A game set during the Bakumatsu period must feel like a bus. You waited nearly a decade to make one, then released two more in consecutive years. After last year’s Yakuza: Vishin took us to late 19th century Japan, Rise of Ronin feels like a trip into familiar territory. It’s probably more familiar because this is an open-world game that happily borrows from Ubisoft’s icon-filled map playbook as well as other modern trends. Wing gliding? certainly! Pet dogs and cats? why not! However, this is still new territory for Team Ninja. FromSoftware has been a serious competitor to FromSoftware for the past few years and has its own take on Soulslike, and this marks a departure: one that’s more grounded than you might think, while continuing to evolve the platform-based platform first used in Nioh. Ki’s mechanics to accommodate a wider audience.
As another third-party PS5 exclusive that fills in the gaps of Sony’s own first-party efforts, it certainly seems like a good fit. When your unnamed protagonist arrives in Yokohama, the first shot looking out over the rolling fields and nearby sea looks absolutely gorgeous. Walking inside, it’s hard not to notice the long grass or light reflecting off the water, or the detailed architecture—a mix of Japanese and Western design. On horseback, with Mount Fuji in the background, it’s obvious: Cor! We’ve come a long way since Nioh’s caves of identity and sacked villages.
This beauty is balanced with brutality as you encounter unruly enemies on the outskirts of cities or abandoned settlements. The ensuing fight usually results in a final blow that results in a severed head or limb and a spurt of blood. Combat has been simplified to just one attack button instead of light and heavy, and the other attack is actually a counterattack, which is the game’s form of parry, which you need to deflect combos to drain your opponent’s ki (stamina) then Then carry out a fatal attack. What I really appreciate is that even if you choose the easier difficulty, the game doesn’t turn into a hack-and-slash game. You still have to respect the mechanic.
But it’s not just about mastering combat techniques. For all the gore that the game favors in direct confrontation, you can opt for a more stealthy approach that’s enough to take down infantry in one shot while severely weakening “powerful” enemies. You can also choose to fight with your bare hands, completely bloodless, although this does put you at a disadvantage in terms of attack power. Animal lovers will be happy to have a skill that replaces silent kills with taming hostile creatures, then letting them fight alongside you. So, yes, you can pet the dog, but it’s not just about pandering to the good boy crowd. Whichever approach you decide to take, it will satisfyingly restore order, allowing an abandoned road or village to once again be filled with citizens going about their day; a simple approach at a time when the country is facing socio-political instability luxury.
Moving away from purely action-oriented missions, the open-world structure allows Team Ninja to do more than just kill or be killed, even if its attempts at dialogue-based narrative choices aren’t quite as in-depth as combat. There are various ways to earn skill points for leveling up outside of combat, such as activating the many banners used for fast travel. Player progress is also more palatable because you’re not just letting seemingly arbitrary stats go up. Instead, you unlock or upgrade skills related to one of four attributes—Strength, Dexterity, Charisma, and Intelligence—with the latter’s associated statistic increasing for every two skills you unlock in those categories .
Despite this streamlining, Ronin still falls victim to some confusing user interface and cumbersome controls. Special moves called martial arts skills don’t require any complex input, but you have to memorize them based on the fighting style associated with them. You can also switch between the latter by holding R1 and moving the right stick in a given direction. There are multiple combat styles you can learn and remap, and you’re encouraged to switch by parsing a tiny blue or orange icon to see if it works or doesn’t work on the enemy you’re targeting. In other words, there’s a lot to think about. That’s before getting into the cumbersome menus, where it took me forever to figure out how to view all my items, not just the consumables.
Japan’s path to modernization is often called a bloodless revolution. Ronin believes that’s not the case, even if the game flips history on its head in bizarre ways, such as giving you the chance to assassinate Commodore Perry, the man responsible for opening Japan after centuries of isolationism. But revolution is also about ideas and loyalty, so bonds play a key role here. Initially, this is more abstract and gameplay stuff, as the more you tick off the quest and collectible lists in any given area, the more “connected” you become to that area. But it’s also about the relationships you form with the many real, albeit embellished, historical figures you meet, from vendors to battle allies.
The cast is strong as well, including key players like Ryoma Sakamoto – who is portrayed as a more laid-back kind of guy compared to Kazuma Kiryu, who enjoys hanging out in the play area with geishas (including one in Western clothing). Luckily, the game’s depictions of women are also diverse, including real-life female warriors from the period. These all provide a human face to Japan’s brewing conflicting ideals, as you’re asked to ally yourself with pro-shogunate or anti-shogunate forces, a concept that I admit still leaves me scratching my head as to what each side represents. Thankfully, you can be quite fickle, to a certain extent. It’s easier to understand a character’s needs and the rewards of improving your relationship with them than to consider their political leanings. Even so, some of your decisions will cause you to come into conflict with some of the Bond characters.
For the most part, Ronin depicts both sides of the conflict as simply having different visions for the country’s future, without any further interrogation or criticism. Aligning with the anti-shogunate forces seems natural, but they can hardly be said to be anti-colonialists, because in the process of Japan’s modernization, they also adopted Western imperialist ideas, including the occupation and annexation of Korea. (Conveniently, this takes place some time after the game is set, so it’s never mentioned.) However, despite the heightened deportationist sentiment, this is also a game about mixing and matching cultures. After all, your player-created character doesn’t have to be Japanese-looking, and your choice of weapons can include rifles and flamethrowers as well as katana and otachi swords. Even with the absurd depiction of a jet-boot-wearing diplomatic figure fighting against you, Western characters are more than just xenophobic caricatures.
The bonds that stick with you best are the ones that also stick with you during story missions. These are reminiscent of Nioh’s linear missions, albeit shorter and still set in an open world, but limited in how far you can wander. Crouching Dragon also allows you to bring in ally characters, although it’s missing a trick. Why only have Ryoma fight you when you can also control Ryoma? So here you can switch controls between characters, allowing you to experience different fighting styles, which you can also learn when the time comes. Even better, these characters serve as second chances. When you reach your end point, control automatically switches to another ally, who can also revive you if you have extra medicine.
It’s a great time to spend with your AI-controlled friends, and you’re less likely to ask other players for help. (While playing during the review period meant a smaller player pool, the co-op mode was unfortunately limited to story missions rather than open-world exploration and raids.) However, you’ll occasionally see AI control of other players, which is A nice touch Ronin wanders around the map, giving the feel of an asynchronous online world. You might even encounter a captured man during a raid on an enemy camp, who can then act as a temporary ally.
If there’s a downside to the more grounded, less fantastical depiction, it’s that the strictly human bosses lack the feel of an event. Typically, a mission ends with you fighting a big guy wielding a large weapon, and that’s the size of the mission. There are also characters you face multiple times who don’t really evolve with each confrontation. Even allowing for the absence of the supernatural, no one is as memorable or legendary as Lu Bu of Wolong.
As a Sony release, Ronin isn’t quite Team Ninja’s Elden Ring, even if it does develop a Nioh-like formula with the help of its existing open-world formula. Still, while it’s been great to witness a renaissance in Japanese gaming over the past few years, there’s something special about seeing a Japanese developer step up and reclaim the status of AAA open-world samurai games – especially one that’s more A game that cares about being a video game rather than a game. Akira Kurosawa’s film.
The review code for “Rise of the Ronin” was provided by Team Ninja.
