Ryse: Son of Rome Reviews
A shallow and unambitious tech demo, of the sort that console launches specialise in. The action works perfectly well but it's instantly repetitive to the point of inanity.
Ryse falls short in almost every area in which a game can. Pretty and polished though it may be, it is not an essential title.
Ryse definitely looks the part, but the gameplay simply isn't up to scratch. It feels unfinished, or like a hardcore title whose mechanics have been dramatically simplified for the Xbox One TV crowd. Thumb down.
Looking back on this review, I'm actually a bit depressed that the highlight of the game (for me, at least) was simply how good Ryse looked. It's obvious that Crytek is capable of so much more, but Ryse simply borrows the best that a few franchises has to offer, and instead chooses to cobble them together quite lazily with a few superfluous mechanics thrown in for good measure, rather than refining and building upon the core game. Granted, Ryse could have been doomed from the start, having started out as a Kinect-only title with a fairly limited control scheme, but I can't help but feel that a brand new IP deserved a little bit more than what we ultimately got. But hey, at least it looks good, right?
Crytek brings its Xbox One launch exclusive over to the PC and it's not great. But PC graphics enthusiasts should probably check it out anyway.
...a pretty game with a heap of promise that wound up as little more than an exercise in monotony.
Ryse is a little better than its reputation as a tech demo in search of a game. But not much beyond a mediocre combat system in want of something more than its predictable, opulent story.
The Roman Empire provides the setting fo Xbox One's Ryse, a visually stunning but distressingly shallow hackathon.
If you can disengage your brain and just plough through the endless array of same-faced enemies, you'll enjoy the glorious visuals and well designed audio – but this is a game destined to be forgotten fairly quickly, even if it does help prove the Xbox One has more power than we first thought.
In fact, the promising arena mode is the only saving grace of Ryse. The campaign may as well not even be there, and having to fight the same handful of enemies over and over on top of a trite, stereotypical narrative is not an example of a good time. Ryse looks great and has a lot of great ideas, but it falls flat in nearly every respect in regards to its core story. If you're a hardcore action fan you may get some satisfaction on the highest difficulty setting, but even then I'd wait for an equally hardcore price drop.
Ryse: Son of Rome is a repetitive and tedious homage to the gruesome battles showcased in the film 300.
Ryse: Son of Rome's combat and incredible graphics are entertaining, but it's too narrow and repetitive, even for a short game.
Ryse is stupid, beautiful, stupid, visceral, stupid and much more fun than we ever gave it credit for. A surprisingly solid launch title let down by a limited stock of enemies to fight, not its controversial yet ultimately entertaining swordplay.
Well-designed gameplay and a consistent bare-bones narrative could have saved this. As it stands, it's a rental title, maybe.
Yes it screams "I used to be a Kinect game," yes it's limited in story as well as combat and yes, you've played many, many games like this previously, better games with more systems and gameplay but...but...crucially, Ryse: Son of Rome looks breathtaking. The perfect launch game, doing nothing new, arguably less so than current gen games but adequately showing off the new hardware - think of it as a tech demo with quick time event executions and you will not be disappointed.
If you played Ryse: Son of Rome on Xbox One, there's little reason to return on PC. It may contain higher resolutions and a more flexible frame rate, but otherwise it's substantially the same game.
Ryse Son of Rome is a beautiful looking game on the Xbox One that regrettably suffers from monotonous gameplay which is a "crying" shame. I wanted so much for this game and at the end of the day, it's more a tech demo than a fully fledged game.
We must say that Ryse offers no long-lasting value, it is definitely a renter at best, but it is a beautiful one. Once you complete Marius' story mode in about five to six hours and try out the co-op multiplayer once or twice, there isn't much else to it. Ryse does an excellent job at showcasing the capabilities of the Xbox One itself, but it lacks any real substance.
Gladiator may have won Oscars, but Ryse is much more like the movie 300 – nice to look at, mindless and silly at times, and the kind of experience you'll probably forget as soon as the credits roll.
There's no denying that it looks absolutely stunning, but sometimes a pretty face isn't everything and due to some extremely bland combat, Ryse: Son of Rome fails to be the killer app that many had hoped it would be. Still, for a launch title, you could do worse.