“In a mad world, only the mad are sane,” a stirring line from Akira Kurosawa’s 1985 samurai epic Ran, urges us to remember that in times of chaos, strange or unconventional ideas may actually be wise. In Rise of the Ronin, I argue Team Ninja exemplifies that madness with an open-world title far outside its usual comfort zone. Unfortunately, even in a mad world, seeing the wisdom in many of the decisions made here is difficult.
Rise of the Ronin is Team Ninja’s first open world, set against a backdrop of 19th century Japan to tell a historical story of political upheaval and revolution. As a new pathway for a developer that primarily focuses on tightly designed levels, there is little to be upset about in its open-world execution. It is, lamentably, about as standard as open-world design comes, with content littered across the map but little of it compelling enough to seek out.
Collecting cats for one quest-giver, foreign books for another, photographs for a third, and so on, starts out feeling shallow and only ends up crumbling into busywork that grates over time more than it enhanced. These activities are clearly meant to freshen up the standard gameplay loop with distractions, but they left me scratching my head at the necessity of being an open-world game in the first place.
