Just completed Rise of the Ronin.
Visuals - 8.5/10 (great)
Audio - 7.0/10 (good)
Gameplay/Combat - 8.5/10 (great)
Story/Characters - 8.0/10 (great)
Overall - 8.0/10 (great)
Played on Dawn (easy) difficulty. Died around 8 times or so in the game. A few boss battles were tough so I could only imagine how they would be on higher difficulty levels. 90+ hours. All regions checklists 100% completed.
Visually, the character models looked good as did the facial animations. World looked good in some areas but great in other areas. Overall, I didn’t have any issue with the visuals. My biggest gripe would be the pop-in especially with NPC characters just walking around the areas which I noticed to be a huge issue with the Japanese games. Like a Dragon/Yakuza/Takes of Arise/Granblue Fantasy Relink/Ronin all have these issues and in some cases are really bad. Oh well.
Music is really good and fits the missions and objectives. Voice acting is solid and sound effects were good. Nothing spectacular but overall, no complaints.
Combat/gameplay is the game’s strongest aspect. From gliding to using the grappling hook to all the different weapons, stances, etc., game is very deep in this regard. If anything, it’s too deep. Also, way too much loot in the game.
Story/characters was really good. I enjoyed the story and got the good ending so I was very happy. Wasn’t a fan of the Bond system because you need to have a higher bond level in order to unlock all the side quests from each character. Other than that, I enjoyed it and kept me interested.
