Rise of the Ronin is a grab bag of gaming’s greatest hits

When I grappled to the roof of a building using my hook, I felt like I’d played Rise of the Ronin before. That’s not a bad thing; I’ve played many of Team Ninja’s previous games, but it felt oddly familiar, in a bloody comforting way.

Team Ninja has released titles at a regular cadence over the past several years, and it’s impressive that the studio has been able to maintain at least a certain level of quality. The developer has experimented with different genres in that time too. It took on the Soulslike genre with Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty and Nioh, the fighting game realm with Dead or Alive, and action RPGs with Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin. This year, Team Ninja is releasing Rise of the Ronin for PlayStation 5 and taking a swing at the open-world RPG. Its gameplay incorporates many systems from Team Ninja’s previous games, and draws inspiration from other developers like FromSoftware.

Ahead of its March 22 launch on PS5, I played two hours of Rise of the Ronin. So far, it feels like a grab bag of greatest hits, stapling together Team Ninja’s influences. I’m still waiting to see if all of those ideas fully work, but a strong opening sequence and fluid combat are already carrying the opening hours of the bloodsoaked samurai adventure.

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Two heads are better than one

Rise of the Ronin starts off with a bit of a twist. Two siblings escape a burning village with murderous samurais on their tail, and an old lady comes to their rescue. She then takes the pair under her wing and trains them to become the Twin Blades, a pair of skilled samurais. When I got to the game’s character creator, I was able to customize both heroes instead of just one.

As I got a little further into the game, it taught me that I could switch between both Twin Blade