Ryse : Son of Rome (Xbox One)
Our next review brings us all the way back to an alternate-history version of Rome in Ryse : Son of Rome on Xbox One. This action adventure game brings you back in time to see some of the great places and people from Roman history. So let's dive into it.
You also can throw spears in or out of combat, by pressing both the left and right triggers. If you're out of combat, doing this will bring up a small aiming reticle on the screen locking on to whichever enemy you're closest to looking at. The right trigger by itself initiates executions during combat, and the right bumper does a massive stun move where Marius slams his shield into the ground, stunning whoever is nearby.
Lastly, you are given four perks that affect whatever reward you get after performing an execution. These can be chosen with any of the four directions on the D-pad, and will be explained in more detail in the following section.
Very simple controls, very easy to learn, and a lot of fun to use. So let's see how they stand up in the game.
In combat, you have full use of your shield and sword for light and heavy attacks, as well as the abilities to dodge and parry attacks, and if you parry at the precisely correct moment, you can stun your enemy. After you're introduced to the spears, you can carry these around permanently and they can be used during combat as well, by pulling both triggers, Marius will draw one and stick the closest enemy with it for either an instant kill or severely weakening them. After weakening them enough, a little skull figure will pop up over their head meaning they're ready for an execution.
The executions are bloody to say the least. As soon as you prompt them, it turns into a short quick-time-event where you have to either bash them with your shield or stab/slash them with your sword. The enemy will glow with whichever color coordinates to the proper button (yellow for the shield since Y is yellow, and blue for the sword since X is blue). You are given a quick grade depending on how quick your reaction time is, and the faster you react the more points go towards your combo. So if you react right away with the correct button, your combo counter could go up two or three hits, whereas if you miss the button completely it won't go up at all, but the execution will still happen.
After the executions, one of four things can happen depending on which perk you have activated. These are health gain (you regenerate a little bit of health), XP boost (earn higher amounts of XP aka Valor points), Focus Boost (earn more points towards filling up your Focus bar), and Damage Boost (you deal extra damage to the next enemy you hit after the execution).
Your Focus meter holds the last element to your combat. This is where Marius's stun move comes from. Once activated, he slams his shield straight into the ground and anyone nearby becoemes temporarily stunned. All the energy in your Focus Bar starts to drain and during this time, Marius can move and strike faster. Very useful if you see yourself surrounded by more than a few enemies.
The enemies you face come in a few different forms, but all that changes between each of them is how much damage it takes to kill them, or the type of attacks they can throw at you. You'll get regular ground-troop barbarians, as well as archers, heavy-types, and the couple of different bosses and mini-bosses you'll face along the way. Either way, no matter who you're facing, just shield bash and sword slash your way to their deaths.
There are times in the game when you get to use the Roman turtle-shell shield tactic. You group up with a bunch of your men, shields at the ready, and slowly move forward throw an area that is heavily guarded by archers. You control when you stop to protect yourself from the incoming arrows, and can even hurl spears back at them to eliminate them. When you're on your own dealing with a handful of archers, you must take them down by throwing spears or getting close enough to them where they jump down and face you hand-to-hand. While you're trying to get close to them, a prompt will come up when you're about to be hit with the arrow and you can either dodge-roll out of the way or deflect the arrow with your shield.
All of Marius's moves and abilities can be upgraded with Valor points which are earned by doing just about anything in the game. Your combo score in combat, number of perfect hits, number of times you stun an enemy, even smashing breaking objects in the world all earn you Valor. With these points, you can add to his health bar, add to his focus bar, add to how long the focus lasts for, and improve the amount of spears he can carry. You can even add different variations of executions to your arsenal.
In the end, its a decently fun game, and definitely heavy on the blood and gore. But how challenging is it?
The combat itself is moderately difficult, but it's also extremely repetitive. Ryse has varying difficulty levels, so the difficulty of the combat is really going to depend on how high you set the game, and also the number and types of enemies surrounding you. If you're only dealing with one or two regular barbarians it's pretty easy. But if you're up against a gang of four or five enemies with a few heavy-types in the mix, you'll be at it a bit.
Overall, it's not a very challenging game unless you set the bar higher for yourself. So let's see what was good and bad about this one before I get to my final verdict.
- Combat is fun. While there's not a whole lot to it, the combat is still great, and the bloody executions don't get old at all. You even are able to perform executions relative to what's around you in the environment. For example at one point, during a fight in a tower, I triggered an execution on one guy near an opening that led to me pretty much pulling a "This is Sparta" kick and sending him falling to his death.
- The Colloseum. In one of the ending chapters, you get to actually live out a battle in the Roman Colloseum in all it's glory. It's popped up in a few games before, but in this one it's actually in it's true digital home.
- Too simple. There's literally nothing to do in this game but the combat and executions.While the executions are fun to trigger and see, there needed to be a lot more to this game than just hacking your way through your enemies.
- No killing blow. All of the boss fights end prematurely. You do all the hard work of dodging and hacking away, and when you get them down to the last smidge of health, it switches into a cutscene and does the rest for you. Not even a quick-time-event to at least make the player feel like they actually got to finish the person off. At that point, I would have preferred if the whole boss fights were just QTE's. It would have still sucked, but at least it would've been consistently bad through it all instead of chipping them down only to not get to bask in the bloody glory yourself.
The Story
Ryse follows the story of Marius, a soldier who's training to be in the Roman Army. After completing his training, he comes back home to visit with his family before being deployed off to Alexandria. While he is visiting at his family's villa, a gang of barbarian attacks the area, slaughtering his mother and sister and, after a chase through the streets, killing Marius's father. Angered, Marius decimates all of the barbarians in the city. Seeing his hatred and need to avenge his family, Leonitus transfers Marius to his legion to lead an attack and wage war on the barbarians and their leader, so Marius can have justice for his family.The Controls
Ryse's controls are fairly easy to pick up as they're very simple. The left and right joysticks control Marius's movement and aiming the camera respectively. A can deflect attacks in combat, B performs a dodge-roll in whichever direction the left joystick is pointed, Y does a push attack with your shield, and X is a slash attack with your sword. Holding X or Y will do a heavy version attack of the shield push or sword slash.You also can throw spears in or out of combat, by pressing both the left and right triggers. If you're out of combat, doing this will bring up a small aiming reticle on the screen locking on to whichever enemy you're closest to looking at. The right trigger by itself initiates executions during combat, and the right bumper does a massive stun move where Marius slams his shield into the ground, stunning whoever is nearby.
Lastly, you are given four perks that affect whatever reward you get after performing an execution. These can be chosen with any of the four directions on the D-pad, and will be explained in more detail in the following section.
Very simple controls, very easy to learn, and a lot of fun to use. So let's see how they stand up in the game.
The Gameplay
Ryse is a hack-and-slash adventure game, through and through. You get to play as a Roman soldier, working his way up through the ranks of the army as he's out for the blood of those who murdered his family. All the combat is done hand-to-hand melee style, with the exception of the handful of Scorpio bows you get to man throughout the game.In combat, you have full use of your shield and sword for light and heavy attacks, as well as the abilities to dodge and parry attacks, and if you parry at the precisely correct moment, you can stun your enemy. After you're introduced to the spears, you can carry these around permanently and they can be used during combat as well, by pulling both triggers, Marius will draw one and stick the closest enemy with it for either an instant kill or severely weakening them. After weakening them enough, a little skull figure will pop up over their head meaning they're ready for an execution.
The executions are bloody to say the least. As soon as you prompt them, it turns into a short quick-time-event where you have to either bash them with your shield or stab/slash them with your sword. The enemy will glow with whichever color coordinates to the proper button (yellow for the shield since Y is yellow, and blue for the sword since X is blue). You are given a quick grade depending on how quick your reaction time is, and the faster you react the more points go towards your combo. So if you react right away with the correct button, your combo counter could go up two or three hits, whereas if you miss the button completely it won't go up at all, but the execution will still happen.
After the executions, one of four things can happen depending on which perk you have activated. These are health gain (you regenerate a little bit of health), XP boost (earn higher amounts of XP aka Valor points), Focus Boost (earn more points towards filling up your Focus bar), and Damage Boost (you deal extra damage to the next enemy you hit after the execution).
Your Focus meter holds the last element to your combat. This is where Marius's stun move comes from. Once activated, he slams his shield straight into the ground and anyone nearby becoemes temporarily stunned. All the energy in your Focus Bar starts to drain and during this time, Marius can move and strike faster. Very useful if you see yourself surrounded by more than a few enemies.
The enemies you face come in a few different forms, but all that changes between each of them is how much damage it takes to kill them, or the type of attacks they can throw at you. You'll get regular ground-troop barbarians, as well as archers, heavy-types, and the couple of different bosses and mini-bosses you'll face along the way. Either way, no matter who you're facing, just shield bash and sword slash your way to their deaths.
There are times in the game when you get to use the Roman turtle-shell shield tactic. You group up with a bunch of your men, shields at the ready, and slowly move forward throw an area that is heavily guarded by archers. You control when you stop to protect yourself from the incoming arrows, and can even hurl spears back at them to eliminate them. When you're on your own dealing with a handful of archers, you must take them down by throwing spears or getting close enough to them where they jump down and face you hand-to-hand. While you're trying to get close to them, a prompt will come up when you're about to be hit with the arrow and you can either dodge-roll out of the way or deflect the arrow with your shield.
All of Marius's moves and abilities can be upgraded with Valor points which are earned by doing just about anything in the game. Your combo score in combat, number of perfect hits, number of times you stun an enemy, even smashing breaking objects in the world all earn you Valor. With these points, you can add to his health bar, add to his focus bar, add to how long the focus lasts for, and improve the amount of spears he can carry. You can even add different variations of executions to your arsenal.
In the end, its a decently fun game, and definitely heavy on the blood and gore. But how challenging is it?
The Challenge (or lack thereof?)
This game definitely leans more in the direction of lack thereof. There's really only one area of "challenge" in this one and it's the combat. Just about everything else is done automatically for you. All the climbing happens just by running Marius into a surface he can climb. There's almost no puzzles to be found, and the few things you can count as "puzzles" only take moments to "solve" aka destroy. The boss fights don't even have anything special to them, the only difference between them and the regular combat is the bosses actually get a health bar.The combat itself is moderately difficult, but it's also extremely repetitive. Ryse has varying difficulty levels, so the difficulty of the combat is really going to depend on how high you set the game, and also the number and types of enemies surrounding you. If you're only dealing with one or two regular barbarians it's pretty easy. But if you're up against a gang of four or five enemies with a few heavy-types in the mix, you'll be at it a bit.
Overall, it's not a very challenging game unless you set the bar higher for yourself. So let's see what was good and bad about this one before I get to my final verdict.
PROS
- Story is well done. Getting to see it play out in such a great way almost makes this game feel like it's a movie at most points in the games. The graphics are beautiful both during the game itself and cutscenes, and there's no different visually between the two which makes for a perfect blend between playing and watching.- Combat is fun. While there's not a whole lot to it, the combat is still great, and the bloody executions don't get old at all. You even are able to perform executions relative to what's around you in the environment. For example at one point, during a fight in a tower, I triggered an execution on one guy near an opening that led to me pretty much pulling a "This is Sparta" kick and sending him falling to his death.
- The Colloseum. In one of the ending chapters, you get to actually live out a battle in the Roman Colloseum in all it's glory. It's popped up in a few games before, but in this one it's actually in it's true digital home.
CONS
- Too short. The game, from start to finish, clocks in at roughly 6 1/2 hours, maybe a bit more if you find yourself dying a lot or just exploring the areas. Either way, the length of this game is a bit of a letdown.- Too simple. There's literally nothing to do in this game but the combat and executions.While the executions are fun to trigger and see, there needed to be a lot more to this game than just hacking your way through your enemies.
- No killing blow. All of the boss fights end prematurely. You do all the hard work of dodging and hacking away, and when you get them down to the last smidge of health, it switches into a cutscene and does the rest for you. Not even a quick-time-event to at least make the player feel like they actually got to finish the person off. At that point, I would have preferred if the whole boss fights were just QTE's. It would have still sucked, but at least it would've been consistently bad through it all instead of chipping them down only to not get to bask in the bloody glory yourself.
