For a game about shredding fools into chunky kibbles with a cavalcade of katanas, Rise of the Ronin still isn’t what you’d call a cutting-edge experience. Its utilitarian visuals are as unpolished as a wooden sword.
The open-world mechanics lashed around its ‘Soulslike’ hakama also aren’t a far cry from what’s been happening elsewhere for ages. And too many of its “samur-AI” can be strung along to their deaths, like you’re playing some sort of homicidal Hamamatsu Kite Festival.
But while Team Ninja’s efforts on this samurai epic aren’t quite topknot-ch, I still couldn’t put my controller down. Particularly, when I was playing co-op with a mate as a “buddy chop” duo, but also outside of those bespoke missions, when I was forging my unique Choose Your Own Adventure plotline and the fates of my friends, foes, and Japan’s future.
Rise of the Ronin
The basic synopsis is this: the year is 1853, and you’re one-half of a Blade Twin ninja team—bonded assassins sent on an unsuccessful mission to whack Matthew Perry. This is, of course, the U.S. Commodore who boldly forced a trade deal with the insular Japanese, not the Friend with the smart mouth, sweater vests, and a third nipple.
Over 25+ hours, your choice of missions undertaken and dialogue decisions clicked will pinball your create-a-ronin back and forth between allegiances. Those would be the pro-shogunate forces who desire modernisation, anti-shogunates who seek to keep the status quo, and also a thinner ‘ronin’ path centred more on swording out the people involved in a personal vendetta of yours (which I won’t get into here).
Multiple playthroughs (or backup saves) will be worth attempting, as seemingly innocuous decisions can condemn companion characters to early deaths. Those can be especially annoying as a friendship / romancing element is going on in the background that provides lucrative perks or items if your bond is levelled up via time, attention, or just love-bombing them with a shitload of expensive rare chocolates.
While I thought this tale was a tad overlong, I was quite pleased with the journey I shaped for myself and the overwhelmingly likeable (and surprisingly large) cast of supporting characters. Indeed, if it weren’t for Dragon’s Dogma 2 dropping soon, I’d have instantly anted up for a secondary ‘what if’ playthrough, which isn’t the norm for me.
The juice is worth the squeeze in a narrative sense, but what about the action? In all honesty, it’s a double-edged tsurugi. The combat formula is a multi-weapon affair, not unlike Nioh 2, mixed with the speed and parry-happy stylings of Sekiro. I like that the nine main weapons are loosely (but not exclusively) affiliated with certain character builds and can be further expanded with two additional, hot-swappable weapon styles. Likewise, there are four reasonably bushy perk trees to mold your playstyle to Strength, Dexterity, Charm, or Intelligence.
I also enjoyed the projectiles side of things, with rifles, revolvers, shuriken, and bows being useful means to shred bosses down or, conversely, to surgically and secretly eliminate the unaware. Speaking of which, Rise of the Ronin has a fairly robust stealth layer woven into it, though enemies will be freakishly omniscient in the early game if you try to break away and reset a bad situation. Late tree perks help this problem considerably.
Be all that as it may, Team Ninja’s insistence on over healthy foes and trying to force you into learning attack/parry memorizations kind of backfires on them. Unwilling to reload or grind for better gear in this impressively sizeable overworld, I turned my hand to cheese tactics. These became so effective, that I geared my ronin towards an exploitative build rather than a face-to-face samurai or a go-for-the-kidneys ninja.
In the many enclosed arena boss fights, the AI’s Achilles heel is pathing around an object. When my squishy stealth build couldn’t go toe-to-toe on Twilight (read Hard) difficulty, I’d simply put a boulder or shrub between myself and the boss, then nip at them during the ensuing circle-strafe dance.
When outposts full of over-levelled enemies kept one-shotting me before I could liberate the region and reveal more “to-dos,” I’d just lure them out into the sandbox to discern their invisible ‘no-go’ lines. When they shuffled back to their designated neighbourhoods, I’d stick them in the pancreas until my inevitable victory.
To its credit, Team Ninja has half-implemented a thwart to this tactic in the form of the enemies using a smoke bomb to teleport themselves back to their starting position. At present, however, it’s poorly implemented on most enemies, if at all. I daresay a quick patch will likely shore up my dishonourable antics.
Something else that should be noted with combat is that the advertised “era authentic weaponry” stretches the term harder than an extreme shibari session. There’s certainly none of the overt demon/Yokai business that’s present in the Nioh series, but the textbook Team Ninja nuttiness does creep in here and there. Quick examples: your personal flamethrower sub-weapon, a retractable hang glider backpack, and at least one boss rocking jet boots.
It’s all a little leftfield, but I’d be lying if I said that some of the anachronisms and exaggerations aren’t welcome in the name of fun. Being caked in a metric Carrie-load of blood every time an enemy explodes into a woodpile of severed limbs? I’m okay with that. Having heads ping skyward when you snipe with a 19th-century musket, not a .50 cal Barrett? Let’s keep that in.
The biggest pass, however, is reserved for the aforementioned glider backpack. In the absence of a true Assassin’s Creed parkour and handhold-to-handhold climbing system, the glider + grapple hook approach keeps traversal fun.
Whipping about the admittedly low-level metropolis of Yokohama and Edo is great when you leverage the kites that serve as a midair train line of sorts. Unlocking the ability to grapple-yank enemies up for a roof execution—or dropping-killing down from your glider—is ceaselessly satisfying as well.
It does have to be said, however, that the ped count and model diversity of said cities leaves a lot to be desired. Many times I’d catch myself wondering where everybody was in these relative ghost towns of NPC repeats. And I choose my words specifically here—like poltergeists, many of these extras will wink into existence.
The impressively vast rolling countryside of Rise of the Ronin fares better in the pop-up department, and there are some stop-and-appreciate-the-serenity spots to appreciate. More often than not, though, there was the nagging voice in my head that chirped “Nice, but it’s no Ghost of Tsushima.”
Further to that, and despite Rise of the Ronin is a game where tracking a multitude of UI elements is key to combat survival, I still found myself yearning for a dynamic visual mode where all that mess would fade away as I was riding.
Mind you, for every niggle I noticed in Rise of the Ronin, there’d be a small bell or whistle worth appreciating. I do love a game that insta-flings you onto your horse when you (magically) summon it, and I award extra points for having an ‘auto-ride to custom marker’ feature that works when you’re on foot—quite a rare thing.
I was also way too invested in sending out my time-based, ‘get loot’ Shiba dog (and patting the pooches of other players). Likewise, I hunted down far too many collectable cats and then pimped them out in a Cat Concierge side game that netted me yet more sweet loot. Most of it is junk. Which Rise of the Ronin loves to drown you in.
When it came time to sheathe Rise of the Ronin after the end credits, I was very glad that I strapped my sandals on for the journey. Despite its imperfect visual presentation and exploitable AI, there’s a compelling plot, visceral combat with a satisfying co-op element, and a frankly absurd amount of loot, collectables, and mostly compelling side diversions to sift through.
Providing Team Ninja iron out some of the creases in a post-launch patch, this could still be seen as a retainer—possibly a worthy companion piece to anybody hooked on the Shogun miniseries. In its present form, however, this masterless samurai jack-of-all-trades is not quite due a Daimyo degree of respect
Rise of the Ronin was reviewed on PS5 using digital codes provided by PlayStation Australia.
