Review #511: Rise of the Argonauts

 The world needed yet another retelling of the Argonauts story.

They could've had better covers...

 Welcome to Rise of the Argonauts, yet another retelling of Jason's myth. This is a very weird, yet oddly entertaining, beat'em up/RPG hybrid that works quite well even if it doesn't do anything too spectacular.

 The moment the game starts is the moment the story begins deviating from the most important, and most consistent, plot device: Jason is about to get married to newcomer Alceme, descended from Ares, before she is murdered by the Blacktongue clan, and it is the gods, Ares, Hermes, Apollo and Athena, who tell him that in order to revive his love he must recover the Golden Fleece. And thus, Jason and his best friend Hercules embark the Argo, and soon he'll be recruiting people, the Argonauts, to join him in his journey. As you'd know there's varying records of who were the Argonauts, but this game, man, this game wanted to have anyone you'd recognize. Hercules? In most versions that include him only have him for a short while, here he stays with Jason all the way through. Medea? Of course. Achiles? You're pushing it, considering it was his father that boarded the Argo. Medusa? Why not! Suffice to say, they added a few characters just because they were recognizable... not that that's necessarily a bad thing. As for the story itself... it's pretty interesting, dialogue goes from cheesy to badass at a moment's notice, but on the whole, it's alright. Many times you'll be allowed to pick different choices(Up to four!), but most of the time the outcome is the same. And when it's not, it's merely a different cutscene. Some characters definitely get more exposure and development than others though, but the important Argonauts get to showcase their personality if you bring them along with you, so there's that.

It's bloody, yet somehow not gratifying.

 The game is structured like a RPG, albeit a very linear one. There're four major islands you'll visit, but a total of six(sevenish...) areas total that you'll visit. The first Island is Iolcus, where you start the journey, and afterwards you can tackle the next three island in whichever order you prefer. I recommend going after the Ares descendant first, since that island nets you Achilles, and you'll want that prick in your party to offer his... insight. Anyways, each of this Islands is only visited once(Kindaish) and each has its own set of sidequests, so you'll want to finish everything before you finish each island's main quest. A tiny little gripe with the game is that you can only check your objective log by going into the Map screen... which isn't tied to a button, which was a bit shortsighted of them since Select has no use, and requires going into the pause menu. Another bad idea was the fact that the battle HUD, which means your health bar, is turned off by default, but it only takes a trip to the options screen to fix it.

 Conversations with options usually involve four different 'personalities', you can answer in a courageous manner(Ares), a just one(Athena), a playful/witty one(Hermes) or a more serious one(Apollo). As you probably inferred from the parenthesis, each answer type favors a god which in turns grants you bonus experience points with that god. Actually, there aren't experience points in the game. At all. Instead, you accumulate deeds. These can be earned by completing sidequests, defeating X amount of enemies, defeating X amount of enemies with Y weapon, selecting X amount of a certain god's answer, etc and then you trade these deeds for experience points on any of the four gods. Each god has their own skill tree: Ares favors the mace and power, Apollo favors the shield and protecting your allies and making Jason more sturdy, Hermes favors the sword and making Jason more agile while Athena favors the spear and making your allies stronger. You can probably earn enough experience points to at least max two trees, but you can build Jason at your leisure, give him a little bit of everything if you so please.

Did I mention that every piece of equipment has its own look?

 There's also no money involved in the game. No money and no experience points... why would you want to do sidequests? Well, besides the possibility to score answers of a specific god, there's also the option of obtaining new equipment. Every armor, sword, spear and mace has a unique look to it as well as a different passive ability. You can bring a sword that's stronger than the others, or one that deals more damage if you attack an enemy's back... or maybe one that deals damage to enemies even if they block. The game is easy enough so that you can bring any equipment set that you like, so just wear what looks cool. Or wield weapons that compliment each other. Or focus on making Jason good at one thing and one thing only. It's up to you, anything will work. As for me, I loved the fact that everything looked different, in an era where costumes are a privilege and not a treat... it's great getting to equip Jason with so many different, cool looking armors.

 Combat is... janky, to say the least. There's a weak attack, a strong attack, a shield bash, blocking, dodging and using god spells. You can switch weapons at any time by pressing R1 and L1, but... sometimes the game won't let you switch just because. Sometimes the collision between attacks won't feel quite right. Nothing feels quite right when fighting. However, nothing is quite broken. Combat is a clunky, but passable, barebones element to the game. There's no fancy combos to be made, no skillful dodging and blocking required, there's no substance and no style... but it's not broken. Compared to the walking and talking you'll be doing, the combat is but just another small piece of a bigger system, so there's not so much combat as to overstay its welcome.

Hercules is a total beefcake... literally.

 And lastly... the game runs like butt. Graphics are ugly, animations are stiff and there's a noticeable lack of... well, attention to detail. Walking up or down stairs looks... janky to say the least. And the framerate? The framerate is horrible, at times it struggles to maintain 30 FPS. On the other hand, the art direction seemed great, but the in-game graphics doesn't do it justice.

 It's got a dialogue wheel... with no real consequences. It's got a lot of combat... that's very shallow and somewhat clunky. It has a decent art direction... but poor graphics. Rise of the Argonauts is a great example of a jack of all trades, master of none. It does a lot of things, some better than others, but it doesn't have any real strong points to its name. That said, it's also better than the sum of its parts, because as clear as it is that the game is a bit clunky... it's can be quite fun at times. You can tell that a lot of love was put into the game, the story is interesting, the characters are interesting and while there're next to no consequences to your choices.... you can tell that they had fun coming up with different alternatives for Jason to speak. The people involved wanted to make a great game, that much is clear, but while the end result isn't fantastic... it's still a remarkably fun time as long as you temper your expectations.
 7.5 out of 10