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Rise of the Argonauts Review

Rise of the Argonauts is one of those games I really wish was better than it is. At its heart is a fantastic concept - Take a classic Greek myth, reinvent it as a KotOR/Mass Effect style RPG, and add brutal hack and slash combat. Trouble is, there's a reason very few companies outside of BioWare attempt such projects, and that's the fact that they're very hard to do successfully. To their credit, the folks at Liquid Entertainment have produced an ambitious and well-intentioned game. It's just not an especially good one.

I went to the Ancient Greek tailor.

The core of the story is that of Jason and the Argonauts. A king named Jason seeks the legendary Golden Fleece with a boatful of the biggest badasses on the wine-dark sea. In Rise of the Argonauts, Jason's wife is assassinated during their wedding ceremony by an evil cult known as the Blacktongues. Unwilling to accept her untimely death (possibly due to overwhelming anticipation of the wedding night), Jason decides to find the Golden Fleece and resurrect his slain love. A tad creepy, but Jason is such an upstanding and earnest character that it actually works well.

After the initial action sequence that introduces the basic gameplay concepts of whacking enemies until they fall over, Rise of the Argonauts reveals itself as more than just a simple hack and slash. You actually spend an inordinate amount of time running around talking to people, solving their problems, and making dialogue choices that define Jason's personality as well as advance his combat skills.

This is actually one of the more inspired design decisions in the game. Most dialogue choices are aligned with one of the four patron deities that watch over Jason. These four also correspond to Jason's four weapons - Ares rules the mace, Athena the spear, Apollo the shield, and Hermes the sword. Making dialogue choices aligned to a god will earn you experience with them. Enough experience results in a point used to purchase skills from that god's skill tree.

For instance, making enough Apollo-aligned choices in dialogue sequences will allow you to purchase skills that generally relate to defense or shield tactics. This is a great way of making every conversation in the game count toward character development and tying it in with the action elements. Most actions you complete also earn you feats that can then be dedicated to the god of your choice for more experience with them. Each feat also takes the form of a star in a constellation chart that tracks your progress through the game. Completing constellations earns you even more feat experience to trade in.

It all interlocks elegantly but is a bit overwhelming and complicated at first. Worse, it's made almost completely irrelevant due to how easy the game's combat is. A lot of the abilities you can earn are flashy and fun to use, but none of them enhance Jason's fighting prowess nearly as much as the weapon upgrades and new armor he gathers over the course of the quest. In the end, a huge chunk of the game's character evolution system plays second banana to repeatedly whacking things with the mace.

He said, "Euripides?"

The combat itself is problematic. The three weapons are all meant to function differently against different opponents. The mace is strong and slow, designed to bash through armor. The spear has range and can be thrown, keeping dangerous enemies at a distance. The sword is fast and balanced, doing damage before slower opponents can react. Despite all this, each weapon does a fine job against any opponent. Just hammering away with your preferred instrument of destruction is all you need to do. Power attacks can lead to brutal finishing kills, including dismemberments and decapitations, which are perhaps the only truly satisfying element of the combat.

As with the dialogue experience system, the fighting has a lot of good ideas in it, but doesn't want to commit to them. If it were possible to encounter enemies who simply weren't vulnerable to the spear or sword, forcing you to use a mace, it would be a more strategic game. As it stands, it's just a button masher, and one with occasionally sketchy hit detection, especially with the spear.

Presentationally, the game gets relatively high marks. The characters look cool, even if Hercules (who really should be Heracles, given this is Greece) has a disturbing "Rob Liefeld drew me during a fever dream" appearance, and everyone is voiced by some of the top voice actors in the business. The animation varies wildly between main characters and bit parts, with some NPCs simply staring off into the distance, unblinkingly expressing their gratitude as you solve their life issues. The music is strikingly good, with epic movements and subtle Greek flavors to it.

I said, "Yeah. Eumenides?"

Despite all this, the game tends to drag due to pacing failures. Long stretches of gameplay consist of nothing but talking and more talking. What bursts of action there are generally confine themselves to small preset areas of the very linear locations you visit, and since most enemies do not respawn, one fight with them is all you get. One island you trek to, Mycenae, is about 80% dialogue and maybe 20% gladiator combat. At times it comes together nicely, but all too often it feels like an attempt to pantomime the far better-paced and plotted areas of Knights of the Old Republic.

Rise of the Argonauts is an unquestionably flawed game. This should not be taken to mean it's not fun to play. Even with the underwhelming aspects of the game factored in, this is a truly ambitious game. It feels like an A-list title made with a C-list budget, but there is heart to it. I believe the team at Liquid was trying to make something special, and while they didn't fully succeed, you can see glimmers of what could have been shining through fairly often. It's these moments - when you pull off a beautiful killstroke or endure a child's five-minute musical sales pitch or debate the merits of the Golden Fleece myth with a dissembling villain while senators cheer and jeer you on - that makes Rise of the Argonauts an odyssey worth a playthrough.

Article by: Matt Keil