The Path to Redemption in “Rise of Ronin”

There are many heroes in Japanese history, and there are generally three periods of history that can provide the stage for literary and artistic works: Genpei, Warring States, and the end of the Tokugawa period. Among the three, the one I am most interested in is not the Warring States period with the strongest sense of existence, but the end of the Tokugawa period.

Because it was indeed a very charming era. Compared with the peaceful and Warring States period at its origin, the various struggles at the end of the Tokugawa period not only gave birth to countless epic tales of heroic martial arts, but also gained a different kind of brilliance due to the collision of different thoughts and concepts. When the silhouette of a new era has loomed on the horizon, whether to stick to the tradition or boldly and thoroughly embrace new things, conceptual differences form the basis for various conflicts and oppositions. From a macro perspective, this process is not very intense. After all, the restoration patriots and the shogunate army only opened the curtain of the Meiji Restoration after three battles of Fushimi Toba, Aizu, and Hakodate. However, this process is full of individual challenges. There are also bloody stories at the civilian level. Countless people with lofty ideals died in street assassinations. People who supported the shogunate and those who supported the reform fought with swords but did not know love, and they were happy to chop. Nowadays, people traveling to Japan and wandering in the narrow alleys of Kyoto would never think that at the intersection where they and their friends were laughing and taking photos, perhaps a hundred and sixty years ago, a breeze blew past a knife dripping with blood. tip.

This era of fierce confrontation between the old and the new is not only the background of the story of the protagonist of this article, “The Rise of Ronin”, but it also seems like a subtle analogy. “Rise of Ronin” has a traditional side. Its action part is the consistent strong point of developer Ninja Group, and you can see various shadows from “Nioh” to “Wolong” in it. On the other hand, the European and American open world role-playing game is a brand new attempt for the developer Ninja Group. Starting from the PS3 generation, the open world design and role-playing elements pioneered by European and American games have impacted Japanese game developers like Black Ship. So this time, people are looking forward to what kind of experience it will bring when the open world and role-playing elements brought by Oufeng Miyu and the Japanese hard-core action games that Ninja Group is good at will be brought together.

Just like the chaotic times of the Bakumatsu, illuminated by the sparks of the collision of swords and thoughts.

Still a hardcore high-speed action game

First, let’s talk about the traditional side of “Rise of Ronin”. That is the action part in this game, or the frontal combat part.

This has always been the strength of the Ninja Group, and its presence has also been very strong in recent years, from “Nioh” to “Nioh 2” to “Wolong”. It is worth mentioning that since Miyazaki's slow-motion combat system became the dominant style of action games and attracted countless imitators in Europe and the United States, the high-speed action games that the Ninja Group still insists on have become another relatively niche banner. Compared with Miyazaki's combat system, which requires players to understand the enemy's movements and figure out countermeasures and rhythms, the Ninja Team's system requires players to actively learn the system and master the characteristics of different weapons through extensive practice. and matching skills, and then through more practice to master the combo system that you are good at. Finally, in actual combat, you can use “right back” to bring the battle rhythm into the system you have practiced, and use reactions to make up for mistakes in the process of making moves. .

“Rise of Ronin” is no exception. Similar to fellow brothers “Nioh”, “Nioh 2” and even “Wolong”, this game has a variety of combat elements that require players to operate. It is these that make the game very deep and require a lot of operations and practice. system.

We can count the elements that the head-to-head action system of “Rise of Ronin” contains that requires player operation.

Not to mention the most basic normal attack, it is easy to understand that long pressing the normal attack button can perform a charged attack and that attacking will consume the energy bar. The energy bar brings out the first distinctive combat element in the game – the Flash Blade. Players who have played “Nioh” should be familiar with Flash Blade. It is equivalent to Zanshin in “Nioh”. Pressing it after a basic attack can restore some energy and ensure battery life after continuous attacks. But when to press the Flash Blade after a basic attack, and always remember to use the Flash Blade, become the first point that tests the player's operation and practice.

The second point is stone fire, which is precision defense and counterattack, or flick knife. This system is also familiar to players familiar with Japanese action games, but the special thing about Stone Fire is that it is an active attack rather than a blocking action. Therefore, compared with the traditional precision defense design that can block with a knife even if the timing is not correct, the risk of stone fire is significantly increased. In addition, there are nine categories of weapons in “Rise of Ronin”, and each weapon has three to five styles. The styles are equivalent to fighting postures, and the movements and timing of stone fire are different in each style, which also brings a considerable amount of practice.

Then there are the weapons. There are nine categories of weapons in the game. Different weapons have different attack distances, attack action frames, swing frequencies and special actions. The protagonist can be equipped with one weapon and one weapon at the same time. It is also very common to switch weapons according to enemies with different characteristics.

Each weapon also involves several genres, that is, different action systems of the same weapon. Each genre will bring three combat skills, which are equivalent to specific moves. The use of combat skills must also consider the distance between the enemy and ourselves, the number of combat skill frames and the character's remaining energy. In addition, there is a restraint relationship between genres, so you have to switch the genre of the weapon you hold based on the enemy's genre to achieve restraint. Fortunately, in “Rise of Ronin”, the restrained relationship between genres is obvious. You can directly see whether your currently selected school is restraining, being restrained, or evenly matched against the enemy, and then just switch to the one that restrains the enemy. However, genres need to be learned, and learning genres requires you to visit the map a lot and complete various side tasks in the open world. Some bosses have multi-stage forms, and the styles used in different stages are different. In mixed soldier battles, different types of soldiers also have different restraint relationships, so you have to switch your own style accordingly, which brings about Some operations are coming.

On the basis of switching weapons and genres, the game provides two advanced actions, namely Zidian and Gale. The former is an additional attack action brought by switching weapons immediately after attacking with one weapon, and the latter is an additional attack action brought by switching genres immediately after attacking. Both of these have their own wonderful uses, but they not only increase the amount of operations but also require time to press keys. If you want to be familiar with them, it is necessary to practice a lot and form a muscle memory of their rhythm.

In addition, you can bring two teammates together for the key battles in the plot. You can switch the currently controlled character between the protagonist + two teammates. In the boss battles of key missions, if you are not an expert and cannot use the stone fire combat skill Flash Blade to directly take away the boss in one wave, then you often need to let the protagonist attract the enemy's attention, and then look for the enemy behind the boss. The teammate switches over and controls this teammate to attack from behind the enemy. This trick works very well. I couldn't get through the first reunion battle with my partner several times, so I finally got through it this way…

However, it is the system of switching teammates that shows another side of Ninja Team. Although switching teammates also brings a lot of operation, this system is actually a major auxiliary method provided by the Ninja Team to players. Many of the player character's charm skills are related to teammates. These skills include being able to bring teammates with you when taking medicine to restore blood, recovering more health points when resurrecting teammates, and reducing the damage suffered by teammates. Considering that most of the time in this game players are alone in the open world and do not spend much time fighting with teammates, so it can only be considered that the Ninja Team hopes to provide players with so many skills related to teammates. Use more auxiliary means to avoid the embarrassing situation of being stuck in a level where you really can't beat it.

That's really the problem with Ninja Group's choice to stick to the tradition of high-speed action games. The combination of the various combat elements listed above has made this game a huge amount of operations in the combat part. For players who are adaptable and skilled enough, the battle rhythm will be very fast and exciting – the stone fire bullet knife will hit a small hard hit, then use the combat skill to clear the enemy's energy bar to hit a big hard hit, the flash blade will replenish some energy and then use the execution, maybe it will be sent directly When the enemy is gone, there is no need to switch between two players or switch teammates to grind blood. However, like all famous high-speed action games, this amount of operations may not be possible for many players no matter how hard they practice.

The Ninja Team obviously didn't want to scare away less hardcore players, so they still tried their best to prepare some means for players to reduce the difficulty. The aforementioned grinding of blood by switching teammates is one, taking medicine to improve attributes and enchanting one's own weapons with different whetstones to inflict bad conditions on enemies is another – these two are also related to the open world part of “Far Cry” 》The resource collection of digging rocks and sticking out branches was hooked up.

Additionally, Ninja Group has added difficulty options to the game. From my experience, a boss battle on standard difficulty requires about a certain number of retries, but not too many times, and you will feel a sense of accomplishment after defeating it. As for the other two difficulties, it goes without saying that the difficulty level is difficult. Action game masters from all over the world are definitely gearing up. I haven’t tried the easy difficulty yet. If the combat strategy and operation amount in the easy difficulty remain basically unchanged, but only give players more room for error (such as slightly reducing the enemy’s desire to attack and connecting speed of combos, or reducing the enemy’s attack speed) damage per attack), should be pretty good too.

Therefore, although “Rise of Ronin” also attempts to accommodate more players, it has never given up the core design of a high-speed action game. Even if they use the tools provided by the game (such as switching teammates to grind blood or enchanting weapons) to reduce the difficulty, players still need to have a sufficient understanding of some basic concepts of action games – these basic concepts include distance control, direction changes, Move frame number, input timing, hard straight, vertical return, etc. These are the essence of Japanese action games.

However, the above discussion is probably only focused on the Boss battle in limited scenes, which is the part of “Rise of Ronin” that is closest to a traditional high-speed action game. Other encounters, even the pursuit of wanted criminals equivalent to elite monsters, are not included in this list.

Because other encounters are generally placed in the open world, and after the open world—especially a rather rough open world—is involved, there are many ways to reduce the difficulty.

The difficult blend of open world and hardcore action gaming

During the pre-release publicity phase, the selling point of “Rise of Ronin” that has been emphasized is that it is an open world game set in Japan during the late Tokugawa period.

If you count carefully, in the past ten years there have been quite a few action games set in Japan, with Japanese swordfighting as a key image. From Sega's “Yakuza Usin” in 2014 to Ninja Group's “Nioh” in 2017, to Miyazaki's “Sekiro” in 2019, Sucker Punch's “Ghost of Tsushima” in 2020 and Ninja Group again. Li's “Nioh 2”.

But among them, only “Ghost of Tsushima” has made an open world. There is certainly a reason for this. The developer of “Ghost of Tsushima” is Sucker Punch, a veteran player who has been involved in the open world game of the PS3 generation since its inception and has created an exclusive experience with superpower combat as its core. His “Infamous” series has always been exclusive to PS consoles, so its influence is not as influential as Rockstar, Bethesda and Ubisoft, but most players who have played “Bad Son” and “Breaking Dawn” on PS4 will know it. I was very impressed by the super power running map and combat. Sucker Punch's accumulated experience in open world design was used in “Ghost of Tsushima”. Therefore, although the open world of “Ghost of Tsushima” is obviously poor, it is quite mature in structure and content, and there is no The greenness of the raw melon and eggs, and the art style and level are particularly commendable.

In contrast, the Ninja Team does not have much experience in this area, and the two “Nioh” games are both action games that favor a linear process. And, although the action parts of the two “Nioh” games have been widely praised, they have not received very good reviews in terms of level design – especially many players of “Nioh” came from Miyazaki's games, which makes the comparison even more confusing. obvious.

So when “Rise of Ronin” was announced and players saw that the Ninja Team was going to seriously challenge the design of an open-world action game, they were somewhat upset. Because everyone is not sure what an open world will bring to a hard-core action game.

After playing the game and taking a closer look at the open world in “Rise of Ronin”, you will find that the open world is not bad overall, but the level of levels and details are really average – especially after adding the stealth system. In addition, the open world and the core action part of the game are not perfectly integrated, but more like they are forcibly stacked together.

Let’s talk about the good aspects first. The open world of “Rise of Ronin” is more similar to that of Ubisoft, but the Ninja team has obviously summarized the experiences and lessons of various Ubisoft streams. They agreed that it was okay to divide the map into tiles, and that feature lists were unavoidable, but they also decided that gradually revealing various interactive features would cause less boredom than piling them all on the map. So they used karma levels to divide map exploration into different stages, ensuring that players can get sufficient rewards for each additional exploration they complete. This is indeed a simple and easy improvement, and the effect is very good.

In addition, the Ninja team also used grappling hooks and gliders to design a puzzle-style mobile experience that is closer to the early Assassin's Creed (that is, the Ezio trilogy era). Some treasure chests require the player to carefully observe the surrounding environment to figure out a movement plan that combines the use of grappling hooks and gliders to reach the treasure chest location. This is similar to how early Assassin's Creed had many restrictions on climbing locations. Players need to spend time studying the design of climbing paths. I personally appreciate this. After all, later Assassin's Creed games no longer do this, so I miss being able to play here.

To say it's good, you have to say it's not so good. The limitation of the ninja group is that their level design level and enemy AI production level are really average, which makes the stealth part of the game very rough.

Like Ubisoft's open world, the open world of “Rise of Ronin” is also equipped with a stealth system and is equipped with some tasks to clean up bandit strongholds. There are usually as few as four or five enemies in the bandit stronghold, and as many as a dozen, and there are often a few elites among them. Rushing in and ending up with a one-on-one five-six usually ends in a restart – this is quite realistic. Therefore, it is reasonable to design a stealth system. It not only provides an additional gameplay, but also allows players to kill some enemies through stealth and relieve themselves from the pressure of frontal combat.

The most outstanding aspect of a stealth game is the design of paths, as well as the location and action logic of enemies. However, the strongholds in “Rise of Ronin” either have so many roads that there is air leakage from all sides, or they look quite open but there is only one path that can really be taken, and in the end they have to be cut head-on. In addition, the position and AI of the enemies are also very touching. Stealth is often exposed. The protagonist and the enemy in front of him mingle. When the swords collide and sparks fly, other enemies more than ten meters away still sit and dig at each other as if nothing happened. Foot scene…

Also, enemies in the stronghold can be fished out and beaten. Different enemies will chase the player for a certain distance based on their initial position, but when they reach this distance, they will return to their initial position. In this way, suppose you rush directly into the stronghold and provoke three or four enemies. At this time, you turn around and run out of the stronghold. The inevitable result is that the enemies whose original position is closer to the exit will chase you farther away. By then his friends have all returned to their stronghold, and you can calmly duel him one-on-one in a very martial way.

For veteran players of stealth games, the enemy AI in “Rise of Ronin” is very primitive. Here you can't see the communication between enemies, you can't see the alarm system, you can't see the weak side filling, and sometimes you can even just You choose a roof where there is no ladder, but you can grab the eaves and climb up by jumping off the eaves. The enemies cannot climb up, so you can sit on the roof calmly and shoot ten arrows at the enemy's head.

This eventually led to a more serious problem. In the open world, due to the rough levels and impressive enemy AI, it is too easy to sneak and touch people, so that there is a huge contrast in difficulty between it and the real boss battle with hard bridges and hard horses. Players who are used to skipping classes will feel frustrated if they suddenly have to fight a boss – I knelt down several times during the battle after the protagonist and his partner reunited in the early stages of the game.

Also, in the stealth part, the ninja team was originally able to make their own unique design, but they failed to do so. What we are talking about here is the detection machine that will be given to the player at the beginning of the game. The essence of the detector is through-wall vision, allowing players to see the enemies behind the wall. This design itself is not new, and has been practiced in countless stealth games in the past. But according to the setting, the principle of providing players with vision through walls is to emit a special high-pitched sound and locate it through echo. So if this kind of high-pitched sound is designed to be heard by more enemies and therefore enter an alert state (currently only the dogs brought by the enemies can hear it), this design will be better than the past wall-penetrating vision that was used at no cost. The skills are a bit more innovative, so players need to weigh whether sometimes in order not to disturb the enemy, they should choose not to use the detector and replace it with traditional visual observation to confirm the enemy's position. This will bring a lot of changes to the stealth part.

Unfortunately, this detail also remains at the level of “yes, but not much” – the same as the overall performance of the open world.

Role-playing attempts beyond numerical values

What surprised me most after actually playing “Rise of Ronin” is that this game actually has some attempts at role-playing, and it is not limited to numerical values. Although many of these attempts are based on past masterpieces, they also add some flavor to the game.

In “Rise of Ronin”, some tasks in the main line have different ways to start them. Players can choose whether to fight with the reformers or stand on the same side as the shogunate. Such a choice will not have a great impact on the overall plot trend of the game, nor will it create a “New Japan” where the shogunate has not collapsed and the Meiji Restoration has not happened, but it will affect the specific mission content, protagonists and important The relationship between NPCs and the fate of some NPCs – somewhat similar to the parallel police lines and triad lines in “Rogues”, and somewhat similar to the fact that several major forces will ask you about the same thing in the later stages of “Fallout: New Vegas” When entrusting, you have to choose whose design you want to help or not. Although history cannot be changed, determining the fate of NPCs is also very meaningful in the game. Some NPCs will compete with the protagonist in the plot, but if you choose to spare their lives after winning, you may receive tasks from them in the future, get rewards, and even recruit them under your command to appear together in important tasks. teammates.

Some tasks also come with additional conditions. For example, you are asked to go to a certain domain's mansion to steal important items, but try not to kill the guards, so as not to worsen the relationship between the client and the domain. To do this, you can use wooden weapons or simply choose to use your bare hands and sneak in to achieve your goal. This requirement for additional conditions reminds me of the “bragging system” in “Fable”, that is, players can set higher conditions for themselves before going on a mission to get more rewards.

The attempts to learn Fables don’t stop there. “Rise of Ronin” comes with a posture system that has no sense of existence. Press and hold the menu button to bring up the posture menu. After selecting the corresponding posture, the protagonist can assume a specific posture. Certain gestures can sometimes be used as secret codes to enter specific places, which is quite interesting to hear. However, the game does not design much content around this system, nor does it turn gestures into a universally applicable interactive system like Fable.

The most RPG-oriented attempt of “Rise of Ronin” is the use of dialogue branching options that are widely seen in European and American role-playing games. The player's skill tree includes three negotiation skills: lying, persuasion, and intimidation, which will bring benefits to the player in some aspects that require negotiation. There is a small mission early in the game that requires you to help a horse dealer retrieve his stolen horse. You will later learn from the bandit who stole his horse that the horse has been sold to another merchant. So you go to negotiate with the merchant. If you have learned persuasion, you can use the persuasion skill to tell the merchant that you already know that the horse is stolen, and ask him to return the horse to you directly. But if you haven’t learned the persuasion skill, you can only spend some money to buy it from a merchant.

What I feel is a pity is that in such a turbulent environment as the end of the Bakumatsu, exciting speeches and debates are actually no less than fast and sharp sword fights. Since “Rise of Ronin” already has so many famous figures who actually existed in history, it would probably be more interesting if there were more dialogue segments based on the skill-based dialogue. However, considering that the protagonist of this game does not even have a voice throughout the entire game, and only speaks in a few clips, I think I may have imagined it too beautifully.

Moreover, the above-mentioned role-playing game-related designs are only a small part of this game. Most encounters, whether they are important tasks or open-world tasks, still have to be solved with knives or guns. In short, friends who are used to playing European and American CRPGs, don’t be like me and just click on the persuasion button and walk up to the wanted criminal to persuade him to surrender.

Although the attempt at role-playing games is not a focus in “Rise of Ronin”, I am still happy to see the ninja team trying in this area. It would be best if this attempt could bring them some useful experience.

Conclusion

In general, what “Rise of Ronin” wants to do is a standard European and American 3A-style open world action-adventure game with role-playing elements. As a strong point of the production team, its action part has enough depth and provides a lot of fun. In comparison, the role-playing part can only be regarded as embellishment, and the open world part is not mature enough, and it does not provide many ways to play other than front-on combat in traditional high-speed action games – the stealth part is average, and the hook-rope climbing and hang gliding are The location puzzles are not very interesting, and the random tasks are not rich enough. Fortunately, there are also some side quests that fit very well with the story background, allowing us to get a glimpse of all the beings at the end of the Bakumatsu.

However, just as the template provided by Miyazaki has improved the overall level of European and American action role-playing games, the experience accumulated by European and American developers in open world design has also brought many useful revelations to the Ninja Team. Although it is not yet mature enough, at least the open world in “Rise of Ronin” is already decent. If there are more opportunities to polish it, it will definitely be better than it is now – even if it maintains this level, it is already far better than A few years ago, Koei Tecmo’s Omega Force challenged the open world of Dynasty Warriors 8 and it was much better.

At least, the open world of “Rise of Ronin” is enough for us to witness the bloody chaos of the Bakumatsu Dynasty, and the action part is enough for us to feel the moment when swords intersect and fight for life and death, and the splashing sparks carry the weight of the confrontation between old and new ideas.

From my own perspective, this game has bonus points. My favorite Japanese drama is called “The Doctor”. The background of that play is also set at the end of the Bakumatsu period. The protagonist Minami Jinmoto is a brain surgeon living in Tokyo in the 21st century, but by chance, he traveled back to Edo (the old name of Tokyo) in the 1860s, met Sakamoto Ryoma and a series of well-known figures from the end of the Tokugawa period, and experienced the whole process It includes historical events such as Wagoniya's marriage, the Forbidden Gate Incident, the return of great power, the assassination of Sakamoto Ryoma, and the bloodless opening of the city of Edo. He used modern medical knowledge to create penicillin before real history, but after he traveled back to the 21st century, the correction force of history erased all traces of his existence, leaving only the martial arts family who had been assisting him in practicing medicine. The woman Tachibana Saki misses him.

When my Hidden Sword girl is running around the streets of Yokohama, Edo and Kyoto, I always feel like the memory of watching “Jin Yi” has awakened. There is a monologue by Miki Nakatani at the beginning of “The Good Doctor”. In the play, she plays the role of the courtesan Nofeng who is somewhat involuntary but understands the righteousness – just like Murayama Taka in “The Rise of Ronin”.

The monologue goes like this:

“We often take all of this for granted – we can go to the other side of the earth as long as we want; we can express our thoughts at any time; we live an ordinary but fulfilling life every day; we enjoy the absence of darkness. night. But if one day, you suddenly lose everything, lose your bird-like freedom, your fulfilling life, the bright night sky… When you are thrown into the endless darkness alone, can you find the light there? ? Will you strive to grasp the light? Or will you do everything you can to bring light to that dark world? “

This monologue is so succinct and concise that after watching the two “Jinyi” movies, I have imagined countless times whether there would be a game one day that would allow me to experience the bloody storm at the end of the Tokugawa it alludes to.

And “Rise of Ronin” did it.