‘Rise Of The Ronin’ review: lose your head for this slick samurai slasher

In Rise Of The Ronin, Japan is in turmoil. A historical open-world role-playing game (RPG), Nioh 2 developer Team Ninja’s latest game is set during Bakumatsu: a 19th-century period of turmoil that saw American gunboats force an end to Japan’s isolationist policy. Vastly out-gunned, Japan’s military dictatorship, the shogunate, was forced to open its country to foreign powers. Meanwhile, samurai across the country rebelled against their perceived weakness with widespread violence and assassinations.

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These real-world events shaped the Land of the Rising Sun we know today, but here, they’re ripe for meddling. When your samurai partner – called a Blade Twin – disappears after failing to kill American Commodore Matthew Perry (not that one), you leave your clan to wander as a ronin, a samurai without a master. A branching, multiple-choice storyline means you can choose whether to keep the peace with shogunate forces, throw your lot in with famous revolutionary Ryōma Sakamoto and his samurai misfits, or try to stay neutral while searching for your missing Blade Twin.

At first, it’s all very overwhelming. Rise Of The Ronin throws a staggering amount of names and real-world history your way, and you’ll struggle to keep up with it all while also trying to learn the intricacies of sword-fighting. This isn’t helped by the game’s sizeable open world, which looks more intimidating than it actually is.

So much is thrown your way that, several hours in, you’ll be surprised to realise how many things stick. The world is fairly straightforward – there are plenty of bandit camps and optional side-quests to tackle, but not so many that they lose their individuality. In one optional quest, a lone farmer begs you for help: bandits have stolen the money he’d squirreled away to save his daughter from a life of prostitution. You track down the robbers and splatter their underground hideout with blood, only to take their loot back to the farmer and learn it was a scam to make a quick buck. The whole thing feels like a tongue-in-cheek jab at role-playing game fans – who will blindly slaughter anything because a character with a quest marker above their heads told them too – but the joke was on him, because we kept the money and ran.

Elsewhere, Rise Of The Ronin spins the events of Bakumatsu into a cinematic drama. In the real world, many of the people who feature here didn’t live to see 30, and this incredibly bloody story shows why. One of the game’s best moments is a recreation of the Sakurada Gate Incident, when ranks of rebel samurai assassinated a leading shogunate minister. Here, it’s been adapted into a gruelling boss fight – and even while fighting for your life, you’ll want to stop and admire the way blood splashes on brilliant white snow.

Combat in Rise Of The Ronin is no joke. Like notoriously challenging samurai fantasy Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice and last year’s smash hit Star Wars Jedi: Survivor, a poise bar encourages you to parry and deflect blades head-on rather than roll out of the way. A limited ability to heal means battles are unforgiving, and though it initially feels clunky and slow, as you come to grips with its deliberate weightiness and stop instinctively button-mashing, every showdown becomes sublime. In each clash, you’ll need to switch your sword-fighting style based on what weapon your opponent’s using, and on certain missions can seamlessly switch between playing as your allies to press enemies from all sides.

There’s no other feeling like parrying six lightning-fast strikes, only to break their poise and land a gory decapitation. Swordsmanship has a palpable sense of progression – many of the game’s toughest boss fights are so brutal they come down to a single hit, but there are also times when you’ll decapitate foe after foe without taking so much as a scratch. You often find yourself in a state of unbreakable focus, perfectly deflecting attacks and landing your own, only surfacing (and remembering to breathe) when your opponent’s body hits the ground.

It’s a power fantasy that extends to the plot. Main missions are divided into three categories – pro-shogunate, anti-shogunate, and neutral – and your choices will influence who lives and dies before the credits roll. If a shock death leaves a sour taste in your mouth, a nifty rewind feature lets you return to prior missions and change your decisions, but for immersion’s sake we resisted the urge to retroactively meddle in our quest against the west. Bakumatsu was an era of moral greys, and there are rarely any right or wrong decisions to make. As a result, Rise Of The Ronin is deliciously messy, and you never quite know if you’re making the best choices for Japan’s future.

Yet Rise Of The Ronin isn’t without its issues. Sometimes the story can be too ambitious for its own good, and keeping track of every twist and key player proves difficult at times. Elsewhere, you’re encouraged to travel vertically with a glider and grappling hook – yet the game rarely presents many opportunities to do so, and with a limited amount of scenery available to grapple, the tools are lacklustre. Finally, the graphics are slightly dated, and there are a few beautiful vistas spoiled by twitching textures.

These problems were particularly jarring in the beginning, and our initial impression of Rise Of The Ronin was lukewarm. Yet with every battle, we found ourselves falling for it harder. Even now, just thinking about the clanging of swords gives us the itch to jump back in for another hit of adrenaline. Bakumatsu was defined by its violence and chaos, and by leaning into that, Team Ninja has created a riveting ronin romp.

Rise Of The Ronin launches on March 22 for PS5