I have finally gotten around to giving Rise of the Ronin a try. I did not like Wo Long, Team Ninja's last game mostly be cause they put dodge and parry on the same button and the combination didn't work for me. Rise's parry button is linked again but this time it's linked with your heavy attack where if you mistime the parry, you will step through the enemy attack and hit them regardless. You'll take the damage, but the heavy attack has a lot of stagger so you might not parry the attack buy you are likely to stagger the enemy out of whatever combo they might be up to. This feels a lot better, on top of a general lower difficulty curve in general to the combat.
Combat itself is still trying to ape a souls-like foundation with locking on, parrying, awaiting for openings. Though there is a bigger focus on parrying however the windows feel more generous that something like Sekiro or Wo Long, which combined with the parry also being an attack button feels okay. Combat itself still feels sloppy and lacking polish, but maybe that's because of the open world around everything which makes it harder to have tight combat. Though this developer is usually combat focused first and everything else lacks, it's odd to have a general downgrade in quality across the board here.
It's the first open world style game this team has made and it shows, there are the normal collection things and side activities you might expect, but there isn't a lot of bloat per area so it doesn't feel overwhelming for completion if you want to go that route. The story is terribly presented with all the english VA's sounds like Japanese people trying to read English despite not understanding it. But that's kind of on par for the story abilities of this developer so I expect that.
Overall the game is okay. I don't think it's bad, but I can't say it's great either. Maybe above average, though it's still very cliche with it's open world ideas.
Combat itself is still trying to ape a souls-like foundation with locking on, parrying, awaiting for openings. Though there is a bigger focus on parrying however the windows feel more generous that something like Sekiro or Wo Long, which combined with the parry also being an attack button feels okay. Combat itself still feels sloppy and lacking polish, but maybe that's because of the open world around everything which makes it harder to have tight combat. Though this developer is usually combat focused first and everything else lacks, it's odd to have a general downgrade in quality across the board here.
It's the first open world style game this team has made and it shows, there are the normal collection things and side activities you might expect, but there isn't a lot of bloat per area so it doesn't feel overwhelming for completion if you want to go that route. The story is terribly presented with all the english VA's sounds like Japanese people trying to read English despite not understanding it. But that's kind of on par for the story abilities of this developer so I expect that.
Overall the game is okay. I don't think it's bad, but I can't say it's great either. Maybe above average, though it's still very cliche with it's open world ideas.
