Genre: Action, Adventure, Hack ‘n’ Slash
Available Platforms: Xbox One, PC
Platform I played it on: PC
Developer: Crytek Frankfurt
Publisher: Microsoft Studios, Crytek, Deep Silver
Ryse is a hard game to judge. On one hand, it’s an absolutely gorgeous game with decent, satisfying combat and some really solid performances from the voice actors, but on the other hand it’s shallow, repetitive, inconsequential and was very clearly just a tech demo for the Xbox One it was originally released on. Despite this, I still enjoyed my (admittedly short) time with it. Ancient Rome (and just antiquity in general) is a time period I’m a real sucker for so my viewpoint might be slightly biased though. I love TV series like Rome and Spartacus and sadly there hasn’t been many games about this kind of time period. The only other one I remember playing is Spartan: Total Warrior on the PS2, so this game was something I really looked forward to playing.
In Ryse, you play Marius Titus, a Roman legionnaire during the reign of Emperor Nero (the guy who fiddled while Rome burnt). The game opens in media res with Celtic barbarians assaulting Rome and after saving Nero, Marius begins to tell his story to the emperor. The rest of the story is told as flashbacks, with Marius recounting his service to Rome and rise through the ranks of the XIV legion. There are a few plot twists along the way that you can see from a mile away and some mythology bullshit mixed in for no apparent reason. The story itself is mostly throwaway and doesn’t matter all that much, which is a big detriment to a game that tries as hard as this game does to be as cinematic as possible. It does have one of the most awesome final QTE sequences though, the only one I’m actually 100% OK with, purely because of how awesome and badass it is, but the ending itself is just lacklustre.
The best part about this game lies in the voice-acting and the dialogue. Two characters in particular stand out: Nero’s sons. They are suitably slimy and unlikeable and their voice actors are just fucking amazing. All of the characters are very well done and the animation on expressions are almost movie quality. The only really dull character is that of Marius himself. He’s generic and boring and never really has a moment where you connect with him, despite the game’s best efforts. I didn’t enjoy him as a character or a hero and he doesn’t interact well with the rest of the cast, if at all. The side characters are the most interesting part of the story and near the end I was playing mostly just to see it through and to get to the next cutscene to see if there was any awesomeness hidden there. The game also has some really awesome environments to fight in that are varied enough to keep things interesting, with the absolute standout level being set in a dark, foreboding Scottish forest.
Combat in the game is enjoyable, challenging and fun for like the first half, but it does get repetitive. You get the standard hack ‘n’ slash actions: an attack button, a guard break, a shield block/parry, a dodge roll, and throwing spears as a ranged attack. It’s more “realistic” than most other hack ‘n’ slash games though, with combat being more slow and methodical because you move at a more realistic pace. As you build up your combat multiplier by chaining moves together you start to get faster and more efficient at taking down people. Every enemy can be killed via a brutal execution QTE event that earns you extra XP, used to upgrade Marius’s stats and buy new execution moves. This gets really boring and repetitive very fast since there aren’t really that many different types of executions and you’ll end up getting the same handful over and over again. There are 4 powers you can set depending on your needs: health regain, extra XP, focus regain and spear restock. These powers are triggered by executing enemies, but sort of breaks the game because I just set it to earn extra XP most of the time (only switching to heal when I needed it) and by the 6th chapter I had like everything unlocked and XP just burning a hole in my metaphorical pocket. There’s a hidden “Rage mode” type thing called Focus that the game never tells you about and I only figured it out like halfway through. In this mode, time is slowed down for a short period and enemies are stun-locked, allowing you to speed up combat encounters and finish off a bunch of tough enemies quickly. There a few sections where you get to control your legion and give them commands as to what to do in combat scenarios, which is pretty awesome. I will say though that the combat is brutal and vicious and satisfying to a degree. I can’t count the number of times I actually screamed out “GET FUCKED BOI!!” every time I did a particularly brutal takedown kill.
To conclude, Rome is not a bad game. It’s short (maybe 6 hours at best), so I wouldn’t recommend it at full price. There’s multiplayer as well (which I obviously didn’t touch), which might prolong your experience with the game if you want it. It’s a decent game but not one I can recommend easily. If you like Rome, can power through repetition and want to see what is some of the best voice acting in video gaming, then by all means play this game.
Conclusion: 3 douchebag emperors out of a possible 5
RANDOM MUSINGS 