Ryse: Son Of Rome Review: 5 Reasons It's Hugely Disappointing

5. The Story Makes 300 Look Like An Oscar Contender

Easily, one of the more focused aspects of development was on telling an immersive tale of vengeance set during Emperor Nero€™s reign over Rome. This is a setting that really doesn€™t receive much exposure in the gaming industry, so it comes with a preconceived notion of hope and anticipation that Crytek would really dig into the historical side of things and weave together a story full of intriguing characters and events, fictional or not. Sadly, Ryse is nothing more than incredibly basic and rote plot events. You play as Marius and begin the game protecting Emperor Nero, where Marius begins to tell a flashback that sweeps across the entire middle portion of the game. Every beat and twist is either predicted or met with total indifference as nothing about the story is gripping. You will probably be able to visualize the final scenes after roughly 2 chapters which is unacceptably poor storytelling. There is also a supernatural aspect tied to the game which adds nothing and feels like a rejected early premise for some God of War 1 themes. All of this is truly unfortunate because Crytek clearly put forth effort into crafting scenes with fantastic production values, especially considering that a good hour of the 5 hour completion length is spent watching characters telegraph every plot point. One area that cannot be chastised though is voice acting. For such a run of the mill story the actors really went out of their way to emphatically deliver the dialogue, and the results are you every once in a blue moon excited to go butcher the same generic enemies.