izigame.me

Sights & Sounds

What the game is really about

I don't have a lot of nice things to say about Ryse, but it's a Crytek game. You know it's going to do two things: 1) tax the hell out of your PC, and 2) look graphically impressive while doing so
Yes, even for a 12 year old game, Ryse still looks really good. It's especially noticeable in the lighting and water effects, which still managed to fantastic even after all this time. Early game sees you fighting on the beaches of Britain, and the scenery is impressive with all god rays peeking through cloudy skies and the spray of the crashing waves
Even the character models are quite good, with Roman and British soldiers looking as war-torn and grimy as you'd expect, while the patricians back in Rome look all opulent and fancy in their Tyrian purple clavi-adorned tunics
The sound design is roundly good as well, with clashing swords and battlecries washing every battlefield in chaos as you wash it in blood at the same time. The voice acting follows suit, with all performances being competent. But no Latin language option? Turpe
The orchestral soundtrack is pretty good. It's got all the blaring trumpets, crescendoing strings, and thunderous percussion that you'd expect in an action game about war. Nothing you'll be humming to yourself later, though


Story & Vibes

Not what the game is really about

The story is dead simple, presumably so you don't get distracted from all the nice lighting effects. I guess you can consider the next three bullets to be all spoilers, but I assure you it doesn't matter
You're Marius, a son of a Senator and war hero. Unfortunately, Nero is the emperor and you've probably heard some unsavory things about him. That being the case, Nero winds up instigating a war with Britain's barbari that winds up being a cover to consolidate power from influential patricians like your parents. Long story short, your family is dead, the British are invading, and you want revenge
Nero's son is named "Commodus". Little on the nose, don't you think?
Not much to it beyond that. There's some cool scenes involving some supernatural bits showing how the gods are involved in the plot, but other than introducing the idea that Marius becomes imbued with the spirit of some vengeful warrior of the early republic
If you want a good narrative about Romans, go watch Gladiator, Spartacus or Ben Hur. Or, I dunno, go read Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus or Julius Caesar. Hell, Cymbeline even gives you the British perspective of a Roman assault
It's a game about war, so the vibes are precisely what you'd expect. Unrelentingly serious and dire. Not a shred of humor to be found. All dialogue just feels like pretext for the next group of bad guys you need to cut down


Playability & Replayability

Paint by numbers

I don't think I've ever enjoyed a combat system less in a game. You don't even need to think. You just wait for an enemy to glow a color that corresponds to the XBox button colors and press the appropriate button. Enemy glowing red? He's about to attack and you'll need to parry. Blue? Light attack. Yellow? Heavy. I hope you're not colorblind, or this could be rough
That's right. Combat essentially boils down to all quick-time events all the time. You can chuck a spear every now and then if you're feeling spicy
There's also a "focus" system that slows time that effectively just slows down the cadence of your button presses. I forgot about it until the end of the game. It's kinda helpful if you're completely surrounded, but it's barely necessary
Some prescripted segments see you commanding a group of soldiers, but the only commands you can issue are "raise shield", "throw javelin", and "advance". It winds up feeling like a more violent game of red light/green light. It's so half-baked that I'm curious as to why it's even included
There's also stat upgrades to improve your health, damage, and focus. I earned them all before reaching the final chapter, so you can expect to be pretty powerful by the time you finish the game
The main campaign is entirely linear, so don't expect to march off in a different direction to complete optional objectives. There's some sort of horde mode here, too, but I didn't bother with it. I guess go try it out if you somehow didn't get your fill of QTEs. There's a dead multiplayer mode as well if you want to go sit in an empty lobby
I didn't really have a good time with this game, so I doubt I'll wind up reinstalling or replaying


Overall Impressions & Performance

Tech demo

At the end of the day, this feels exactly like what it was meant to be: a tech demo launch title to try to get people to buy an Xbox One. Considering that the Xbox One pushed 30 million fewer units than the 360, it didn't work as intended
I'm a little baffled by the "recommended" percentage on Steam. Linear story, QTE-centric combat, braindead progression system, and dead multiplayer aren't the ingredients for a fun time. The only advantages from my perspective are that it's cheap and was about 7 years ahead of its time graphically
While Ryse did look quite nice on my PC, I wound up switching to my Steam Deck for the last half of the game. Partially because I was curious to see a Crytek game run on its APU, but mostly because it was more convenient to find somewhere comfortable to play it. Surprisingly, the audiovisual experience holds up well, even if there were a few pockets of slowdown


Final Verdict

2.0/10. I guess if you're dead-set on playing an unchallenging and repetitive game because you want to spend a few hours without your brain doing more than reacting to stimuli, don't let me stop you, but if you enjoy interesting games, steer clear