Ryse: Son of Rome review: before the fall

Set in a revisionist history version of ancient Rome, Ryse follows the story of Marius, a soldier-turned-centurion with a tragic past. After his life is torn apart by a barbarian invasion, Marius becomes one of the Roman legion's fiercest warriors, fighting on the front lines of the expansion of the empire into new territories.

As yet another video game protagonist driven by revenge alone, there's not much to Marius. Some early scenes with his family hint at a gentler and more interesting character, but he quickly fades away, replaced by a screaming general-type who's loyal to his men but little else. The plot offers a handful of twists, reveals and new characters to try to keep things interesting, but nothing sticks, and it all builds up to a dull finale — though one that at least didn't try to shove hope for a sequel down my throat.

In fact, a lot of Ryse is dull despite swordplay that looks exciting enough. The mechanics feel good at first; you can smoothly leap between multiple opponents, swapping between regular sword attacks, shield bashes that throw enemies off balance, and blocks that prevent you from taking damage. Slice at an enemy enough times, and a skull icon appears above their head. This signifies that you can perform an execution — the ultimate example of both Ryse's flashiness and its lack of actual substance.

But as cool as they are, those events are the exception. They're also missing entirely from Ryse's arena-based co-op multiplayer.

Titled "Gladiator mode," the online co-op attempts to add some longevity to the game with slow-paced leveling and a loot system that's absent from single-player. However, all you'll be doing is that repetitive combat, and even within that, some of the sparkle is gone. The visual splendor gets interrupted by seeing your partner run through the scene or watching them idle when they're actually in the middle of an execution.

Tons of armor and weapons to choose from could add some depth in theory, but in practice the loot is both tedious and exploitative. Most of the items affect your stats in very tiny, difficult-to-notice ways — how fast you gain focus to allow for special attacks, how quickly you gain experience points, etc. — which makes getting something new a lot less exciting than it could be.

It's even worse when you've paid to get some new pieces and don't even end up with something you want. See, loot in Ryse is purchased using "gold." You can grind out gold slowly in-game — in the early arenas, I was getting between 100 and 250 for every 20-to-30-minute playlist — or you can purchase it. Gold is available in packs ranging from $.99 for 1,000 to $19.99 for 25,000, with the highest-level loot pack costing 6,000 gold for three random items.

The key word there: random. You don't purchase specific individual items in Ryse. You buy packs that come with a certain number of items from a certain tier of power. So it's entirely possible to spend your hard-earned gold and get nothing of value. In fact, I only purchased three or four loot packs and still ended up getting several pieces of junk that I had no interest in. Though it's a system borrowed from other microtransaction-heavy games, I don't think it's a very kind way to keep players engaged.