"Rise of the Ronin" Review

Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment

Developer: Team Ninja

Platforms: Playstation 5 (Reviewed)

I don't exactly think it's common knowledge, but never in my entire life have I enjoyed a Team Ninja game. In fact, when I've talked about them, I often say that they simply don't have sufficient talent to create the games they want to make. Ever since their first soulslike, Nioh, I've been calling their games out as mediocre whenever I can be bothered to review them. The key word there is "review." I always give their games a chance, because there's a part of me that really wants them to succeed, but they just never do. As a result, I've never completed a Team Ninja game, and the only one I've written a full review for was Nioh. The closest I've ever come to beating one of their mid-tier titles was last year's Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. It was by far their best effort at the time, and I got further in it than in any of their prior titles, but they still couldn't help but Team Ninja it up (by which I mean overcrowd the gameplay experience with a whole bunch of unnecessary crap that nobody asked for that makes things far more complicated than they needed to be). Now, other than to give you a bit of context, why do I bring this history up? Simple. Rise of the Ronin is not only the best Team Ninja game by a country mile, and it's not only the first Team Ninja game that I've completed. It's also the first Team Ninja game that I've spent more time in than was necessary, having spent a couple hours continuing to play after the credits rolled. That doesn't make it perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but the fact that I actually liked this game is no small brag!

Rise of the Ronin marks a departure from Team Ninja's usual flirtation with fantasy based on Asian folklore in favor of a foray into hard-H History. Set in the period of Japanese history where the nation struggled between globalization and their traditional isolationism, Rise of the Ronin follows one of two twins trained in the blade by a secret anti-shogunate organization. After a mission to assassinate British commander Matthew Perry on his own ship goes sideways, our protagonist's twin appears to be killed...but as one might expect from a game where you get to customize both twins, this twin appears out of nowhere working for the enemy some time later. From there, our protagonist bumps shoulders with a frankly obscene amount of figures from Japanese history (including Sakamoto Ryoma, who was played by Kazuma Kiryu in Like a Dragon: Ishin) as they play their respective roles. As the plot progresses, you'll get to choose which factions you side with, and the story will play out in different ways depending on your choices. Being decidedly not an expert in Japanese history, I can't say how any of the individual events turned out in real life and in what ways story events can differ from actual history, but from an ignorant perspective, I appreciated how variable the story appeared to be. Team Ninja stories are NEVER good, and this one is really no exception, but there was some legitimate nuance when it came to the conflicts between the two sides of the war that I found intriguing. If you're familiar with this team's work, you aren't going into this game expecting a good story, but I'd say you're getting a better one than you might expect. 

Now, on to gameplay, which is another area where Team Ninja titles always stumble for me. Let me get this out of the way first: Rise of the Ronin is just as bogged down by Team Ninja nonsense as any of their other titles. There are approximately ten trillion different combat stances with no discernable differences (save for invisible rock-paper-scissors advantages against certain types of weapons) per weapon type, and even if you know what kind of weapon you want to use, you have to sift through approximately ten trillion versions of that weapon with the most incremental of incremental damage increases and side effects. It's a staple of Team Ninja's design: give the player a legitimately excellent range of weapon types to use, but ruin that with so much unnecessary crap and micromanaging busywork that it doesn't feel fun. So, Rise of the Ronin does the exact same thing that I always slam other titles from this team for...so what's the difference? The difference, oddly enough, is the Ubisoft-style busywork. For most people, a gigantic open map filled with copy/pasted chores is a negative...but I'm not most people. It may be because of some...suspected neurodivergences of mine...but I find a great deal of comfort in having a fun but repetitive task to do across a map. I get into kind of a zen zone when I can walk across a map systematically clearing out bandit camps and praying at shrines and whatnot. But why does that help with the Team Ninja-ness of this game? Well, as you do this open world content, you get experience points and level up. This ultimately means you can spend as much time in the open world as you'd like, and you can end up being vastly over-leveled for the main story. That's the difference. Because of how naturally I gravitated towards the open world content, I was so over-leveled for the story missions that I straight-up didn't have to give a thought to the inane crap. It didn't matter if the default stance for my weapon was ineffective against a certain enemy, I was strong enough that it didn't make a difference. All I had to do was pop into my inventory after each mission to pick the stronger version of my weapon, and that's the most I had to engage with the things Team Ninja refuses to go to therapy for. 

But enough backhanded discussion about the developer, let's talk about the gameplay on its own merits. First things first: the weapons pretty much all feel great to use! The most obvious weapon you might use is a katana, but you also have options like odachis, sabers, greatswords, spears, bayonets, and many more. Any of these options are viable, as one upside of the inevitable loot fatigue is that you'll 100% end up getting versions of each weapon with decent damage. The weapon type I ended up maining was, oddly enough, the bayonets! That essentially meant I was using a rifle as a melee weapon and only shooting it when landing a critical hit. That really shouldn't have felt as great as it did, but it was my favorite weapon type to use! So if you typically like using giant swords, for instance, you might find that they feel great to use even in a battle context where more traditional Japanese weapons might feel more at home.

Regardless of the weapon you choose to use, combat is largely a Sekiro-esque affair. With that in mind, you likely already know what to expect: you'll parry enemy attacks to break down a stamina (or in this case 'ki') meter to temporarily incapacitate them and leave them open for an insta-kill/critical attack. In addition to deflecting regular attacks, enemies will also launch glowing red attacks that must be deflected on pain of an extreme amount of damage to the player. Like any self-respecting game that takes pages from the book of Sekiro, the actual act of parrying is extremely satisfying from an animation and audiovisual perspective. What's more, the finishing moves you use on enemies whose ki you've depleted are equally satisfying....or maybe it's just the bayonet finishers that are satisfying. After all, an animation where you stab a dude with the edge of a rifle, detach it, swing the rifle around, then blow the dude to chunks with a point-blank gunshot literally never gets old. But if I had to guess, I'd say the other weapon finishers are just as great! 

There's more to combat than just the open crossing of blades, however. There's also a stealth element...and it's one that does require a bit of suspension of disbelief. In addition to your melee weapons, you have the ability to equip sub weapons such as bows and rifles (without the bayonet). These can be used in open combat, absolutely, but you'll primarily be using them to pick off sentries and isolated enemies without being noticed....and no, you didn't misread that. You can, in fact, use rifles to this effect. And yes, it works just as well as if you used a bow. So, that's pretty comical...but the important thing is that it's fun to take an enemy out with a loud ass rifle and have everyone else be none the wiser.

Now, I briefly alluded to Rise of the Ronin's Ubisoft-style open world. So let's talk about that. It isn't one gigantic open world like you might expect. Rather, it's a series of 3 smaller open worlds segmented off for specific plot windows. So it's not quite as overwhelming as a Ubisoft title. You can get from one side of a given map to the next fairly quickly on foot (to say nothing of horseback or on the glider), and the open world activities are packed just densely enough that they don't take too long to get to without feeling like you'll trip over them. As for what you'll be doing in the open world...well...Team Ninja couldn't help but Team Ninja this aspect of the game up just like the combat. There's this whole convoluted "bond" system with each little segment of a given map that has a bunch of barely noticeable unnecessary effects that nobody gives a crap about. But like with the combat, the Team Ninja-ness is easily ignorable here. So, in this open world, your primary activity will be restoring "public order." This is a handwavey way of saying "bandit camps you clear out." These are fun across the board, and they always result in excellent rewards. Then there are shrines, which you pray at to receive a skill point for character upgrades...which I'm not going to go into because it's the one Team Ninja-fied aspect of the game that can't be ignored or waved away. Then there are activities like world events, photo spots, and collectible cats. These activities net you silver coins, which are a specific currency used to buy things like horses...because Team Ninja just couldn't have the currency system be straightforward...but I once again digress. 

On the technical front, there's really nothing much to discuss. These games tend to lack impressive visual fidelity in favor of a gameplay experience free of jank, and Rise of the Ronin is largely no exception. However, there is one major problem that caused me grief on more than one occasion. The healing function is barely responsive at all. There's no animation cancelling, so if you do anything at all, you have to wait for a couple seconds until after the animation ends before the heal button will work. Even when it works, there's no audiovisual feedback of any kind, so you'll sometimes end up using up more than one medicinal pellet without intending to. This game isn't particularly challenging, so outside of some bosses that break this mold, I found that this technical issue was my cause of death more often than not.

Folks, Rise of the Ronin simply wasn't made with me in mind, but I seriously enjoyed my time with it anyway. It isn't the most glowing praise in the world to say that I enjoyed this game because of the fact that its menagerie of Modus Operandi issues is rendered less offensive because of its generic open world...but if I say it's a positive, it's a positive. I understand that most of this review has been me badmouthing Team Ninja, but take that for what it is: a sign that if you don't have the same issues I do with this developer, then you'll probably like this entry even more than the rest of the team's library!

Let us review:

Team Ninja gameplay bloat - 1.0

Team Ninja world/leveling bloat - 1.0

Unresponsive healing - 0.5

The final score for Rise of the Ronin is...

7.5/10 - Pretty Good

About time, Team Ninja, about time!