It’s easy to look at Immortals Fenyx Rising, the latest open-world action adventure game from Ubisoft, as something you’ve seen before. And in many ways, you definitely have. There’s a lot more than meets the eye here, however, and Immortals just might surprise you. Let me tell you why.
Gods & Monsters
Immortals Fenyx Rising used to be called Gods & Monsters (which is a way cooler name, by the way), and that name pretty much nails what Immortals is all about. An evil creature called Typhon has weakened the gods and taken over the land, corrupting some of the wildlife while summoning a horde of his own monsters as well. It’s up to you, Fenyx, to save the gods, restore the land and bring down the mighty Typhon himself. Sounds easy enough, right?
One of the things that really makes Immortals stand out is its storytelling. The entire affair is narrated by Prometheus, who is telling Zeus about the legend of Fenyx. I won’t go into details about the why and the how-to avoid spoilers, but these two characters ensure not only context and insight into Greek mythology as you play through the game, they also add a ton of funny banter along the way. If you’ve played 2018’s God of War, you might find this pretty similar to Mimir’s stories while you’re in your trusty boat – except with added 4th wall-breaking commentary. It’s funny in sort of a dad jokes kind of way, and while the humour may not be for everyone, I was definitely entertained.
A vast world to explore
Like I mentioned at the beginning, a lot of what you’ll be doing in Immortals isn’t new. It brings together gameplay elements from games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact and Darksiders, and creates an open-world adventure that offers a bit of everything.
The core of the experience is the game world itself. There are seven completely unique zones to explore, each offering a different biome and typically introducing a new type of monster or two. You’re probably used to Ubisoft games requiring you to climb some sort of tower to uncover a laundry list of activities to complete, but Immortals doesn’t quite work that way.
Instead, you can use something called Far Sight (essentially binoculars that allow you to spot things through the environment) to manually find things in the world for you to do. These include treasure chests, some which are freely available and others that are protected by either monsters or some elaborate puzzle, as well as Vaults, Myth challenges and more. Having to spot everything yourself is both very welcome, as it can feel a lot less overwhelming than seeing 100 new icons on your map all at once, but it also means that missing out on stuff is quite easy – unless you spend a lot of time in Far Sight, which can get a bit tedious.
The Vaults you discover are challenge/puzzle rooms, where you’ve got to overcome increasingly challenging puzzles to get the shiny treasure at the end. You’ll be spending a lot of time in these vaults, but luckily, the puzzles are both clever and really fun to figure out – and sometimes even offer more than one solution to a problem, creating some very welcome moments where you feel like you’ve outsmarted the game. The reward for completing these vaults typically include a resource required to upgrade your stamina, but if you manage to find the additional chests inside, you’ll be equally rewarded.
Not all Vaults are puzzle rooms, however, as some offer combat challenges instead, to mix things up. The rewards remain the same, but the variety is certainly welcome – even if the puzzles are a lot more fun.
The Myth challenges found in the open world come in many different forms, though a lot of it still requires some degree of puzzle solving too. Fresco challenges, for instance, are small 4-piece jigsaw puzzles, Navigation challenges require you to get from point A to point B within a certain time limit, Odysseus challenges require you to navigate your Apollo’s Arrow (an arrow you can control mid-air) through a specific path, and Constellation challenges require you to – you guessed it – solve a number of environmental puzzles to acquire some glowing orbs. There’s a ton of environmental puzzle-solving in this game and while you’ll need a keen eye to spot some of the solutions, an unsolved puzzle is typically highlighted by a red object or door, so you know that there’s something here for you to uncover.
The power of the gods
Combat in Immortals starts off pretty standard, with a normal sword attack, a heavier, stun-inducing axe attack, and your trusty bow. As the story unfolds and you meet new friends, however, your arsenal expands considerably and not only adds a trusty mythical bird companion to your loadout, but also grants you some awesome Godly Powers. These include the ability to dash into and damage enemies, to summon spears from the ground to lift up everyone around you, to grab onto and pull closer to enemies – and a huge hammer, that slams into the ground and damages everyone nearby. True to the nature of Immortals, these Godly Powers can be comically huge and excessive, making combat a true spectacle at times.
As your combat abilities grow, each encounter keeps getting more and more satisfying and fun – at least on higher difficulties. If you’re playing on Easy (or Story), you can pretty much brute-force the entire game, but if you’re taking on a tougher challenge, you’ll need every trick in the book to stay alive.
Key to this is the ability to dodge without needing stamina, which means that even if you go all out with your abilities, you’re not automatically punished for it. Immortals also has animation-cancelling, which means that even if you’re in the middle of an attack and need to dodge out of the way, you can do that just fine. It all serves to make the combat fast and responsive – and ultimately good fun.There’s also a Parry-system, allowing you to use enemy attacks against themselves, as well as a Perfect Dodge-system, that slows down time if executed properly.
A final note on combat: It’s all completely skill-based (unless you’re on those brute-force difficulty levels), which means that even without any upgrades, you can take on some of the toughest enemies and prevail. It would take a while, but you could do it. There’s no level-gating (or any levels at all), so you’re free to go just about anywhere at any time and see what adventures await.
Rewards galore
Alright, so there’s a lot to explore and find in Immortals Fenyx Rising, but it wouldn’t be half as fun without some rewards for your efforts. There are chests everywhere, whether you’re completing a vault, an open-world puzzle, or taking down some baddies. A lot of these will include weapons and armor, but not only new pieces, but also new versions of them.
What you equip is part of your strategy going into combat, as all gear comes with different stat bonuses. Whether you want more raw damage, health regeneration from hits, faster enemy stuns, more resources when gathering or whatever strikes your fancy, there’s something here for you. If you like looking awesome (and who doesn’t, right?), you can even “Customise” one gear piece to look like another, so if you’ve got a favourite weapon or armor appearance, you can use that, regardless of what actual gear you’ve got equipped – as long as you’ve found it in the world.
You’ll also be rewarded with different Wings for Fenyx, as well as different versions of your bird-companion that give it different abilities in combat. Finally, there are almost 30 different mounts in the world for you to find and tame, though I hardly ever used any mounts since the next adventure always felt just a stone’s throw away.
Whether you’re looting chests, defeating enemies or gathering resources in the open world, everything you do feeds into your character upgrades. Weapons and armor are upgraded as a category as opposed to individual pieces, which means upgrading your sword upgrades all swords, upgrading your axe upgrades all axes etc. This means that no upgrade is ever wasted and there’s no wrong way to upgrade anything.
You’ll be upgrading weapons, armor, health, stamina, Godly Powers, combat skills and potions, so you’re likely to still be working on several of these by the time you finish the story. Even after something is maxed out, however, you’re still able to keep upgrading through Mastery Levels, which means that even when you’ve seemingly unlocked everything, there’s still a benefit in finding those last chests, completing the extra Vaults or harvesting those additional resources – especially if you intend to take your Fenyx into New Game+ to tackle the Nightmare difficulty, which is unlocked after you finish the story.
To keep the adventure going, Immortals also has Live Tasks, which are infinitely rotating objectives for you to complete, in order to earn currency used to buy certain time-limited cosmetic items. Speaking of which, Immortals does offer a number of items for sale for real money, but it’s cosmetic items only, and nothing that will change your actual game in any way.
-K. A. Pedersen
VERDICT
I could probably harp on about Immortals for another few thousand words, but I’ll save you the rant. I will, however, leave you with this: Immortals Fenyx Rising is really good. The humour may not be for everyone, but there’s a ton more here than you might expect, and I think it’s worth your time if you’re into open-world action-adventure games. It may not bring much new to the table, but it’s a 30-50 hour journey that I’m super happy I went on – and you should too.
Available on: PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC, and Stadia
A code for this game was provided by the publisher for review purposes. Reviewed on PS5.
Immortals Fenyx Rising is available on Amazon UK here.
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