Developed by Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja, Rise of the Ronin is an open-world samurai action RPG. Offering challenging but accessible gameplay, it has a great balance for those who expect punishing parrying battles and the more casual player.
A New Age Dawns
Set in the final years of the Edo period, Rise of the Ronin loosely retells the story of one of the most fascinating times in Japanese history. It’s an exciting time as the age of the samurai closes and Japan opens up its borders to Western influence, leading to plenty of conflicts and shifting alliances. I say loosely as I’m fairly sure that the British diplomat Sir Ernest Satow didn’t use rocket boots to fight.
While it does certainly spice things up with the occasional flaming sword or historical figure deciding to personally deliver a beatdown, many notable facts remain familiar. Past incidents, like the assassination attempt at Teradaya Inn, and alliances are represented.
That said, the overarching plot is more of a backdrop. By itself, it isn’t too gripping and you may have even seen it before, whether in a history textbook or by playing other titles such as Like A Dragon: Ishin. When it comes to the story, what grabbed me was the characters and their tales.
Shifting Alliances
Rise of the Ronin introduces you and your partner as Blade Twins, assassins trained as partners who are said to be unstoppable together. This does seem to be false marketing as your twin is defeated and captured almost immediately, leaving you to escape.
You can customize the appearance of both your character and your Blade Twin. There are quite a lot of options when it comes to appearance, allowing you to go into quite a lot of detail or select preset parts and tweak them. Interestingly, you can choose from a variety of skin tones, allowing you to make a character who appears non-Japanese. This may break immersion somewhat considering some of the anti-foreigner ideologies involved, but options are always a good thing to have.
Your partner’s capture sets you on a quest to discover what happened to them, leading you to work with the Pro-Shogunate and Anti-Shogunate factions. You may be working to expel foreigners from the country one day, then fighting alongside them the next. This gives you the chance to work with everyone from the Shogun himself, to the foreign military, diplomats, and businessmen who influenced this period of history.
Luckily, while there are times when you can choose who to side with, no one seems to mind too much that you were trying to kill them earlier. In fact, you can be quite close with people despite sometimes working directly against them. It doesn’t matter too much who you side with, which is a strength in allowing bonds with many people, but does mean that it feels like it doesn’t matter much which side you lend your strength to.
Allies And Bonds
Rise of the Ronin has a huge cast of characters, most of whom you’ll meet during the main story, though some only appear if you do certain side quests. Some you’ll get to know very well, like Ryoma Sakamoto, while others are less well-represented. Many have thoughts on the best thing for Japan in these turbulent times, and I enjoyed hearing these and their motivations for fighting which added well to the main story. Others have more specific concerns such as treating the cholera epidemic that was brought to Japan by foreigners. It did make sure to lighten the mood with the occasional moment of levity when seeing them drunk or visiting the pleasure district though.
While such a huge cast did mean that a number only appeared briefly in the main story, these characters did often get side quests that gave them more screen time. For instance, you can follow up on a rescued doctor and help them get what they need to treat patients.
The way that each character had their own views and relationships with others helped to make this world feel a lot more real. It went beyond the surface level that many game stories settle for. Much of this is explored further in the optional content, but Rise of the Ronin feels at its strongest when taking the time to slowly experience it, not just rushing through the main missions.
Beyond the fact that much of it is genuinely a joy to experience, the optional side quests reward you with items and experience. Doing these and other actions to increase your bonds comes with a variety of other gameplay bonuses too, like new fighting styles.
That said, while the main feature here is story content, whether main or optional, some of the supporting systems were fairly shallow. For example, gifting items to improve bond levels and underbaked romance options that only consist of a couple of scenes.
Exploring Japan
As an open-world game, Rise of the Ronin has quite a lot to explore outside of the story and side missions. This is to the point that it can be distracting at times. I once was heading toward a story mission, but it was quite a long journey on horseback. I ran into two areas that needed bandits clearing out to make the villages safe, a named criminal who needed to be removed, a mission to photograph some dogs, two cats that needed petting, three ‘checkpoint’ flags to activate, and a nearby island with a shrine to visit. That was without going too far out of the way of the direct route there.
Usually, I’m not a fan of overly busy open-world games, but I felt like it worked here. The combat-related ones were always quick but fun, missions like finding and photographing dogs were something different adding variety, and even searching out some of the cats and checkpoints was interesting as some needed puzzling out how to scale a building. In typical open-world game style, most of these were on the map and had waypoints, but there are a few more hidden secrets to find too.
This all ties into the idea of factions, with certain areas being owned by certain factions later on. Doing activities in these areas liberates them, which has some gameplay benefits. Plus it satisfies that desire to see a map all dyed in one color, much like Dynasty Warriors 9 Empires.
Sneaking Mission
Rise of the Ronin allows you to explore a few large open-world areas, but missions mostly take place in their own unique smaller zones.
Missions are generally about 20 minutes long, usually involving moving through guarded areas with up to two allies who you can also control. You’re often given a choice on whether to sneak through most places, quietly assassinate everyone in your way, or face enemies in open combat. There’s always some combat though, with bosses at the end of most levels and minibosses often having keys.
There isn’t much variety in mission type, but I never found this an issue just because of how fun the core gameplay systems are.
Stealth has its issues, as is the case with most games. Enemies relax too easily after you disappear after discovery, and loudly knocking over an item doesn’t seem to alert anyone nearby. But the enemy layout is well thought out to make you try to find alternate paths or throw something to distract them. Learnable skills tie into it well too. I always found it enjoyable to get the better of enemies this way.
Action Movie
Combat is perhaps the most fun element of Rise of the Ronin. Most battles are small-scale, involving a few people on both sides, effectively meaning most battles are one-on-one, more or less.
At first glance, you might think that Rise of the Ronin is similar to Soulslike titles, or Team Ninja’s previous titles that fall into that realm like Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. It involves a lot of parrying, avoiding hits to avoid a quick death, and chipping away at enemy health. In a way, this is a good introduction to Soulslike gameplay, as something that can start to hone those skills. Despite this, it does differ in some important ways.
Combat in Rise of the Ronin is relatively slow compared to some other action RPGs, with wider windows for parrying attacks. This does depend on which weapon you and the enemies are using of quite a selection, but even the fastest ones don’t require a very high reaction speed.
With some Action RPGs along these lines, it can feel like parrying is the only option too. As someone terrible at it, it does suck the fun out of the genre at times. Luckily it’s a little more flexible here. Parrying is king and pulling it off will create the best openings, but mixing in dodges to attack from the side and the occasional block for smaller attacks is certainly viable.
Perhaps as a trade-off, there can be quite a lot to think about. It’s possible to switch between two melee weapons, each with up to three assigned combat styles with advantages. Enemies can change their weapon mid-fight too, which means you have to keep up and change with them. There are also firearms, bows, poisons, and other options to mix in.
Rise of the Ronin isn’t an easy game, but it’s accessible. If nothing else, a big part of this is having three initial difficulties, with a fourth unlockable. As with similar titles, it lets you buy skills but points can be deposited often and easily. It even has extra options for the easy mode like increased health recovery, and the nature of the game makes over-leveling possible if you get stuck. It still offers a challenge for those who want it though.
Beyond over-levelling, you can also focus on equipment sets. Drops are somewhat down to chance, but completing certain side missions guarantees particular items and generally playing more to get better equipment helps. Each piece of equipment has its own attributes too which you can use to put together a build and some sets have bonuses when you equip them all. You can go quite deep into the equipment side of character builds, but it only feels necessary to on the higher difficulties. When I started I just equipped whatever had the highest stats, but as I neared the end of Rise of the Ronin, I did start to at least focus on set bonuses and completing optional missions to unlock extra accessory slots. There is an upgrade system too, but I rarely used it as I often found better equipment sooner rather than later.
Cherry Blossoms Blooming
As is often the weakness of open-world games, while certain areas looked great, wide expanses of land could be fairly desolate at times. While the many activities kept it interesting, the rides outside of the major cities weren’t exactly scenic. In more populated areas, Rise of the Ronin has some beautiful environments involving famous areas in Kyoto and Edo, cherry blossoms, and traditional architecture. Some places are stunning and these tend to be the ones most of your time is spent in.
Other than the environments, the graphics didn’t stand out too much to me. Performance is generally good while using performance mode, but even that drops frames occasionally and pop-in is an issue. It’s probably worth waiting for the rumored Pro version of the console to bother with the Graphics mode and Ray Tracing mode.
Verdict
Rise of the Ronin uses exciting combat and character-driven story scenes to tell the story of one of the most interesting periods of Japanese history. Between slightly different combat and an open world with a ton of extra activities, it doesn’t quite fit into the soulslike mold and is a far more accessible game for it.
RISE OF THE RONIN IS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED
If you are looking for more action RPG games, you might enjoy our review of Granblue Fantasy: Relink or Fate/Samurai Remnant.
Thank you to Sony for providing a PlayStation 5 review code for Rise of the Ronin.
A gamer since the days of Amstrad and DOS and someone who has dabbled in a variety of professions. He enjoys a wide variety of genres, but has been focusing on visual novels and virtual reality in recent years. Head Editor of NookGaming. Follow him and the website on @NookSite.
