Team Ninja has been an incredibly busy developer this year. After letting go Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin in March it then announced its next project, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty, on the Xbox/Bethesda Showcase in June. The game appears to be in a late stage of development already, bolstered by the fact that Team Ninja released a limited time playable demo on September 16. The release is slated for early 2023. As if this wasn’t enough, September’s State of Play event revealed that the developer has another project in the pipeline: Rise of the Ronin. This open-world action RPG looks like the next evolution of Team Ninjas Nioh range, in terms of the scope and scale of the project. In many ways it echoes Elden Ring‘s evolutionary progression compared to FromSoftware’s earlier dark souls spell.
The Nioh Series is incredibly popular, with gamers and critics often declaring it to be the best soulslike on the market. With its robust, tight combat and its steep but rewarding difficulty, many fans have been hoping for a third installment. While those who have played the demo version of Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty have quickly pointed out the similarities with Nioh and the sequel, Rise of the Ronin appears to be much larger in size, and from what Team Ninja has revealed so far, represents a bigger step forward.
Rise of the Ronin Could Be Team Ninja’s Elden Ring
The success of Elden Ring surprised the industry. By August 2022, nearly 16 million copies of the game had been sold worldwide. Widely praised for its immersive open world, targeted and engaging combat, and the depth of the build variation, the game exceeded all expectations. For long-standing fans of the souls series, and probably to FromSoftware itself, the game’s success probably didn’t come as too much of a shock. Gamers have seen FromSoftware gradually improve its craft over more than a decade, from its initial release in 2009 of Demon Souls by means of dark souls and its two sequels, then with Bloodborneand Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice. Each new item in this collection introduced new mechanics and represented a more polished version of the game that preceded it.
What Elden Ring is therefore the result of a developer at the very top of his game, learning from every previous title to keep the best parts and adapt the parts that need to be changed. FromSoftware successfully built on the already acclaimed battle systems of the previous games and transformed the semi-open world, the interconnected card formula, into a massive world that players can explore completely freely in any way they want.
This was a calculated risk that FromSoftware was absolutely certain would pay off, and crucially, it was right. This is a great example of a developer scaling up exponentially with every project, culminating in a landmark title that sent shockwaves through the industry.
Nioh’s formula has room for growth
Despite fans calling Nioh and the sequel the best souls like games on the market, there are many ways the games manage to define their own identity. From the exaggerated characters and storylines to the much smaller map layouts, Nioh is far from just one dark souls clone. In fact, there is a perfectly valid argument to be made: NiohThe combat is even more robust than anything FromSoftware has yet managed to create, thanks to the speed with which the player can switch stance and weapon and the intelligent ‘Ki’ system, which replaces the stamina bar. PVP’s approach to the series is also slightly more user-friendly than the sometimes cryptic souls series, which is handy, because the Nioh games are as hard as theirs souls counterparts.
Where Nioh eventually his age starts to show in the level design. While the maps are perfectly functional, they are extremely linear and at times very claustrophobic. It’s hard not to imagine Nioh‘s combat on a much larger scale, with no limiting cards holding the player back. Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty seems to at least somewhat remedy this, judging by the gameplay revealed so far which shows off bigger maps with a lot more verticality. Ultimately, however, wed long will not be an open world and will likely feature a similar mission structure to the one in Nioh and Nioh 2. Obviously, this won’t be quite the leap forward in scale that Team Ninja fans are hoping for.
Enter Rise of the Ronin, which at first glance appears to be the pinnacle of Team Ninja’s work to date. With a huge open world to explore, several ways to traverse it, including retractable wings and rideable horses, and a combat system that seems to meet Team Ninja’s usual high standards in this department, the samurai title wants Team Ninja’s formula and pick it up to 11.
Rise of the Ronin will inevitably draw comparisons with Ghost of Tsushima thanks to both games having a similar setting and premise. This is despite the fact that they take place in two completely different time periods, with events in Tsushima about 600 years earlier. Regardless of these comparisons, Rise of the Ronin is ultimately a Team Ninja project and therefore should be much more aligned with the developer’s previous games in terms of how it plays.
Rise of the Ronin has a long way to go before it’s released, and much about the game is still shrouded in mystery. With a vague release window for 2024, Team Ninja has plenty of time to tweak it and hone the formula it’s worked hard to cultivate over the years. The game and the developer seem to be on the same path as Elden Ring and FromSoftware, and if Rise of the Ronin proves to be around and well received as its counterpart, Team Ninja will consider it a huge success.
Rise of the Ronin is currently in development and will be released for PS5 in 2024.
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