I dug deep to get my review of Ubisoft’s latest title out as soon as possible.
Immortals Fenyx Rising is a game I’ve been looking forward to ever since I played the Stadia-exclusive demo a few months back. A chance for a Breath of the Wild style game that wasn’t bogged down with horrible design choices set in the background of Greek mythology? Sign me up.
Immortals follows the character of Fenyx whose tale is told in the form of a story by Prometheus to Zeus. Prometheus serves as the narrator with Zeus adding in a joke here and there. Fenyx has been chosen by the gods to assist in the fight against Typhon who has imprisoned the gods and intends on killing all of them. Also you’ll want to help your brother who was turned to stone along with all of the other mortals.
The humor of Fenyx Rising is one that feels at home in a story of Greek mythology, and by that I mean there is a lot of sex, murder, sex, drinking, sex, drugs, sex, betrayal, and sex. Fans of Greek mythology will be happy to point out the various nods and winks to the pantheon and those less educated can still laugh at the idea of Zeus turning into a swan to seduce someone.
1. Customize Your Experience
One thing I love about modern day Ubisoft is how dedicated teams are to allowing the player to tailor their experience because these are video games and the ultimate goal is having fun. If there’s something in Immortals that you don’t like, odds are there are ways to customize the game to make it less of an issue.
Particularly this comes into play with the various puzzle types that dot the world. Pretty much all of the puzzles have some sort of option that can be switched to make them more accessible. Having trouble with the sliders? Turn on the edges. Not understanding where the game is coming from for the constellation puzzles? You can have orb locations appear on the compass or on the screen. Unable to perform the arrow puzzles in one shot? Turn that off.
Virtually any and all HUD elements can be disabled individually if you don’t want to see things like loot pickups, damage numbers, combo numbers, etc. The subtitles allow you to choose whether or not they display the name of the speaker, whether they have a transparent background, and you can even adjust things like adding a cooldown to the music shifting. This is also one of the few third person games with an FOV slider that I have played.
Fenyx has a few customizations upon creation, namely you can mix and match any of the options. Instead of gender the game has two body types and two voice types that determine what the game refers to Fenyx as. None of that matters however as you can go to a barbershop and change any of that at any time. You can even transmogrify your equipment to look like the gear you like best.
2. Legend of Copyright: Breath of the Infringement
The one topic that I think needs to be taken care of right off the bat is comparisons to Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and whether the game is a clone of sorts. My short answer? Kinda totally yea. There are a lot of mechanics in Fenyx Rising pulled straight from Breath of the Wild; from the biomes surrounding the big bad guy’s gate, using your farsight to highlight points of interest, the glider, the combat, the dungeons, the puzzles, the climbing, the vaults, the stamina system, the mount taming, the mini-bosses, and other mechanics. Okay so there are a lot of similarities.
There are several differences between Immortals and Zelda to note outside of the story elements of course and the biggest one is that Fenyx Rising does not have weapon durability. Instantly a better game if you consider the two to be close mechanically. Secondly the rain does not fall in Fenyx Rising causing you to slip while climbing up ledges. Two benefits for the price of fun.
3. How Can She Fight?
Combat in Immortals Fenyx Rising is definitely the star of the show. Fenyx is able to zip around in battle thanks to a library list of abilities that you’ll earn over the course of the game. You’ll be expected to block, parry, dodge, duck, dip, dive, and dodge to beat the various foes that come your way. Everything feels very fluid and responsive, and I rarely felt as though the controller wasn’t reacting to my button presses.
There are a few points where the game can get frustrating, particularly when Fenyx gets grouped up on by enemies with shields who start spamming unblockable attacks. Thankfully there are plenty of ways to use crowd control to beat them back.
There are no player levels or experience to grind in Immortals. Instead you’ll need to complete different activities and open chests that reward you with various types of armor. Each piece has its own effect such as giving Fenyx more health, giving damage bonuses for maintaining combo numbers, or reflecting damage with a perfect dodge/parry. It’s up to you to equip items to suit your style of play, and odds are if you have a style it is represented through one of the many pieces of equipment.
There is a base “level up” system in the sense that as you obtain currencies you can upgrade your health, stamina, as well as across-the-board upgrades to weapon/armor rates. It’s a combination of horizontal and vertical progression that can work against the game’s favor. Content doesn’t scale to your character (or if it does it’s not visible) meaning you’ll tend to vastly outperform its expectations if you tend to clear a zone out once you’ve uncovered it.
Also I love how when you beat enemies they just get yeeted off into the horizon. Looks like team minotaur is blasting off again!
3. Achoraphobia
Fun fact: There is a scientific term for people who have an irrational fear of Ubisoft games. The term is Achoraphobia. I made it up. It involves a fear of spending dozens of hours in a single game completing a list of chores and as we all know Ubisoft loves chores. Ubisoft game designers love chores more than kids love not doing chores. In fact I’m willing to bet they’re doing chores right now or writing a list of chores and going to bed eager for a new day of doing chores. Stop saying chores.
“Reading this review is a chore.” Jinx, you owe me a Coke.
Immortals Fenyx Rising is packed out the ears with chores full to the brim with stuff to do. There are arrow challenges, transport challenges, constellation challenges, mini-bosses, chests, guarded chests, epic chests, and all kinds of doodads and tchotchkes to collect and increase your digital portfolio. Thankfully at no point are you forced to complete all of these. At some point it just becomes a matter of how overpowered you want to be.
5. Fenyx Too Tiny, or, The Bosses Too Giant
One major complaint I have with Immortals is that the boss creatures are kinda sorta pretty much entirely broken. I’m not sure if any other reviewers are mentioning this because I don’t read other reviews before I publish mine, but the bosses in this game were either not play tested or they weren’t play tested with a diverse enough group of people. I say that because I’m not an MLG pro gamer and if I figure out a strategy it’s probably going to be much more widespread.
You see the big problem that many of the bosses and legendary monsters have is that their size is massive and Fenyx is tiny. What this leads to is a problem where I can just hug the feet of most monsters and they can’t hit me with their giant weapons. All I need to do is dodge their stomping attacks and I could get through many of the toughest boss battles without taking more than one or two hits. It’s also kinda sad seeing the bosses flail about unable to hit me or figure out how to get themselves lined up while pulling off what I assume are hard-hitting attacks. They look cool, it’s too bad I’m straddling their shins and completely untouchable.
I beat the final boss with only one health potion consumed, and the only reason I needed it was because I literally walked out of the room to heat up some soup. Here is my health bar when I returned:
And here is the soup. Chowder. The heaviest of soups.
6. A Lesson In Physics
I think the part of this game where Ubisoft Quebec seems dedicated to giving the player the middle finger is in the numerous physics puzzles that dot the land. This part of the game wouldn’t be a problem if the systems, you know, worked, however in many areas the physics system combined with the material system produces a concept that is nearly worthless at best and more than worthless at worst.
One trick the game pulls to prevent players from cheesing some of the puzzles is to use wooden boxes that must be carried, pushed, or pulled and can break rather easily. Unfortunately they can also break from the simple act of picking them up which I doubt is an intended feature and should have come up during normal playtesting. This can cause a number of puzzles to be ridiculously difficult not because they are complicated but because the game simply doesn’t work properly. Other times you are expected to stack boxes which can be equally frustrating when they snap on contact, again something that shouldn’t happen.
Another major problem with this game is that it doesn’t follow its own rules some of the time. There are ledges that you can’t latch on to because I don’t know. Walls you can’t climb on for no particular reason. Some ledges can be grabbed on to if gliding into them but not jumping at them, which makes me suspect they weren’t supposed to be grabbable at all. Some flat surfaces can’t be stood on for no obvious reason. If you’re going to go through the trouble of creating a sandbox system, the least you can do is make sure the game adheres to its own rules.
Some aspects just don’t work. Fenyx should be able to grab items pull them over her head but often that system just fails for no reason. For the most part it’s fine, but when there are puzzles that can instantly fail if Fenyx drops said item it becomes frustrating fast.
7. In Conclusion
Immortals Fenyx Rising is a game whose positives outweigh the negatives. While the fighting system might not be perfect it is functional most of the time and the general battles you get into on the field greatly make up for the less stellar boss fights. There is a ton of content in the game given I left a good number of collectibles and still ended with 40 hours of gameplay.
There is a heartwarming story inside of all the tales of Zeus getting drunk and burning a village or destroying an island. The characters are memorable thanks to their animations and voice actors, and ultimately I think most people will come out having appreciated their time in the game. As to whether or not you’ll want to dive in for the New Game+ or the upcoming DLC, that’s another story. I on the other hand had completely burned out by the time the credits rolled, having put 40 hours into the game over the course of three days.
I think I’m going to let this one rest and marinate.
If you want to play Immortals on PC and don’t want to pay out the $60, I recommend subscribing to a month of Uplay+. It’s $15 and you get to play all of Ubisoft’s other releases like Assassin’s Creed Valhalla and Watch Dogs Legion.
MMO Fallout 