Rise of the Ronin should have been a slam dunk. After having delivered some of the best action games in recent years with the likes of Nioh, Nioh 2, and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, Team Ninja has swung for the fences with its next game, billed as its most ambitious project to date and the studio’s first crack at open world design. To say the very least, it’s a momentous occasion for the studio, and with the backing of the PlayStation Studios banner, there was every reason to believe that Rise of the Ronin would be another notch in the belt for a developer with an already immense legacy. Unfortunately, however, though Rise of the Ronin has some legitimately bright highlights, there’s just too much about it that feels either too rough or too underbaked for it to be able to rise above being anything more than just a fun but forgettable game, even at the best of times.

Playing Rise of the Ronin, it’s impossible not to draw comparisons with a number of other games out there, because it makes no bones about the fact that it does indeed borrow liberally from several of its peers. From Ghost of Tsushima and Assassin’s Creed to Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and, of course, Team Ninja’s own Nioh, Rise of the Ronin pulls in elements from many well-loved and recognized games. That’s a bit of a double-edged sword in this particular case, however, because in almost none of those comparisons is Rise of the Ronin good enough to come out on top.

"Though Rise of the Ronin has some legitimately bright highlights, there’s just too much about it that feels either too rough or too underbaked for it to be able to rise above being anything more than just a fun but forgettable game, even at the best of times."

If you want an open world game with a historical Japanese setting, you can certainly play Rise of the Ronin, but Ghost of Tsushima is just so much better at it. If you want to play a game with the typical AAA open world structure of a large map filled with icons to clear out and checklists to complete, Assassin’s Creed is just such a better option. If you want to play a game that places parrying mechanics front and center in its combat, though Rise of the Ronin is surely a decent option, it isn’t anywhere close to being good enough to be a better pick than Sekiro. And, of course, if what you have a hankering for is a good Team Ninja game, there’s very little here that would compel you to pick Rise of the Ronin over, say, one of the Nioh games.

But let’s pause and cover the basics first. Rise of the Ronin is set in late 19th century Japan, telling the story of the civil war between the Tokugawa Shogunate and the many anti-shogunate factions who take issue with the increasing influence of Western powers on Japan. You play as a Ronin – one that you can customize to your heart’s content at the outset of your journey – who’s on a quest to find their Blade Twin, before getting roped into the nation’s larger conflicts. On paper, the setup is a strong one, not only because of the inherently fascinating time period and subject matter, but also because of the game’s drive to craft a much more grounded and historical experience than the fantasy-infused likes of Nioh and Wo Long.

Unfortunately, the setup is only an interesting one on paper, because it the game completely fumbles its execution. Team Ninja has never been known for its storytelling prowess, and if this were any of the studio’s other games, I don’t think it would be fair in the slightest to judge it on its narrative strengths and weaknesses. But Rise of the Ronin has very much been billed as a much more story-driven experience than past Team Ninja titles, so to see it continuing to underwhelm in an area that it supposedly wants to place greater emphasis on is disappointing, to say the least.

"Rise of the Ronin has very much been billed as a much more story-driven experience than past Team Ninja titles, so to see it continuing to underwhelm in an area that it supposedly wants to place greater emphasis on is disappointing, to say the least."

A fascinating setting ends up misused, and from a purely narrative perspective, there’s little here that actually grabs attention. Characters feel like carboard cutouts that are just reading out lines, with very few of them showing any actual personality, and though there are some cutscenes that are well directed, by and large, I found it incredibly hard to be invested in anything that was going on in the story. The writing is consistently mediocre at best (and downright pedestrian at worst), and the voice acting, though never awful by any means, never manages to be anything more than middle of the road acceptable.

That, in fact, is also an accurate description for the game’s open world setting. That Rise of the Ronin is Team Ninja’s first open world game ever is abundantly apparent in how plain it feels more often than not. Structurally, it functions the way you would expect the vast majority of AAA open worlds to function, with each region of the world gradually unlocking new quests and side activities. It’s a very checklisty game, for the lack of a better word, which means it can be fun in the most basic sense from time to time.

The issue is that the content that it does have on offer is very rarely engaging in any real way. From collecting cats to clearing enemy encampments to praying at shrines to gain skill points, the side activities you’ll be tackling in Rise of the Ronin’s open world on a recurring basis suffer from a devastating lack of originality and innovation. Of course, that’s true for a great many open world games out there, but where other titles with similar cookie-cutter open worlds try to offset their flaws with the sheer quality of their content, Rise of the Ronin doesn’t even succeed on that front. The way it contextualizes side quests is perfectly emblematic of that- in that it barely bothers to contextualize them. You’ll get a couple of lines of clunkily written and soullessly performed dialogue to set up a quest, and that’ll be pretty much it. The game very rarely makes the effort to make you actually care about what you’re doing in the open world. More often than not, the activities are there just because they have to be there to fill out a large map.

"The game very rarely makes the effort to make you actually care about what you’re doing in the open world. More often than not, the activities are there just because they have to be there to fill out a large map."

The game tries to get you more invested in its world and characters with the inclusion of a Bonds mechanic, which sees you forging and strengthening bonds with not only individual characters, but also entire areas of the map and the factions that you cross paths with. Ultimately, however, that just ends up being a meter that you fill up by doing more of the activities that are scattered throughout the open world- and those activities, as I mentioned, aren’t anything to write home about. If Rise of the Ronin had succeeded at actually making me care about its characters and its world, I would feel much more strongly about its Bonds mechanic. As it stands, however, it’s just something that exists in the background and has done very little to sway my opinion on the game one way or another.

This is not, however, a game without its high points. In particular, the combat in Rise of the Ronin is an absolute blast, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has any experience with past Team Ninja titles. Though Rise of the Ronin is significantly easier and more approachable than Nioh or Wo Long, it can still be a pretty challenging game, while it also stuffs its combat side of things full of mechanics and systems that add a great deal of depth and variety. There are a multitude of different weapons to use, different combat stances to employ with each weapon, tools like the grappling hook or ranged weapons to utilize, and much more. Progression does feel pared back when compared to something like Nioh, but the game still does a great job of letting you personalize your character how you see fit.

Actual moment-to-moment combat is a blast as well. Rise of the Ronin puts the bulk of its focus in the combat department on parry mechanics, similar to Sekiro, with your main goal in every fight being to parry incoming attacks to break enemies’ guard, and then move in for a devastating attack during their brief moments of vulnerability. It’s a tried-and-true system, yes, and it’s used to great effect here. Fights against even the lowliest of trash mobs feel thrilling and enjoyable, and bosses and larger enemies in particular stand as the highlights of the experience, to no one’s surprise. Stealth is also a much more viable option than past Team Ninja games, though the mechanics here feel quite rote (which isn’t helped by how unsuited the enemy AI is to stealth sequences in general).

"The combat in Rise of the Ronin is an absolute blast, which should come as no surprise to anyone who has any experience with past Team Ninja titles."

Another area where Rise of the Ronin deserves praise is the traversal. Right off the bat, you’re given access to a grappling hook that you can use to pull yourself up to higher places, and especially when you’re in urban environments (like the city of Yokohama), climbing up on top of buildings and clambering from rooftop to rooftop can be a lot of fun. Things get even spicier when, a couple of hours into the story, you also unlock the flying device known as the Avicula, which can be pulled out at any time with a single button press. The game allows you to seamlessly transition between gliding, running, and galloping on horseback, with the grappling hook thrown in to facilitate all of it, and it all works incredibly well. Those strengths are much needed, too- the actual content and design of Rise of the Ronin’s open world leave a lot to be desired, but at least navigating its environments is always fun.

Visually and technically, Rise of the Ronin is not going to knock your socks off, even if it is perfectly acceptable for what it is. I want to be clear here- I have no issues with the game not being hyper polished and obsessively detailed the way so many AAA games are in today’s day and age. As has become abundantly clear in these last couple of years, that obsession with uber-realistic graphics has been a massive Achilles’ heel for AAA development, so if lower development budgets have to come at the cost of less impressive visuals, I’m all for it.

Rise of the Ronin looks fine- it’s not going to take your breath away, but by no means is it an ugly game, especially because it does have genuinely solid art design backing it up. Is it unpolished? It certainly is- but if developers would spend less time and money on making the wrinkles in a character’s cheeks look more realistic and focus more on improving things in the gameplay and storytelling departments, the games industry would be in a healthier place right now. So I’m not going to knock Rise of the Ronin for being rough around the edges where its technical aspects are concerned. Of course, the fact that it’s rough around the edges in other areas as well does the game absolutely no favours, and its deficiencies in those areas, I feel, are much more egregious.

"There’s still some fun to be had here, thanks to the game’s genuinely enjoyable combat and traversal mechanics, but there are just so many games out there that do at least some (if not all) of what Rise of the Ronin does, and do it much, much better."

Ultimately, Rise of the Ronin feels like a surprisingly middling package in almost everything that it does. Team Ninja is a studio that has always prided itself on injecting its games full of personality and uniqueness, so to see such a middle-of-the-road, generic experience from a studio with that kind of a track record is, to say the very least, quite disappointing. There’s still some fun to be had here, thanks to the game’s genuinely enjoyable combat and traversal mechanics, but there are just so many games out there that do at least some (if not all) of what Rise of the Ronin does, and do it much, much better. Coming at a time where there’s no shortage of excellent games to play (especially for fans of RPGs), there’s very little about Rise of the Ronin that will compel you to pick it up over the many other options that are available on virtually all platforms right now.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 5.