Set for a release on the 3rd December 2020, Immortals Fenyx Rising is Ubisoft’s latest first-party offering. Once called Gods and Monsters, the idyllic world of Greek gods has opened its doors to us. We were already able to try it out in September, but this preview session allowed us to take a deeper dive into the game’s story.
An open world inspired by Greek mythology, with stunning environments and puzzles to solve: do we have yet another The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild clone on our hands, or could this be something entirely different? Read on for our verdict.
Note: all the images you see were taken during development. They are not indicative of the game in its final state.
- Genre: RPG, Adventure
- Release Date: 3rd December 2020
- Platform: Xbox Series X, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Epic Games Store, Uplay, and Stadia.
- Developer: Ubisoft Quebec
- Publisher: Ubisoft
- Price: $59.99
When the Gods of Olympus Call for Aid
Whether you’re a fan of Greek mythology or not, the setting of Immortals Fenyx Rising feels simple and effective. We’ve come a long way from bloated stories and toing and froing between NPCs to learn more about the world they inhabit. For that, you can count on two renowned narrators, Zeus and Prometheus, to do a marvellous job regaling you with tales of the world.
But it’s not all about the narrators: the stories in themselves are incredibly gripping, with just about the right amount of humour in both animations and dialogue.
So, what’s the gist? Typhon wants to destroy the Earth and has kidnapped all the gods and goddesses from Mt. Olympus. Playing as Fenyx, you’re the only one who can free them and save humanity. Throughout your long journey you must take on formidable foes and recover artefacts from the gods.
But in true RPG tradition, you must first create your character before any of that. There are a lot of customisation options for you to choose from and you can always change them whenever you want if you get any second thoughts.
The first hour of the game is key: you’ll learn to fight, solve puzzles, how to glide, and mostly importantly, come to understand what’s going on in the world. But don’t worry: although the voices Zeus and Prometheus will chime in regularly to tell you the tale of Fenyx, Immortals Rising is a true open-world experience. It’s up to you to go where your feet take you and decide whether you want to busy yourself with secondary quests, hunting down hidden chests, or simply just picking up every single berry in your path.
Simply just by looking at gameplay videos of Ubisoft’s new title, you’ll quickly realise that comparisons between Immortals Fenyx Rising and Zelda: Breath of the Wild are unavoidable. It’s impossible to deny it, as there are a lot of resemblances with the Nintendo title: puzzles that require you to use specific powers, similar mechanics between dungeons in the two games, and an open-world landscape, shimmering with colour, filled with resources to collect and enemies to fight.
But these resemblances take a back seat to just how striking and substantial the setting feels. It should be said that it’s been a long time since we’ve played a game where such an effective and gripping story takes such a hands-off approach at the same time
But what exactly is there to do in such a vibrant environment? In addition to saving humanity by trying to find the captured gods and goddesses, you’ll have to make your way through corrupted landscapes in search of immensely powerful artefacts.
Atalanta’s axe, Heracles’ bracers, Apollo’s bow, and even Hermes’ winged sandals…all these mythical objects will help you turn in quests, solve puzzles, and finish dungeons. If you want to get your hands on them, you’ll have to explore Tartarus, the underworld, and take on a plethora of enemies to recover Zeus’s precious lightning bolts, which allow you to improve your endurance. However, these dungeons are more complex than they seem – you’ll need both skill and patience if you wish to make it out in one piece!
In actuality, some dungeons are rather frustrating to explore if you don’t immediately understand how they work at first glance. Fenyx will have to stack boxes, move spheres to unblock passages, race against time to make it to the exit, and pull levers. The dungeons in Zelda, on the other hand, are a lot simpler. During our 4-hour play session, it took us a good 35 minutes to finish a mid-game dungeon, though that may be more indicative of how bad we were at the game than anything...
But all jokes aside, dungeons tend to increase in difficulty alongside your equipment and abilities, which are constantly improving. The immense Hall of the Gods is a real strong point for Immortals Fenyx Rising, as it allows you upgrade and boost your artefacts and other powers.
Another area where the game succeeds would be its difficulty levels, as you can choose between 5 different difficulties which can be changed at any point. You can play the game just for its story or get a real challenge against superpowered enemies at max difficulty. During our play session, we opted for normal difficult so that we could appreciate the story without making combat too easy.
And when it comes to slaying your enemies, what could be better than rare abilities and weapons forged by the gods? Whether fighting with a sword, an axe, or a bow, combat feels very fluid and enjoyable to experience. You can also fight in mid-air and use dodges to slow your opponent, or even approach them sneakily and take them unawares.
But players should be careful to not to bite off more than they can chew. Some enemies are much stronger than others and can finish you with a single blow! Some zones are inhabited by much stronger enemies, making the game a bit more linear than at first glance. You can still explore the map freely, given that it’s an open world game, but it’s a good idea to stick to the main quest so that you don’t just end up getting knocked around by enemies ten times stronger than you.
As mentioned earlier, you can also improve your equipment and unlock new powers as you work your way through the game. You don’t need to gather hundreds of different kinds of items to unlock these powers, as to our knowledge, there’s only ten different types of resources to collect in Immortals Fenyx Rising. Some players may find that number a bit lacklustre, especially when compared to Breath of the Wild or Genshin Impact more recently, but the idea to not bog down players with the burden of collecting loads of different materials does make some sort of sense.
Ultimately, a desire to work through the story tends to overshadow everything we’ve mentioned, though that won’t stop you from getting excited when you stumble across a hidden chest and set off on a quest to find all of Charon’s Coins in the game, for example.
So, What Else?
Yes, the story is indeed extremely engrossing and immensely funny. But once the main quest is over and all artefacts have been found, what is there left to do?
During our time with the game, we had the chance to fight a boss while controlling a character with max stats. It became immediately apparent that if you want to get to end-game level, you’ll have to spend countless hours running throughout the map trying to find Charon’s Coins, Ambrosia, Zeus’ Lightning Bolts, and other materials you’ll need. You’ll need all these resources to improve your endurance and, more importantly, your HP. It’s a real joy to be able to stretch out your wings and soar over the world without having to worry about your depleting your endurance.
In the video below, the boss fight looks rather easy, as our character is at max power, with maximum endurance and HP, as well as maxed-out weapons, but the journey to acquire all the resources you need to reach this point is indeed a long one.
If you ever find yourself getting a bit tired of the main story, there's always something else to do. The Hall of the Gods can be renovated at any time, or you can try out a range of different abilities available to you, finish some of Hermes’ secondary quests, go take on some corrupted enemies, hunt down some harps or Charon’s Coins, solve some puzzles, and even tame horses or mythical creatures like Pegasi!
In short, Immortals Fenyx Rising promises long and enjoyable hours of gameplay and we can’t wait to play it again!
And if you find that your divine powers make the game feel a tad too easy, then be sure to up the difficulty and see how you fare!
With a great sense of humour, fantastic voice acting, colourful graphics, an engrossing story, and extremely fluid gameplay, Immortals Fenyx Rising definitely a game you shouldn’t be missing out on this year! While it’s true that there are some similarities to Breath of the Wild or Genshin Impact when it comes to exploration and dungeon segments, the story is so excellent that it does more than enough to help you move past it.
Though the game does come across as a bit simplistic when it comes to storyline and gameplay, Immortals Fenyx Rising remains a very enjoyable adventure to experience, and one that is sure to satisfy a whole range of different tastes.
