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.