Sony Ps5 Rise Of The Ronin

they have tried too hard and it shows, better to give this a pass

This is a game which is carried by two things : combat mechanics and customizations. The combat is super fun. Enemies are awesome to fight with. Throughout the game I always looked forward to boss fights, friendly sparring matches and 1 vs 2 fights. I played NG on the hardest difficulty but NG+ adds a new difficulty. With variety of weapons to experiment with, a dojo where you can train with all your allies (and its so much fun) and the fighting styles and weapons the combat is just so awesome. Similarly lots of customization options for the character as well.

But it falls flat in every other aspect.
1) Performance – Even on FPS mode, there were judders and frame rate drops and game overall is poorly optimized. Especially on missions where its mandatory to fight alongside 2 allies, the frame rate drops are huge.
2) Graphics – Mostly I don’t care about graphics but GoT and RdR2 showed why a open world game needs good graphics. The locations in this game don’t look that great because the graphics is poor and in this day and age this is not acceptable.
3) Story – The game makes you believe you can choose factions to side with but that has no impact on the game apart from boss fights. Everyone adores you no matter if you double-crossed them few missions ago. This makes it really weird and negates the RPG elements. I think what TN was going for was to show the whole story (given that its based on true happenings) and that is why you can choose to fight against anyone but still get to be allies with them as it would lead TN to add story missions to show the whole history which makes the presentation nothing short of awkward.
4) Characters – After finishing GoT, I felt an emotional attachment to the characters which shows how well the characters were voiced, acted and developed throughout the game. Here you will feel none of that. Everyone is good and everyone is bad depending on which faction you are sided with at any moment and you fight absolutely everyone at some point or other. One of the most awkward things was that there’s a guy who trusts in you to guide his friends forward but few missions ago you were on the verge of killing him and he escapes. This is what literally killed immersion for me.
5) Missions – The missions are fun just because of the combat. Else all the missions go like this – start at some place, kill a bunch of dudes, maybe kill few “Formidable Foe” enemies so as to have the final boss fight with lower Ki. Lather, rinse, repeat. Side missions also are same i.e. accompany some dude and fight a bunch of dudes while having huge frame rate drops.
6) Inventory management – This game gives you so much loot that you will spend a significant amount of time doing inventory management. Upgrades are meh as you will always get a better weapon/armor in the future.
7) Difficulty – I always felt that there is a balance issue somewhere. Even though I never quite got the parrying right, I was able to push through most enemies on the first try. So the game is difficult and also not so difficult. The 1 vs 2 boss fights can be brutal when fighting alone but can be simplified with some well placed bombs. Yes your character can throw flash bombs and fire bombs where flash bombs are useless and fire bombs do lot of damage.

Overall the game wasn’t a disappointment but it could have been much much better, and much more polished. Given the scale of the story and the game, a well thought out story with consequences and say two characters, where each character chooses a faction and is throughout allied with a single faction would have made more sense and the game itself could have been done in 2 parts rather than cramming a lot into a single part.

I am a huge Team Ninja fan so I will always support and buy their games but I hope they get their act together in future games.

Initially, I found it dull due to what I perceived as childish graphics, but as I continued playing, the experience improved significantly. Really a good game.

Received damaged CD