Displaying items by tag: Immortals

Ubisoft released the adventure game Immortals Fenyx Rising at the beginning of December, just in time for the PS5 launch. Originally, the title was supposed to be released under the name Gods & Monsters.

I bought the game as one of the first games for the PS5 and have played through it in the meantime (Platinum trophy included).

If you take a look at the game at first glance, you might think that the tried-and-true (and by now somewhat worn-out) Ubisoft formula is being applied here as well. Those who have played some of Ubisoft's game series (e.g. Assassin's Creed, Watch Dogs, Division, etc...) probably know what I'm talking about. I'm not saying that these games are bad, quite the opposite, but the flow is often very similar. A huge open world that needs to be explored. To unlock certain areas, you climb a tower, hack a computer, and so on... and a part of the map becomes visible, where certain chests, side quests or simple sights are shown. Some of these side activities are important to progress in the game or to strengthen your character, others are just for completeness and to get certain achievements/trophies. One thing in advance: of course Immortals Fenyx Rising also makes use of this formula, but while playing I increasingly had the feeling that much more passion was put into these side activities, apart from climbing huge statues to uncover a larger area on the map.

I won't go into the main story here, I'm mainly interested in the general gameplay and the activities outside the story. To go a little more into these side activities, I will now explain the different tasks.

Starting with the chests, there are hundreds of chests. However, they differ in 3 variants. There are the "simple" chests, which are marked on the map and which you can simply open when you have found them.

Then there are chests that can only be opened after you have defeated a group of enemies.
Last but not least, there are chests that only become accessible after you have solved a smaller or sometimes somewhat larger puzzle.

Next to the chests there are so-called Fiesko activities. These puzzles are not particularly difficult, it is only a picture from four individual blocks to assemble. Here it is only important how you move the blocks so that you get the picture together.

Then there are Lyra challenges. In each area there is a large lyre (a kind of harp). On this lyre you can activate one of 4 strings with your bow and arrow to play a melody. In the areas distributed are then several small Lyra's, which always play a certain melody. You have to play these melodies on the big lyre to get a reward.

Another challenge are constellation activities. In my opinion, these are the most challenging open-world activities in the game. There, you have to recreate a certain constellation with the help of several spheres. The constellation is shown on a board and on the floor in front of it there is a square grid of holes into which you have to put the spheres in order to recreate the constellation. The difficulty is to find the spheres in the immediate vicinity. Some spheres are relatively easy to get, others are a bit trickier to reach.

Then there are smaller sprint challenges, where you have to reach a checkpoint in a certain time, and bow challenges, where you have to complete a certain path of rings with your guided arrow. The bow challenges are also a lot of fun and require some skill.
As a final feature, there are also smaller dungeons, the so-called Vaults of Tartarus. These are instanced areas that you have to go through, either by solving the puzzles in the dungeon, or by defeating waves of enemies in an arena. And there is a lot of variety in these dungeons as well. I don't recall one dungeon being like another in terms of puzzles. And there are many dungeons on the world map... some of which are also coupled with the main story.

All in all, these open-world activities offer quite a bit of variety, but the special thing in my eyes is that none of the puzzles resemble each other too much. There are always new approaches to solving the puzzles, and the abilities that you can gradually unlock play an important role. Sure, at some point you'll figure out the solution quickly, but the way to get there is always different.

With this review, I simply want to highlight a game that, in my opinion, rightly got its very good ratings and which, for a long time, offers a lot of variety and is very entertaining.
In many reviews, Immortals is also compared to genre giants like Zelda. And I personally think that Immortals definitely has what it takes to be a good Zelda representative in the Playstation universe.

I can recommend this game to every Zelda adventure-like fan, and also to fans of action-adventures in general. Even though it doesn't have the scope of a Breath of the Wild, you'll still have 40+ hours of activity if you want to complete every single activity.