I’ve been a Team Ninja fan for as long as I can remember. I stumbled upon Ninja Gaiden 3’s demo on PS3 by pure happenstance, as an 11 year old that definitely shouldn’t have been playing a game that brutal. But it hooked me, and after playing the rest of the Ninja Gaiden games, I was desperate for more Team Ninja action.
After playing through Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and the Nioh duology in recent years, it’s safe to say that I’m a fan of Team Ninja as a developer. So, when Rise of the Ronin was revealed as an open-world game from the company, especially with it looking similar to the excellent game that was Ghost of Tsushima, it’s safe to assume I was very excited. However, while most of my excitement and anticipation paid off, Team Ninja’s debut open-world game falls into a few pitfalls of the genre that leave me wanting more.
In Rise of the Ronin, you follow one of your two custom characters, with the other taking the role of your Blade Twin. The narrative starts with the arrival of the Black Ships, foreign travellers from the Western world looking to influence Japan during the final years of the Edo period. (Anyone currently watching the FX masterpiece Shogun will now exactly what this means.) Following a fairly dramatic event, where you’re forced to leave your clan looking for revenge, your character becomes a “Veiled Edge”, a Ronin entering a politically-charged Japan with two major factions - Pro and Anti-Shogunate.
The driving force of Rise of the Ronin’s story boils down to a simple revenge narrative, but most of the experience is about joining forces with either side of the Shogunate. Throughout the game, you’ll bond with characters of either faction, causing them to become your allies during story missions, which splinter off from the open world with their own level designs. Most characters are fairly forgettable,one-note stereotypes that are used to fuel the narrative and push it forward, but some, like Ryoma, are stand-outs that become beloved allies to your experience.
I appreciate that Team Ninja offers an in-game Encyclopaedia, as well as a conversation history and related events sections during cutscenes to keep players less-involved with Rise of the Ronin’s political events up-to-speed with the nature behind the game’s evolving Japan. It’s useful Quality of Life features like these that make lore-heavy games easy to keep up with, something which Final Fantasy 16 also did very well.
In all honesty, Rise of the Ronin excels at narrative choices. I felt like the major decisions in the game actually had weight behind the consequences. One minor moment early in the game, for example, was choosing between killing or sparing a bandit leader. After sparing him, I accidentally encountered him later on being blamed for a crime he didn’t commit, where we teamed up together and became allies against a new enemy. This moment, where my Veiled Edge and the spared bandit joined forces, was just side content, but it made me feel confident that my choice at the time was the correct one to make.
Rise of the Ronin’s combat is pretty much what you’d expect from a recent Team Ninja game. The stance mechanic lets you adjust your fighting style on the fly, with each stance having an advantage (or disadvantage) against certain enemies and their choice of weapon. It feels like a blend of Ghost of Tsushima and Jedi Survivor’s cinematic style-switching, but it’s powered by a lot of Team Ninja flair.
Combat feels like a good mix between Nioh, Ghost of Tsushima, Sekiro, and other games in a similar lane, however, for Team Ninja veterans like myself, Rise of the Ronin’s difficulty is fairly accessible. The most challenging part is dealing with the game’s incessant and ever-growing list of mechanics and features, most of which feel pretty useless and spiritless. You could easily charge through the main quests and get through the narrative without ever touching half of the systems in play.
There’s a solid gear system in Rise of the Ronin which you can build your character around, whether you decide to specialise in katanas and paired swords or want to use heavy weapons like the odachi. Gear score helps you keep pushing for higher-tier gears as things get progressively more difficult, but the sheer abundance of loot drops left me confused. Each piece of gear has its own attributes and bonuses, but why not remove gear score and focus on letting players build around the bonuses or set attributes instead?
However, that doesn’t take away from that incredible feeling of landing successful Countersparks over and over again, defending yourself from an enemy’s combo of attacks as you watch their Ki bar drop and leave them open to a critical hit. Team Ninja consistently proves that it is the king of action games, and Rise of the Ronin’s admittedly accessible combat proves that to be the case again.
Unfortunately, the team’s talents don’t translate too well to the open world of Rise of the Ronin. Team Ninja’s recreation of Japan is undoubtedly stunning, with beautiful vistas across the rather large map, but, traversing the world feels dull, and uninspired. It’s a fairly standard region-by-region map, one you can interact with as you please, but getting from point A to point B feels like a lacklustre tour of a beautiful map.
Don’t get me wrong, Ghost of Tsushima’s traversal is, arguably, more limited. But Sucker Punch’s offering is remarkably better in terms of the open world due to the immersion. Limited UI, the breeze leading you to your destination, and a world that is under control by your enemies makes Tsushima exciting. Rise of the Ronin is fairly Ubisoft-style in its world design, and that is really disappointing.
However, Rise of the Ronin is a great blueprint for Team Ninja’s future endeavours. It still has the exhilarating combat, filled with both flair and substance, that the developer is infamous for, with a narrative that is complex and multi-layered in its approach. And while the open world is pretty dull compared to the standard that Ghost of Tsushima set a few years back, I’m hoping that Team Ninja can take the feedback on board, and focus on immersion over copious amounts of content.
Reviewed on PS5. Review copy provided by publisher.
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