Rise of the Ronin Review: The Blade is the Answer

Holding a blade, fighting for your life, choosing your destiny, and finding answers. Rise of Ronin is a thrilling adventure that will put you through unseen challenges of the beautiful lands of Japan that are ravaged by beasts and demons wanting to paint the lush green earth red.

Rise of Ronin is an action-adventure open-world RPG game exclusive to the PlayStation 5. The previous releases of Nioh heavily fuel Team Ninja’s latest creation but boast of putting up an entirely fresh story set at the end of the Shogun era.

Let’s slash our way to the full Review of Rise of Ronin.

Japan’s Legacy

Rise of Ronin is set at the end of the Shogun Era. You play as a twin called the Veiled Edge. Veiled Edge is a perfect symmetry of one another from a clan which works in the shadow to protect the dignity of the nation. With the uprising of the West interference in Japan and possible fear of the Westerners attempting to take over the nation, The clan opposed the shogunate and as a result was murdered overnight. Your veiled edge twin is also lost in a mission to assassinate a captain from the West.

With a lost clan that was responsible for raising you and a missing sibling which makes you whole, you embark on the journey as a Ronin.

In your travels, you will come across various fugitives and criminals. A great way to further hone your skills and help the lands be free of one more demon. You can influence a district and gain various favours if you cleanse villages under siege or simply remove any wandering criminals. Visiting various shrines will also bless you with enhancing your skills but the task with the highest priority is to pet cats.

As for your main task at hand, you will make numerous friends with whom you can increase your bonds. Bonds can further help you make them your ally in critical missions and also influence the story. Your main missions will also be proposed to you as an option. You will come across in choosing factions that are either Pro-Shogunate or Anti. Each mission decision will have different outcomes to the story. What will be your fate? Since everything is now in your hands.

How the Blade and Character Moves

Using the right weapon for your playstyle is crucial too. Rise of the Ronin allows you to wield two weapons and two ranged weapons at the same time. While there may not be much complexity in performing moves, the game only asks you to attack with a single button and counter with a single button. You can unleash special moves with R1 and the four buttons, but apart from that everything is dependent on how well you adapt to the pressure without losing a lot of stamina.

The counter is a bit awkward to understand at the beginning, but as you encounter more enemies, you start remembering the timing for perfect counters. Breaking their stance allows you to unleash critical attacks, taking away either half or the entire HP. You can simply change your targets using the Right stick to distribute attacks, as enemies rarely attack you while you’re already engaged on a target.

I found the game a true souls-like difficulty threat only for the first 20 minutes. For the rest of the game until now, I am cosily tucked in my bed with my Dualsense headsets and quickly finishing off enemies and missions.

As for stealth, similiar to Sekiro, if your approach is right, you can drop a devastating blow which will eliminate weak opponents or take off a significant chunk for mini-bosses. The grappling hook allows you to gain height but only in places with hook options available. If you have the height, you can either Air Assassinate or pull up the enemy themselves to keep the height.

Rise of The Ronin will also put you in special missions, which are linear maps with objectives mostly to kill enemies of high threat. You can co-op with 2 friends or choose 2 AI allies that you make friends with within the story itself. You can also control the ally at any time, giving you a major flexibility and advantage. The only drawback is you share additional items across your party instead of individual inventory. And yes, that unfortunately means, you can’t go out exploring places in Co-op.

Speaking of the weapon itself, you get various choices of weapons to choose from. While you stick with the original katana, you can also throw in two fast blades, Odachi, long-sword, Saber or even a bayonet to shoot and slash at the same time. Each Weapon has multiple styles that you can learn by defeating fugitives around the map. These weapons styles also are effective and ineffective against each enemy type. Hence, you may need to change your combat style with each enemy you pick a fight with.

While the combat is elaborate fun, the story design is also impressive in its own way. Having two different branches of approach to the story allows you to choose what faction you personally side with and eventually shape the ending as well.

But what’s even more mindblowing is the ability to go back in time to redo missions or complete any remaining activities in previous regions using a book called The Souls of Testament. Your certain actions while reattempting previous missions will also shape your current timeline. Allowing you to experiment and choose options that you truly want to unfold instead of sitting and regrets and loading saves.

Breathtaking Sunsets

Rise of Ronin’s epilogue was set in a limited space with tutorials. All that I could think of was Sekiro. The events that took place made me feel as if I was in a pure souls-like game. However, right after you walk into the massive open world of Japan, the true beauty shines.

The game right of the start allows you to design two characters which are twins called the veiled age. Being twins does not cause them to look alike, giving you freedom to shape both the characters as per your liking with quite an elaborate character builder.

The voice options although are limited which is a bummer. However, I shouldn’t complain about the same because I want to complain about the lack of dialogue my own character has. And the amount of zero input my character gives in any cutscene discussions truly validates my introverted self. While we are already talking about the voices, the English VA of the game is unbearable for many characters of the game. Since I had already started with English I was reluctant to change, but as I came across more characters with even more horrible VA, I had to change, which was my best decision in the game.

Adding to it, while setting up the game for the first time start of the game, the audio option was set to stereo by default instead of 3D or surround. So make sure you fix that before hitting launch!

Verdict

Rise of Ronin is a mindblowing action-adventure open-world RPG set at the end of the shogun Era. While the game may have soul-like elements, it is not as hard as a souls like, allowing more people to enjoy the game. Inspired by many mechanics from Nioh titles, the game boasts to have a compelling story with the freedom of shaping your future under your control. Rise of Ronin also excels with fluid combat and amazing sights but slightly lacks in matching the current generation graphics