I’ve finally rolled credits on Rise of the Rōnin. The game’s critical path is much, much longer than I expected it to be, with more twists and turns than I could have ever predicted. As I got closer and closer to the end, I thought quite a lot of Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey on one hand and Fire Emblem: Three Houses on the other (or any number of other SRPGs, but Three Houses was the one I’ve most recently played)
Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey has a similar conceit of playing a wandering mercenary sort during a time of great upheaval, complete with the ability to (ostensibly) choose a side on the Peleponnesian War. That game never quite delivers on its promise, though: its narrative is criminally short and largely abandons the war plot in favor of a pretty generic ending that has nothing to do with the war at all
That turned out not to be the case for Rise of the Rōnin in the slightest: the conflict between the expulsionists and the shogunate remains central to the game’s plot until the very end, with the “lock-in” to one faction or the other ultimately feeling pretty satisfying, too. There’s definitely some issues with structure both in terms of the narrative and the way mechanics around the factions are introduced (and also the way those mechanics are communicated to the player, with faction bond frequently coming from responses and quests that are not marked as such, despite the game telling you it will mark them!), but seeing things through results in the sort of political, character-driven drama I’m normally used to seeing in SRPGs
That brings me to what I’d consider the game’s main negative, though: much like a good SRPG, its cast is unbelievably enormous, to the point that I regularly lost track of who was who as the game went on (and I didn’t even meet every character!). This is compounded by the fact that the game sort of “repeats” character archetypes (there are, for example two different cat ladies and multiple Shinsengumi swordsmen of similar demeanor, among others, many of whom you can potentially romance). This tends to work all right in SRPGs, since the actual story will often focus on a smaller core group, but a large number of Rise of the Rōnin’s cast are part of the story and make repeat appearances. A smaller cast probably would have done wonders for this one in the narrative, and also for the character bonds. Since there are so many characters, none of them really get enough screen time (which is especially true of the romances, with some characters you can romance disappearing for entire acts)
The romances ended up being pretty amusing in some ways, though: there’s no restrictions from “locking in” with multiple partners, though some of them will eventually get fed up if you do so, laying down ultimatums (and breaking up with you if you try to weasel out of that too many times). What I found most interesting, though, is that this does not seem to be the case for every character you can romance, so I finished the game with two active (the two aforementioned cat ladies, as it happens). As someone vaguely polyamorous, I always appreciate a game that is at least somewhat more open with these sorts of things. I don’t need every character to have a laissez-faire attitude about it (and in fact it’s more believable if that’s not the case), but it’s nice to have a few. Unfortunately, as best I can tell the romances don’t have any particular impact on anything outside of being a flavor thing, with little in terms of reactivity from other characters or plot events. That can be fun in its own way, but a smaller cast might have allowed them to flesh these out a bit more
As with the cast, there’s probably lots of trimming that could have been done in other areas, too, from a more condensed talent tree to more considered (and therefore more meaningful) loot, and fewer gadgets and consumables. They tried to cram this game full of stuff on every axis, and I definitely think less would have been more for Rise of the Rōnin overall
All in all though, I’m quite glad I ended up picking this one back up. It’s not Platinum Trophy material or anything in my view, but it scratched an itch I’ve had since I originally picked up and bounced off of Ghost of Tsuishima on account of its protagonist. I was definitely somewhat fatigued with the game by the time I got to the end, but having reached the end, I’m glad they crammed it full of story and characters (as opposed to something like Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, which is mostly full of busywork)
The game’s solid, though (it’s a solid 7.5, maybe even an 8 on a good day) and for anyone looking for something to hold them over until Ghost of Yōtei later this year, Rise of the Rōnin might just do the trick
