Rise of the Ronin was the latest title from Team Ninja back in March of 2024 exclusive to the PS5. Published by Koei Tecmo, the game takes place during the Bakumatsu Period of Japan, around the late 1800s. Carrying the trend that most Sony exclusives are following nowadays, Rise of the Ronin is coming to PC on March 11th of this year.
The Story And Environment
The game takes place as mentioned before during the late 1800s, around this time the Boshin War was taking place which would result in the end of Tokugawa shogunate. Amidst this tense period we follow twins who had their village massacred by Tokugawa forces and are then raised by assassins.
Then as the story progresses the game presents a really interesting picture with themes of xenophobia, colonialism and how people were reacting to western technology making their way to Japan and changing livelihoods for most if not all citizens.
The player will encounter important political figures of the era such as Ryoma Sakamoto, Genzui Kusaka, Kogoro Katsura and many other key figures during the Bakuhatsu period. There are choices to make that each lead to slightly different endings and additional cutscenes that tie the narrative around.
The Combat Mechanics Were Not Up To Par
Team Ninja are mostly known for their in-depth and extensive combat mechanics, we don’t have to look far into their portfolio to understand such as Ninja Gaiden, Nioh and Nioh 2 to name a few. Combat in Rise of the Ronin however felt simplified to an extreme due to which it felt limiting when compared to their other games.
Even if the system was changed, players have come to expect difficult but fluid mechanics from Team Ninja as such it was disappointing to see the drastic change in direction for it. Essentially, there are three stances, Jin, Ten and Chi, each of these stances are effective against certain weapons and ineffective against others.
For example, Jin is effective against light weapons like sabers and ineffective against heavy weapons like Odachis, Ten is effective against medium weapons like swords and ineffective against lightweight weapons thus Chi weapons is effective against lightweight weapons.
This rock-paper-scissors system may seem intuitive on the surface, it quickly became repetitive and uninteresting as there wasn’t any proper way to continue a combo like how it was possible in Ninja Gaiden or Nioh.
Lacking Visuals
Team Ninja games aren’t typically known for developing games with staggering, realistic visuals but the visuals presented here felt a step backwards when compared to Nioh or Stranger in Paradise. There is a significant amount of popping, which is when objects in the distance get a sudden change in color as we go near it.
Other than the issues with popping, the overall color palette was very bland, everything just looked muted. There are various water bodies across the various parts of Japan and yet the water looked the most egregious as it looked less graphically impressive than a PS3 era title.
All of the above issues were fixed with consecutive updates but alas Team Ninja themselves fell into the unfortunate practice of shipping a game before its finished as these visual issues should have been caught earlier and before shipping a seventy dollar title.
Conclusion
The game is set to come to PC on March 11th with notable features such as 120 frames per second, DirectX 12 support, Ultrawide monitor support, Ray tracing support, AMD Fidelity FX, Nvidia DLSS and Intel XeSS support. Along with that players with capable hardware will be able to render the game at 8K.
The game is now in a proper state but again the core issue of the game is not visuals it is its lack of identity. Players who know what to expect from Team Ninja would be left disappointed due to the simplified combat system and lack of build customization and variety, casual players who don’t know what to expect from Team Ninja would be left disappointed due to unimpressive graphics and lack of depth in the story.
The game may not be worth the 70 dollar price tag but it is certainly worth to pick up if it is found on a sale, while there are some choices that are definitely questionable the game is in a proper state now and Team Ninja does explore a historical era of Japan that is almost no other developer has explored before and they executed that pretty well.
