Enter the warring period of the Edo era of Japan, Rise of the Ronin is the latest RPG by Koei Tecmo’s Team Ninja and is claimed to be their most ambitious project yet. Made with a scale more massive this time around, now an open-world title that provided its own challenge during development.

Although the developers are best known for highly challenging titles such as the Ninja Gaiden series, Nioh series, and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, this time, Team Ninja will also be prioritizing accessibility by having difficulty options in Rise of the Ronin. This does not detract from the challenging gameplay, however, as players who seek brutal thrills can still experience intense Souls-like combat. This makes Rise of the Ronin the second AAA title after the terrific Elden Ring to combine Souls-like combat with open-world exploration gameplay.

Veiled Edge

Starting the game for the first time will grant three difficulty options, divided between Dawn, Dusk, and Twilight. These options are thankfully flexible, allowing you to tweak the difficulty level freely without restrictions on the fly and without needing to repeat the game from the beginning again. After that, you will be brought to the Character Creation menu, which uniquely allows you to customize both male and female protagonists together this time, because they will have a close relationship as the twin pair “Veiled Edge” in the story.

The range of customization options offered is quite adequate and fans may find it familiar to previous Team Ninja games such as Nioh 2 and Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty as many options including hairstyles carry over from each other. Even though you are given the option to customize two characters, you would only need to play one of them as the main protagonist from start to end, so you can prioritize customizing the one you prefer.

Once you have your characters created, you will be presented with the “Blade Sharpening Origin” option, which is simply your characters’ classes. The available choices include Killer, Breaker, Seducer, Sapper, Beginner, and Unsharpened.

Depending on your choice of classes, your character can gain certain advantages from the start of the game in terms of accessing special skills and different weapons. Killer would be one of the most ideal options due to its priority on combat capabilities, including the choice of three different weapon types and the essential skill to deflect arrows and firearm shots.

Entering the Boshin War 

After you have done with creating your desired characters, the adventure in the world of Rise of the Ronin begins, and it’s from here that you will be introduced to the lore of the game, the important missions you will have to undertake while still a Veiled Edge, to finally taking on a new destiny and travel as a Ronin.

The early sessions of the game are divided into tutorial sequences that are relatively reminiscent of the Nioh series. In Rise of the Ronin; however, your character can perform more actions such as sneaking around for assassinations, jumping, and using grappling hooks to maneuver to vantage points. This level of improvement to the character’s mobility is greatly appreciated, especially the ability to sneak as one major grip that many players have for Wo Long is the lack of any stealth options despite the game highly encouraging such a play. 

Similar to previous Team Ninja games, you are still given slots to equip a few primary melee weapons and ranged weapons such as bows and rifles as secondaries. There is a mechanic called Combat Style, which works similarly to the Stance system from Nioh, where each style grants you access to various skills depending on the weapon of choice, allowing you to mix and match styles together for seamless combos.

Throughout the tutorial session, I also got to encounter a boss battle that I thoroughly enjoyed as Rise of the Ronin puts a lot of focus on sword-fighting action since the setting is more grounded this time around. This means you will be facing humans rather than Yokai or demons like the previous Team Ninja titles. With a focus now on humanoid enemies, there is also a focus on a new parry system known as Counterspark, but I’ll save the mechanic explanation for the final review. From our experience so far, Rise of the Ronin certainly gave off a satisfying and high-octane experience very typical of Team Ninja’s challenging titles. It is almost like a combination of Nioh and Wo Long, but with a twist.

Going Open

Shortly after completing the tutorial session, you will be thrown straight into the vast open world of the game. Where from here, you can explore freely, go through various side activities, or immediately continue progressing through the main missions. This makes for a fresh experience since Team Ninja has always divided the content progress in their past titles into mission select with separate maps. Rise of the Ronin really does live up its ambition as an open world game, and it has a fun map to explore with many available side activities that will catch your attention.

One of the main sections of the open world map is called Public Order. This deals with the condition of the various areas that are overrun by bandits and if you manage to eradicate them, you could strengthen your bond with the residents of the area. These NPCS would also begin to inhabit areas and villages back, taking back what’s there from the bandits and opening up access to rewards to earn as well as the ability to purchase or craft items. This is only one of the many activities ready to keep you busy in Rise of the Ronin.

Ambitious Team Ninja

Although it is still early to form a solid impression, what Rise of the Ronin has to offer so far is enough to convince me that this could be Team Ninja’s best game yet. They have managed to merge the right mix of stellar gameplay systems from their previous titles, which had all received positive reception by the way, while packaging it in a well-designed open world. If the game already had me hooked in its early hours, then I really can’t wait to see what it has to offer in full.

Rise of the Ronin is slated to launch exclusively on the PlayStation 5 on March 22, 2024.