Game Review: Immortals - Fenyx Rising

Score: +12 /-3

Underrated open world game done right and nowadays available for a song. Pick it up from Ubisoft directly as they sometimes have discounts that can make it cheaper than buying through Steam or the Epic Games Store.

The vibe is about fun that's a little offbeat, a little irreverent, and a creative yet respectful take on the Greek myths. A rare combination especially in the contemporary climate of often just butchering old IPs for radical novelty.

+1 In terms of visuals, graphics performance, and storytelling cutscenes, it has aged very well and in fact superior to many games that have come since (especially performance/optimization).

+1 A lot of builds are possible including potion-spamming so you can use your skills more (which cost Stamina). This can make the game feel too easy but you can adjust the difficulty, making it accessible for a wide range of players.

-1 Dodging and blocking can be unreliable against certain enemies. Fortunately this is not strictly a soulslike (although it can be played like one) so there are other ways to clear encounters or even cheese them if necessary.

+1 Massive amount of redundant resources in optional POI content

• Even just a fraction of the game world is enough to unlock most of the skills and variations. Therefore you are free to ignore a lot of content and do it later as part of New Game Plus if you want to focus on the main story.
• Including the POIs, just the main game zones can span well over 100 hours.
• After unlocking all upgrades, upgrade currency is still valuable because you can use them to trade for more power creep bonuses.
• If you run out of POIs that you are willing to do, you can do Ubisoft Connect's weekly missions to get more currency (or collect cosmetics).
• This is in contrast to many other games that also have a wealth of "content" in POIs but ultimately you "must" do everything in order to get the final character development such as buffs from achievement titles based on strictly finishing all content, even the stuff you might really dislike such as harder platforming.
• And there is repeated content in the "live service" component so if you like the IP and just want to keep playing in the game world, you can instead of suddenly running out of things to do.
  • It's quite grindy but has a range of difficulty over the week in tasks, and you definitely earn your purchases of cosmetics with the currency you earn.

Some of the puzzles are quite badly designed and irritating.

• -1 For example, some outright difficult platforming.
• -1 Some feel more random luck requiring an excessive amount of retrying. For example, you may have to golf a rock past fast moving pillars that can block the object.
• Fortunately, you don't have to do all of them since the same rewards are generally available elsewhere.
• +1 Difficulty levels actually help you with some of the puzzles, e.g., puzzles with timers.

+1 Power creep is incremental, not RNG based to artificially extend grind. You are grinding but also constantly seeing progress either in your stats or your collection of cosmetics.

+1 There are many ways to get the same armor set and additional copies just give you cosmetic options so you generally do not need to succeed at specific challenges.

+1 Live service done right -- keeps the game relevant yet without FOMO urgency.

• Through Ubisoft Connect tasks you can also get certain upgrade currencies without having to do any in-game puzzles at all.
• Alternatively you can earn currency with easy weekly and daily tasks to buy more cosmetics.

+1 The open world allows you to do and find side quest things before the quest is started, and explicitly recognizes when you have done them already with contextual dialog.

+1 The world is packed with not just things to gather but points of interest.

• In many contemporary games, these are just copy-pasted POIs such as catching bugs or extremely simple puzzles repeated around the map (e.g., Starfield, Nightingale).
• But in Fenyx, puzzle points of interest are often based on Greek myths including less recognizable ones, and explained with commentary from Prometheus and Zeus (all voiced).
• Further, they are all solved differently and can take some time to solve, so it feels like a genuine break from exploration and traversal.

+1 Milestone events feel epic.

• With story-light exploration-heavy games, often the story feels short and the part where you "write your own story" by exploring the land feels weak. However, here there are certain milestone events you can earn such as defeating all four corrupted heroes and earning a heroic statue of yourself amid theirs, in an emotionally uplifting scene. This adds to the sense of accomplishment from "simply exploring" and doing optional things.

+1 Humor mostly works although a few lines from Zeus do fall flat.

• The idea of the gameplay being a story told by narrators provides an interesting excuse to fill otherwise quiet exploration with dialog about frank takes on Greek myths, which made me actually pause to listen to. This is instead of what other games often do which is have an NPC talk at you through some kind of comlink and more often than not your protagonist doesn't respond.
• There is also a meta theme to the narration (e.g., Zeus as a father figure) so it's not just a straight lore dump with occasional reinterpretations of myths.

+1 The story is actually interesting and not as predictable compared to plots where the right path is straightforward and good or deliberately morally gray.

• Instead it draws on the Greek myths and lets the gods be their complicated bickering selves while still moving toward the initially straightforward ending of defeating the final villain Typhon.