandits just off the main road, and was sucked into a really engaging stealth mission that saw you clamber up buildings and take out the whole group without being detected. Just a few minutes later, I stumbled across a man who needed help taking down a lumbering brute of an enemy in a one-on-one fight. There’s always something different to uncover, and it unfolds in a way that feels natural and unforced.

Once you gain the glider and grappling hook a few hours in, they quickly become the stars of the show. Both add so much, not just to traversal around the open world, but how you see enemy encounters. Hiking up a hill so you can glide over an enemy and get the drop from above, or pulling archers off their towers to stab them when they hit the floor, the two gadgets complement each other nicely, and elevate every single part of the game.

Plenty of the story missions have great moments, too. One has you infiltrating a ship during a fireworks display, using your grappling hook and glider to swing from boat to boat to make your approach. Another has you break into a prison to save a beloved mentor, with multiple paths to tackle it, from a stealthy approach scaling the walls, to a full-scale attack from the front. There’s so much promise here, which makes the times it falls flat on its face more disappointing.

Though there’s more to Rise of the Ronin than being a simple Soulslike, the combat lacks the finesse we’ve come to expect. It’s not exactly ‘shallow’, with things like elemental weaknesses and a cool blood mechanic that has you flick blood off your blade to regain stamina. But matching up your weapon style to the enemy’s weakness feels like rock-paper-scissors, and with so many arena-sweeping attacks your positioning is less crucial than your ability to parry.

It’s the difficulty spikes that kill it. Too often, boss encounters can be absolutely ruthless, serving as major skill checks that quickly turn a mission into a slog. If you can’t nail frame-perfect parries, get caught on some scenery, or find yourself stunlocked in a combo you can do nothing about, you’re stuck with just going back to your last checkpoint over and over and over and- you get the picture.

Uneven difficulty keeping me away from that wonderful open world is one thing, but Rise of the Ronin also doesn’t learn from the biggest problem of its spiritual predecessor, Nioh: the gear system. Souls games work best when they have you commit to a weapon and upgrade it over time, learning all its ins and outs and having it become a part of you. Ronin instead throws literally hundreds of gear pieces with marginally different stats at you and has you min-max them every few minutes to get the best advantage possible.

Rise Of The Ronin Is Very Pretty, Though

Combine that with the huge stat trees to upgrade and multiple weapon styles to learn, and you quickly become overwhelmed in number-crunching. Coming from the open world where you can seamlessly find yourself in the game’s most engaging moments to having to sit down and wonder if you really need +3 percent to your counterspark damage just because you’ve hit a wall in a mission helps hammer home just how fractured and disordered Rise of the Ronin is.

It too often feels like Rise of the Ronin trips over itself with its ambitious ideas, and that stretches into its storytelling too. It loses track of itself, with the whole Blade Twin angle – which is nonsense at the best of times – left for dozens of hours at a time for the sake of the political intrigue. Meanwhile, the bond system has friction with the story too, as allies who should’ve gone off you after killing their superiors and betraying their cause still turn up for tea because you gave them enough cigars beforehand.

It feels like nobody in Rise of the Ronin is connected to the world or its events, much in the same way most mechanics of the game don’t feel connected to each other. The game is inconsistent and unpolished. Annoying stat-crunching, a poorly handled story, and some really awful boss fights make it feel like a bad Soulslike was bolted on to something that could’ve been so much better. But its traversal mechanics, top-notch side missions, sublime open world, and the varied and likeable characters you can build relationships with all help prop up its weaker elements.

Rise of the Ronin

Reviewed On PS5

Platform(s)

PlayStation 5

Released

March 22, 2024

Publisher(s)

Sony Interactive Entertainment

Genre(s)

Action RPG , Soulslike

Multiplayer

Online Co-Op

Pros

• The open world and side missions
• Gliding and grappling are excellent
• Interesting supporting cast

Cons

• Ridiculous difficulty spikes
• Confusing story
• Overwhelming gear, stats, and number-crunching