Hands on with Rise of the Ronin - Preview
When Koei Tecmo announced that they were creating a game that would let players run around Japan in the mid-1800s, as a ronin, equipped with a sword, gun and grappling rope, my attention was grabbed. Thanks to PlayStation, I was lucky enough to put a few hours into the early game and I have some thoughts.
Before I jumped into the game, I had to create my character and going against my normal way of doing previews, I actually spent a bit of time with it and discovered just how rich it was. The first option is to choose a body type, which are split into traditional male and female body types, but you can start to modify it from there. There is an option to present a random preset so I just spammed that a few times to get something interesting and then started to tweak it. What I ended up with was a female warrior with red and dark green hair. That might not sound that exciting, but I could have gone further with things like age lines, tattoos and scars, voice type and tone, plus if all that was not enough there is even underwear settings. Was this the richest character creator that I have ever used, no but it is easy to use and offered quite a lot of modifiers, which should allow players to create either themselves or replicate someone they want to see be a badass warrior.
Once the actual look of the character was done, it was time to select the background, what type of character they are, the weapon types they weld and so on. There are four main presets for the background, one of them leans into dexterity, which is something useful for anyone aiming for more of a stealth approach, so I selected that. You can also opt to be a no preset type of player, but that means you won’t have any sort of specialisation, but you can be a more rounded character. The weapon selections don’t stop you from using a different weapon in the game, but the ones you select here mean you will be more proficient with them, so choosing one now and then using something different in the game will put you at a disadvantage.
Right, with the character selection completed, it was time to jump into the game and the first thing I had to decide was who I was going to be. Yeah, this confused me too and was made even weirder by the fact that the other character looked identical to the one I had just created. It turns out you are one half of a Blade Twin, which is something that happens once in a generation. It felt weird to create a character to then be able to choose someone else, it was made even more confusing when I was allowed to select different weapons again. I don’t know if this is a weapon proficiency thing or something else, but it was odd. With my dual blades selected, which is what I opted for in my character creation, I went ahead and pushed through the tutorial and eventually, I was given my first mission, steal some papers and if the opportunity arose, take out a commander of the ship that sailed to Japan from the USA.
I won’t say anything about the mission, but I was able to get the papers, which was good, but rather than being able to relax in the hidden village that was home, events happened and I was forced to flee… alone. This let me out into the world of Japan, with a simple goal, head to Yokohama, so after checking the map I made for the city. Along the way I found myself getting sidetracked by dots on the map, they were red as opposed to everything else being white, so I got curious. Turns out they are bandits that have taken over towns, or locations and as I was a samurai, I felt I had to give justice to the land and take them out. This proved to be quite a challenge at times, but not in a bad way.
Combat is primarily based off of attacking, defending and parrying, a standard line up these days. Every move that you do in either an offensive or defensive manner uses Ki, so you have to keep an eye on that, even dodging attacks drops it. Your Ki is important as if you run out, you are unable to move, leaving you to be wide open to enemy attacks, but the same is true in reverse. If you stand still and block all attacks, you will take no damage, but your Ki will drop and if you take a lot of hits in a row, it can leave you open for an attack. Parrying, or countering the attacks doesn’t impact your Ki, but if you successfully do it, you can drain your opponents Ki and then leave them open to you wailing down upon them. There are some attacks from enemies that can’t be blocked and unless you parry them, you will take a good amount of damage and then there are named enemies that can dish out even more. I died quite a bit early on whilst attempting to sort out what was going on, but eventually I found my groove and honestly started to have fun.
But like all good things, taking down enemies had to come to an end, mostly as once they are all cleared out, the citizens that used to call the place home will return. One such town had a side quest in there, in which I was asked to get some flowers that grew in the mountains and it seemed simple enough. Along the way I found a traveller beset by wolves, farmers working their lands and just life teeming all around me. Eventually though I had to push forward to Yokohama and that was where the first roadblock was, like in the game, as I was not allowed in without a pass. Finding one was simple, but it also provided me with my first companion and the start of our bonds. Bonds are relationships between yourself and others, if you take the time to nurture the bond it will grow stronger, giving your ally more options in battle. The mission we went on together was simple, take down a local criminal lord and get the passes, but when presented with information on the mission, the first thing I did was remove Ryoma from the support role, I didn’t want to run around with anyone following me.
The mission was a success and I got into Yokohama, eventually getting up to the end point of the preview and while PlayStation advised that I would get around 2 hours from it, I got nearly double. This is because I was exploring the world, taking down bandits where I could, helping out random folks and even just trying to unlock the travel banners. Coming into the game, I got the vibe that it was just going to be Assassin’s Creed but made by another studio and playing sort of confirmed that, but as the combat is so much richer, it felt more like the child of that series and another entirely. The other parent is Dark Souls, or perhaps more accurately Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and taking the best of both seems to be doing things right, at least for now. There is still a lot of game for me to discover and enjoy, so it could change, but right now this feels like it is striking true.
The full game is set to release on March 22nd, so there isn’t long to go now.
