From the team that created the amazing Nioh with Team Ninja, Rise of the Ronin begins with high expectations. You start as a pair of “Blade Twins”, samurai from Veiled Edge, who set out on an assassination mission. Of course, it serves as a gameplay tutorial. This allows you to use dual melee and dual ranged weapons such as swords and spears. Weapons such as guns and bows. You can also switch between warriors, which adds an interesting strategic element where one warrior may be better suited to defeating an enemy than another.
At the end of the prologue, one of your warriors is injured and you have to choose which warrior to play, but the ally dynamics come back and become a fundamental part of the game. The Rise of the Ronin development team has an ambitious concept that allows gamers to build allies through missions and encounters to take on future missions, giving them gifts to increase loyalty and conversation options to improve relationships. We built the gameplay based on. But most of these choices are perfunctory, and I increasingly feel that no matter what I do, the game and my connections with allies will play out the same way. It's good for a game's narrative to provide authorship, but it also needs to feel resonant. I decided to change the choices from good samurai to brutal samurai to test my theory that they don't really matter, but I couldn't really tell the difference . This game keeps you focused on the same story beats no matter what.
And those story beats are very bland, lending to repetitive and clunky combat. First, the combat system is incredibly overcrowded. Not only does he previously mentioned switch between four weapons, but he can also switch his melee weapon stance depending on the enemy. If that doesn't sound confusing enough, you can also equip items to the left side of his overcrowded HUD and use them immediately. There's a huge lack of fluidity, as combat becomes a series of clumsy choices rather than engaging encounters. The physics are also wildly inconsistent, from swings that don't seem to have any real connection to the enemy, to an energy system called ki, which requires more attention. While gameplay that allows for this much variety and customization is great in theory, Rise of the Ronin is a great example of too much of a good thing. This is a case study of how something goes from elaborate to unsophisticated.
