Rise of the Ronin

I’m totally team ninjas’s primary audience so I’m a bit biased towards their extremely systems dense skill/knowledge based combat but this might be my favorite combat system in any of their games (or games in general??). All weapons and weapon styles are very very different beasts, not quite to the same extent as stranger of paradise job system but surprisingly close. Even within the katana weapon class there are styles that completely hinge on exploiting different moves in the martial skills and even completely different animations for blood flash, Countersparks, and charged attack. My favorite katana style is the one that focuses on sheathing your weapon. A combo ends on an animation of sheathing your weapon in which you can’t act but blood flash will quickly sheathe your weapon (while doing a sick spin)! Counterspark can be held to give more wiggle room to parry at the right time as well as performing a multi hit attack when released. Other styles for this weapon don’t have an attack when you Counterspark which means the recovery frame for a missed parry is shorter but you don’t do an attack which can sometimes be useful because there is a small chance the Counterspark attack can stun an enemy out of their combo. I can honestly go into detail with each weapon and style, once you give the time and effort to get a feel for each combat will feel like a back and forth dance in which a mistake can lose the fight while one successful parry can win it. This is not even including jump attacks, secondary weapons (pistol, rifle, bow, shuriken, earthenwareball), grapple functions, and stealth. Jump attacks are the least useful, being primarily used to prolong an enemies stunned phase. Pistols do massive ranged ki damage during an enemies stunned phase and looks sick as hell. Rifles do insane headshot damage and are easy to pull off unnoticed (though its loud and will alert enemies in stealth) and it can be hard to get a hit in during regular combat. Bows do less damage but are better for stealth and can be fitted with poison or fire arrows that can be crucial to handling multiple enemies because of the affliction wave mechanic when one enemy gets affected multiple enemies around them get stunned and the same status affect. And honestly I haven’t messed with the other two sub weapons yet lmao. Grabbing hook is great because you can use it to close distance with an enemy, pull a ranged enemy from a roof top, or (my favorite) steal a consumable being used by an enemy to apply it to yourself. Jumping, sprinting and grabbing are super important to properly positioning your character in fights which plays a huge part in single enemy and multiple enemy fights. Block, counter spark, and dodge are the primary defensive options in the game. The most brilliant mechanic here is something unique to RotR which is parrying the last move of a combo to stun the enemy leaving them subject to massive ki damage with a martial skill or combo. This expands the skill needed to take down an enemy from parrying all their attacks to just having to parry one! There is a reward for parrying all attacks if you have become familiar with their move set still but this freedom and rewards for tactical play feels so damn good! This stun mechanic is further emphasized because your attacks are never guaranteed to stop an enemy from starting a combo. Only during this stunned phase do you have a safe time frame to attack without fear of retaliation. Attacking an enemy while they are not in this mode also does significantly less damage and while you can counterspark animation cancel a regular combo you can not animation cancel a martial skill into a counterspark, meaning a poorly timed martial skill will be severely punished. Dodge works great to create distance let a combo run its course and take avoid damage in their red martial skill attacks that can be really tough to parry. Not as essential as counterspark but is great at giving you another defensive option!Oh yeah this game also has really fun rudimentary stealth! Enemy AI is super simplistic but predictable so weeding out a camp before going into all out battles is quick and cool pull off. Especially when you assassinate one enemy in a group just to quickly slit their friend’s throats in quick succession. What makes stealth so satisfying is that the animations are incredible and each enemy actually poses a threat to you in battle! Groups of enemies are extremely dangerous and can be tough to manage without some additional status effect, ninjutsu abilities. The mini boss enemies are best fought one on one because they can mess you up extremely quickly with distractions. I absolutely love the enemy design in this game, they put so much work into making every regular dude ass enemy (often the worst fights in Nioh 1 and 2) extremely varied and exciting to fight. Visually a lot of them are surprisingly varied! I died laughing when I found the Paul Bunyan ass giant American and the creepy claw hand guy actually jump scared me at one part of the game. What I’ve found playing the game is that there is not only a learning period to mastering each enemy type but most importantly mastering going against each weapon. Each weapon is clearly labeled most to least effective depending on the stance you’re using but this is just hinting at the further tactical complexity at play to figuring out what best counters a weapons move set. One example of this is double swords and bayonet being possibly the hardest to master. Double swords feature never ending combos that incredibly tough to parry each hit requiring specific timing/memorization of the last attack combos. While bayonet has excellent ranged attack abilities to demand dodging bullets or parrying them while also doing everything in your power to close distance to them because these attacks can become devastating when they also cause fire build up status effect. On top of all this boss fights are all super unique and feel handcrafted with special moves the player doesn’t have access to. Each one regardless if you bring your npc companions are going to wreck you until you devise a well executed strategy against them. Overall it’s really cool to follow their games closely and what they take from previous games, leave out, and what new mechanics they come up with! The ki system of Nioh, the job system from stranger of paradise refurbished as the weapon styles(yes Nioh has stances but it’s not as impactful as it is here), and the parries from Wo long.

OKAY I guess will talk about the rest of the game now. The open world is standard but gives you the opportunity to see a gorgeous realization of 1850s Japan, gives you things to do inbetween high intensity combat, and gives rewards for combat as well as other systems present in the game. The closest system closest to this in their post Nioh games are the side missions which are shorter and easier mission you can do between main missions. The open world structure meshes well with the long arcing historical fiction narrative. My biggest complaint with open world games is that besides a select few they usually play like shit! So while there is no Sofia river moments (the only thing that comes close is encountering characters from other team ninja games as bosses or npcs), it is still a super fun relaxed way to experience the game outside of the combat. I’ve spent an hour or two collecting cats while my son watched me play hahaha. One thing I think they did well is to create traversal mini puzzles in later open world eras to find cats, treasure chests, and access to mini games. Speaking of traversal, glider, horse, and grabbing hook all feel amazing! This game doesn’t waste any of your time and gives you free rein to engage with its optional objectivities as much as you want in a quick fashion. I honestly think this is a key aspect to why I can’t seem to put this game down! I find myself wanting to redesign my characters look, check in with side characters, and complete optional content just because it’s fun little breaks between what is the main strength of the game, the combat. Additionally there is tons of bandit camps, the dojo, fugitives, and secret bosses in case you need more combat outside of main missions as well! I honestly would pay full price just for the dojo I spent like 15 hours mastering each boss and getting to gripes with the combat here. The only time i felt the game wasted my time was in the early game the main missions sometimes focus on introducing side content to you like taking pictures. Luckily these are short and always, sometimes hysterically, lead you into having to fight someone.

Now to the narrative, this is easily the best story team ninja has ever put together. There such a clear love and admiration for the historical period and the events and it shows in every aspect of the game. Some may be dissatisfied with not having as much an impact on the narrative as expected from a game advertised as having that control but I was really pleased with the more limited scope. This is historical fiction first, there is no way you’re changing the events of history. However you do get to be apart of the ideological and political turmoil of the period and see the context in which these groups of people made history for better and for worse. I have only done an anti shogunate playthrough so far so I can’t speak for the pro shogunate side but I felt really connected to the characters, their stories, and their motivations. There is quite literally nothing like constantly beating the shit out of your comrades sometimes for fun sometimes because you guys are at ideological opposing sides. While the historical reverence is present, this is still first and foremost a Video Game. After Bosses are defeated they get up and strike a conversation about the future of Japan, while working for an opposing side as a ronin you’ll fight your pal to complete your objective, to put aside different clans differences you have a bare knuckle brawl. I’m most reminded by the narrative choices of armored core 6 where at first you are working for either side, getting a grasp on the pros and cons, motivations and ideologies of both sides and then the third act funnels you into choosing a side. I found the tonal shifts between real history and video game silliness to work together really well while not going quite as wacky or melodramatic as the yakuza series. All jokes aside you can truly feel the turmoil Japan was in when the US, Britain, and France came to open up trade and colonize the country. Why real human beings put their lives on the line and killed for the sake of what direction their country was going. This is further enhanced by the bond mechanic which gives every single minor character in game rewards for engaging with them, asking them questions, choosing them to fight with you in battle, fighting them in the dojo, giving them gifts, and even romancing them. I was surprised how much I enjoyed this mechanic! The in game rewards (primarily learning new moves in combat styles) are excellent and along with the encyclopedia section, really gives every character a role in the narrative, big or small

Overall my expectations for this game were high but were honestly far exceeded putting this game just under Nioh 2 as my favorite team ninja project