Ryse Son of Rome was a launch game for the Xbox one. I never had an Xbox one and never got to play this game. Now that I have a method of playing this I figured it was about time, and looking at some screenshots I was excited.n

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Reviewed on the Steam Deck n

Being a launch game for a new console I would say Ryse Son of Rome did its job. Its job was to show what the console can do and visually it looks great. The presentation and graphics are definitely a showpiece for what this hardware would be able to do. Even coming to this a full console generation later it still does look gorgeous. n

The look of the game is really where the positives for me stop. I found just about everything else to be a bit of a chore. The first time you go into combat it looks flashy and responsive and then the execution-style kills were fun to pull off. Then you start to realize two things. There is no depth to the combat and when you do the executions you don’t even have to hit the right buttons.

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The story starts off great and I’m sure it was interesting through the course of the short campaign but I ended up getting so uninterested in the gameplay that I started to get uninterested in the story too. n

The game was never a challenge. There can be a lot of enemies on screen coming at you but it never was difficult and I never felt like I was in danger of dying.

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I don’t know what I wanted from this game but what I got wasn’t it. I’m sure if I played this on a launch Xbox one I would have had a better time for longer just based on how great it looks. Now that we have so many games that look great, games need more than that. n

Verdict

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Ryse Son of Rome was a great graphical showpiece for what a launch Xbox One could do, but in 2022 it just doesn’t have enough to go with its impressive looks. Very boring, and repetitive combat take away from everything Ryse has to offer. If I could go back in time I would love to play this when it launched but it’s moment passed and I wish that’s what I did with this game.

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Final score 3/10