Trying Rise of the Ronin on the PS5

To try out the new recliner, I plugged the PS5 into the television again. (Previously it had been plugged into my recording PC to record Nioh 3, but I gave up on that game some time ago.)

I got a game called Rise of the Ronin, something I’ve seen on the Playstation Store for quite a while and wondered if it was a blatant rip-off of Ghosts of Tsushima. It was a free download because of some subscription or another I have, which is probably wasting my money.

I can report that it isn’t, at least for the first hour, but it’s not an especially great game either. It’s kind of Souls-like-ish but the gimmick is you actually play two different heros (“twin swords”), the second of which will distract enemies, and you swap characters when you’re downed by an enemy. Mechanically it doesn’t change much except it gives you more chances before getting killed for good.

I got to the first boss on a ship, almost beat him, but died in the end because I couldn’t remember which buttons did what. Because of course it’s one of those controller games where they just make up random buttons to do important actions, and the majority of the game experience is un-learning the muscle memory of previous games to get the buttons right for this game.

(In this case, the triangle button is the vitally important parry button, which has literally never been done before in any action RPG, so overcoming that muscle memory is quite an ask.)

I haven’t played a controller game in a long time, and boy did it show. It doesn’t take long for my hands and thumbs to start telling me, “It isn’t natural to hold something like this!” Once again we lament that all games are made by people with no concept of human aging.

Otherwise, the game and the story is completely forgettable so far. It’s cursed to be a perfectly servicable, average game, which might as well be an abject failure in today’s over-saturated game market.

That’s it, that’s the review.