Rise of the Ronin’s great combat can’t elevate a pedestrian open world

Rise of the Ronin is a victim of a genre in decline.

While open-world action games have become a permanent fixture in the release calendar since the early 2000s, the last half-decade has seen a malaise creep in, as players grow ever more tired of opening an endless map, littered with icons.

There are, of course, games that rise above this station, such as FromSoftware‘s seminal Elden Ring, but there’s a growing sense that in the realm of massive maps,  millions of objectives, towers to climb-style games, it’s not enough to be a good one of those to stand out. Rise of the Ronin is a good one of those, but it never stands out.

Rise of the Ronin is very much a “Now, that’s what I call open-world games,” compilation. Within the first hours, you’ll be reminded of Assassin’s Creed, Ghost of Tsushima, and Sekiro: Shadow’s Die Twice.

Being reminiscent of a game is no crime, and the director Fumihiko Yasuda even cited Red Dead Redemption and Assassin’s Creed as inspirations for the game in a forthcoming interview with VGC, but it becomes a crutch when one starts to feel like they’d rather play the inspiration, rather than that which it inspired.

You get the feeling that being Team Ninja‘s first fully open-world game, the developer felt obliged to include all of the monotonous side content that was novel a decade ago but has achieved meme-worthy status in the subsequent years. None of it is offensive, but it would be a net positive if they were all removed. This is except for certain roaming sub-boss fights that you can stumble into, suddenly turning the game into a classic Nioh-style experience. One vs one sword battles, pure mechanics, no fluff.

It’s not just the open-world sensibilities that feel dated, the game looks incredibly dated too. It’s very colourful, and from an art perspective the game is strong, but from a technical perspective, it feels a decade behind genre stable-mates. This can be offset by using the game’s visuals-focussed graphics mode, but this is Team Ninja,