With the global pandemic still ongoing, it’s a miracle than any games are trickling out. Yet Ubisoft have managed to release three in the last month. Watch Dogs: Legion had some technical issues but stands out as a showcase for 9th gen. tech. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla had a couple of gripes but is a strong showing for the long-running franchise. Immortals: Fenyx Rising seems almost like a labour of love lined up next to two of their powerhouse franchises.
Set when the rift between the gods and humans was slimmer than usual, Immortals follows the titular Fenyx. Fenyx is chosen by fate/two bickering-but-friendly gods to banish Typhon, a recently freed demon. Typhon has stripped every god of their powers and Zeus and Prometheus have a little bet on. Prometheus believes that a mortal will defeat Typhon and save the gods, Zeus is not hopeful. The plot has a Trading Places vibe to it with our protagonist wrestling his overseeing hands throughout.
Like a Fenyx from the Sea (No Spoilers)
In Immortals: Fenyx Rising, players take their choice of a female or male Fenyx. Fenyx is a farmer and storyteller who washes ashore after the ship s/he is sailing on sinks during a great storm. His/her brother is a great warrior who possesses a sword gifted from Achilles but, like all of Fenyx’s shipmates, has been turned to stone.
Fenyx being hustled by fate into beginning their journey only to be hijacked by scheming gods is a superb premise. The gods are mostly ambivalent to the trials and tribulations of the humans that worship them. Until it affects them, of course. A mixture of tragedy, comedy and godly mischief, Immortals: Fenyx Rising‘s plot is a loving pastiche of Ancient Greek storytelling.
Ubisoft have trawled through myth and legend before. So it’s no surprise that the application of Grecian lore is excellent. Immortals: Fenyx Rising is filled with actual mythological content and could teach you a thing or two.
Much like their other olden-dayser series, Assassin’s Creed, Immortals: Fenyx Rising captures the spirit of their subject. Unlike AC, Immortals seems to treat the lore within with a great deal of reverence. The knowledge and love for Greek gods and heroes is obvious.
War-Torn Greece
The game’s combat is easy to learn and difficult to master. However, most of the game’s foes are easy to dispatch once players get the hang of the easy parry system. Tapping both shoulder buttons at once in time with the exaggerated and telegraphed enemy attacks will fill an enemy’s stumble meter for an easy barrage of attacks.
Ranged-attacks are mostly useful in the game’s open spaces as they don’t pack much of a punch. Throwing heavy objects is quite a lot of stress to take on in the heat of a battle but it’s the most effective way of slaying mythical beasts.
Open-Realm
Immortals: Fenyx Rising strongly resembles Assassin’s Creed in form and structure. Players unlock areas of the map by climbing a monument or mountain to oversee the area. There is a nice micro-game when you use the far-sight ability atop these heights. Players use controller vibrations to hone in on areas of interest to mark them on the map.
Each area has its own theme to reflect the punished god residing therein. Some are luscious and beautiful, some are dangerous and scary. The game takes advantage of its fantastical setting to introduce variety to its settings.
Fenyx is very mobile. Adorned with wings and an uncanny ability to climb anything, trekking the world is swift. The undulating terrain is perfect for finding something interesting and gliding to it. The parkour elements are secondary to exploration. Ubisoft aren’t looking to test you as you move around the overworld – it has dungeons to test you in after all.
There is, however, a heavy puzzle element to Immortals: Fenyx Rising. Many of Golden Isle’s secrets and goodies are trapped behind a quick, cheap environmental brain-teaser. Be a sliding tile game, a pure maze puzzle or a weighted button test, the overworld’s brand of light puzzling is fun. It doesn’t hold you up for long but delivers a little satisfaction each time. Thanks to a painstakingly detailed world, solutions or paths to success are gently signposted everywhere.
Dungeon Mix
Players will find themselves being drawn into rifts to upgrade their gear and powers but also to slay regional bosses. The dungeons areas are otherworldly with impossible architecture and floating islands aplenty. The game’s most evil environmental puzzles reside here; from genuine tough puzzling to the more misleading but simple stuff, Immortal’s: Fenyx Rising‘s dungeons can take quite a while to complete once the easier, early dungeons are finished with.
There are some problems with implementation of boss dungeons. Players can wander into a fight in which they have zero chance, only to lose a little progress when it becomes apparent this area is not for you. Once you enter these scenarios, there is no easy way out aside from reloading a previous save.
Rip-Roaring Start, Then Left to Drift
The introductory phase lasts for around two hours. A series of regimented missions to show you various facets of the game is very welcome. After that, the plot stops. Players are invited to gather gods after freeing them from Typhon’s punishment with absolutely zero structure. One needs to discern what is important and manageable at that time and hope it’s possible.
The aforementioned impossible boss was a result of this lack of guidance. Having freed a god to help with the banishment, I heeded her advice. I went to slay a corrupted god to free her region of Typhon’s influence but found that fifteen minutes, all of my healing items and 50-60 hits of my weapon to (what looked like) his weak spot took about 10-15% of his health. Simply by listening to a cut-scene, desperate to know what to do next, I had trapped myself and due to poor game design, I had to reload and lose progress.
Even the narration drops off after that intro period. Zeus and Prometheus are a fun, almost constant soundtrack for the first few hours, only to stop very abruptly when players are left to roam. The seachange when the game stops being structured is jarring.
This only feeds the game’s main problem. Players have little incentive to do anything. The overall aim of the central quest is so detached from everything that players volunteer to do that they may forget that aim as soon as they are let loose. For all of its clever puzzles and beautiful vistas, there is nothing to make a player bothered to chase any of it.
Assassin’s Link
The art and dungeon aspirations of Immortals: Fenyx Rising are clearly inspired by TLoZ: Breath of the Wild. Not a bad game to be inspired by but the form and open-world is heavily based on Assassin’s Creed minus the form, the intrigue and the narrative incentives that come with them. This leaves Immortals as a hollow experience that doesn’t drive a player to the next stage of its yarn. In fact, I genuinely struggled to give myself a reason to keep playing the game.
Players may enjoy the exposition when it comes to them. But they will need to really enjoy it to romp through the game’s huge provision of content. While the twists on old tales are intriguing in of themselves, the devs’s love of the game’s subject matter isn’t enough to make most players want to chase said twists.
Review code provided by PR, reviewed on Xbox Series X.
