Rise of the Ronin review

Rise of the Ronin on PC has kept me guessing for all the wrong reasons. Don’t get me wrong, I love a rambling systems-heavy open-world action RPG romp as much as the next guy. I’m fond of being led on countless wild goose chases across fantastical lands with ambiguous historical grounding. And I’m partial to layered combat systems, brutal melee combinations, and enemies who scale in difficulty as I become increasingly adept at waving a pretend wooden stick around while clicking my real-life mouse at the exact right moment. Lest I cop one in the mouth myself, of course.

What I’m less into is unpredictable performance issues. I’m far less enamoured by FPS counts that shuttle between single and triple digits faster than a round of Family Feud, and I don’t care much for being forced into slow motion movement in built-up areas, wading through proverbial Edo-era treacle, simply because my screen is busy with NPCs and quest-givers.

Team Ninja, it must be said, has blazed a fine trail into the action RPG genre over the last several years. But the developer is also no stranger to poor PC ports in that same stretch. And that’s what makes recommending Rise of the Ronin on PC via Steam in its current state difficult.

Smooth/criminal

In the interest of transparency, I finished and mostly enjoyed my time with Rise of the Ronin at launch on PS5 in March of last year. For the most part, I knew what I was getting this time around, save for the underlying dread now synonymous with the delayed console-to-PC pilgrimage so many have struggled with in recent times.

Like Monster Hunter Wilds upon arrival, Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, and Team Ninja’s own Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty to name but a few, Rise of the Ronin is another such casualty in what can now only be described as an unwanted trend. That said, none of Rise of the Ronin’s peers above managed to baffle me in quite the same way.

You see, when Rise of the Ronin is running smoothly, it’s a dream. With a frame rate cap of 120 on high settings, I breezed through its character customisation suite and tutorial without issue, which at various points involves switching between fighters on the fly mid-combat, executing break-neck combos and gruesome limb-severing finishing moves, before zipping over rooftops by virtue of a quick-fire grappling hook Sekiro-style.

Powered by my Nvidia RTX 3060 GPU, Intel Core i7-10875H CPU and 16GB of RAM, I struggled to marry the slew of negative performance-related reviews that exist on the game’s Steam page with my own experience, and prematurely, and clearly naively, decided I’d lucked out. (At the time of writing, Rise of the Ronin has a ‘Mixed’ reviews consensus on Valve’s digital storefront, with 45% of 1300+ reviews marked as positive.)

I hadn’t, of course. Because barely had I planted my feet on the slick timber deck of a 19th century navy vessel in Rise of the Ronin’s opening mission before things turned to crap.

With a half dozen extra bodies on-screen, my characters suddenly moved in slow-motion. Animations jarred, audio dipped in and out, and texture pop-in blighted, well, just about everything. I dropped my settings down to standard and then eventually to low to no avail, as the night rain battered down on my two listless combatants in something that better resembled the jailbreak scene in the Shawshank Redemption.

As if wading through the poisonous swamps of Dark Souls’ Blighttown, I painstakingly made my way to the ship’s stairs just a few feet away and headed for its lower deck. Met with even more baddies than before, my heart sank. And then, inexplicably, my performance spiked.

I morphed into a Boshin War legend with fists of fury and a wooden stick that moved like a fly swatter. I made light work of my aggressors and even lighter work of the FPS cap in a lightning-fast, silky-smooth blaze of glory. Fast forward 20 minutes, and I was back in the optimisation doldrums as I stared down a cluster of angry swordsmen whose leather boots appeared super glued to the snowfield underfoot.

And so went my time with Rise of the Ronin on PC. Sublime one moment, ridiculous the next, and no less frustrating throughout. Which is a shame, not just because it compromised my own time with this version of the game, but because I’m clearly not an isolated example. Quick to address the recorded issues, publisher Koei Tecmo issued a performance-facing update on launch day—Tuesday, March 11—stating it was "investigating" reports and working on a patch that aims to "fix or improve some of these issues." At the time of writing this is yet to materialise, however it’s worth noting that almost half of the game’s Steam reviews are nevertheless positive.

The path of light

So, if you are able to persevere, or are among those who’ve managed to avoid progression-halting optimisation issues, Rise of the Ronin isn’t without its charm. It’s formulaic, sure, but it riffs on an interesting juncture in Japanese history and is a joy for nomadic action RPG completionists who’re fond of combing sprawling open worlds from pillar to post.

In Rise of the Ronin, the Shoganate era has entered its final furlong during the Bakumatsu period. You’re planted in a mid-19th century slant on Yokohama (later visiting Edo and Kyoto too) as a member of the Veiled Edge resistance group who seek to overthrow the Shogunate.

In its most basic form, this involves ridding villages of unwanted bandits, growing your regional bond with the area as you go, and netting karma from these perceivably altruistic endeavours. Karma can be swapped for skill points and used at banner checkpoints to grow your strength, charm, dexterity and intellect skill trees, and, as is the case with any ARPG worth its salt, doing this helps define your character’s qualities and fighting style.

The latter is especially important because stealth in Rise of the Ronin, while possible, is pretty non-existent as a result of ignorant enemy AI, who may as well be deaf to the world around them. In turn, the most satisfying sense of reward is gleaned from mastering the game’s three core fighting styles—Jin, Chi and Ten—by cycling between them off the cuff as each combat scenario dictates.

Similar to Team Ninja’s Nioh series, ki is stamina by another name, and must be managed every time you lock horns with enemies. Only with enough ki in the tank can you hope to break an opponent’s stance or perform a brutal, incapacitating takedown. Moreover, counterspark, Rise of the Ronin’s take on parrying, will help force windows of opportunity for those guard breaks and cinematic executions—and so when all of this is put together, Rise of the Ronin at times can feel as much of a rhythm game as it can an ARPG.

That’s no bad thing either, because the eureka moments that follow finally overcoming a steadfast end-of-zone boss by virtue of quick wits and mouse clicks—of knowing when to reach for the shuriken over the bow; the musket over the sword; the grappling hook over the rifle—are second to none. This sense of achievement is bolstered further still the deeper you wade into the game’s narrative and the more bonds you form with applicable NPCs, who in turn offer valuable items, new combat styles to learn, and unique unite attacks to experiment with when paired together in battle.

Ronin moanin’

Of course, none of this means anything if performance issues prevent you from playing the game and experiencing it. There are, again, plenty of people also saying they’ve gotten on fine. If I thought they were exaggerating, I simply wouldn’t comment, but the fact that my own experience with Rise of the Ronin on PC has kept me guessing quite so much, it all seems to fit pretty well. Ultimately, it appears the majority of folk have so far faced the same or similar problems I did, and that’s simply unacceptable for paying players.

Whether or not the awaited patch fixes things, the difference between a game like this one and, say, Monster Hunter Wilds is that it tends to only be the very best games that are capable of brushing themselves down and fully bouncing back.

I’m not entirely convinced people care enough about Rise of the Ronin for that to happen, and I get the feeling the damage has already been done here. In any event, Team Ninja’s latest PC port has ruled itself out of the conversation for the time being. And that I can say with certainty.