Ryse Son of Rome tells the story of Marius, a roman soldier who seeks vengeance against those that destroyed his family. Marius himself tells the tale, and through his own words you get to see and experience the horrors of war.
Story
Ryse’s story is a basic one, and built around a simple
premise; Revenge. Having seen his family murdered, Marius joins the 14th
Legion and takes the fight to the Barbarians. You actually start the story out
as a General leading his soldiers in the defense of Rome as the Barbarians
attack, and after that tutorial level is completed you are whisked back in time
to when Marius just starts out in the Legion, from there the story takes you
from the streets of Rome, to the beaches of England, the dense forests of
Northern England and then back to Rome.
It is through the course of this campaign that you see that
Ryse’s story is just a shell to move you from one location to another, without
any real investment in characters. Each of the characters, of-which excluding Marius
takes a fairly predictable route, save a single character, and that feels like
a wasted chance to really have fun with them.
Presentation
Let’s get this out of the way now. This game is fantastic to
look at, in fact that may have been the entire reason that most people purchased the game. If you wanted to show off your brand new console, this would be the game to
prove it. The character models are amazingly detailed thanks to in part of the
brilliant motion capture performances of the actual actors they used. The words
are vibrant and colourful, where they need to be, and in the other parts, bleak
and disgusting.
Having Marius slug through the muddy and bloody aftermath of
a body dumping ground will make most people squirm in discomfort. The enemy models are well
crafted, with each being easy to distinguish from the others, there is no
mistaking a simple lackey against a more powerful shielded guy. It is here that
the bad guy template is ended, as you will fight the same guy over and over again,
as each of the opposing armies only has one look for each type of fighter. There
are even times when you will be fighting 3 or 4 of the same guy and it can get
a little confusing when they all mix together.
The sound of this game is just as impressive as the visuals.
Each clang of the sword onto shield or stone reverberates with a satisfying thunk,
thud or twang. The sound of arrows being let loose by both sides and tearing
through the sky can put the hairs up on the back of your neck. And the sound of
lines of Roman soldiers marching in formation is loud and brash, and you can
imagine why this would intimidate many back in the day.
Gameplay
Sadly this is where the game falls apart. While there is
nothing wrong with the concept of the fighting (think of the recent Batman
games, but with a simpler system and you’re there), however it just does not
expand beyond that. Each enemy will have a pattern to their attacks, and once you
know it, you just need to decide to either block/deflect the hit or strike first,
then you just keep spamming the attack buttons until you can trigger the series
of quick time events that allow you the ability to recover health, focus or
increase damage.
Once you start the QTE, the relevant bad guy will get a blue
or yellow outline around them, indicating which button you need to press, but
even that does not mean anything. You can simply press the same button each
time ignoring the colours and you still get your kill. Or should you choose you
can also just leave the sequence to play out on its own, and yep you still get
the kill. The only reason you need to do button combination correctly is to build multipliers
which allows you to get one of the aforementioned bonus, health, focus, damage
or xp back quicker.
There are times when you will take control of your legion
and lead them down very narrow corridors, raising shields to protect yourself
and your men from the incoming arrows. Or even a few times when you can use a
giant crossbow, which does not take time to reload, or time to prepare a shot,
so it feels like this is a little cheat, thrown in by the developers. The Kinect voice commands work from time to time, and they do feel like you are doing something other than just mashing buttons. Sadly you can't use them them you want, only when the game allows it.
There is a multiplayer component, but it suffers from the
same level of combat awareness as the main campaign. And while the always
changing arenas is impressive, it does not add anything to the overall
experience.
Verdict
Ryse Son of Rome is a visually impressive beast, but that
is the only really selling point of the game. If you can overlook the repetitious
and shallow gameplay, you can find a pretty enduring little game, but even the
most lenient of gamers will find themselves hard pressed to join the Legion on
this fight more than once.
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