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Review: Immortals Fenyx Rising
May. 23rd, 2021 09:26 amI haven't written a video game review in forever—because I usually don't have many complex thoughts besides "This was great for XYZ reasons!" But Immortals Fenyx Rising is the first game I've played that I've had complex feelings about, so let's get to it.
Out of a 5 star rating, I would give this game 2-2.5 stars.
The fact that it's clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn't bother me. I love BotW, so I'm happy to play similar games. But the problem is that Immortals has major flaws in execution such that BotW was a better gameplay experience.
The story
The story of Immortals is that Typhon has separated four gods from their essences, rendering them useless, and Zeus is about to lose against him. Your character, Fenyx, a lowly shieldbearer, washes up on the Golden Isle and is recruited by Hermes to help save the gods. Along the way, many Greek myths are explained.
A lot of people were charmed by the whole Zeus/Prometheus narrative device, and yes, I agree some of their dialogue is funny. Overall, though, I find the story disappointing, just because it's not fresh.
The Greek gods have been done so many times that, by now, the way to stand out is to put a new spin on them. It's particularly glaring when you look at a game like Hades, which came out almost the same time as Immortals Fenyx Rising, but which is daring in terms of story—the protagonist, Zagreus, is literally an obscure Greek deity that is elevated by the game—and features unique, memorable character designs for the gods.
Immortals simply feels...safe. Even the choice of the four gods that the game focuses on—Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaistos, and Athena—feels safe and blandly conventional for a story about fighting back against Typhon (instead of spicing things up by throwing in, say, Dionysus or Apollo. But also, why the hell do Athena's blessings all revolve around archery? The game might as well have used Artemis or Apollo instead). The gods' character designs are equally blandly conventional (except that Athena has blue eyes, which...what?).
There is nothing new added to the Greek myths here. Achilles is a character, yet aside from hints that Zeus had a crush on him, his relationship with Patroclus isn't even mentioned. The overarching narrative is essentially "the gods were horrible jerks, but we need to restore them to their jerkish selves in order to beat Typhon" because Ubisoft doesn't want to play with the canon in any meaningful way—and the result is a narrative that isn't interesting and feels rather problematic.
I haven't played the DLC, but I've watched the story of The Lost Gods, and the story honestly gets even worse, with every god—especially Poseidon and Hades—being complete caricatures. Poseidon is a surfer bro with zero brain cells. Hades is so jealous of Zeus that he becomes the bad guy. Kronos is a cannibal, because Ubisoft took the "eating his children" part and made it his entire character.
Basically, if you already know and enjoy Greek myths, don't play Immortals for the story. If you're a child who knows nothing about Greek myths, I suppose you might learn something from the super basic way Immortals presents the Greek gods.
The visuals
The artistic style of Immortals is quite pretty, and I enjoyed it. However, I have to knock points off visual presentation for the Switch version of the game. I don't mind that it doesn't look as good as the PS5 or Xbox X/S versions, but Ubisoft essentially dialed down a particle effect slider for the Switch version, which led to problems like: amber not showing up in trees until Ubisoft patched it (which took several months from launch), certain landscapes appearing too foggy to see properly, and some of the cosmetic skins looking defective and ugly (not really a good way to entice people to buy them—not that I'm complaining, since I hate microtransactions). Basically, the Switch port felt lazy. But then again, that's pretty much what you'd expect from Ubisoft these days.
The gameplay
Whooo boy, do I have things to say about the gameplay on basically every level.
Let's start with structure and overall gameplay design. Unlike BotW, Immortals is crammed with things to do on the map, between myth challenges, Tartaros vaults, and chests locked behind puzzles. The problem is that, after a while, none of this feels particularly compelling to do. The puzzle designs aren't clever—think 100 puzzles that all involve some variation of putting heavy things on pressure plates, flicking switches, and lighting torches, and you can see how repetitive it gets over time. Half of the time, it becomes a scavenger hunt to even find the damn switch/torch you need, or figure out what the hell you're supposed to do to unlock the chest. This isn't fun gameplay. It's tedious.
Quick game design note—any puzzle that involves manipulating heavy blocks becomes instantly trivial when you unlock the skill upgrade that allows you to carry heavy blocks overhead. On one hand, I can't complain since the puzzles are so tedious that I'm glad for any shortcut—but on the other hand, the puzzle lover in me is appalled that you can so easily "cheat" these puzzles. Like, what's the point anymore?
The Tartaros vaults are especially tedious. Now, there were a handful of vaults that I actually enjoyed (I liked the ones that were designed like obstacle courses for Fenyx, and the pinball one was fun), but many of them were designed so that if you made a mistake, you had to go a long way back to the beginning to start over, which made the experience so damn tedious. The vaults and side content are in stark contrast to BotW—yes, BotW's shrines were generally easy, but as a result, they also never felt tedious, and yes, BotW didn't have tons of things marked for you to do on the map, but as a result, you felt genuinely rewarded when you stumbled across a Korok seed or hidden chest because you wanted to go exploring and found this cool thing along the way.
I really want to reiterate that, aside from maybe some of the constellation challenges that were moderately interesting, there isn't really a sense of accomplishment when solving these puzzles, but just relief that you've ticked off that box and can move on to the next thing. And I'm saying this as someone who's a completionist whenever I play a video game.
In terms of main quest gameplay, you're allowed to rescue the four gods in any order you want, which is fine. But when you get to the final area, King's Peak? It basically takes two hours to slowly ascend this huge mountain, occasionally pausing to fight enemies or do mandatory myth challenges, and all of it is just. So. Boring. I don't know whether they threw in the mandatory myth challenges as a way to pad out the gameplay length, add some "variety" to the ascension (even though the myth challenges are all ones that you would've done already, unless you went out of your way to avoid doing any myth challenges on the Golden Isle), or force you to get some Charon Coins before the final boss in case you, again, went out of your way to avoid myth challenges (which feels like too much hand-holding). But the whole experience is, again, just tedious.
"Tedious" is not a word I should be using at all to describe a video game, let alone using multiple times.
Now, let's talk about the combat. There is nothing wrong with the combat at first blush—it's more frenetic than the precision-based combat of The Legend of Zelda, so if you preferred a hack-n-slash combat style, you'll probably enjoy Immortals more. But it's also—once again—not done in a way that's particularly interesting. Maybe this was stark for me because the previous game I'd played was a Platinum Games game, so there could really be no contest. But combat in Immortals boils down to figuring out the most efficient strategy and then using that over and over again. For me, it became (1) spam Ares's Wrath until I stunned the enemies, (2) wail on them until the stun meter ran out, (3) repeat ad nauseum. The only time you're forced to change your tactics is when it comes to the wraiths and some (not all) of the bosses.
Combat itself felt slightly janky to me. I don't know whether it was me or the game (though, once again, I just came off a Platinum Games game where I found the combat responsiveness smooth as butter), but I sometimes felt like I would hit the button to dodge or parry, but the move wouldn't register or it would be delayed, and that was extremely frustrating.
Also, you have a number of special abilities: Athena's Dash, Ares's Wrath, Hephaistos's Hammer, and Phosphor's Attack. However, because—again—you're incentivized to stick to one efficient combat strategy, I find myself almost never using Athena's Dash or Phosphor's Attack. Athena's Dash feels redundant in combat, because you have Ares's Wrath for heavy stun damage and Hephaistos's Hammer for heavy DPS, so Athena's Dash has no niche (except maybe if you want to close distance to a faraway enemy, I guess). Phosphor's Attack is cool, and I wish I could've used it more often, but it just doesn't feel worth the stamina cost compared to Ares's Wrath or Hephaistos's Hammer in most cases. There's a problem when half of your special combat abilities feel pointless.
In terms of combat strategy, there's a fundamental problem with the game, which is that you're generally incentivized to dodge instead of parry, since most attacks from most monsters are un-parryable. So, when you encounter a new monster or boss, instead of wasting time learning the 10% of the battle when you can parry, it's easier to just dodge. Plus, when you're sufficiently "over-leveled" in terms of health/power/potion strength for a boss fight that's supposed to require specific tactics, you're incentivized to soak up damage rather than change your strategy. However, this becomes a problem in the 1% of situations when you're supposed to parry a boss's attacks. I learned this too late for the Medusa boss in Athena's vault—after three extremely frustrating phases when it took me forever to damage her because she was constantly teleporting, I finally realized I could parry one of her attacks. This isn't good gameplay design.
Conclusion
Immortals Fenyx Rising is entertaining enough if you have literally nothing else to play at the moment—and yes, that's damning praise. But it's a game made mediocre by its many flaws, and it falls heavily into the Ubisoft trap of seemingly having tons of side content, only for said side content to feel like tedious items to tick off a completionist's checklist rather than enjoyable for their own sakes.
Out of a 5 star rating, I would give this game 2-2.5 stars.
The fact that it's clearly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild doesn't bother me. I love BotW, so I'm happy to play similar games. But the problem is that Immortals has major flaws in execution such that BotW was a better gameplay experience.
The story
The story of Immortals is that Typhon has separated four gods from their essences, rendering them useless, and Zeus is about to lose against him. Your character, Fenyx, a lowly shieldbearer, washes up on the Golden Isle and is recruited by Hermes to help save the gods. Along the way, many Greek myths are explained.
A lot of people were charmed by the whole Zeus/Prometheus narrative device, and yes, I agree some of their dialogue is funny. Overall, though, I find the story disappointing, just because it's not fresh.
The Greek gods have been done so many times that, by now, the way to stand out is to put a new spin on them. It's particularly glaring when you look at a game like Hades, which came out almost the same time as Immortals Fenyx Rising, but which is daring in terms of story—the protagonist, Zagreus, is literally an obscure Greek deity that is elevated by the game—and features unique, memorable character designs for the gods.
Immortals simply feels...safe. Even the choice of the four gods that the game focuses on—Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaistos, and Athena—feels safe and blandly conventional for a story about fighting back against Typhon (instead of spicing things up by throwing in, say, Dionysus or Apollo. But also, why the hell do Athena's blessings all revolve around archery? The game might as well have used Artemis or Apollo instead). The gods' character designs are equally blandly conventional (except that Athena has blue eyes, which...what?).
There is nothing new added to the Greek myths here. Achilles is a character, yet aside from hints that Zeus had a crush on him, his relationship with Patroclus isn't even mentioned. The overarching narrative is essentially "the gods were horrible jerks, but we need to restore them to their jerkish selves in order to beat Typhon" because Ubisoft doesn't want to play with the canon in any meaningful way—and the result is a narrative that isn't interesting and feels rather problematic.
I haven't played the DLC, but I've watched the story of The Lost Gods, and the story honestly gets even worse, with every god—especially Poseidon and Hades—being complete caricatures. Poseidon is a surfer bro with zero brain cells. Hades is so jealous of Zeus that he becomes the bad guy. Kronos is a cannibal, because Ubisoft took the "eating his children" part and made it his entire character.
Basically, if you already know and enjoy Greek myths, don't play Immortals for the story. If you're a child who knows nothing about Greek myths, I suppose you might learn something from the super basic way Immortals presents the Greek gods.
The visuals
The artistic style of Immortals is quite pretty, and I enjoyed it. However, I have to knock points off visual presentation for the Switch version of the game. I don't mind that it doesn't look as good as the PS5 or Xbox X/S versions, but Ubisoft essentially dialed down a particle effect slider for the Switch version, which led to problems like: amber not showing up in trees until Ubisoft patched it (which took several months from launch), certain landscapes appearing too foggy to see properly, and some of the cosmetic skins looking defective and ugly (not really a good way to entice people to buy them—not that I'm complaining, since I hate microtransactions). Basically, the Switch port felt lazy. But then again, that's pretty much what you'd expect from Ubisoft these days.
The gameplay
Whooo boy, do I have things to say about the gameplay on basically every level.
Let's start with structure and overall gameplay design. Unlike BotW, Immortals is crammed with things to do on the map, between myth challenges, Tartaros vaults, and chests locked behind puzzles. The problem is that, after a while, none of this feels particularly compelling to do. The puzzle designs aren't clever—think 100 puzzles that all involve some variation of putting heavy things on pressure plates, flicking switches, and lighting torches, and you can see how repetitive it gets over time. Half of the time, it becomes a scavenger hunt to even find the damn switch/torch you need, or figure out what the hell you're supposed to do to unlock the chest. This isn't fun gameplay. It's tedious.
Quick game design note—any puzzle that involves manipulating heavy blocks becomes instantly trivial when you unlock the skill upgrade that allows you to carry heavy blocks overhead. On one hand, I can't complain since the puzzles are so tedious that I'm glad for any shortcut—but on the other hand, the puzzle lover in me is appalled that you can so easily "cheat" these puzzles. Like, what's the point anymore?
The Tartaros vaults are especially tedious. Now, there were a handful of vaults that I actually enjoyed (I liked the ones that were designed like obstacle courses for Fenyx, and the pinball one was fun), but many of them were designed so that if you made a mistake, you had to go a long way back to the beginning to start over, which made the experience so damn tedious. The vaults and side content are in stark contrast to BotW—yes, BotW's shrines were generally easy, but as a result, they also never felt tedious, and yes, BotW didn't have tons of things marked for you to do on the map, but as a result, you felt genuinely rewarded when you stumbled across a Korok seed or hidden chest because you wanted to go exploring and found this cool thing along the way.
I really want to reiterate that, aside from maybe some of the constellation challenges that were moderately interesting, there isn't really a sense of accomplishment when solving these puzzles, but just relief that you've ticked off that box and can move on to the next thing. And I'm saying this as someone who's a completionist whenever I play a video game.
In terms of main quest gameplay, you're allowed to rescue the four gods in any order you want, which is fine. But when you get to the final area, King's Peak? It basically takes two hours to slowly ascend this huge mountain, occasionally pausing to fight enemies or do mandatory myth challenges, and all of it is just. So. Boring. I don't know whether they threw in the mandatory myth challenges as a way to pad out the gameplay length, add some "variety" to the ascension (even though the myth challenges are all ones that you would've done already, unless you went out of your way to avoid doing any myth challenges on the Golden Isle), or force you to get some Charon Coins before the final boss in case you, again, went out of your way to avoid myth challenges (which feels like too much hand-holding). But the whole experience is, again, just tedious.
"Tedious" is not a word I should be using at all to describe a video game, let alone using multiple times.
Now, let's talk about the combat. There is nothing wrong with the combat at first blush—it's more frenetic than the precision-based combat of The Legend of Zelda, so if you preferred a hack-n-slash combat style, you'll probably enjoy Immortals more. But it's also—once again—not done in a way that's particularly interesting. Maybe this was stark for me because the previous game I'd played was a Platinum Games game, so there could really be no contest. But combat in Immortals boils down to figuring out the most efficient strategy and then using that over and over again. For me, it became (1) spam Ares's Wrath until I stunned the enemies, (2) wail on them until the stun meter ran out, (3) repeat ad nauseum. The only time you're forced to change your tactics is when it comes to the wraiths and some (not all) of the bosses.
Combat itself felt slightly janky to me. I don't know whether it was me or the game (though, once again, I just came off a Platinum Games game where I found the combat responsiveness smooth as butter), but I sometimes felt like I would hit the button to dodge or parry, but the move wouldn't register or it would be delayed, and that was extremely frustrating.
Also, you have a number of special abilities: Athena's Dash, Ares's Wrath, Hephaistos's Hammer, and Phosphor's Attack. However, because—again—you're incentivized to stick to one efficient combat strategy, I find myself almost never using Athena's Dash or Phosphor's Attack. Athena's Dash feels redundant in combat, because you have Ares's Wrath for heavy stun damage and Hephaistos's Hammer for heavy DPS, so Athena's Dash has no niche (except maybe if you want to close distance to a faraway enemy, I guess). Phosphor's Attack is cool, and I wish I could've used it more often, but it just doesn't feel worth the stamina cost compared to Ares's Wrath or Hephaistos's Hammer in most cases. There's a problem when half of your special combat abilities feel pointless.
In terms of combat strategy, there's a fundamental problem with the game, which is that you're generally incentivized to dodge instead of parry, since most attacks from most monsters are un-parryable. So, when you encounter a new monster or boss, instead of wasting time learning the 10% of the battle when you can parry, it's easier to just dodge. Plus, when you're sufficiently "over-leveled" in terms of health/power/potion strength for a boss fight that's supposed to require specific tactics, you're incentivized to soak up damage rather than change your strategy. However, this becomes a problem in the 1% of situations when you're supposed to parry a boss's attacks. I learned this too late for the Medusa boss in Athena's vault—after three extremely frustrating phases when it took me forever to damage her because she was constantly teleporting, I finally realized I could parry one of her attacks. This isn't good gameplay design.
Conclusion
Immortals Fenyx Rising is entertaining enough if you have literally nothing else to play at the moment—and yes, that's damning praise. But it's a game made mediocre by its many flaws, and it falls heavily into the Ubisoft trap of seemingly having tons of side content, only for said side content to feel like tedious items to tick off a completionist's checklist rather than enjoyable for their own sakes.
