Reviews Immortals Fenyx Rising »Vortex

I can’t imagine anyone in the Immortals Fenyx Rising rating completely avoiding the comparison with the hit The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild for Switch. The similarity between the two titles is not accidental, distant or apparent. New to Assassin’s Creed Odyssey is an extremely close clone of Zelda from 2017, whether Ubisoft is committed or not. Link’s adventure is reminiscent of A to Z, and through and through, the title is riddled with the same elements, mechanisms, and variations on the Nintendo epic. In the end, the Immortals may be much closer to Zelda than we originally feared. Surprisingly, it doesn’t matter as much as we thought. Perhaps in the spirit of Pablo Picasso’s statement: “Good artists copy. The best artists steal. ” But what do you get when you perfectly copy one of the best games ever? Another hit, or just a derivative that is a shadow of the previous triumph?

The player must help the gods to defeat Typhon, who has freed himself from captivity and turned the powerful ruler of Olympus into bizarre cartoons that have lost their power and, on the contrary, are a kind of counterpart to their former power and uniqueness.

Immortals Fenyx Rising take us to a mysterious archipelago inhabited by Greek gods. The action adventure was inspired by legends, myths and myths and serves us a cheerful, light-hearted story full of funny dialogues and allusions. Its main narrator is Prometheus and is seconded by Zeus. Both describe in a fun way the protagonist’s troubles, gloss over what’s happening on the screen, and sometimes even enter the story and change it a little. The player must help the gods to defeat Typhon, who has freed himself from captivity and turned the powerful ruler of Olympus into bizarre cartoons that have lost their power and, on the contrary, are a kind of counterpart to their former power and uniqueness. Your task is to save one by one, return them to their form and unite them all in the fight against Typhon. The progress of the game is non-linear and you are free to choose the order in which you decide to help them, or at any time to interrupt this journey and go for the next character. In return, the gods will gradually endow you with various supernatural powers that will expand your already diverse register of skills.

You create the main character at the very beginning and, with constant commentary by the narrators, you choose his gender, form, hairstyle, skin color and voice. With it, you will go to a relatively large and colorful open world, which does not want to compete with the Assassins in size, but still a large map full of interesting places, surprises, discoveries and hidden locations awaits you. Each area has a characteristic atmosphere, style and appearance according to which of the gods it belongs to. As in Zelda, you will also come across dungeons in the form of combat, but most often logical puzzles, puzzles, puzzles and labyrinths. I must say that I was surprised at how important a role they play and how extensive and challenging they can be. Although you sometimes have to use ingenuity in solving some mechanisms and mysteries in the open world, you will more often strain your brain in special areas of Tartar, where you are transferred from the main map, similar to Breath of the Wild. I was surprised at how much time you spend here, how often you go here and how sophisticated these areas are.

The authors perhaps rely even more than Zelda on solving various spatial, physical or environmental puzzles. You use weights, roll giant balls, move heavy blocks, ride elevators, break objects, reveal hidden rooms, use wind, redirect various mechanisms, shoot incendiary arrows, avoid deadly rays, bayonets and other traps… In other words, there is a lot. And if you grind your teeth on Immortals just for action and fights, the result could disappoint you, or at least unpleasantly surprise you. If, on the other hand, you like to be tormented by a riddle, you will be in your element. Although some ideas are repeated, I really liked the emphasis on puzzles and their execution. I might see the problem only in their dosage. In some major tasks they are more frequent, while in others you do not come across them as often. But you can never know exactly what awaits you. However, nothing prevents you from embarking on another task or even another god at that moment. Of course, there are also side quests, challenges and optional missions.

However, the emphasis on logical puzzles certainly does not mean that the action is missing or not even interesting. Exactly opposite. When it comes to combat, despite the relatively simple mechanisms, it is very interesting thanks to a diverse mix of enemies. You will come across various mythical creatures and monsters as well as various heroes and other characters from Greek myths. Of course, there are also bosses who will test you for all your abilities. In combat, you will use not only light and heavy weapons or bows, but also a plethora of special attacks, which you can improve as well as your other attributes. In the game, there is a whole host of all sorts of things that you collect, and you will use most of them when upgrading only one feature at a time, such as health, amount of stamina, power of weapons and so on. In most cases, for these upgrades, you will return to the Hall of the Gods, which is a kind of centerpiece of your adventure, with appropriately inflated pockets. But I must say that I would often forgive myself for this journey. Although it can be shortened using fast travel, I would rather explore the world organically and not go back. The mentioned health or stamina could easily improve automatically every time you collect enough units that you need to strengthen.

The gods are a really cheerful bunch of smug, teasing and sarcastic solitaires.

So that the path to the gods is not so self-serving, you can at least change your appearance here, if you are tired of the current one, accept some additional challenges or chat with the gradually expanding staff. And it should be noted that the gods are really a cheerful bunch of smug, teasing and scathing solitaires. The dialogues are based on all sorts of well-known and lesser-known stories, real history and make excellent use of self-reference humor and all sorts of allusions to the modern world. This is a very individual thing. What one finds funny may be embarrassing, but I really liked the comedic and light mood of the game. The characters top themselves in every possible way, remembering the good old days and revealing their strengths and weaknesses. So that the game is not taken a little seriously, everyone speaks a very modern contrasting language. I would consider this idea very risky myself, but thanks to a well-written script and charismatic dubbing, the authors finally managed to turn it into one of the main advantages of the game. From our point of view, the fact that the game is equipped with linguistically imaginative Czech subtitles is very beneficial to the experience.

But don’t forget for a moment that this is a clear copy of Breath of the Wild. When you look at a title, when you play it, when you think about it – Zelda jumps on you everywhere. They are bigger and smaller things, but they are ubiquitous. Immortals have a wonderful fairytale but very similarly styled world. The stamina you consume when fighting, running, climbing, swimming and flying works the same way. You can sail here in a very similar way as in Zelda. You use binoculars in the same way. You accidentally cut down a few trees in battle. You visit the already mentioned dungeons, which are usually larger, but they work similarly and at the end of them you will always be rewarded. You can tame a wild horse or other similar animal, which you then ride. The combat system or some special forces such as the ability to carry large objects are also familiar. You cook various strengthening potions from the collected raw materials and replenish your energy with them. You will come across the equivalent of Blood Moon here. Even the very encounters with the individual gods and their involvement in the final encounter will remind us of the preparations for the culmination of Breath of the Wild. And so I could go on for a while.

It’s not just a few similar ideas, a little inspiration here and there. Immortals clone Zelda in the way we’ve come to see in Chinese studies, but it’s not common for major publishers in the West. The best that a game brings is simply not original. In other circumstances, it could break a neck like a game. Copying something is one thing, another thing is to do it well. It was reasonable to doubt whether Ubisoft could emulate one of Nintendo’s best games convincingly. This is also not automatic. By some miracle, however, the developers succeeded. They took a huge risk as they were so inspired by the excellent Zelda. However, they performed their clone so well that it does not bring them to the bottom and the title cannot be condemned only as a failed plagiarism. Still, I must honestly admit that I was disappointed with how little real innovation Immortals brings. I thought that the game would be more original after all. And speaking of complaints, I’ll unpack the rest. I have already mentioned that the problem can be the pace and irregular dosing, or the alternation of action and puzzles. But I was probably most bothered by some bugs and physics mistakes in puzzles that can create very frustrating situations. And maybe it’s a pity that the game doesn’t put more emphasis on stealth. Although it is possible to approach someone unnoticed and hit them harder, sneaking is certainly not a common part of the game as with older Assassins.

I played the PlayStation 5 version and preferred the framerat to the details. I was satisfied with the graphics, after all, it is a cross-gen title, which also targets Switch, for example, and style plays a more important role here than the number of polygons and technological tweaks. In addition, the game loads very quickly on the PS5. I was just surprised that it hardly uses the capabilities of the DualSense driver at all, and its haptic response and adaptive trigger functions are more marginal.