Ryse: Sone of Rome (PC)

Almost a year after releasing Ryse: Son of Rome for the Xbox One, Crytek has now come out with a version for the PC. Just like the console version, the game has you fighting your way through the Classical World as the Roman general Marius to save Rome from certain ruin all the while proving that your Latin class wasn’t for nothing. We already saw what the Cry-Engine was capable of on the Xbox One, but the game itself came off more like a graphics demo without any real depth in terms of gameplay. The graphics in the new PC version have been markedly improved, but does this mean there are any noticeable improvements in gameplay too?  DLH.net has the answer.

Ut desint vires tamen est laudanda voluntas

Ryse: Son of Rome came out exclusively for the Xbox One in November 2013, and managed to garner a lot of praise as well as criticism from the get-go. The basic concept is of course the same in the PC version – you take on the role of Marius, an experienced Roman legionary who saves the Emperor Nero from a barbarian attack. Right at the beginning, a tutorial lays out the basics of combat, and in Ryse: Son of Rome, Mars awaits the player with trial after bitter trial. As savior of the Empire, Jupiter has only granted you the following options: block, attack, dodge, and deflect. Once an enemy has been mortally wounded, you can send him to the underworld with a quick-time event. You don’t actually need to time these killing moves all that well, and really don’t take much effort at all, but they do look cool and give the game a level of brutality that’s almost unnecessary. If you know the series Spartacus: Blood and Sand, you have an idea how brutal and bloody Ryse: Son of Rome is. The “M for Mature” rating from the ESRB is entirely justified. After Marius saves the emperor’s life, the emperor asks him about himself, and Marius begins to divulge his entire life story. The adventure starts with our band-new soldier strutting through his family’s atrium to be received by his overjoyed father. The happy scene is short-lived, however – Rome has long been a shadow of its former glory, and a barbarian attack on the Eternal City launches us into an adventure driven by vengeance and a sense of duty.

When the story begins, our legionary has only a gladius, the classic Roman short-sword, and a shield at his disposal. Did we say when it begins? Actually the only thing that changes during the whole course of the story is that you eventually get a throwing spear. You can’t even learn new combos or killing moves. You actually get everything you are going to use for the whole game within the first five minutes, and there’s no chance of acquiring new weapons or abilities in the rest of the game. Of course, you can upgrade and improve certain so-called abilities, but this RPG element seems like it was implemented as a desperate attempt to make it look like there was some depth in the game. Basically, all you can do is increase your stamina and your strength, and over the 7-9 hours of gameplay you keep getting the feeling that they forgot something really important. The story itself does pick up pretty quickly, and soon you’re fighting side by side with Roman soldiers…Well, actually, your comrades mostly just sit by and watch as you offer piles of victims to Mars. There’s definitely no AI to speak of here. The soldiers also like to look on while three or more enemies whale on their comrade without even pretending like they’re going to do anything to help. Okay, at least every now and then you get to actually march together and even use the famous testudo (“tortoise”) formation at certain scripted points in order to escape a hail of enemy arrows. But all in all, this game is missing a crucial element, which is gameplay itself, so to speak. When you want to use a scorpion, which in the ancient world fired a large spear, you almost have to laugh when Ryse: Son of Rome has you mowing down wave after wave of enemies with what seems to be an ancient machine gun, which is simply out of place. It would have been nice if they’d had fewer enemies, and added more realism and depth. They had a whole year to do so, after all.

Ave Caesar, morituri te salutant

Now, the multiplayer game is an entirely different experience. You can’t fight other gladiators directly in the Coliseum, which could have a lot to do with the fact that the game’s limited attack and defense options might have made things even more monotonous, but you can at least fight alongside other players in different game modes to fight off hordes of enemies. Each successful combo placates the roaring masses more, and you receive experience points. Each battle also contains mini-missions where you can get extra points and gold, both of which you can use to equip your gladiator with better booster packs and enhance his appearance a bit. This takes far too long, however, and shorter steps and more options would have made for a more positive gameplay experience. As a little Easter egg, you can put on the Nanosuit from Crysis. It’s entirely unnecessary, but it is kind of funny.

Solo Mode in multiplayer – it sounds strange, but that’s it – is extremely unmotivating. This mode also has you complete tasks, but the dull gameplay often keeps you from doing so. Sometimes you have to destroy targets in the arena, or rather you would like to, but at the same time you have to fight your way through endless hordes of identical enemies and the gameplay doesn’t really allow you to just walk away and approach the targets from another direction. After you die, you have to deal with extremely long load times once again and then listen to the obnoxious stadium speaker again. On the Xbox One you could chalk it up to bad console hardware, but our test PC is as high end as it gets.

Minerva laughs and cries at the same time

Crytek Studios in Frankfurt is known for one thing in particular – they create incredibly beautiful and realistic game worlds. With Ryse: Son of Rome, they’ve done it once again, creating a gorgeous portrayal of the ancient world. All of the levels are beautifully crafted and make you feel that you’re living in the days of Caesar. Of course this means ridiculously long load times from start to finish, but quality apparently has its price. Enemies are modeled really well in themselves, and look like real barbarians. What? Again? Didn’t we just see that guy? That’s how things went during out test. The player is swarmed by true hordes of enemies who – perhaps by some curse of Jupiter or Juno – all look identical. There are only a handful of enemy types – archers, swordsmen, etc. and they appear en masse. Come on, Crytek, that was a divine curse on the eyes on the Xbox One, but doing this in the PC version a whole year later is really hard to understand.

One result of this is that it makes the combat, already pretty boring, even more tedious and monotonous. The game’s hero Marius himself is animated really well – his detailed armor glistens in the sun, and all of his movements in combat look realistic. The overall design of Ryse: Son of Rome is pretty hit or miss, and you can’t help but get the impression that they meant to put other elements into the game but ran out of time, and we ended up with a simple console port. Voiceovers are decent, even if they aren’t anything special. Speakers usually do a good job of getting the drama of a situation across, but they’re often not loud enough in comparison to background noises. You can raise the speech volume in the options menu, or lower everything else, otherwise you might miss a few lines. Of course that was a problem with the console version as well. They did a really good job of capturing the sounds of Ancient Rome and the world in those days, and yet there are still enough explosions to make it a real action extravaganza.

Varus, Varus, give me my money back

In my opinion, the game is not worth the $40 they’re asking for it, as it’s too monotonous and boring. Ryse: Son of Rome comes off more like a graphics demo with some gameplay elements. And it really does a good job of showing what a PC is capable of – excellent light and shadow effects, realistic faces, and a lifelike environment with sound effects that fit well into the overall picture. Then there’s a pretty decent storyline and a relatively fresh setting for an exciting adventure under the eyes of the gods. This is all true, but the biggest weakness is the gameplay. At first I really was impressed with the combat scenes and the glorious killing moves and brutal and bloody animations. But after just ten minutes or so I was more bored and irritated than anything else.

Unfortunately, none of this has changed in the PC version of the game. Online mode contains a few more scenarios, but that’s it. Ryse: Son of Rome is nothing more than a console port with better graphics options tacked on, or maybe it’s just the ones you had to deactivate so it would run on the Xbox One…