4/5 ★ – Mrneverchillin's review of Immortals Fenyx Rising.

Immortals Fenyx Rising Review Written by: Vic Brubacher III Introduction Spoiler Alert! You ever wonder what it is like to gain god-like powers? Well you are just in luck with Immortals Fenyx Rising, formally known as Gods and Monsters, as you play as a mortal named Fenyx who gains those powers over the course of the story. It kicks off with Typhon escaping Zeus’s prison after many years and cuts the Olympian gods off from their godly essences. Zeus seeks out help from Prometheus. During their conversation, Prometheus makes a bet with Zeus that a mortal will beat Typhon. And that is where you come into play. Fenyx’s story begins with him washing up onshore of the Golden Isle after surviving a shipwreck. Upon arrival, you are shocked to see other survivors there but are all turned into stone. You team up with Hermès to return all the God’s essence to the Gods to help you take down Typhon to free all your friends and family. Immortals Fenyx Rising is an Action-Adventure, single player, third person open world game developed by Ubisoft Quebec & Ubisoft San Fran and was released on December 3, 2020 on all platforms. Graphics/Controls As soon as I took the reins of Fenyx, I was blown away. The world looked absolutely beautiful with all of the vibrancy and majestic landscape. It had invited me and gave me a feeling that I wanted to actually explore this massive open world as opposed to the feeling many other Ubisoft titles usually give me like Assassin’s Creed where I am not too keen on exploring. The game begins and introduces all of the controls and mechanics at an easy and smooth pace that did not seem to be too overwhelming. The combat is also a lot of fun and rather intuitive at times. The controls for all of the attacks were easy to understand and maneuver to create different devastating combos. While traversing the world, you would come across these Vaults of Tartaros, which were like portals to another realm. Here is where you would complete puzzles using different abilities. While here, I would catch myself just looking around and gazing at the sky and the surrounding areas as I was in a trance. Within these vaults, I was just so mesmerized by the star art and portraits that were created in the sky while trying to complete these puzzles. Nothing really completes a game like anything else, the character models. They were done exceptionally well and had some awesome designs for all of the characters within the game including all of the different versions of the gods. Gameplay/Mechanics You ever think while traversing an open world game and be like, “wow, this is taking forever!”. Well, I do not believe you would get that feeling while playing Immortals. You have a few options of traversing from the typical sprint to the occasional gliding from higher points of the map to even riding a mount, which I did not learn or understand how to use until half way through the game. But if you are going to sprint or glide, you are limited for how long depending on how good your stamina bar is or when it is almost depleted, you could take a stamina potion to partially refill your bar. It’s definitely something you must balance because you do not want to waste those potions as they can be difficult to craft since finding the required ingredients can be very tedious and at any given moment you could come across an enemy that you must engage and you don’t want to have an empty stamina bar. During your travels, you were accompanied by a bird named Phosphorus, who would aid you in combat. You even have the ability to change to different types of Phosphoruses that you discover during your journey that provide different attacks and appearances. I did really enjoy how there were next to zero loading screens unless you fast traveled, went into a Vault of Tartaros, or died. You ever want to change the look of your character in a game but couldn’t because that game lacked the feature to do so? No, because every game these days allows you to customize your character again even after you have begun, which you can do in Immortals at Aphrodite’s beauty chair in the Hall of Gods. One thing that really bothered me about Immortals was the upgrading system. It’s cool to be able to make your hero better and stronger but the fact that you had to travel back to the Hall of Gods to upgrade was an inconvenience. I could be half way across the map but would either run back or fast travel and that wasted time. Seemed like a step backwards in that area. But nonetheless, this game offers a very smooth feel to it and has some unique and fun things to do within this majestic world. Sound Part of making a game look beautiful and magical is to also have an emotionally and beautifully crafted soundtrack that further immerses you into the game. And Immortals does just that. The music whether you were in the Valley of Eternal Spring or the Gates of Tartaros was phenomenal and matched the ambience of each section of the map. Elana Dunkelman who voiced Fenyx and Aris Athanasopoulos who voiced Hermes both did a phenomenal job, especially since you heard those two voices majorly throughout the game. Overall, the voice acting from everyone else was pretty solid as well. Replay Value Immortals Fenyx Rising offers you a lot to do during your play through. From the main missions to the many many side quests that have different puzzles or platforming to complete that offer meaningful rewards to help you upgrade, to the hidden quests throughout the vast world to discover to completing all of the Vault of Tartaros. So you certainly have a lot to do but one of Immortals weaknesses like many other games in the industry is the end game or post game content. Not much to do or meaning to go back into the world that you already save to complete side quests. One highlight though is the 3 narrative DLCs that were released during the months after release. First up was A New God where Fenyx must prove himself even more worthy to be able to get into the inner circle of the gods since Zeus granted Fenyx god status. Secondly, Myths of the Eastern Realm, where you play as a new protagonist named Ku. This time the world is inspired by Chinese Mythology and you must save the world, again. Lastly, The Lost Gods, changes things up by going from a third-person to an overhead game. So all and all, there is certainly a lot to do and explore, and certainly a world you can get lost in. The Verdict Immortals Fenyx Rising tells an amazingly fun story from start to finish set in one of the most beautiful worlds I have seen in awhile. The vibrant art style is something very appealing to me and got lost in this world. Everything plays smoothly from riding your horse across the open planes to climbing the mountains to reach a new treasure. Even with the lack of endgame content, it still took me about 21 hours to beat it. Only dealt with one major hiccup while playing was when my save file was glitched and wouldn’t save 2-3 hours worth of game play and have to redo 3 days in a row until I was able to fix it. But overall this is one of those hidden gems that got overlooked since it released around the time as Cyberpunk 2077 and I highly recommend giving this game a try since it mixes up and makes the typical Ubisoft formula worth playing and enjoying. I really hope they make a sequel! In the end, I gave Immortals Fenyx Rising an 8/10 Reviewed on: Xbox Series X