Immortals Fenyx Rising (2020)

Much as I love The Legend of Zelda in general, I thought Breath of the Wild, while excellent in some areas... had a few issues that caused me to put it down and only pick it up again recently. While it's been a few months since I've last played Immortals Fenyx Rising, it won't be anywhere near as long before I pick it back up again. It takes the playstyle of Breath of the Wild and, in my opinion, elevates it with a couple of excellent tweaks:

• The ancient Greek epic style is a clear winner. You'll get my attention every time with Greek gods and monsters, and quests, and heroes, and so on and so forth. That this game's existence is based on the conceit that it's an untold ancient Greek epic is perfection to me.
• Say what you want about it, but I despise the weapon break mechanic in Breath of the Wild. Not only do the weapons NOT break in Immortals Fenyx Rising, but you can get a TON of new designs and permutations of those weapons if you're going for a specific look. Very cool, and a lot of fun.
• I like that you can level up more than just your health and stamina. Weapon and armor strength, potion potency and number, power stunts, passives... I just think these kinds of abilities serve an open world action adventure setting like this extremely well.
• You can design your character, and change out those designs later in game, including gender. VERY cool touch. Heck, you can even give your female-presenting Fenyx a full and glorious beard!
• Finally, and feel free to hate me for this, but I love the dialog. I know others think it's cringe, but I think that's part of the charm. Yes, it's over the top. Yes, Zeus is snarky and at times annoying; that's who he is. I think one of the bright spots in this game is the breadth and occasional depth of knowledge the narration shows off about Greek mythology, and the dialog has a lot to do with that.

Immortals Fenyx Rising takes much of the skeleton that is Breath of the Wild and clothes it in new flesh that, for me at least, is a little more attractive to my gaming sensibilities. I love the map and marker system, I love the mythology, and I love all the combat and puzzles. A more excellent version of another, similarly excellent game.

The graphics are very different than usual, more like BotW I guess, but I like them. Performance is perfect, I've seen no framerate drops or stutters or anything. The story is not mind blowing but it's certainly a fun adventure. The game world is pretty big and very colorful. Not to be compared to a game like Valhalla, but honestly I enjoy it more and think it's way prettier.

The only shortcoming of this game seems to be the marketing, Immortals is by far one of the best Ubisoft game and they seem not to have gotten that across as well as they should have. I sincerely hope Ubisoft will release a sequel to this some time, because it really deserves one already, even though I'm still going strong with dozens of hours in.

Game Summary : Definitely NOT a Breath of the Wild clone. Nope, totally original game here based around Greek mythology because that's free to use and recognizable.

Review Portion : Look, it's a good game. BUT when your game is so clearly and directly aping another game instead of taking inspiration from that and trying to be it's own thing only two things can happen. You can either beat that that game at its own game or you can fall short and forever live in the shadow of what you were copying. This game does the latter.

The upgrades available to your combat moves and puzzle solving abilities are nice, but tying them to grinding out gems instead of earning them through a puzzle or mission feels disappointingly generic.

Being able to scan for activities/treasures is nice, but it feels obnoxious to use in it's own way and turns the game into a "follow the mini-map compass" game instead of having the sense of exploration I felt with Zelda.

Every character feels like the quippy comic relief, but that's a complaint that's FAR from exclusive to this game.

I remember being impressed how versatile the abilities felt in BotW. That using them for combat or puzzle solving felt equally natural. The same can not be said here. Some abilities feel much more like combat abilities and it's easy to forget they exist come time to solve puzzles and vice versa.

WOWSERS is the stamina draining nonsense in the last area obnoxious.

Summary : Not a bad game and if I hadn't gone for the platinum I'm sure it would have felt less like a slog towards the end, but I couldn't help but feel like I could hear an Ubisoft executive pointing at Zelda and yelling "Just make that with Greek shit!" most of the time I was playing.

Personal Score : 7

"Objective" Score : 8

I know my Brand™ is hating on Ubisoft, but I give credit where it's due, and Immortals: Fenyx Rising is inoffensive...sigh even...fun. It's good, alright? It's not groundbreaking, it's not going to join the pantheon of great games, it's not going to haunt my dreams, but it's fine. It's charming, there's no gratuitous child murder, no dead family members, some of the puzzles were actually interesting, cheeseing the puzzles was sometimes more fun than the puzzles themselves, and I was only ridiculously overpowered for like a third of the game.

Does it have Ubisoft towers? Of course it has Ubisoft towers, but there's only 5, and being able to climb up any part of them makes it a relatively quick and easy chore, and gliding off in any direction definitely beats taking a zip line or jumping into a pile of hay. And the world is pretty; it's not breathtaking or particularly interesting, but it's pretty, and diverse enough to not get too boring.

The gods were entertaining (favorite: Athena (obviously), surprise runner-up: Ares, most disappointing: Hephaestus [oh cool, we're doing the "true art comes from pain" thing]), the story was decent—though, as with AC:Valhalla the game potentially suffers from allowing players to do things in any order: because I did Ares's quests last Fenyx's brother showed up after I'd already proven myself, so that dynamic felt well-earned and like a satisfying conflict, which I don't think it would have if I were just starting out. Also, meeting him right before tackling Mount Olympus just felt right, pacing-wise. Like, it would've felt weird if I met him and then travelled around the whole island without running into him, and then he just showed up again at the end. I just feel weird when a game lets me make its story worse, and while all open-world games run into this problem to some extent, Ubisoft has a way of making it a feature instead of a bug.

Still, though, I had fun, didn't yell at it more than any other game with mediocre platforming, and I don't regret playing it.

Also, love a customizable HUD.

p.s. I haven't played Breath of the Wild but based on what I've seen I think this is both more and less than a BotW rip-off, for whatever that's worth. And narratively it is both more and less than a Hades rip-off, for that matter.

p.p.s. As with all Ubisoft games, if I'd played it longer I'd probably have given it a lower rating, so I quit while it was ahead and didn't get to all of the side quests, including the Hephaestus heist quest that I'm not convinced was actually going to be a heist quest.

p.p.p.s. I found out you can just guess the lyre melodies, which is cool.

p.p.p.p.s. It would've been nice if the wings had perks and weren't just skins. Maybe even make them special, like have 1-3 wings that are just standard and then the rest have like an upside/downside thing, maybe trading off navigation boosts for combat boosts or vice versa. Just feels like a missed opportunity.

One of the better executed Ubisoft, here are a lot of icons in our open world go do them formula.

++ Puzzels

++ Decent combat system with somewhat meaningful upgrades

++ A lot of stuff to do, if you like it

-- The writing is dreadful. Somebody was payed to write the lines in this game, other people where paid to voice act them, them other people animated the scenes and lip-synced the voice acting .... it is a marvel that all this was possible without the people involved cringing at least a couple of their internal organs to dust.

-- The final gauntlet of challenges is exactly on the same level of the other challenges in the world.

-- Once you end the story you cannot continue to explore the open world

As an avid Zelda fan, this game was such a blatant copy off of BoTW, I'm amazed Ubisoft didn't get sued by Nintendo over this. I guess a knock-off version is better than nothing at all? At least it scratched an itch until BoTW 2 gets released later this year.

Oh, and weapons no longer break so that's always a plus... Just be ready to put up with Zeus' insufferable dialogue nagging at you over the 30+ hours of gameplay.

Immortals: Fenyx Rising combines much of the scope, traversal and combat of Breath of the Wild with the way-finding and collectibles of more conventional open world adventures, but with a greater emphasis on puzzle-solving. At its best, this combination makes the game feel abundant yet approachable: I spent many an enjoyable hour starting up my save file, consulting my map and picking a direction to explore. I was particularly impressed by how many of the game's puzzles were part of the world itself, instead of being solely confined to the Golden Isle's vaults. Also, the weapons and gear I collected never broke... thank goodness!

But the game feels a bit less confident in its approach than many of its predecessors. I'm a big fan of humor in games (Double Fine's my favorite American developer, after all), and I think that could have helped set this story apart. But the dialogue is so meandering and, frankly, unfunny that I quickly turned the volume way down so I could listen to podcasts while playing. The game's cringe-y humor, over-engineered menus and Ubisoft Connect prompts lend it a vague cheapness that sometimes disrupted my immersion in its otherwise vibrant and engaging world.

I really enjoyed Immortals: Fenyx Rising and would recommend it to those hungry for a game that's similar in some ways to Breath of the Wild, but a bit more chill and traditional in its approach. It's just held back some by its attempts at snark and its visibly corporate origins.

(Played on PlayStation 4)

PROS

• A highly-polished action/adventure that takes a ton of influence from BOTW to create a colorful open-world that can be explored at the player's leisure
• Smooth controls make everything from combat to platforming a breeze
• Lots of tools and mechanisms to experiment with
• It actually has p...p...puzzles????

CONS

• Reeks of artless Ubisoft open-world design practices (I call it "chorification")
• Obnoxious narration and constant embarrassing attempts at humor
• Unfortunately, the BOTW influence also extends to a lack of any proper levels or dungeons to explore

Immortal Fenyx Rising Review

This game probably the biggest surprise of i guess 2020. Its a shame because i don't think the games gonna sell well because Ubisoft hardly promoted it and it released when Cyberjunk was out or coming out.

The Story of Immortal Fenyx rising is nothing that special its fine for what it is, its not bad though but i wasn't really expecting a great story. The story is this being known as Typhon who was at war with the gods pretty much defeated them all. Zeus having his lightning stolen goes to Prometheus whos chained up due to him giving humans fire and because Zeus is a dick he chained him up and let an Eagle eat his liver for eternity pretty much, because his liver grows back. Zeus talks to Prometheus and hes basically saying theres no one that can defeat Typhon than Prometheus says that he bets a human can, and he makes a bet with Zeus, Zeus laughs it off calling mortals parasites and pathetic. Prometheus says that if there is a human who can beat a god, than Zeus lets him go from being chained but if there isn't than Prometheus has to help Zeus defeat Typhon. Prometheus tells a story about Fenyx the main character a boy or a girl depending on what you choose. Fenyx is shipwrecked due to a storm and lands on an island of the gods, The Golden Isle. During the beginning part her crew mates have all been turned to stone including the brother, Fenyx wants to fine a way to save them, Fenyx gains a variety of godly weapons that he/she should'nt be able to wield but can, things like Zeus own Lightning and Diadolos wings and Hephaistos's hammer. You meet Hermes and he takes you to the Hall of The Gods and Fenyx's purpose in this journey is rescuing the greek gods who Typhon has stripped away there powers and personalities and what makes them gods and getting the gods to help her defeat Typhon.

Gameplay Now if Assassins Creed annoys you because theres two much dialogue and choices than you'll like Immortal Fenyx Rsing because theres so much gameplay and not as much cutscenes. Immortal Fenyx Rising is like Assassins Creed Odyssey and Breath of The Wild which people compare it to. I honestly don't care about the comparison. In Immortal you explore a vast colorful and vibrant looking world seperated by 7 regions, all these regions are unique and are not copies of each other but of course some are better than others, this is the complete opposite of Assassins Creed Valhalla where the world was bland and every region looked identical to the next. Unlike Valhalla this world is very fun to explore, very fun collecting stuff and also unlike Valhalla your rewarded good stuff. The rewards you get are new swords, new hammers, new armors, new wings, new horses, a new bird companion, new bows, new helmets, and also skins for stuff sword skins, hammer skins, bow skins, armor skins, helmet skins and each weapon has like 3 skins each armor has 4 skins so there is just tons of stuff to collect. The combat in Immortal Fenyx rising is also very great its not slow its not methodical it is very fast pace very responsive its akin to Devil May Cry...Not 5 because its a pile of shit but i digress.... Fenyx has light and heavy attack and 4 abilties you can use, the abilties take up stamina. You can launch enemies in the air you can do air combos, you get an upgrade where you can pull enemies towards you or pull yourself towards them you can use your abilities in the air so the combat is very enjoyable. Fenyx can dodge, Fenyx can parry theres perfectly timed parries that will create a blue spark enabling you to counter attack. Theres is Bayonetta witch time dodges where time slows , you can pick up stuff and throw them at enemies, you have your bow to shoot enemies and later you get a bird to help out as well to. Than theres advance stuff like theres invincibility frames for your abilities so learning and timing your attacks to respond to enemies is very useful for example enemies have red unblockable attacks but if you time like a shield bash you'll go right through it.

Also something else not alot mention are combo stages. As your attacking your hits go up so as your doing really well in combat and not getting hit, if you reach a 50 hit combo your combo stage will go red and you'll see red hit sparks and a different sword hitting sound making you do more damage and later you get the blue combo stage for 80 hits furthering your damage this is very needed for stonger bosses and i liked it alot. The only thing i can compare it to is the Ghost Rider video game. As you get your combo style up Ghost riders flames would change from normal to yellow to green and than blue it was awesome.

In combat also you drink potions this is kind of like Witcher and i guess foods in Monster Hunter where you get a boost for acouple seconds.Yellow potion for a boosted defense, purple potion for more attack power, blue potion for stamina and red potion for health.

There is so many great armors and just cool looking stuff, and the new weapons actually have useful abilities that help you in battle a lot.

Exploration

Lets talk about whats in the world of The Golden Isle. A bunch of stuff, in each region theres numerous things to collect a lot of it is for upgrading Fenyx. You have the Ambrosia which are these crystal looking things that shine, you mainly fine these in high places by climbing and you can climb anything but this time you have a stamina bar so as your climbing or jumping the bars drains. I liked this a lot because i think its dumb how you climb anything in the newer AC's, i liked in Immortal you had to be careful what you climb and if you have enough stamina to make it to the top, because if it uns out you fall or lose your grip. You can restore stamina by blue mushrooms and blue potions though and also upgrade to get more stamina.

. There are these plants in the world you gather yellow plants which are flower nectar purple plants (Olympian Fig) and a blue mushroom. The plants are for making upgrading potions but more on that later.

Theres these big crystals you can break in the world that you find giving you adamantine shards a red crystal a blue crystal a purple crystal and a yellow crystal these are for upgrading weapons and armor. Theres also Golden Amber and these are usually in chest.

Than theres treasure chest on the map you can find some are guarded by enemies, some can only be opened at night where stronger enemies guard it and some treasures you have to solve something to open them. Than you have to view points where you have to climb a giant statue like AC and this is like the only AC thing about this game, but theres only one in each region and this only gets the fog off the map because you yourself have to use your farsight to look around the map getting stuff to appear on the map. Last but not least is the major thing about the game and its the puzzles

Puzzles

Now what makes this game a unique open world? What make it different? Its the puzzles in the game. The world is full to the brim with so many puzzles you have to solve and these are very fun to do and they are very creative. Throughout the entire game is puzzles or obstacles you solve and they are all different nothings a copy of something else. It is seriously brilliant that my entire playthrough of the game i kept running into new and creative puzzles. They do such an amazing job of keeping everything fresh. Treasure check will be locked behind this red barrier so than you solve a puzzle to get to it, you'll usually see pressure plates it might have a heavy plate or a light plate, you may have to carry a metal box on a pressure plate or look around to find some rocks. There might be lazers you have to manuever a breakable box through theres seriously so many its hard to list and thats just one part of the puzzles in the world. There are these bow and arrow obstacle courses where you have to shoot your bow through these rings you see in order to light something on fire or sometimes you'll see unlit lamps you have to shoot your bow to fire and manuever it over to light the lamp. Theres the myth challenges where its a timed race to get to this light flashing and these give you see charon coins. Theres these constellation puzzles where you have to search the area for 5 blue balls you place there usually locked behind something and you to figure out how to get them and these give you charon coins. If you want more theres these small lyres scattered throughout, they play a tune and you have to memorise it and play the tune on the giant lyre by shooting your bow at it, this also gives you charon coins. Oh and theres are these picture puzzles where you have to make a picture from 4 pieces

Of course enemies are throughout the region as well and also Many legendary and mythical bosses or Elite bosses are in locations on the map as well and unlike Valhalla they reward you good stuff for killing them. The final thing for exploration are the Vaults of Tartaros. Vaults of Tartaras are these areas where you solve even more clever crafted puzzles and there is about 50+ vaults and these are also very enjoyable and sometimes enjoyably frustrating lol. What you do always changes all these vaults are all different nothings a copy. The things thats the same is theres usually always pressure plates and you usually always have to get metal boxes or breakable boxes sometimes roll a ball in a slot, but the structure is always different and what you do is always different getting to those boxes and stuff. They keep it fresh cause certain vaults require you to get a certain ability to complete the vault so you really need all of Fenyx abilities to complete them all. I honestly expected to get tired of these after 20 of them but i never did they always brought something new to do something clever and required me to master abilties because later on they get crazy like you may have to fly and use your spear ability to get higher than you may have to dash through lasers its just awesome. The Vaults usually have treasures that are optional they contain a variety of things but you need all the treasures to close a vault. At the end of the vault is Zeus's lighning and you need these to upgrade your stamina.

Hall of The Gods and Story Quest

The Hall of The Gods is an entire area where the gods you save will be at. Its also the area where you upgrade everything. Coins of Charon are for getting new abilties or your godly powers its not a huge skill tree, theres 5 skills than 2 or 3 levels of it godly powers are the same. The Cauldron is where you upgrade or make potions. You upgrade potions with golden amber to make them stronger and theres quite a bit of levels to upgrade. You make potions from the flowers you gather. The forge is to upgrade your weapons and armor and these use your adamantine crystals. This big cup is where you upgrade you health with the ambrosia you gather. Last is the bench for upgrading stamina. You always get a cutscene when upgrading and it involves a lot of Fenyx flexing muscles with hermes and its funny. Oh and if you want to change your characters look you can also do that from Hall Of The Gods...because you know...Cyberjunk doesn't have that lmao.

Story Quest are as followed you usually locate a god and you have to help them because Typhon took away there essense i won't spoil all the gods in case you want to be surprised but i'll spoil one which is Aphrodite. Typhon took aphrodites essense away and turned her into a tree and shes to nice so he took the parts of her that makes her a god away her beauty and shes mean. You gather her essence back by going into a vault, usually a boss fight and when you give it back she changes into her original mean self lol. I liked all the gods just insult you when there back to thereselves because you know gods are dicks. Fenyx literally says to the one god "your an asshole thats why your my favorite.

There aren't alot of side quest your not riddled with hundreds of quest ever each god when you save them give you one or two quest thats about it.

Disappointing Lazy Enemies

The enemies and most bosses. It follows the lazy color swap an enemy when there stronger. This is the only thing lazy about the game, there are 13 enemies throughout the region but there always the same its just there colors are changed and the colors represent there power. Theres Red the weakess Blue about mid-strength purple is the strongest. The legendary and mythical bosses are different colors like Yellow or Green or White stronger variants of enemies this really sucked. The whole game i would say is really good designed like the areas and the armor and all the puzzles but the one thing thats lazy are the enemies which is disappointing.

Bosses

Boss fights some of them are surprisingly good and very fun to fight better than the AC bosses. Than theres some that are Souls like bullshit bosses that kill you based off of one mistake, like man do all games have to follow this now make a game hard by making enemies to massive damage its just a lazy design now that everyone follows. However there are some fun bosses in the game it mainly comes from the Wraiths which are optional bosses. They have lairs on the map and you enter there layer to fight them and all these bosses are fun. One in particulur Atalanta is probably the best fight in the game.

Its a fast paced fight she has a bow and also a bear companion so you have to fight her avoiding her arrows dodging her bear. If you had been spamming dodge in bosses you'll get punished for it this fight cause you have to carefully dodge her arrows at the right time parry her arrows she has an unblockable arrow that will destroy you if you get hit its an exciting fast paced fight i loved it. Typhon himself though i didn't care about its just one of those villians where he'd already caused havok and you just hear about you don't see him do anything so it does'nt make me care about him much but the fight with him was pretty good

Negative

The enemies are a negative but i didn't hate it as much as i hate this and that is the goddamn revives. When you help the gods they give you blessings more abilities well Aphrodite gives you a revive ability and i freaking hate it. You see, when i do boss fights in these types of combat heavy games like Devil May Cry any Platinum game i don't like using health potions and i do not like stupid revives i like learning from mistakes. I can't learn shit if i can freaking revive every goddamn time. Like what is it with games now? The New dumb God Of War had revives lmao old ones didn't have it, Devil May Cry 5 you can buy revives with red orbs instead of just yellow orbs but i guess they even knew the bosses they designed where trash like what the hell why? What happened to the skill involved why bother playing great if i can get freaking revived its freaking dumb.

Final Thoughts

Absolutely loved this game my whole 65 hours was just very fun and entertaining. I loved the puzzles loved the world loved , the armors you get, theres so many that looked awesome. Some bosses where really good, the story is nothing special kinda seen the story in multiple games but its fine. Im glad they portrayed the gods like how they are i thought they were gonna change them but you hear all the bad stuff they did especially Zeus because throughout the game Zeus and Prometheus talk cracking jokes or just talking about bad stuff Zeus done to the other gods. At one point when you get all the gods gathered they freaking hate each other insulting eachother saying they want to murder each other pretty hilarious. The combat is probably the best from Ubisoft since 2008 Prince Of Persia it just felt extremely good and fluid and smooth and you could do a lot of stuff. Since the World wasn't huge it allowed Ubisoft to create a better crafted world where everything was unique. Ubisoft really surprised me with this one there wasn't one glitch either but there was some crashes i had about 4 but it stopped. I don't think we'll get a second one which is a shame it there better up the combat with even more combos and make better designed enemies than it'd be even more amazing.  Im just so suprised in how they were able to keep introducing stuff new to those puzzles the entire game The ending was even good as well .My final score for Immortal Fenyx Rising is a 10