Today we are going to take a look at Immortals Fenyx Rising. This action RPG promises to take you on a journey through Greek mythology and let you explore the islands of the Gods in a Zeldaesque adventure. Whether it can deliver on its promise is the question we will try to answer today. Immortals Fenyx Rising is available on the Epic Games Store for 59 Euro and 99 cents or your regional equivalent.

With this review you have a choice of either reading it here in text form or listening to the video review. They both contain the same content.

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While being considerate, let’s face it. Ubisoft is a bit of a factory for making games. In the bad sense of the word. They take some basic tropes such as a seemingly frail hero who is actually though, a giant open-world filled with disposable quests and people, a cutesy mount, or at least a side-kick throw all of this into a giant tumbler, shake, shake, shake and serve. But that’s doesn’t necessarily mean all of their creations are bad. Some are actually a hell of a lot of fun! The problem comes in when they try to milk every franchise, by adding a sequel after sequel after sequel. That’s why every new IP is incredibly important and actually brings us games we want to play.

You might have heard the story that the creation of Immortals: Fenyx Rising was caused by a bit of luck. Or to be more precise, it was caused by a bug when they were developing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey when somehow the human crew was replaced by cyclopes. And the devs thought that was a lot of fun so they decided to take a bigger look at the mythological part of Greek culture and history. From there, it was just a small step to replace the serious tone of the Assassin’s Creed games with a world that is much more colorful and fun. And by just looking at the game there is no denying it. This was inspired by Breath of the Wild.

Every good superhero needs a catastrophe at the start of his origin story. And that’s exactly where the story of Fenyx begins. The ship with your hero aboard crashes at the shore of the strange island. And once you wake up you will quickly find everyone turned into stone, including your much more heroic brother. But, as you’re the only one remaining you need to find out what’s going on and save everyone, including some Greek gods and kick ass while defeating the evil guys who are the size of the Titanic. What’s really nice is the fact that this quite ordinary story of good vs. evil is told from a very different perspective as Prometheus is telling it to Zeus. These two have really great banter between each other, constantly break the fourth wall, and are making sure you understand this is a story that wants to be much more about the fun than about drama.

In the beginning, I wasn’t sure whether this would be a good choice as if they weren’t well written these two could quickly get old and annoying. But I was proven wrong and in the end, I enjoyed their banter and even looked forward to it. Yeah, it does depend on what style of humor you personally enjoy but let’s just say if you enjoy somewhat immature humor you will get a few laughs for sure.

What might disappoint some is that this isn’t a game where you get a lot of choices. Don’t expect this to be the next Witcher. This is a straightforward game where the only real choice you get is how your hero and heroine will look and from there you just follow the story. After a very linear tutorial island where you get to learn the basics of how the world looks, you will move to the central island where you will save a few Gods and then literally fly into the fight in the other zones.

The nice thing is that Fenyx is no weakling. You can easily juggle giant rocks, telepathically control arrows, climb completely vertical walls without any problems, and fly using acquired beautiful wings over distances very fast. I really liked the fact that the vast majority of abilities are given to you very early and from there you only make them better. The enhancements are separated into two distinct categories, the first coming with the traditional stuff like more damage, better defense, etc., etc., etc. and godly powers. There are six godly powers such as the strength of Hercules that allow you to carry the already mentioned giant boulders, Apollo’s arrows, and many others and these are really fun. And even these can be further upgraded to make you, for example, conjure a giant hammer out of thin air.

The big thing some of you might be disappointed by is the length of the game. This isn’t a game you will spend hundreds and hundreds of hours in. About 30 – 40 hours is what you should expect. On the other hand, this makes sure the game never gets boring as there’s always something going on.

What also some of you might find missing is a traditional leveling system. You won’t find it here. Instead, you need to focus on doing all the side-quests that can be found on the map that will provide you with a variety of different currencies used to upgrade your skills. But don’t forget to kill anything in your path as kills also provide you with the currency that’s used to upgrade your weapons and armor.

Since the majority of the inhabitants of these islands were turned into stone there really aren’t that many characters to talk to or to give you quests. Apart from a few randoms that somehow managed to escape all the mayhem and a handful of Greek gods to give you your quests the puzzles and map-events
will be your bread and butter. And so what if that makes the islands an empty playground? It was fun as hell to fight for the chests against gigantic mythical monsters, solve puzzles, navigate arrows through tiny space, race against the time in sprint races, or just play some melodies on a giant lyre. And if you want to take a break from the main island, jump into one of the mini-dungeons (which are eerily similar to the shrines from Breath of the Wild) which are full of even more fights, puzzles. As you can see, the variability could be a bit more… diverse. And the puzzles could grow in difficulty a bit more. Probably even a four-year-old could eventually figure them out.

The only place where the difficulty rises, sometimes, are the required story-puzzles, but that only proves the developers know how to make more difficult puzzles, they just didn’t. But, to remind you, this wasn’t something that made me not enjoy the game, just if it was better, I would have enjoyed it even more.

What was surprisingly fun is the combat. While at the start the combat seems a bit too straightforward and simple. Six skills, three weapons, the ability to dodge and parry, a few simple combos… that doesn’t really sound like much. But in the end, it ends up quite action-packed and full of.. well…. zing as Fenyx flies through the air, swings giant hammers, fires arrows in slow-motion, and just wrecks everything. Add to that the awesome giant mythological monsters and you’re in for a lot of fun in combat.

Though, again, I wish the developers were a bit more creative. Yeah, you will encounter the expected stuff such as cyclopes, minotaurs, harpies, and a few other mythological beasts. But there really wasn’t anything that would just make me stop and wonder at its amazing design.

What is great on the other hand is the style of the game. The bright colors and a comic-like style just looks great. Each part of the islands is dedicated to a god and is appropriately different. The parts dedicated to Aphrodite and Athena are luscious with opulent palaces and giant statues while the part dedicated to Hephaestus is cinnamon red, full of hammers and anvils, with robots frozen all over the place. And whenever you climb high enough you get these beautiful vistas that just ask to be screen-shotted.

Then there’s the technical part. I don’t really have anything bad to say about it. Everything just worked. Maybe the only thing, every time you go to the main menu the game checks for online assets and I do wish it would only do it once when it launches.

Sadly, there are a few bad things I have to tell you about. For example, there a few things the game forgets to teach you and you might have to search for online how to do them. Such as how to tame mounts. The physics can sometimes be a little tricky, especially in puzzles that involve flying or the use of wind. But in the end, all of these were just little things and didn’t bother me that much as I was just enjoying myself too much to care.

Conclusion

So… in conclusion: Immortals: Fenyx Rising is an interesting combination of Assassin’s Creed, Zelda and could certainly use a bit more creativity. But somehow, I didn’t care. I just had careless fun. If you like open-world games that don’t try to be bigger than the Universe, laughter, Greek mythology, and aren’t afraid to do a lot of puzzles you will have a lot of fun in this RPG. And also, it’s the closest we get to playing Breath of the Wild on PC.

So, that’s it for today guys. I hope you liked the review and if you did, please up-vote the review, follow my blog, and be sure to share it with your friends. And comment, if you have anything you would like to add. See you guys later with more gaming content.

Disclaimer: All the images have been taken directly from the Steam game page