Koei Tecmo sure has been collaborating with various other game publishers lately, despite them being a game publisher themselves. Last year they teamed up with EA for Wild Hearts. The year before it was with Square Enix for Stranger Of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin.
Developer Team Ninja has also been on a hot streak of making soulslikes. Nioh 2, Stranger Of Paradise and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty are all released within the span of four years. And now there’s another one.
For 2024, Koei Tecmo and developer Team Ninja are working with Sony Interactive Entertainment/PlayStation Studios for Rise Of The Ronin. A rather apt title for this publisher and developer given their recent history, I think.
But if you’d think Rise Of The Ronin is going to be another Team Ninja-style soulslike, you’d be wrong. Team Ninja is bringing another different interpretation of what a soulslike can be. And that is by embracing the sub-genre’s roots and by going open world.
Soulslikes Are Action-RPGs, After All
Soulslikes evolved from action-RPGs. Pioneering games like Demons’s Souls and Dark Souls eschews from a typical action-RPG in that it focuses on deliberate, methodical and punishing combat. Its different enough that RPG or action-RPG fans may not necessarily be into soulslikes.
Yet here in Rise Of The Ronin, we have skills that affects interactions outside combat. You can learn speechcraft skills to unlock dialogue wheel options. There’s a dialogue wheel. Dialogue choices will affect your reputation. You develop bonds with allies via conversation. There’s an open world to explore, with villages to liberate and collectibles to collect.
While soulslikes have slowly evolved away from its action-RPG roots, Rise Of The Ronin is going against the grain as it embraces all these elements that have been more or less discarded in modern games of the subgenre.
A Slower, More Deliberate Combat System
The combat also feels like a return-to-roots as well. Rise Of The Ronin is a tad closer to Nioh and Nioh 2 rather than Stranger Of Paradise and Wo Long in that you have a Ki (stamina) bar and its pace being relatively slower.
Parrying (or as it’s called in this game, Counterspark) requires precision due to its long start-up and wind-down animations and has a slower rhythm to the hyper-fast parries (deflects) you pull off in Wo Long. Parrying Commodore Perry, the first boss the game dishes out, was not as straightforward as I thought, my Wo Long muscle memory doesn’t work in this game.
If you’re familiar with Nioh, you probably feel more at home. Rise Of The Ronin has its version of a Ki Charge, the Pulse Charge. Your weapon gets bloody with each strike and with the perfect press of a button after a hit, you’ll wipe the blood off to top up your Ki bar and keep on the offense.
What’s new in Rise Of The Ronin is the ability to directly control allies. Like past Team Ninja games, you can expect NPCs and other players to be part of your three-person squad when tackling missions. And if you have an NPC with you, you can switch between them.
Have your protagonist getting comboed by a boss because you miss that parry? Switch to your partner and take cheap shots at their back while that attack is played out. Literally even, one character that joins you carries a revolver. You won’t respawn until you and your companions die, so there’s more of a fighting chance for solo players.
An Open World RPG With Soulslike Combat, Not Really An Open World Soulslike
And on that note, the first two hours of Rise Of The Ronin really shows off its open world in a great way. Yokohama and its outskirts circa Bakumatsu period looks genuinely stunning. The clash of cultures seen in the Western brick buildings standing across traditional Japanese buildings. The colourful trees in the woods. The beautiful (and not glaring) lighting. It has a little bit of that Ghost Of Tsushima art direction- not because both games explores pre-Industrial Era Japan, but how it uses natural colours and moody lighting to evoke an inviting world to be in and explore.
The open world, of what I’ve seen in the first two hours, isn’t that big and isn’t that dense, which is fine. It’s just enough to convey a sense of place. Team Ninja soulslikes were all mission-based where you hop into various levels so this is a big change of pace for those that have played all their recent works.
Rise Of The Ronin still has a linear mission structure for some quests, but it’s all done in the open world. And that’s a bit worrying. The two linear missions I played so far (which you can play co-op online or bring an NPC companion) are not impressive.
The charming thing about Team Ninja’s soulslikes is that there are all linear levels but still evokes the labyrinthian level design the subgenre is known for. Rise Of Ronin has to work with a small portion of the open world to replicate that feeling, and it doesn’t quite work as well. You don’t really get to move around that much and before you know it the skill-checking boss fight arrives and that’s mission complete. The exploration aspect of the linear missions is diminished significantly compared to past Team Ninja soulslikes. I hope there will be longer levels where it’s fun to explore.
This is not like Elden Ring where you can still experience a traditional soulslike level within the parts of the open world, as Elden Ring is arguably can still be considered a soulslike- it just happens to have an open world. Whereas Rise Of The Ronin feels more like an open world action-RPG but with a soulslike combat. At least that’s what I feel it is now in this early stage of the game.
But really, this game isn’t supposed to be comparable to Elden Ring. Rise Of The Ronin uses the ingredients of “soulslike” and “open world” but it’s following a whole different recipe.
On another note: given how popular the Bakumatsu period has been depicted, you can expect to run across some familiar names from history in Rise Of The Ronin. Of course, the first guy you meet is the most famous man associated with the events of the period, the dude does looks good in leather shoes.
Closing Thoughts
Overall, prepare to be surprised with Rise Of The Ronin. This is the most unique soulslike experience Team Ninja has cooked up so far, in that it’s arguably more of an open-world action RPG. It is fascinating that the conception of the game predates Nioh, using all the learnings from the past games to finally create this title.
With this game sharing the same release date as Dragon’s Dogma 2, March 21 looks to be a good day for open-world action RPG fans, as we’re getting vastly two different interpretations of what this rather general genre name can mean. And if you’re a fan of masocore action and parries, the choice is obvious.
Rise Of The Ronin releases on March 22, stay tuned for a full review soon.
Played on PS5. Preview code provided by the PlayStation.