Team Ninja gave us our first proper look at Rise of the Ronin during Wednesday's PlayStation State of Play showcase, and it looked good. Assuming you're into the Soulslike action-roleplay that the developer executed so well across its Nioh games, this independent follow-up ticks a lot of those boxes – on paper, and now, it certainly seems, in practice.
What started with light exploration, rooftop grappling, horseback meandering and glider-based aerial travel, quickly progressed into brutal, blood-spilling melee combat, deadly sword-slashing combos, and, thank the Edo era gods, quick-firing firearms. Hand cannons and rifles featured in Nioh, but this looks like the From Software-style mash-up I've always dreamed of – a martial arts game inspired by real events that combines deftly-timed, rhythm-heavy sword-play with gun-powered parries a la Bloodborne. We're some ways from Yharnam in the throes of the Boshin war, granted, but Rise of the Ronin is already speaking my language.
Guns n razers
Rise of the Ronin offers a glimpse into life after Elden Ring
I can't quite get my head around the fact Bloodborne is almost nine years old, but one of my abiding memories from its brutally unforgiving early steps involved a shield. When I first stormed the Lovecraftian streets of Yharnam in 2015, I'd only ever played the first Dark Souls. I missed out on Demon's Souls on the PS3 six years prior, and never got round to Dark Souls 2 until after I'd finished Bloodborne. Lordran, then, was my only experience of FromSoftware games at that moment in time, and I cautiously slouched around its entire twisted world with my guard up – simply because I could never quite get my head around parrying, and my roll-dodging left a lot to be desired.
When I first crashed into Bloodborne, I was surprised its tutorial stage failed to equip me with a shield. I assumed I'd pick one up shortly down the line, but grew increasingly weary as I waded deeper and deeper into Central Yharnam with only a Hunter Axe and Hunter Pistol in tow. When I finally reached Cathedral Ward, I was delighted to find my very first shield – and then became acutely aware of Bloodborne's cruelest joke: this shield (the only shield in the entire base game; a literal chunk of wood) is less than worthless. This cruelness leads to some degree of kindness, however, by forcefully molding you into the hardened hunter you invariably become, striking and dodging and firearm-parrying like a person possessed by the game's final showdown with the Moon Presence.
Fast forward four years, and I fell in love with Sekiro's meticulous, Bushido Blade-esque rhythm combat. I think the main reason I'm so drawn to studios like FromSoftware and Team Ninja is the fact that their games are firm but never unfair. When you die – which you will, countless times – it's your fault, and not the game's. You've messed up your timing. You've misread your enemy's attack patterns. You've made an arse of it, and it's this very fact that keeps you coming back for more. Often, overcoming failure invites a new approach – trialing a different combination of attack patterns, spells or parries – until something sticks. In Sekiro, though, failure sometimes felt stifling; that through a lack of combative options, persevering and praying to the RNG gods was the best way through.
"The myriad attack combos all of this promises – or at least the scope for such – is really exciting, and I can't wait to mix-and-match to my heart's content when Rise of the Ronin lands later this year."
Back to Rise of the Ronin, and what was shown during its three-odd minute gameplay trailer, to me, showed off the best of both Bloodborne and Sekiro – frantic yet measured combat unfolding in large open spaces and yet somehow claustrophobic, where every single sword blow matters, and every quick-switch to a firearm parry can catch you off-guard. Again, Nioh had guns, but for me, melee and firearms always felt better suited as alternative measures as opposed to combat styles designed to be employed in tandem.
The Rise of the Ronin gameplay State of Play segment that kicks off around the 1.50-mark dazzles to this end, first showing the player torching a group of charging foes with a flamethrower, and then engaging one tough SOB with a sword and hunting rifle in quick succession. Shortly after that, the player is seen stabbing an enemy at arm's length with the bayonet of a rifle, shooting them in the gut before rushing them and decking them, and then unholstering a pistol and putting one square between their eyes.
The myriad attack combos all of this promises – or at least the scope for such – is really exciting, and I can't wait to mix-and-match to my heart's content when Rise of the Ronin lands later this year. When Rise of the Ronin was first unveiled at the tail-end of 2022, I said its combat-heavy action-RPG trappings offered a glimpse at life after Elden Ring. It was an ambitious claim, I'll admit, but while 2024 at that point seemed like a lifetime away, the fact that we're likely to have this game and the long-awaited Elden Ring Shadow of the Erdtree DLC landing in the same year marks a pretty thrilling time for fans of these types of games.
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