Immortals Fenyx Rising

Getting a month of Ubisoft+ maybe wasn't the most optimal course of action while also having an active 3-month Game Pass subscription going. But it was offered for a lowered price and I didn't know how long that offer would last. And most importantly, I wanted to play Ubisoft's colorful action-adventure game from last year, Immortals Fenyx Rising.

A humorous adventure in Greek mythology

The game was originally going to be titled Gods and Monsters but evidently Monster Energy considered that as an infringement of their trademark. The final title puts more emphasis on the game's protagonist but it is just begging for some sort of separator after the first word. I don't know why they didn't include a colon -- did they want to avoid Yahtzee doing a dry heave on his review when saying the name?

Fenyx Rising was developed by Ubisoft Quebec who made Assassin's Creed Odyssey previously. It shows in various aspects and features of the game, including combat: it has that equally great feeling to it. Similarly to Odyssey, Fenyx Rising also draws inspiration from Greek mythology which is this time in central focus: the game is pure fantasy through and through -- no historical setting shackles to keep things on the ground. (Odyssey did get pretty wild too though.)

The game begins with Typhon the titan having escaped from his imprisonment. As he takes his revenge on the Greek gods, Zeus seeks helps from Prometheus. Prometheus wanting to be free as well, instead wagers to be released if a mortal can defeat Typhon. He begins telling the story of Fenyx, a Greek shield-bearer who has just survived a shipwreck. She discovers that her surviving crewmates and everyone else in the game's open world, the Golden Isles, have turned to stone. Fenyx finds a prophet to recite a helpful prophecy and then begins restoring a selection of gods to rise together against Typhon.

Your adventures as Fenyx are narrated by bickering Prometheus and Zeus, who comment on events and people from the Greek mythology as about all the game's activities -- puzzles etc. -- are related to them in theme. It is a humorous (and educational) narration that doesn't shy away from the dark and odd parts of the mythology. Usually I stay away from games trying to do comedy but this time I liked it. It also helps that Promethous and Zeus have good voice actors: Elias Toufexis (Adam Jensen in the Deus Ex series) and Daniel Matmor (Sokrates in AC Odyssey) respectively. I feel their narration is what in part really makes Fenyx Rising, its humor not really hitting the mark without them. You can notice that particularly in the game's DLC where they don't appear.

Solid third person action

Gameplay-wise Fenyx Rising took inspiration from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (or so I've been told; not having played it myself). I'm sure there are other action adventure games in the mix too though. But I guess climbing requiring stamina is a feature taken from Breath of the Wild. It makes sense for something like negotiating one of the game's huge statues to remove fog from a map area, but often times I was annoyed by having to chug a stamina potion just to be able to shortcut up a cliff. (With about every action consuming stamina in the game, I was surprised that dodging doesn't.)

Defogging an area doesn't reveal points of interests in this Ubisoft open world. Instead you have to do it manually via the game's the first-person eyeballing mode (which can be used anywhere). To get stuff marked on the map otherwise you pretty much have to interact with it. That's a bit too much I think; passing something close by should be enough. As a completionist I was also bothered by how the game doesn't tell you if/when you have discovered everything there is.

Even on Normal difficulty Fenyx Rising starts pretty tough but with new gear, abilities, and upgrades it eventually becomes easier, quite the power fantasy in fact. You have pretty much every tool your typical action adventure game has these days: fast and slow melee, bow, perfect parries and dodges, etc. Slow motion happens at the right times and for the right duration to feel impactful. The game's combat is simply joy. There may be a bit too much of it, at least if you do everything there is. Not even this time could Ubisoft avoid maxing their quantity slider. I liked that you can keep getting small stat upgrades even after you've maxed everything. I think AC Origins was the first Ubisoft game they started doing that.

I initially considered gear effects to be disappointingly minor but they turned out to scale with your upgrade levels, many of them becoming much more impactful later on. Still, I think too few are as equally viable as the best ones. There could be more actual gear too, instead of having so many alternative color options taking space in chests: for every gear piece looted there are three more color options for each in as many treasure chests.

I played most of the game Fenyx looking like Kassandra from AC Odyssey as her hairstyle and armor looks can be unlocked with Ubisoft Units. I thought it was cool but I did later on start experimenting with alternatives as well.

Also, a side note: Ubisoft had apparently changed how their club rewards work because club challenges now give you experience points instead of Units straight up. Experience increases your account level, and levels give you the Units you got from challenges before. The Unit gain rate seemed to be about the same, if not more for me. Older Ubisoft titles also had had their challenges removed and rewards unlocked for everyone.

One of the more time consuming activities in Fenyx Rising are Vaults of Tartaros that are scattered around the world. They can consist of arena fights but most of them involve platforming/puzzle-solving with your godly powers, much like the minor activities in the game's open world. There are few tougher Vaults I had trouble solving or getting through but largely they are fairly easy. I think it's neat that the ultimate upgrades of your powers allow you to shortcut many puzzles. For instance, you can lift a heavy object that was designed just to be pushed in a puzzle or you can jump higher and float longer than intended to skip a section.

Gorgeous

I greatly enjoyed the game's vibrant visuals and style. Fenyx Rising is absolutely beauteous particularly if your machine can keep up a playable framerate while everything is maxed. But even on lower settings the game still is pretty. Later on I realized that I had gone slightly too heavy handed when aiming for 60 FPS and was able to at least turn resolution back to my monitor's native 1080p. That made the game again a bit sharper, as was to be expected.

Fenyx Rising plays nice with controller but I had to switch to mouse and keyboard again, this time due to the awful d-pad the Xbox 360 controller has. I have trouble ever hitting only one direction at once on the d-pad which in this game tends to mean unintended potion usage. Parrying also requires two controller buttons while on keyboard it's just one.

On both peripherals, spreading Fenyx's wings to glide has unnecessarily its own button. That caused me to fail in multiple platforming sections. I think games with a similar feature -- like Darksiders or Alice: Madness Returns -- usually just have you hold down the jump button when you want to float. And that's what I'm used to. I wonder what caused Ubisoft to do things differently.

Season pass's value questionable

Since Ubisoft+ gives you full access to a game's content, I decided to play the three pieces of DLC Fenyx Rising has even though I had an impression that they hadn't been well received. The first one, A New God, picks up narratively where the main game left off. Its gameplay is mainly doing more Vaults -- or Trials, as they're called in the DLC -- with further upgraded godly powers. The DLC can get tedious since there's not much open world exploration to balance out the back-to-back Trials.

The second DLC, Myths of the Eastern Realm was developed by Ubisoft Chengdu and is practically a smaller scale version of the main game with Chinese mythology theme instead of Greek. There are some minor differences in abilities but otherwise the DLC is structured in the same manner as the main game. It's an all right DLC but kind of pointless.

The final DLC, The Lost Gods makes a return to Greek mythology, and you as Ash go find a selection of gods that didn't make an appearance in the main game. Some gaming news article's title stated that the DLC "adds a topdown camera". I feel that 'add' is an incorrect word to use here; restrict would be more accurate. It takes away free third person camera, instead giving you a very limited view of the game world. I reckon that the DLC would function completely fine with the camera freed.

Taking things away seems to be the theme of the DLC in general. You initially can't sprint, climb, nor swim. These basic movement options you had previously only return after hours of gameplay -- the DLC is a full game in itself. Autosaves seemed to happen only when exiting a Vault (drastically different to the main game that saves constantly), and instead you need to save manually at fairly scarce altars. And saving takes resources too -- resources that you need to farm from the environment and enemies for all kinds of other stuff as well, like ability upgrades.

You can also spend the resources on temporary blessings which seemed to be nigh mandatory. Enemies scale up with your upgrade levels aggressively and I found the DLC truly difficult on Normal. For some reason few old enemies had had their behaviors changed which threw me off more than once. Like certain enemy that summons three adds when engaged and gains a floating shield for each add alive. In the main game, killing the adds stuns the enemy but in this DLC he just keeps going.

Then there is how more and more enemies keep popping out of thin air, like in Dragon Age 2 but tuned up to ridiculous levels. In the endgame, a pack of enemies is at least three times as numerous as it initially appears.

There is a rather involved ability upgrade system in the DLC, allowing you to enhance your attacks with new effects -- and restore effects they had previously (like being usable while in the air). The feature is poorly balanced however: I doubt there are many different effective ways to go about it. Prioritizing critical damage and chance, adding some health and stamina restoration, and finally having your favorite attack (like the dash) have a chance to not consume stamina appeared to work for me. Enemies no longer handed my ass back to me when I had no blessings on.

The Lost Gods sure left a sour taste in my mouth. You're really better off just buying/playing the fun and entertaining main game of Immortals Fenyx Rising and avoiding its DLC.