Rise of the Ronin – What Happened?

Coming from Team Ninja and with the backing of the PlayStation Studios banner, Rise of the Ronin had plenty to live up to, and though it’s not a game without its strengths by any means, it’s fair to say that it hasn’t quite hit the way many had hoped it would. Currently, the game sits at a Metacritic score of 76 (with GamingBolt’s own review giving it a 6/10), and the consensus seems to be that though there are things to like here – the combat and traversal in particular – in a lot of key areas, Rise of the Ronin doesn’t do nearly enough to make a mark.

One of those key areas was also one of the game’s biggest talking points in its pre-launch marketing cycle- its open world. Billed as Team Ninja’s biggest and most ambitious title to date, Rise of the Ronin puts players in a massive environment littered with content that they’re free to explore at their own pace. That open world has, however, hasn’t lived up to expectations- to the extent that it almost feels like a game that’s a decade outdated. The fact that it’s structured in pretty generic fashion by itself isn’t necessarily a huge knock against it, but the content that the world is packed with is also almost never anything to write home about, with rote objectives and minimal narrative contextualization coming together to make for open world activities that feel almost procedurally generated.

If Rise of the Ronin had come out ten or so years ago, its open world would probably have been much better received, but in a world where the larger gaming audiences have experienced games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Tears of the Kingdom, Red Dead Redemption 2, The Witcher 3, and so many others, Team Ninja’s crack at open world design seems bafflingly ignorant of all the strides this particular genre has made over the years. It doesn’t help that, on a purely technical level, the world feels as inactive and static as it does- from sparse crowds to lifeless NPC AI, even locations that should on paper be bustling hubs of civilization can feel dead.

Of course, though Rise of the Ronin’s open world is the biggest way it sets itself apart from past Team Ninja games, it’s not the only one. Another prominent difference is the fact that this has been billed from the get go as a much more narrative-driven game. From choice and consequence mechanics to a setting that is, at least on paper, an inherently fascinating one, Rise of the Ronin sets itself up as a more story-focused game than the likes of Nioh or Wo Long. Unfortunately, this is another area where the game doesn’t make good on its promise.

Very rarely does the game hit you with cutscenes or cinematic moments that will pull you into the story. The characters you meet throughout your journey almost never manage to make a mark in any meaningful way. From the most insignificant conversations to the most pivotal narrative revelations, the game is frequently let down by lackluster writing and voice performances. All of these issues (to name a few) combine to make for a game that doesn’t do nearly enough to make you care about its world, its conflicts, or any of its characters. Never before has that been a concern in a Team Ninja game- but Rise of the Ronin was specifically designed to be a game where the story was going to be a bigger deal, so the fact that the game stumbles in this area in spite of those ambitions is definitely disappointing.

Of course, as is often the case with major releases in the games industry, Rise of the Ronin’s own deficiencies aren’t the only thing that have contributed to the reception surrounding the game in the immediate aftermath of its launch. The context surrounding its development and its release have also had their own role to play in that story. Take, for instance, the fact that this has been published as a PlayStation Studios game exclusively for the PS5. That usually comes with a certain level of expectations – whether in terms of narrative, polish, or even general quality – that Rise of the Ronin doesn’t hit, something that one might argue it wouldn’t have been scrutinized for quite as much as it has been if it wasn’t a PlayStation Studios game. It’s also coming at a time when it’s abundantly clear that Sony isn’t going to have any major, flagship first-party games ready for release for at least the next year or so- which means the expectations on Rise of the Ronin’s shoulders may have been even weightier than they would have been under ordinary circumstances.

It is easy to understand why the backing of PlayStation Studios comes with higher expectations. Team Ninja received development support on the title from PlayStation’s XDev, not to mention the fact that the game has been in development for nearly a decade, with work on it having started as far back as 2015. Given all that, you can’t really blame people for having much higher expectations from the game than what it has ended up delivering, even if the final product does have its fair share of brights spots.

Rise of the Ronin’s failure to completely stick the landing is doubly frustrating, because you always want to encourage new IP. We want developers to be swinging for the fences and trying new things that they’ve generally stayed away from in the past. A Team Ninja game that boasts an open world structure, a greater emphasis on story, and a more approachable view on difficulty, while also delivering the crunchy, visceral combat that the studio has always been known for- a game with an elevator pitch like that is something that we always want to see more of.

In the end, will Rise of the Ronin end up being a net positive for Team Ninja and Sony? There’s a good chance that it will, in spite of its fair share of issues. It’s worth noting that Team Ninja has a history of providing prolonged, beefy post-launch support for its games, so there’s every possibility that Rise of the Ronin only improves from this point forward. Meanwhile, from a purely commercial perspective, we wouldn’t be surprised if the game manages to sell well. Koei Tecmo said in the lead-up to its launch that it was expecting lifetime sales of over 5 million units for Rise of the Ronin, and it may very well end up crossing that milestone, especially with good post-launch support. After all, Days Gone, despite its lukewarm critical reception, managed to sell over 7 million copies.

In the here and now, however, Rise of the Ronin has definitely fallen below the level of quality we expect to find in a new game by the studio that brought us the likes of Ninja Gaiden and Nioh. We can only hope that Team Ninja will continue to build on these foundations so it can fully realize the potential of this new approach at some point in the future, whether that’s through DLC, a full-fledged sequel, or an entirely new game that puts its own spin on Team Ninja’s vision for an open world experience.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to, GamingBolt as an organization.