A game title like Rise of the Argonauts immediately evokes a number of images for a gamer that possesses any familiarity with classical mythology. When one learns that they will be filling the sandals of the legendary Greek hero Jason, known for his epic adventures, perilous trials, memorable crew, and heroic deeds, the idea sounds adequately exciting. When one further discovers that this legendary saga is the basis of an action-RPG, the concept only seems more appealing -- who wouldn't want to split their time between building one's strength and character while amassing an army of amazing heroes, and carving a bloody swath through a horde of mythical monsters? Rise of the Argonauts, from Liquid Entertainment and Codemasters, allows a player to do all of these things -- yet, amazingly, fails to be even remotely epic. Never before has a retelling of this world-spanning, fantastical, heroic tale seemed so thoroughly mundane and average.
It's really a (Greek) tragedy in its own way -- as has been proved time and again through literature, film, and even video games, the universe of Greek myth has limitless appeal, and worlds' worth of characters and stories. From God of War to Age of Mythology, gamers are still quite eager to hear tales of double-dealing gods, visit lush Mediterranean locales, and watch minotaurs get carved up with gladii. It's a formula that seems like it can't miss, and the genuinely frustrating thing about Rise of the Argonauts is that all of these elements are present; every ingredient has been added to tell an awe-inspiring tale. Yet, despite the engaging story elements, impressive visual setpieces, and enticingly powerful advancement system, there is also repetitive combat, unchallenging and constraining progression, jerky and glitchy animation and sound, and enough bugs to make the game feel sloppy and unfinished. Every one of its assets is counterbalanced by an equal and opposite flaw, leaving Rise of the Argonauts squarely in the realm of "just another game."
The tale of Jason and the Argonauts has been told many times, with several variations, but Rise of the Argonauts covers the basic points: Jason, a brave warrior from the city of Iolcus, assembles a crew of heroes aboard his ship, the Argo, to seek out and claim the Golden Fleece. Everything else in the story is enough to make a historian's head explode; Jason is already a king when his journey begins, Medea is never in love with him, Perseus and Medusa are somehow involved and are brother and sister, Achilles is one of the Argonauts, and there are never any harpies. Changes aside, Rise of the Argonauts spins a perfectly good yarn: Jason is right in the middle of marrying Alceme, the princess of nearby Mycenae, when an assassin kills her with an arrow. Stricken by grief, Jason refuses to accept Alceme's death, and declares his intention to seek out the Golden Fleece, an artifact which has the power to reverse death itself. The Olympian gods are moved by Jason's devotion, and personally speak to him in order to guide his quest. Before long, Jason is on board the Argo, and sets out in search of prophecies and clues to the Fleece's location.
It's a fine re-imagining of the story, and is definitely suited to a character-driven RPG, providing a personal quest for love and revenge to motivate players. Along the way, naturally, there will be side quests and missions, and a whole host of NPCs to work with/against. These interactions play out much like Mass Effect; conversations will progress between Jason and an NPC until there is a choice to be made in the dialogue, at which point the player is presented with a "wheel" of summarized responses.
However, just because the dialogue mechanic may be similar, don't go expecting a Bioware-styled RPG experience -- Rise of the Argonauts is very much a linear affair, with only minor variations available to differentiate one playthrough from the next. Players can choose the order in which Jason visits the various game areas, and on occasion, which NPC will join his crew, but these are entirely cosmetic; the locations are very much start-to-finish "levels" with no hopping from zone to zone, and the NPCs in question neither affect the story nor confer character benefits of any kind. Over the course of Rise of the Argonauts, players can expect to make maybe half a dozen actual decisions, and in those few cases, the game isn't actually letting you develop Jason's character at all -- these moments very clearly have a "right" choice and a "wrong" choice.
Playing a linear RPG isn't a bad thing, necessarily, it just becomes mildly disappointing when prefaced with the illusion of freedom. Many of these moments are very obvious, such as when Jason is confronted by the following "decision": The king of a far-off city has placed a bounty on a man's head, and the king's agent, searching for this man, offers Jason a substantial reward for the target's whereabouts. Jason happens to possess this information, yet the target in question has proved to be an ally thus far. Most RPGs would use this as an opportunity for character development, with subsequent rewards or penalties, by allowing the player to choose between selfishness and loyalty, but there is no such choice here. Jason can either send the agent on a wild goose chase, or simply claim ignorance, leading to the same outcome; there is no available option to sell out the target for an in-game material reward.
Rise of the Argonauts does not use the typical stats/XP system of RPG advancement, opting instead for a unique system of divine satisfaction. Each of Jason's deeds is tied to his patron gods, and for each task he completes, he can dedicate his earned glory to one of his four personal deities in return for increased combat abilities. Jason follows kind Apollo, wise Athena, bloodthirsty Ares, and crafty Hermes, with each god moved by different deeds and granting different powers. At one point, Jason is attempting to gain information from a reluctant source, who challenges the Iolcan king to a game of wits. Jason can accept the duel, or he can simply bully the man into talking. However, the game more or less forces the player to take the former choice: Winning the duel of wits is good for a "completed deed" reward, and the other choice is not. In other words, if you want Jason to level up and get better at combat, you'll do as the game says, setting aside your role-playing freedoms. Again, it's not Rise of the Argonauts' linearity that's a problem, it's that the illusion of choice is frustrating when there's clearly only one "correct" way to play through the game.
Furthermore, the game misses another great chance for variation and decision-based rewards by allowing the player to dedicate their deeds to any of the above gods. If you want to gain the violent boons of Ares, you can take the completed "duel of wits" deed and allot it to the war god's favor, despite having handled the situation in a very Hermes-like way. The one exception to the rule, curiously enough, is in the game's otherwise inconsequential conversations: At many points in the game, the player can make a dialogue choice that embodies the spirit of one of the gods, such as "Oh, that poor man!" bearing the sign of Apollo or "Well, the law is the law" standing for Athena. Each of these responses grants just a tiny portion of that god's favor, allowing one to build up levels towards more powers, placing at least some character choices in the hands of the player. Still, it seems bizarre that an offhand remark might curry Ares' favor, yet slaughtering an island full of Satyrs can be used to please the warm and compassionate Apollo.
To the game's credit, the tasks demanded of Jason are quite diverse, taking the hero to distant lands with a broad variety of dangers. The player will have to brave wild jungles full of terrible creatures, as well as sprawling cities filled with suspicious characters. Naturally, one can expect to see a lot more combat where monsters roam, while populated areas will often present quests with verbal solutions. Rise of the Argonauts also lays out these objectives in a creative, visual way: Jason, as is appropriate for his nautical adventure, possesses a star chart, filled with many constellations, themed around different types of task. As he completes these various objectives, new stars will appear in the constellations, such as Ursa Major for certain ferocious combat achievements, or Virgo for finishing justice-based quests. As the game progresses, the star chart will grow more densely populated, and the player can check out the missing spots any time to see how those stars are gained. Sometimes, these are quite obvious, such as "Slay 15 of enemy type X," while other times they are humorously cryptic -- "Endure the ultimate test of fortitude and will" turns out to involve sitting through a really terrible song.
On the other hand, the downfall of the game's advancement is how single-minded and narrowly focused it is. That is to say, everything that Jason gains over the course of his journey is combat-oriented. Players can give the king better speed, harder hits, self-healing powers, devastating area-of-effect attacks, and so on, which are certainly helpful, but don't provide a great deal of variety to one's advancement path. Given that nearly half the game is spent wandering around and progressing the story through dialogue, one might imagine that the old RPG standards like Charisma or Intelligence might pop up, but Jason will only see improvements in his physical prowess.
Of course, Rise of the Argonauts is an action-RPG, so keeping one's power-ups on the physical side isn't a bad thing if it serves to let the player advance through the game's heavy combat portions. The problem is that accomplishing any task improves your combat ability, whether it required any combat or not, or even whether it required any effort. The gods are about as equally impressed by "Kill 30 mercenaries" as they are by "Speak to Patroclus," and both tasks are thus applied to your fighting skill, making for a fairly disjointed advancement process that feels entirely hollow. In fact, depending on the order in which you choose to visit the various locales, this can practically spoil the game: If you happen to visit the populated area first and advance almost entirely through verbal quests, by the time you get to the combat-heavy wilderness, your combat powers are good enough to let you simply mow down the opposition effortlessly.
This leads to another major disappointment for Jason's adventure: The combat starts out as barely decent, quickly gets repetitive, and becomes downright pointless after only minimal advancement. This, by itself, is reason enough to kill one's enthusiasm for the game; an action-RPG with only mediocre action had better have some revolutionary RPG elements (which Rise of the Argonauts does not). What's more disappointing, though, is that the game yet again seems like it should have had all the right ingredients to provide a fun time, but someone forgot how to put them together.
Jason makes his way through the game with his trusty, indestructible shield, and dispatches his foes with three weapons: The sword, the spear, and the mace. His enemies, excluding bosses, are similarly equipped, and the combat has hints of variety to it -- Jason can hack away at his foes' shields until they are defenseless, or hope to stun them through powerful blows, or even slip a careful attack right past their guard for a quick kill. Early on, there's some skill and timing involved, forcing Jason to carefully time his blocks and counterattacks, and to match the correct weapon to his foes' choices in order to mount a decent offense. With minor practice, players will find themselves slicing their foes in half, and knocking enemies' heads clean off in a bloody mess.
The novelty wears thin quickly, however, thanks to an extremely short list of moves, sluggish controls, and extremely repetitive enemy AI. Each weapon has 2-3 combos that can be executed, none of which require any real timing or precision to pull off. The enemy doesn't seem to have much of a strategy apart from "run up to Jason and/or his friends and attack," and while this can lead to some difficulty when the enemy has you surrounded, a single dodge to get the entire horde on one side will allow you to make short work of them all. As for Jason's allies, while they too have some impressive and brutal moves, you have no say in how those moves are carried out. The Argonauts are entirely non-interactive, possessing exactly as much AI as your enemies: "run up to the bad guys and attack." There is no teamwork, you can't call on them to watch your back or attack specific targets, and they can't even die -- if damaged enough, they'll just slump in place until you run over and revive them with a single button tap. Despite their cosmetic differences, the Argonauts are completely interchangeable, pointless apart from providing more warm bodies for your enemies to attack and evening the odds.
To top it off, once you've granted yourself a few power-ups, the combat becomes a great big button-mashing time-waster, allowing players to sleepwalk their way through the latter half of the game. As lamented earlier, Rise of the Argonauts will grant you the gods' favor for accomplishing zero-effort tasks, which can be exchanged almost immediately for wildly unbalanced combat advantages. One of the very first powers I attained allowed me to create a ghost image of Jason, which all enemies would attack instead of the genuine article. Once I had just this ability, which even worked on most bosses, I could quickly and easily eliminate almost anything the game threw at me -- and by the time I was halfway through the game, I had become functionally invincible. Even against massive armies of 20 or more opponents, I had lost complete interest in fighting, my initial excitement now replaced by repeated bouts of "mash X to win."
I've said before that I'm willing to tolerate average gameplay in the service of an excellently executed story, but Rise of the Argonauts simply can't meet that demand. Ultimately, this is the game's greatest failing; every time the game seems to offer the promise of an above-average experience, there is a glaring inadequacy to mar the designers' efforts. Worse still, these flaws are often just sloppy or careless.
Graphically, Rise of the Argonauts is fantastic, presenting some Unreal-powered character detail and scenery that are spectacular to look at and to explore. However, the animation stutters throughout the game, making it painfully obvious when a loading sequence is happening (or when the game is simply collapsing under its own weight). The beautiful scenery and exciting combat is too often obscured by an uncooperative and poorly-placed camera, and irritating scenery/character collision detection. The detailed facial animations during dialogue often break down into glitches, involving poor lip sync and bizarrely changing expressions.
The audio has clearly had a lot of work put into it, including a suitably epic score and a cast of professional voice actors with decent vocal direction. However, nobody has put any work into mastering and balancing the audio, leading to wildly inconsistent volume levels -- conversations occur between a whispering character and a shouting one, and the music will either lightly underscore the dialogue or completely drown it out.
The game can't even boast technical proficiency: Saved games will restore your character's position, but not the progress of his conversations or tasks. Loading times are hugely varied, even in the same location under the same circumstances. Awards and achievements are given out for unfinished tasks -- on one occasion, I believe I was even rewarded for the exact same deed twice.
In the end, almost every reason to play Rise of the Argonauts is matched by an equally compelling reason not to play it, leaving only a few left in its favor. If you're a fan of Greek mythology, there is some enjoyment to be had from the story, and the combat might keep you entertained for a while if you challenge yourself by refusing to advance Jason's powers. Or, who knows; maybe you just have 16 hours that you really, really need to kill. Otherwise, it's safe to miss this one.
Rise of the Argonauts is available now for Xbox 360, PlayStation3, and PC.
A game title like Rise of the Argonauts immediately evokes a number of images for a gamer that possesses any familiarity with classical mythology. When one learns that they will be filling the sandals of the legendary Greek hero Jason, known for his epic adventures, perilous trials, memorable crew, and heroic deeds, the idea sounds adequately exciting. When one further discovers that this legendary saga is the basis of an action-RPG, the concept only seems more appealing -- who wouldn't want to split their time between building one's strength and character while amassing an army of amazing heroes, and carving a bloody swath through a horde of mythical monsters? Rise of the Argonauts, from Liquid Entertainment and Codemasters, allows a player to do all of these things -- yet, amazingly, fails to be even remotely epic. Never before has a retelling of this world-spanning, fantastical, heroic tale seemed so thoroughly mundane and average.
However, just because the dialogue mechanic may be similar, don't go expecting a Bioware-styled RPG experience -- Rise of the Argonauts is very much a linear affair, with only minor variations available to differentiate one playthrough from the next. Players can choose the order in which Jason visits the various game areas, and on occasion, which NPC will join his crew, but these are entirely cosmetic; the locations are very much start-to-finish "levels" with no hopping from zone to zone, and the NPCs in question neither affect the story nor confer character benefits of any kind. Over the course of Rise of the Argonauts, players can expect to make maybe half a dozen actual decisions, and in those few cases, the game isn't actually letting you develop Jason's character at all -- these moments very clearly have a "right" choice and a "wrong" choice.
Furthermore, the game misses another great chance for variation and decision-based rewards by allowing the player to dedicate their deeds to any of the above gods. If you want to gain the violent boons of Ares, you can take the completed "duel of wits" deed and allot it to the war god's favor, despite having handled the situation in a very Hermes-like way. The one exception to the rule, curiously enough, is in the game's otherwise inconsequential conversations: At many points in the game, the player can make a dialogue choice that embodies the spirit of one of the gods, such as "Oh, that poor man!" bearing the sign of Apollo or "Well, the law is the law" standing for Athena. Each of these responses grants just a tiny portion of that god's favor, allowing one to build up levels towards more powers, placing at least some character choices in the hands of the player. Still, it seems bizarre that an offhand remark might curry Ares' favor, yet slaughtering an island full of Satyrs can be used to please the warm and compassionate Apollo.
Of course, Rise of the Argonauts is an action-RPG, so keeping one's power-ups on the physical side isn't a bad thing if it serves to let the player advance through the game's heavy combat portions. The problem is that accomplishing any task improves your combat ability, whether it required any combat or not, or even whether it required any effort. The gods are about as equally impressed by "Kill 30 mercenaries" as they are by "Speak to Patroclus," and both tasks are thus applied to your fighting skill, making for a fairly disjointed advancement process that feels entirely hollow. In fact, depending on the order in which you choose to visit the various locales, this can practically spoil the game: If you happen to visit the populated area first and advance almost entirely through verbal quests, by the time you get to the combat-heavy wilderness, your combat powers are good enough to let you simply mow down the opposition effortlessly.
To top it off, once you've granted yourself a few power-ups, the combat becomes a great big button-mashing time-waster, allowing players to sleepwalk their way through the latter half of the game. As lamented earlier, Rise of the Argonauts will grant you the gods' favor for accomplishing zero-effort tasks, which can be exchanged almost immediately for wildly unbalanced combat advantages. One of the very first powers I attained allowed me to create a ghost image of Jason, which all enemies would attack instead of the genuine article. Once I had just this ability, which even worked on most bosses, I could quickly and easily eliminate almost anything the game threw at me -- and by the time I was halfway through the game, I had become functionally invincible. Even against massive armies of 20 or more opponents, I had lost complete interest in fighting, my initial excitement now replaced by repeated bouts of "mash X to win."
In the end, almost every reason to play Rise of the Argonauts is matched by an equally compelling reason not to play it, leaving only a few left in its favor. If you're a fan of Greek mythology, there is some enjoyment to be had from the story, and the combat might keep you entertained for a while if you challenge yourself by refusing to advance Jason's powers. Or, who knows; maybe you just have 16 hours that you really, really need to kill. Otherwise, it's safe to miss this one.
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