Immortals Fenyx Rising

While Ubisoft is one of the major publishers in gaming, for most serious gamers just hearing the name rubs them off the wrong way. And it's understandable, Ubisoft don't have the best track record and have released their fair share of generic game. Their open world games are sort of a standard where you have tons and tons of icons for repetitive activities to do on the map, and those can get pretty tiresome. Occasionally they can release a gem here and there, and Immortals Fenyx Rising is one of them.

Now everyone says that this is a Breath of the Wild knockoff and it's fairly true, it doesn't shy away from its influence. The open world with the gliding and the colorful world, it's very easy to be reminded of the now legendary Zelda game. But I think Immortals does have its own things going for that doesn't make it quite a clone. It doesn't have the mystery of BOTW where you have to guess where to go and just explore, the locations and objectives are more clear. None of the stupid gear durability, you keep your sword, axe and bow all game and you get to improve their stats by doing stuff instead. And none of those recipe guessing either, the crafting here is all lined out and it's just a matter of acquiring the right elements (which is the challenge in itself). So what does it do that's different? Most of all the combat is a lot more active and fast paced, lots of hit and dodge and it's fairly fun. I hope you like puzzles because the game has TONS of them. Every vault or main quest is just full of them, you'll be moving blocks, playing with the wind, finding hidden locations, assembling things and a bunch of more things.

Overall the game is well balanced in things to do. Combat, puzzles, exploration and it's just right to never really get bored. Completing activities gets harder as you progress, but the gear upgrades from the rewards are so worth it so it becomes very satisfying to complete them. The game is fairly long as it took me 35 hours to complete it and I didn't finish most of the sidequests even, there is tons of content in the game without even having to look at the DLC expansions they have released. I think the game does a good job at showcasing that you can build on the very good BOTW template and make a unique game out of it, and it's probably not going to be the last that's like that. Definitely recommended and one of the better Ubisoft games, I feel this one is very easy to like and get into and still brings a lot of challenge.

The Ubisoft open-world formula is one that I usually find pretty tiresome, and while Immortals Fenyx Rising does fall foul of the usual traps of these games, it remains more consistently enjoyable thanks to its visuals that balance a cartoonish look with genuine beauty, a breezy sense of humour and a movement system that makes navigating the world downright fun. This is a game which feels appropriately giant in nature, with the environment dwarfing you at the beginning until you upgrade your stamina, allowing you to climb higher and higher until you feel like the king of the world, or, well, a god. In the end, though, it is the typical 'checklist' pattern that all Ubisoft open-world games fall into which ends up holding the game back, as mopping up everything in an area, particularly the repetitive puzzle vaults, is nothing more than a tedious slog that leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

So this is sort of a sleep game that was overshadowed due to releasing around the same time as Assassin's Creed Valhalla and the launch of PS5 and XBOX One X, plus the game has a weird name that doesn't really roll off the tongue easy, so this game sort of became one of those games that people who played enjoyed, but the mainstream sort of tossed aside due to the hype of everything else going on at the time. Immortals is actually an alright game if you dedicate time, it starts off kind of slow and boring, and in many ways feels like a Breath of the Wild Clone, you got similar gliding mechanics, similar climbing mechanics, combat is similar, and even the exploration and reliance on dungeons and puzzles to progress.

For the most part, Immortals is a fairly basic adventure/puzzle game, you travel between 4 areas of the game helping out 4 different Greek Gods with their problems and when you help and save all 4 Gods from their problems you then go to a massive dungeon and confront the final boss. Immortals mostly shines in its exploration and puzzles, the exploration isn't as tedious as an Assassin's Creed, there isn't as much to do and the map is more compact, although there is still a lot of stuff to explore, mostly chests that give you materials to upgrades your weapons and abilities. There are vaults you can explore that are similar to the mini dungeons in Breath of the Wild, and these vaults consist of puzzles that once you solve give you materials to upgrade your stamina. The puzzles in this are mostly good but there are some frustrating ones that mostly involve aiming with your bow and arrow.

The combat in this game is pretty bland, mostly just consists of spamming R2 and R1 to stun enemies and occasional dodges, but the combat mostly gets tedious, especially on enemies that soak up loads of damage. The story is sort of in the background, and is mostly sarcastic, the humor is somewhat hit or miss. The characters in this game are kind of unique, and I didn't dislike them, but they also weren't super memorable, and the character you play as is just bland and unmemorable compared to all the other characters in this game.

I found the main story to this game really to just be a distraction where I had more fun in the side content and exploration. The World in this game is pretty decent, I enjoyed the art style for the most part, and the puzzles can be fun. It does get repetitive since there isn't a wide variety of activities and its a major grind if you want to fully upgrade everything, but for the most part, Immortals makes a decent in between game when you are waiting for a new release and have nothing else to play. Its at least worth renting, and it isn't too long and can be beaten in around 15 hours. For what its worth I enjoyed this game more than Assassins Creed Valhalla, and even if Valhalla had better gameplay and was graphically more impressive with a more engaging story, this game just was way less tedious and had less bloat, and I'd rather Ubisoft use this game for reference when going forward because I'm just tired of their games all becoming massive open World endless collectathons.