It’s a very complicated feeling, looking at Rise of the Ronin. The game from the same studio as Nioh and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty is the next logical step for the series: having perfected its tried-and-true brand of Souls-like formula, it’s now time to apply it to a big open world to make their shot at Elden Ring.
While Elden Ring prides itself on being “This is just a Souls game but open world”, you can really feel that Ninja Theory, to their credit, tried for something new. In a way it almost feels like a Samurai-flavored Skull and Bones- that is to say that it knows which checkboxes to go for in the open world.
These are the biggest critiques with Rise of the Ronin, that it boils down to two major appeal points: Do you like the Nioh formula? And do you like open worlds?
A Dance Of Swords And The Occasional Sumo Headbutt
As always with Team Ninja, the combat is excellent if you’re willing to keep up with it. While Nioh may have started as a Souls-like I admire how much it and its offshoots have grown into their own genre. Team Ninja wants you to learn to parry, and if you want to make it off that accursed Pirate Ship in the prologue you’re going to do it.
It’s really interesting how front-loaded offense is in Rise of the Ronin- you can regain your stamina by ending your combo with a blade flash, you can weaken the enemy’s own max stamina by parrying them and you’ll want to be using the appropriate stances to counter every enemy weapon type.
It’s interesting because the parry almost entirely supplants the block- I’d almost forgotten it was even in the game, since parrying is so much more rewarding if you can get it out first.
Of course, if you’re a Team Ninja veteran none of this should be news to you- all their games have been iterative in their combat design, Parry-or-Die may as well be the series’ name by now. The game keeping this alive is honestly it’s strongest point- I love the idea of raiding bandit camps just to throw down against random mooks before stealing their weapons. I’ve somehow become a shonen protagonist as I wander feudal Japan not for plot reasons but because I simply want another sick fight.
Despite this, the jump to open world in Rise of the Ronin is, well, not great. I don’t necessarily mean it’s bad, it’s just not great. Rise of the Ronin’s adherence to typical open world dogma really highlights the worst of the Team Ninja formula. The game’s loot treadmill feels even more boring and egregious when I travel all the way across a map just to get an inventory filled with colored loot junk.
Like Drinking A Fine Sake With The Wrong Loot Color
It’s so frustrating because the combat itself is already amazing- so suddenly having an inventory full of Odachi with different percentile stat increases feels like someone telling you the funniest joke you’ve ever seen, then going “get it?” and explaining the mechanics of the joke to you. The fact many of the bandit camps you raid also end in you unlocking a checkpoint which nets you a synchronize-style cutscene really doesn’t help its case either. Open World games have been so uniform in the past decade that this is the visual language of busywork- something that exists not to be interesting, but to take time.
Again, actually interacting with these can be fun- one camp had a bandit who fought with sumo rather than a weapon, meaning I’m once again forced to learn the Honda match-up. But it’s the presentation where it falls apart, and that’s where it’s its most heartbreaking.
Even the game’s co-op features- which let you partner up with other AI-controlled ronin, don’t feel like they add anything meaningful. If anything, as a veteran of the Souls series it just feels like a hassle, since you share healing items and they mess up enemy boss aggro.
Color By Bloody Numbers
If you like the wandering samurai fantasy, you’ll probably love Rise of the Ronin. Some praise needs to be given for its more grounded approach- you really are just playing a samurai going on Samurai adventures. The combat system reflects this well, letting you focus more on footwork, timing and the occasional throwing a barrel full of explosives as a combo ender.
My biggest gripe comes down to the fact that everything to do with its open world feels inherently safe- Team Ninja had a good opportunity to really wow us with something the same way Elden Ring did for Souls fans, but all we got is another jump-then-glide-then-capture-tower open world.
Combine that with the boring loot progression in Rise of the Ronin and seemingly shoehorned in CRPG elements (Speech checks, really?) and you’ve got the equivalent of watching your friend’s new stand-up act. When it wants to be new it fumbles, but when it goes back to the old material, even if it’s a little off-color, it’s delivered with confidence and polish.
Score: 7/10
Game reviewed on PS5. Review copy provided by PlayStation Asia
