Ryse: Son of Rome Review

Crytek’s Ryse: Son of Rome is now marching its legions through the Steam pipeworks to our PCs after its hedonistic debauchery on the Xbox One as a launch title.

Ryse is no newcomer then but a re-release for PC gamers who were disappointed in Crytek’s decision to favour the new Xbox console, and not even whispering conspiratorially that it would end up on desktops someday. Times changed and now the once lauded studio has returned with promises of Ryse that’s gushing with both blood, but also PC exclusive treats.

It’s quite clear they’ve beefed up Ryse with graphical options letting us tweak the usual suspects from textures and shadows to fancier optionals like motion blur and super-sampling. Using a GTX 780 Ti with 3GB VRAM I’ve experienced no trouble with everything set to maximum at 2560x1440, all with the exception of having super-sampling kept in check. Ryse has performed smoothly for me with no noticeable stutters or even crashes.

That’s one serious case of jaundice, or it’s time to shield bash him

That isn’t to say the PC launch has been flawless however. I was on the receiving end of having my entire campaign progress wiped clean because of an initial syncing bug with the Steam cloud. I also found myself battling through barbarian hordes with critical game mechanics oddly absent, like being able to regenerate health, focus, or amplify my XP or damage. A hotfix was delivered swiftly but not before the senseless massacre of my save data. Then there was the second hotfix wait as a video file had been corrupted barring the way to continuing the campaign.

These troubles aside, Ryse has actually been a robust experience. Combat is, as some might object to, a series of quick-time events (QTEs). However it should be stated these are by no means mandatory for the most part, but they do become arguably essential to cutting down the enemies of Rome. These QTE executions, while eye-watering with their brutality, also tie in to our Centurion Marius being able to recover health, focus and earn more XP and increase his damage.

We can flick between which particular bonus we’d like to reap from during combat and even whilst we’re about to stab some war-painted warrior through his neck. It’s an easy on-the-fly way of changing the course of a battle. QTEs do crop up during boss battles, with enemies highlighted by a specific colour – blue for attack, yellow for bash and red for evade – and these are conveniently tied to the button colours of the Xbox controller. Again, these can be ignored as you just go slashing and bashing through scores of barbarians but that requires some lightning reflexes.

New executions are unlocked with XP, but we can’t choose them in combat

Ryse’s combat is essentially a never-ending rock-paper-scissors affair, which is akin to the more rhythm-based brawls you find in the Batman: Arkham series or even Assassin’s Creed, which is an effective way to make combat tense and visceral but can fall victim to repetition. For the most part Ryse does avoid this through the use of its narrative and some rather striking and powerful set pieces we battle though, but at times it can feel a little wash-rinse-repeat. It doesn’t help that a lot of enemy models are recycled, so prepare to kill the same fat bloke with a shield a lot and his army of cousins.

The story of Ryse is not just about a Centurion trying to survive the political savagery of Rome as the mythology of the age is up to mischief behind the scenes, which is why Crytek excuse themselves to take some serious artistic license with this well documented period of history. Not even your best go at the Total War series is likely to match a certain barbarian queen’s rampage in Rome on elephant back, but it’s all plausible in the wake of those interfering gods and their schemes.

At times we’ll be using our position as a respected leader of Romans to take charge of a cohort in battle, which ranges from being directly apart of the unit itself and timing between ordering your men to form the testudo formation to block incoming arrows, or taking aim with their pilum and kill the offending archers. It’s a nice little touch to help remind you you’re part of the Roman legions. It’s a mini-game of sorts where timing is crucial to not take casualties. Other moments also let us decide where archers will be stationed or defensive lines will be formed to control the flow of battle.

At rare moments we get to play the role of ‘General’ Marius, not just the Centurion

The weak point with Ryse is that unlocking new executions are the only means of trying to ‘spice up’ combat itself – and combat is essentially all this game is about. It’s also not exactly up to us which execution will be used and when, so more repetition. This is what endangers Ryse’s moment-to-moment action in becoming stale. Given the very linear nature of the game we can’t leverage the same degrees of freedom that other games can, compounding this sense of rinse-and-repeat. A saving grace is definitely the sheer attention to detail, barring the recycled models, as a lot of effort went into the animation of bodies and faces – especially their expressions. It should also be said this is one of the best examples of good acting, both in body and voice from its cast.

Ryse: Son of Rome is a great tale set in the Roman period, with its visceral limb chopping and an authentic weight to its centurion credentials, but as a third-person action adventure it’s something of a one shot deal with little to pull you back in once you’ve seen Marius’ journey through. Its gorgeous visuals and in-your-face combat may wow, but their shine dulls with unfortunately little to be offered in their place to reignite that initial excitement.