Developer: Ubisoft Quebec
Publisher: Ubisoft
Platform: PC, Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5
Tested on: PS5
Immortals Fenyx Rising – Review
Ubisoft has been sailing quite smoothly in the gaming industry thanks to Assassin’s Creed, Watch Dogs, For Honor and Rainbow Six: Siege and Just Dance as their main headliners for nearly the last decade. We did see an occasional sputter of life coming from the Raving Rabbids or Rayman, but other than that, not that much has happened in Ubisoft’s recent history when it comes to actual new IPs. We were quite surprised when we saw the first footage of Immortals Fenyx Rising, which looked quite familiar in a way, but we couldn’t place our finger on it. When actually playing the game, we really had very strong Breath of the Wild vibes, with hints of Assassin’s Creed mixed through the entire experience. While certainly entertaining, we also don’t understand they didn’t get sued for literally copy-pasting a lot of Zelda’s Breath of the Wild’s gameplay.
Story
We are taken to a time when the Greek gods supposedly still ran everything that went on in the world. We see the somewhat arrogant Zeus, asking Prometheus for help, as Typhon, Zeus’ biggest foe, has escaped his prison. Zeus asks Prometheus to help, and might even let him free when doing so. Prometheus has a different offer altogether, namely to let a mortal defeat Typhon, albeit with some divine help. This is basically the plot of the game, and we get many dialogues, as well as background narration when you progress through the game. The game is kept lighthearted, with a lot of humor in the dialogues. The presentation is top-notch, even if the dialogues can get a bit cheesy.
Graphics
Having played the game on PlayStation 5, we were not completely blown away by the graphical forte of the game. The character designs are nicely done in their respective comical styles, but other than that, there’s something off. The world is colorful and has a fair amount of variation, but for some reason, a lot of the environment feels like it’s still in development, especially the starting area. A lot of interacting objects don’t mesh together, such as barely seeing any ripples in the water when treading through shallow puddles. Even in the case of shipwrecks on the beach, they don’t really sink into the sand, and the actual division between sand and the ships frame is done with solid lines, rather than the sand being a bit messy. There are a lot of details such as this that take back from the cute design of the game, making it feel like the characters have to distract from the faulty environmental design.
Sound
The sound design is top-notch for this title. You have a lot of quality voice acting, presented to you in a lighthearted fashion. While many dialogues are cheesy, and a lot of the humor misses its mark, it’s very amusing to listen to all the banter. The supporting soundtrack and special effects are also nicely handled, making things a proper whole.
Gameplay
Immortals Fenyx Rising is an Action-Adventure game that borrows a lot of items from Zelda’s Breath of the Wild. The game has you exploring a big world, saving 4 godly entities, eventually having to defeat one big evil presence. You are free to go where you like, tackle story quests, or explore and slowly farm items to become stronger. The game is pretty much a clone of Breath of the Wild, from the 4 godly beings, to how the mount system works, the gliding and even the Rifts, which are clearly inspired by the Temples. While the latter is a tried and true formula, it somehow feels like it borrowed a bit too much. Other than these elements, there are the obvious Assassin’s Creed-inspired pieces of gameplay.
The game lets you trot along merrily at your own pace, be it to level up your character, or simply sticking to the story. You can opt to play on different difficulty levels, making sure you find the experience that you like. The combat feels fairly standard, where you have a light attack with your sword, a heavy attack with your axe and you can also use your bow and certain magical powers. The balance feels right, and the overall simplistic control scheme allows everyone to work properly within the game.
The islands in the game are fairly big, and the number of side-missions is quite impressive, making sure the map has many options for you. Nonetheless, actually highlighting these missions is a very tedious task, as you’ll have to use a lookout point, then slowly scroll everything in sight, find the spots where your controller vibrates the hardest and then highlight them. This system is probably so you are rewarded for ‘exploring’ but it’s just plain annoying.
Just like in Breath of the Wild, you can do Temples, but in this game, they’re called Rifts. You’ll have to tackle certain puzzles to complete them, and then get a reward at the end. These are fairly doable and some are actually nice. The sad part is that some of the puzzles just don’t work as they should and are left to complete ‘randomness’. More than once certain puzzles didn’t go as they should, simply because the physics weren’t properly aligned, just leaving things up to chance.
A trend we see with the recent Ubisoft releases is the massive purchasable content, even on launch. There is already a few hundreds of Euros/Dollars content available on the store. While most of the content is cosmetic upgrades, it would still be nice to actually unlock this content yourself, rather than spend extra money on an already full-priced game.
Conclusion
Even with the constant hinting at the gameplay of Breath of the Wild, Immortals Fenyx Rising is still a very nice game to play through, especially with the lower difficulties allowing younger gamers to try their hand at this title as well. We loved the overall theme and atmosphere of the game, even with many jokes never landing their targets. While the gameplay portion will feel familiar to many, and perhaps has actually been done better in other games, it’s still an amusing title to look into.
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[…] the end of 2020, we reviewed Immortals Fenyx Rising. Only a month later and the first DLC has been released for this action-adventure game. In this DLC […]