Rise of the Ronin is set to release soon, but it’s already facing some bad press.
You may have already heard early impressions that the game doesn’t seem to have good graphics. It’s not that the game is ugly – rather, the game’s promotion, alongside the caliber of its developer and publisher, has suggested that it would be a bigger title than it looks like to previewers.
We will focus on SkillUp’s impressions of the game. When it comes to graphics, he compares Rise of the Ronin unfavorably to games that were even published on the PlayStation 4. SkillUp says:
“Visually, Rise of the Ronin is a good-looking game, in its own way. It’s really tough because Ghost of Tsushima exists. And say what you will about that game, no one can argue that Tsushima is a looker, an absolutely stunning rendition of not only that world, but also that period, always embracing bold color palettes and sweeping horizons. Even though it’s a console generation old, Ghost of Tsushima is still a phenomenal looking video game even today
When it comes to art design, Rise of the Ronin also faces stiff competition. Fromsoft’s horrific rendition of samurai and yo-kai exhibits their unmistakable macabre genius, while Like a Dragon Ishin had these incredible faces that look so distinctive and this beautiful and bustling town of Kyoto to explore by either night or day
In contrast to all of this, why is the Ronin looks quite workmanlike. It’s by no means an ugly game but it lacks the arresting beauty of Ghost of Tsushima the stark art design of Sekiro or the impressive character designs of Ishin. It kind of just gets the job done, and I don’t want to sell it short because I don’t think it looks bad, but it’s certainly got less technical sheen and visual distinctiveness than its contemporaries.”
And then, SkillUp has even worse things to say about its performance.
“Performance was also a little shaky. Like I said I played it on performance mode and with a game looking like this I’d really hope for a locked 60 FPS but I did not get that. I don’t know that this is actually running at 60 FPS by the way. It kind of looks more like 45 FPS to me, with regular dips.
These dips were frequent enough that I found them disrupting at certain moments. Furthermore ,it seems like cutscenes are locked to 30 FPS. Or, if they’re not, there’s some weird jittering effect going on that makes it feel less smooth than it should be.
I’m certainly looking forward to the Digital Foundry write up on this one, because I’d really like to see the specific numbers behind some of the stuff I can only report on anecdotally.”
It’s certainly surprising to be learning this about a PlayStation second party game, from a studio with Team Ninja’s reputation. They literally recently released a better performing multiplatform game in Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty. But perhaps the issue stems from Team Ninja releasing the game a little earlier than they should. Hopefully a patch or two will address these issues.
Rise of the Ronin will be releasing on March 22, 2024, exclusively on the PlayStation 5.
