Ryse was one of the big games shown for Microsofts E3 conference and when I first saw it I was intrigued and excited to play it. As Ryse began to be reviewed many gave Ryse poor grades, for a repetitve shallow beatem up style. When I heard this I was a bit skeptical to buy it, but I was pleasently surprised to see that it wasn't as bad as people seemed to have thought it was(at least in my opinion)
Story: The Main Character of this game is Marius Titus who is becoming a soldier in the roman army, because his father was a general in the army you could see that Marius wants to carry the same honor for his family. One day while he is sparring with his father barbarians break into Rome wreak havoc and they end up killing his mother, and sister, and later on even his father, Marius vows revenge on the barbarians. There is a lot of story to explain and I don't want to bore you with every single detail so I am going to speed the story up a little bit so excuse me if I miss some details to it. After capturing the King of the barbarians and his daughter The son of the king Nero, Basilius kills The King of the barbarians and the daughter gets away. Marius finally realizes that the barbarians aren't the reason his parents died but yet the unruly rule of the King and his followers. This is basically the main plot with the ending that I will address later in my review. The story is pretty awesome it's pretty short but it kept me interested throughout the game.
Presentation: When it comes to Ryse's presentation their isn't a whole lot that makes it stand out, but their our some decent things about it. First off the voice acting's excellent, Their our some great looking area's to the game, but one thing that I have to say is that the graphics for this game didn't impress me to much, their wasn't an insurmountable next gen look to it, but they didn't look bad. Their really isn't a whole lot of memorability to the presentation but all I can say is it's not bad.
Gameplay: This is probably the thing that most people would say dissatisfied them with Ryse. Ryse is a linear beat em up, and the combat to some feels repetitive and some people think it gets stale. I don't honestly agree with this, Sure I agree that the combat isn't the most deep combat system in a video game and sure their isn't a lot to the gameplay, but for me I just had fun with it, and probably because Ryse does not over stay it's welcome with only about a six hour campaign, and sure this shouldn't be a good thing considering that you are paying ten bucks for each hour of gameplay you play, but this does Ryse's gameplay a little bit of a favor because it would feel really repetitive if it lasted any longer. The combat is basically your normal beat em up and then after getting your enemy weak you can restore health and other special things with a quicktime event move you must correspond the color the character is attacking with the color of the button(like for example blue for X because X is colored blue on the controller) and this will kill an enemy or even multiple enemies just by pressing RT instead of having to continually hit them over and over again. A lot of people complained about the button prompts too because you can do pretty much any single button or even no buttons at all to not execute the proper QTE and you will still kill the enemy and maybe they have some what of a point, because you should at least have some enemies stop you from doing this, but the game rewards you with more XP to upgrade yourself faster, by doing this fast and accurately by pressing the right button, so I can see the reasoning behind this, but they should have executed it more properly. The gameplay is simple and shallow sure but I still honestly had a fun time with it, and if it's a good time that's good enough for me.
(Spoiler Alert) Marius goes through a change during the end of the story after nearly dying by the Barbarians. He's known as Damocles a myth in Roman folklore that would kill the leaders of Rome for treating their soldiers badly. Damocles Goes after Basilius, kills him, and then after King Nero and ends up killing him but dying in the process because he has to throw King Nero on his own sword to kill him and he falls down a large height to throw King Nero on his sword, so both die but Marius lives on as a legend for being the savior of Rome. The story as I mentioned above is interesting and enjoyable all the way to the end.
Overall sure Ryse isn't the best game you could spend your money on but you have to choose do you want a game that is fun, or do you want a game that has more depth to it. If you aren't too picky when it comes to certain game's I think you will like this game, but if you are maybe this game is not your cup of tea.