Rise of the Ronin Review: Team Ninja's Samurai Story Strains Under Its Own Weight

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When it comes to video games, it's Samurai season. Medieval Japan is no stranger to the medium; From Okami and Onimusha to Tenchu and Total War, the setting has been explored in poetic and punchy ways before. But a few popular recent games have brought renewed interest in sword saints and shinobis. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice established the ethos of a modern action game set in Japan's tumultuous past, and Ghost of Tsushima refined the open-world, action-adventure genre for a Samurai story.

Rise of the Ronin, Team Ninja's latest action-RPG which was released March 22, falls somewhere between those two titles. Set during the final years of the Edo period, the game leans on deep role-playing systems and challenging parry-based action combat reminiscent of Sekiro, while presenting a sprawling open world map peppered with checklist activities and distractions, much like Ghost of Tsushima — which itself tread the familiar open world path laid down by Assassin's Creed games. But in its best of both worlds approach, Rise of the Ronin loses the sanctity of Team Ninja's robust and relentless combat language established in the studio's previous games and fails to bring new and distinct ideas to the open world formula.

That doesn't mean that Rise of the Ronin doesn't add any new flavour to the genre at all. The game's combat is a balanced mix of accessibility and challenge, offering a plethora of distinct melee and ranged weapons and stances. Its ally system encourages you to indulge in the side content and level up your bond with your friends. And its period-accurate setting presents a more grounded picture of the times when compared to other games set in medieval Japan. But despite its successful, if somewhat wobbly balancing act that tries to keep hard-edged combat and serious systems of old-school games on an even keel with ambitious and expansive scope of contemporary open-world titles, Rise of the Ronin often tilts over into tedium.

Rise of the Ronin, Stellar Blade, Death