I consider myself to be rather well informed about upcoming games but there’s always a few that manage to creep up out of nowhere, for me Rise of the Argonauts is one of those games. Very loosely based off some ancient Greek mythology, Rise of the Argonauts tells a tail of Jason and his companions in their quest for the golden fleece which the astute amongst you may remember as an item in God of War 2. I’m a total sucker for any Greek mythology, even when it is rather twisted from the original tales there’s always a whole lot of back story that makes you feel like your playing in a world full of rich back story. It’s also easy to forgive the lack of accuracy in the retelling of these stories as who wants a story about Hercules killing his first children and taking many male lovers? Actually don’t answer that, I don’t want to know.
Everything begins with the assassination of your wife on your wedding day, Jason becomes rather aggravated by this and sets out for revenge while still determined that there must be a way to bring back his wife. The story is all laid out rather quickly and doesn’t offer much in the way of surprises, you’ll quickly find that you need to recover the descendents of three gods and use them to recover the golden fleece. Any option for open ended mission structure begins and ends with your choosing which descendant you go after first. It’s all a rather predictable story that’s clearly laid out for a video game; initial mission, 3 quests to find the descendants, mission after everyone's together, final mission.
Almost right away you’re thrown into some rudimentary God of War style combat with some familiar controls; weak attack, strong, dodge and block. At the beginning although everything appears to control rather well and you have 3 weapons, it doesn’t seem very deep or extensive, no real combo system and you simply either block attack or dodge attack. Fortunately the combat does get increasingly more interesting as you develop powers by devoting your deeds to the four gods. I’ll go into deeds a little later, but once you’d devoted some deeds you get to choose aspects from the four available skill trees, pick a few level one skills and the level 2 bracket opens and so on. It seems a little complicated on paper, but it actually works out pretty well and most importantly it adds a lot of diversity to the combat. Some aspects build up your existing skills, others can be mapped to the Dpad and used as god powers. God powers take a short while to charge up but being able to open up a black hole above you and suck enemies in or throw lightning and turn your foes to stone sure does mix up the combat and keep things interesting. The big disparity between something like God of War and Rise of the Argonauts is that instead of a game full of combat with brief pauses, you’re only occasionally treated to any combat, epically after the first battle.
Once you’re through your first battle Rise of the Argonauts transforms into something more akin to Mass Effect than you’d at first expect, lots of people to talk to and the rather iconic radial dialog menu. I mentioned before how Greek mythology is rather a fascination of mine and I appreciate a game that goes a little slower to build up the experience, but Rise of the Argonauts takes it a little too far. After the first combat you’ll be wondering around Iolcus traveling from one side of the map to the other on several occasions to complete quests, now I know that we’re talking 6th century Greece here and town planning has surely come a long way, but whoever designed this city should be sent to the gallows! Navigation has to be achieved without any mini-map, or full map hot button so trying to find your way around is often only possible by repeated trips through the menu to pull up a map. Perhaps if the regions weren’t so tedious or difficult to navigate then the story sections wouldn’t feel so long and strangely the worst example of this behavior hits you right at the beginning of the game.
Meet Hercules (left), the human man mountain
In the cities you visit you’ll find plenty of little side quests that will occasionally provide you with new armor or weapons but more likely will be the gift of a completed deed that can be devoted to the deity of your choice. The radial dialog menu often allows you to honor one of the four gods by reflecting their virtues in your response; follow the path of Athena and give justice, Allollo for compassion, Hermies for cunning or Aries if you just want to act like an ass. By devoting deeds from completed quests, general achievements or following the virtues you can unlock the abilities mentioned earlier and toughen up Jason for the fights ahead. These dialog sequences aren’t written partially well and acting follows suit with a rather mediocre performance, these dialog sequences are often spoilt even further by the soundtrack and glitches. While there’s nothing exactly wrong with the musical score it doesn’t seem to know when it’s not wanted, a powerful part of the tune will flair up in the middle of some dialog partially drowning out the voice work, other times the speaker of a line of dialog may stand stiff as a board with only his lips moving giving the occasional feeling your using a 6 year old game engine with high resolution graphics. The game engine shows plenty of faults outside of dialog but mostly with the way the characters move and feel like their skating across the floor. Graphically everything looks fine, but there are some deeper issues at play here.
People looking for a fast action game will be disappointed by Rise of the Argonauts despite how good the combat does eventually become it’s just too few and far between. Rise of the Argonauts is worth a play though if you are the more patient RPG type who can put up with the many failings then you’ll at least find some joy as having Hercules as a trusty sidekick. 10-15 hours of time should see the average player through from start to finish, but lack of any real effect from your actions stifles replay value.
4/5
