Immortal Fenyx Rising

 

Publishers : Ubisoft , Ubisoft Milan

Developers : Ubisoft Milan , Ubisoft Quebec

Platforms : PS 5 , PS 4 , Xbox , Nintendo , PC

        So immortals is Ubisoft new IP that is officially labeled as an open world action adventure game but let me go ahead and stop you right there and tell you what this game really is. A mortal is is a mostly linear puzzle based adventure game with third person spammy action combat and I'm careful to phrase it that way because most of what you'll be doing in this game revolves around solving puzzles the 15 to 20 hour stories presented through four main areas which can be completed in about three to four hours each and all of them have mandatory puzzle solving in order for you to advance through the story. Unlike other action games that make puzzle solving optional such as doing one to find equipment in the new Assassin's Creed game immortals integrates puzzles throughout the entire game story, so if you're not into this kind of thing, it's best to stay far away from this title. While I'm fine with puzzle solving in action games. I think it's best served in moderation and definitely best when puzzles are not tied to progression through the actual story, but that's really not how it is here. Getting through immortals will require you to do a tremendous amount of honestly not very interesting puzzles. at pretty much every corner we're talking about things like moving blocks, hitting switches, collecting objects, guiding arrows and manipulating terrain and when all the mechanics are perfectly serviceable, such as how things move and interact and other logically solved. But most of them aren't really all that fun because they've all been done before. Not to mention there's just too much not only does the game require you to fiddle with puzzle solving to do anything in this game, even going so far as to lock the front door of a building to housing the NPC that's required for your next quest. Numerous times, and mortals also features of vaults every 45 minutes or so which are essentially giant instance puzzles. Add on top of the four main boss vaults, which you must do to finish each area which I can best describe as confusing, convoluted hour long, tiresome mega vaults, you'll start to realize that this game is just one giant ocean of puzzle solving the absolute worst offender in this game though, is actually climbing an enormous mountain with never ending puzzles and platforming blockades to unlock the final boss fights which takes the cake is one of the most annoying things I've done all year in the game. After a 15 hour marathon of puzzle solving this level actually made me almost want to quit if the game did a better job. of balancing the proportions of its other elements platforming, exploration and combat which are all far better it wouldn't be so bad but as it stands right now, the overwhelming majority of gameplay revolves around tedious puzzle solving. And by the way, it's not the good I feel awesome because I figured this stuff out or Wow, this is pretty clever or new. It's the What the hell do I do trial by error? Why are they making me do this puzzle solving over relying on puzzles interrupts the game too much crashing all sense of momentum. Okay for a puzzle game not okay, if you're marking this as an action game as it creates moments of extreme standstill, especially because the game doesn't do a good job of explaining actually what it wants you to do. Often you'll arrive at a puzzle situation take a look around and say to yourself, Okay, what now you just walk around wondering what to do praying that you'll run into the object you need to do XYZ for reasons ironically, half the time the solution was actually really obvious but since the entire game crashes to abrupt halt consistently for you to solve tiny riddles to proceed forward, you'll end up overthinking it all the time. Yeah, overall, I despise the puzzle solving this game because it never ends. Thankfully, the game does better in the combat department, but I won't go further than saying it's just okay and mortals has your traditional lock on style combat and third person but it doesn't really feel all that great compared to other games like DMC or Bayonetta. 

        It's too simple to easy and it's floaty and very bouncy. Phoenix has four abilities she can use such as a charge a hammer and a launcher, which I'll feel really cool and you get to use them very frequently, which is nice, but there's just not enough variety in her toolkit. And after a couple hours I started to yearn for more. You can combo a few things here and there. But that's about it. Most of the time, a simple four hits swiping combo Button Mash will do the trick because enemies only do one of three things swings that you can dodge or parry right attacks that you can dodge or projectiles that you can dodge was such a reliance on dodge and you end up bouncing all over the screen constantly which makes the gameplay feel very floaty and awkward. Especially considering the game has a very spicy soft lock on which seems to slide around too much when multiple enemies are present which creates this disorientation on screen which is crucial for a brawler to avoid combine those things with a lack of enemy variety and a real lack of interesting enemy mechanics and it's clear that the combat in this title can be best summed up as spammy, underwhelming and very slippery for five hours or so it's certainly some button mashing fun in the bosses are actually pretty enjoyable because they're much more focused and interesting, but if you're looking for a serious combo action game, this is probably not it. The other aspect to immortals is platforming, which is also unfortunately hot and cold on one hand general movement is fun and it's easy to get around everywhere thanks to the fact that most abilities can be linked together. For example, you can do a double jump while riding your horse off a cliff then link that into a glider which then you can boost then link that to an air dash or even a launcher to get up cliffs and such. This all leads to a very fluid traversal system and I have to admit it's pretty fun. 

        However, there is a lot of climbing in this game as well. And this is actually very slow and tedious and mortals is just begging for some sort of grapple or slingshot mechanic to get you a vertical space as quickly but as it stands now you have to sit through a slow crawl like animation for Phoenix every time she climbs up some unlike other platforming games Phoenix is sprint has somewhat of a jerky windup phase, where she awkwardly lurches forward before she starts running. Not only this is feel super weird when moving in any direction other than exactly straightforward but the animation must finish before it can be linked into a jump. This goes against every fiber of my inner gamer because it means you cannot hold the spread button while tapping jump like you would in any other game ever made. You have to press Sprint's way to split seconds for the animation to finish it jump if you hit jumped too soon, you will lose that jump. That means in a game where you have a double jump, you cannot double jump if you screw this up. 

        This is so bizarre because if you're already running you can hit jump while holding sprint just fine. I cannot tell you how many times I die with this mechanic because for pretty much the entire game I could not get used to dealing with this small input delay and again with this many bottomless pits that causes to death and mountains you do not want to fall from because climbing is again very slow. Just yet what why this is the sole reason that the platforming in this game is not as good as it should be. Now regarding the story, overall content and everything character related immortals is actually pretty underwhelming again, the story is pretty forgettable, involving some fly to Phoenix to say four gods and four different zones. which have been corrupted by the evil god Taiwan, which is just another very generic evil bad guy was zero personality.

        The game tries to grab your attention with jokes and light hearted banter but it falls flat in is pretty cringe. The cutscenes are also too long and overly wordy which by the end of the game I was just skipping through because they were pretty uninteresting. There was way too many in the voice acting was actually kind of irritating. Immortals is also quite devoid of meaningful things to do and side quests. It relies on various repeat side activities sprinkled around the map vaults with puzzles to find treasure song puzzles for upgrade materials, other puzzles to find gear you get the picture. As usual, this stuff is fun. For a short time and kind of miss after a couple hours. I pretty much passed up on all this stuff as it's just fluff and the game isn't hard enough for you to want to pursue this extra content. I instead try to explore the entire game app hoping to find more interesting content and I found around seven optional bosses or so tucked away in the corners which are by far the highlight of this otherwise fairly mediocre adventure I was really excited about immortals Phoenix Rising which by the way is a terrible name for an IP is it sounds like a forgettable mobile game that you find skimming through an iOS store as it would be it actually turned out to be quite forgettable you complete a pretty boring tutorial area free for guys but going through for pretty many quests you complete a bunch of puzzles which aren't really all that fun you climb up one of the most frustrating theme park mountains to get to a final boss but you're killing the game is over there is a new game plus option but by the time I finished this game I was not interested in what else has some fun game mechanics like lighting and yard style is pretty good. It has a decent chance was enjoyable for a while being fairly bare bones in terms of the most important game It looks nice in the art style is charming but it's so bogged down by an overall puzzles fiddly platforming and honestly a pretty boring story. I think he will do a lot better and why I think it's not a terrible video game. I cannot recommend immortals especially since I'm very surprised to see that they increase the price.