Reviewing video games is an odd and inexact science. While almost every website has a similar review scale these days (7- good, 8- great, etc), I imagine that every reviewer has their own journey as to how they come up with that final number. I feel like, at times, many reviewers start at a certain score and start taking off points for every flaw the game has. And in some ways, that makes sense. It would be odd to spend half of a review talking about what a game does poorly and then turn around and give it an 8.5.
And yet, that is my exact plan here when it comes to Rise of the Ronin. I imagine I will spend a good chunk of this review talking about all of the things that it could have done better. This was Team Ninja’s first foray into open world video games, and there are definitely things they can learn from it.
But in the end, its main focus is to give you an intense samurai combat experience. And it does that wonderfully. I can only downgrade a game so much for its flaws when the main thing it wants to do is executed so magnificently. Combat is king in Rise of the Ronin, and Team Ninja has crafted one of my favorite combat systems of the year. While it’s not great at plenty of things, having your core combat be as good as it is here can cover up a whole lot of flaws.
Dream Samurai Combat
There are a variety of elements that make Rise of the Ronin’s combat so good. More than anything, though, I’d say the highlight is how damn good parrying feels. Enemies come at you with a very wide array of attack patterns that constantly keep you on your toes. They come at you fast as well. If an enemy comes at you with a 4-5 attack sequence, ideally you want to parry every attack, but you can usually stun the enemy if you at least just parry the last attack in their sequence, which is generally the strongest. It’s very common to have 5 attacks come at you within a few seconds. I loved how balls to the wall and intense this was. The sound design when you parry is absolutely perfect, especially when you break an opponent’s guard. This feeling and design never got old.
I was impressed by how many unique attack patterns I came across throughout my 50+ hours with the game as well. While you will recognize attack patterns over time, there are enough where even some pretty basic enemies can surprise you with a nice sequence of attacks sometimes. This gets ramped up for big bosses and even the occasional mini-boss. One mini-boss was suddenly hitting me with sumo-esque strikes. Another was coming at me with claws that reminded me of Vega from Street Fighter. The mix of pacing and variety in Rise of the Ronin is not something most games in this genre can match.
And while parrying is great, going back on the offensive ends up being equally fun as well. A mix of variety and customization lets you attack each battle in an incredible amount of ways that keep things fresh throughout. You have nine different weapons you can equip, and you can equip two of them to switch between at any one time. I had a mixture of a more giant sword and a standard sword (there’s more interesting weapons, but I’m boring), and if an enemy was tripping me up, I enjoyed switching between them as a way to mix things up mentally. Each weapon also has multiple different “styles” you can equip, which dictates your special attacks. You can equip 3 of these styles for each weapon, and there is a rock paper scissors element to them with other styles. Basically, you will want to switch your styles depending on what your enemy is using during fights. This sounds annoying and can occasionally be cumbersome, but it was actually a feature I ended up really enjoying. Without it, I’m sure I would have gotten comfortable with one style and mostly stuck with it, but because the game almost forces you to change styles, it makes all the fights a bit different and more interesting as you start to learn how to utilize all of them effectively.
The game also gives you other options to keep things engaging. You have firearms to use, which can be a bit awkward but mostly enhance the combat by giving you more flexibility. You also have a grappling hook that you can use to pull enemies towards you or off rooftops. This was wicked fun to use. It really never gets old pulling ranged attackers down from rooftops and towers.
But my favorite thing to do outside of the core combat was surprisingly the stealth. Rise of the Ronin gives you a pretty fun array of moves and assassinations that let you really rack up the kills while in stealth. Other enemies get shocked when they see a comrade go down via stealth, so there are times when I got one stealth kill and was able to parlay that into 4 more, which was always super satisfying. You eventually unlock an ability to assassinate an enemy off a full sprint that is an absolute blast as well. And with the glider that you get for open world traversal, you can easily do stealth kills from the sky in certain areas, which once again never got old. You aren’t given tons of tools for actually staying hidden, so it doesn’t become overpowered. I found myself trying to kick off a lot of combat encounters with a stealth kill to see if I could get things rolling, but I would generally pivot right back to the action and have a great time with sword combat once I was spotted.
That combat is so much fun as well because of how smooth the performance is to go with the fast pace. Rise of the Ronin runs well at 60 FPS. It certainly lacks in the fidelity department, but it excels where it matters, and that solid frame rate made combat as fun as it could possible be.
And the beauty is that all of this is well balanced and accessible. Rise of the Ronin features difficulty options for anyone who needs it, but I found the normal difficulty to be incredibly fair. I probably died 2-
3 dozen times across the whole game, and many of those were in the late game when I started to mainline it (I will talk more about this in a bit). The game was challenging but never overly frustrating. It also helps that major missions let you take allies that you can switch between and revive a limited number of times. You could probably describe Rise of the Ronin as a souls-lite, as it has a few classic elements from that genre, but everything is accessible in ways that soulslikes generally are not.
To Open World or Not To Open World, That Is The Question
A big part of that accessibility comes from Rise of the Ronin being an open world game, too. Much like Elden Ring, this means that if something is tripping you up, you can go explore elsewhere, do some other things, and come back when you are a bit stronger.
There are three different open world maps in the game, and they are absolutely stuffed with things to do. A lot of these tasks are just lighter combat encounters. There are some quick “fugitive” fights, where you essentially take out a mini-boss, and then some more collectathon type tasks, like taking pictures of scenic areas, and cat collecting, which generally ends up involving some light navigation puzzles, as you find the best way to a rooftop or tower where they are hanging out. There are also plenty of side quests that, you guessed it, feature more combat.
My feelings on this open world are very complicated. I don’t think any of the tasks Rise of the Ronin gives you are bad. I love the combat in the game, so having extra opportunities to fight was never a terrible thing for me. But there is just way too damn much of all of it. The open world is bloated with things to do, and even the tasks I enjoyed would get old after a while. I actually ended up taking roughly a month hiatus from the game at about the halfway point because I was trying to clear the map, and it slowly wore me down a bit.
When I came back to the game, I quickly found myself having a blast again, especially as I started completely ignoring most of the map markers that weren’t main quests. The simple solution is to just not try and clear the map. I think doing about half of the optional tasks is probably the sweet spot. There is more than enough content in this game to get your money’s worth even if you do mostly mainline. This was Team Ninja’s first attempt at an open world game, and I think there is a lot they can take from this to do better the next time around.
Uhh, Who Is This Guy Again?
This was also Team Ninja’s first attempt at having choices in the story, and that ended up being one of the bigger misses in the game for me. Rise of the Ronin takes place in Japan during the mid-1800s, as Westerners are starting to converge on the country. The bulk of the game takes place during battles between the shogunate and anti-shogunate forces. You can choose to align yourself with each side, but in their attempts to show both sides of the conflict, things are constantly getting muddled and weird. It was bizarre how often I would face off in a boss fight with a noteworthy character, only to end up doing missions for them and forming a bond a few hours later. This happens constantly, and with the way the story is told, I rarely found myself particularly invested in one side or another. I actually switched my allegiances a few times throughout the game as each side kept doing things that I didn’t agree with, but almost none of it seemed to matter much.
The game also throws literally dozens and dozens of characters at you in ways that also made it impossible for me to care of any of them, outside of one in particular. Late in the game, I counted up how many characters that Rise of the Ronin said I had a “bond” with, and the number was 41. While this era of Japan has been highlighted in popular culture many times, and I respect that they were trying to do something a bit different, a more focused story would have been way more effective here. Because this is based on real history, there are plenty of really interesting events and twists and turns throughout, but because of the odd storytelling, and how little I cared about any character, none of it hit as hard as it should have. The big moments still have some impact, but I came away really wishing that I was more invested in this story. If the narrative was better, I doubt I would have been able to let myself take the little hiatus that I did from this game.
Combat Is King
But despite those disappointments, I came away so pleasantly surprised with my time with Rise of the Ronin. In the end, almost none of my issues mattered much when I was on the edge of my seat in a duel to the death with a skilled samurai. Yes, the open world is bloated. Yes, the fidelity isn’t awesome, and yes, the story and characters mostly fall flat. But Rise of the Ronin is about living a samurai fantasy in combat, and while there are a few games like Sekiro that are certainly on or above Ronin’s level with combat, Ronin’s open world and accessibility give it a leg up that make it stand alone for me in this particular subgenre of action RPGs. There are some gamers that will have to turn off the part of their brains that demand them to complete everything. There are some graphics snobs that will have to overlook that there are occasionally mediocre environments and some weird animations. But if you are someone who rocks with gameplay above all else in your action games, then I can pretty much guarantee that Rise of the Ronin will have something for you. In this genre, combat is king, and Rise of the Ronin stands with any of the greats.
Score: 8.5/10
Big Nerd Gaming 
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