Mythology was the beating heart of Ancient Greek culture, intrinsically tied to their history and everyday lives. People in Ancient Greece used myth to process the world around them, using it as the primary lens through which they viewed the weather, cultural differences, political conflicts, and even personal friendships. See the thing about Greek Mythology is that the gods and monsters that inhabit it aren’t so different from us. They’re larger than life (literally) forces of nature, sure, but still bound by the same emotional burdens and petty jealousies that we go through. The best stories about Greek myths are ones that nail both the spectacle of their elemental awesomeness as well as their humanity, and that is exactly the story the game formerly known as Gods and Monsters seeks to tell.
Developed by Ubisoft Quebec (Assassin’s Creed Odyssey), Immortals Fenyx Rising concerns itself almost entirely with the personal character flaws of said gods and monsters, viewing them through the lens of a lowly nobody shieldbearer named Fenyx, who has some obstacles of her own to overcome. The story begins as Typhon, a menacing Titan escapes his eternal prison and exacts vengeance on the Pantheon by stripping them of their power and turning all of humanity into stone. All but one, the aforementioned Fenyx, who finds herself shipwrecked on the Golden Isle where all of this just happens to be going down.
Anyone familiar with Greek myths will not find much in the way of surprise or subversion here, since Immortals Fenyx Rising hits all of the classic tropes of the genre. However, if you give it a chance, there’s plenty of great character writing here. The plot is presented in flashback as Prometheus narrates the story of Fenyx to Zeus, and this framing device is thoroughly entertaining, with the two of them rehashing classic mythic tales and legends as if it was a funny incident at a house party last week. It’s bizarrely compelling.
Fenyx herself is quite unlike the typical Campbellian hero, since she accepts the call to action almost immediately without much prompting. The fun thing about her is that she arrives into the story fully formed and with an axe to grind. She is a perfectly capable, if somewhat unproven, warrior who is just aching for exactly the kind of story that ends up happening to her. So rather than a typical heroic coming-of-age, the story we get here is much more introspective.
Typhon’s actions have turned the gods into, let’s just say “lesser” than their former selves, and it’s up to Fenyx to help them regain their essence and self re-actualise so they can help her take the fight to the bad guy. There’s four gods – Ares, Athena, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus – whom you have to save with the help of Hermes. Each of the four gods occupies a different region on the world map, each with their own separate biomes, enemies, quest lines, etc. You’ve seen this in countless other Ubisoft games. Do quests in a region to ‘liberate’ it, move on.
What’s different here is just how free-form Immortals Fenyx Rising is compared to something like Wildlands or Far Cry 5. This is where I will have to address the elephant in the room. Yes, Immortals owes a great debt to Breath of the Wild. From the general pace of the exploration (climbing, gliding, both running on stamina) to the world layout (different themed regions with a central boss location in the middle) to a lot of the core gameplay mechanics, Ubisoft Quebec obviously learned a lot of lessons from Nintendo.
But curiously, what makes Immortals most compelling is the ways it diverges from and improves on Nintendo’s game, with a few choice picks from other influences, as well as a few pretty good ideas of their own. For one thing, the combat is much deeper than I was expecting. The bones of the combat system are lifted almost verbatim from the studio’s own Assassin’s Creed Odyssey with the light/heavy combos, dodges, and parries being exactly where you expect them to be. Your light attacks focus on damage while heavy attacks fill up an enemy’s stagger gauge which, once full, will stun them for a bit.
Things get a lot more interesting once you dig into the skill tree, however, and by the end I was launching myself into the air and grappling and zipping between enemies like I was Spider-Man or something. Your abilities run on your stamina meter and pull double duty between damage and traversal so fighting effectively often involves thinking multiple steps ahead so you can maximise damage while placing Fenyx exactly where you want her in the fight. The end result is a mechanically complex combat system that allows players to express themselves in increasingly stylish ways.
Gear and skill progression is very streamlined, since Immortals is not an RPG. Instead of grinding for XP or skill points, you solve puzzles out in the world to earn one of three currencies, each of which does different things. Zeus Lightning, used to upgrade stamina is found inside Tartarus Vaults which are essentially mini puzzle dungeons. Charon Coins are earned by completing Myth Challenges which are traversal challenges or environmental puzzles strewn across the map, and Ambrosia is just found in the game world in hard-to-reach places and used to upgrade your health bar.
You can find all of these simply by exploring, but you’re encouraged to find high spots and use your “far sight” to scan for them in the world. This is very similar to how you’d use your eagle to find points of interest in Assassin’s Creed Odyssey except it feels much more organic here because you have to seek out actual vantage points (any high ground or a decent cliff edge) and actually look around you. It grounds you into the world and gives exploration a much more natural place as you climb to a high point, see something shiny or interesting in the distance, and then just go there. It also intrinsically ties exploration to your character progression, because you become stronger by exploring more of the world rather than grinding for XP. Solid stuff.
Visually, Immortals Fenyx Rising makes a hell of an impression. It runs on the same Anvil engine that powers the Assassin’s Creed games but has gone with wildly different art direction. The environments and foliage are rendered with a watercolour-like softness, while the characters and monsters look like they were plucked straight out of a modern Disney film. The character designs are endearing and immediately distinct. Every bit of gear and armour you find is gorgeous. Seriously, I found them all and there isn’t a single one I dislike (though I do have my favourites). Fenyx herself is lavishly animated, with her combat animations being particularly enticing for my photo mode-loving heart (yes, the game has photo mode).
The background score by Gareth Coker (Ori and the Blind Forest) is utterly magical. It is the sort of score that’s so good it ends up elevating the piece overall. The main theme is immediately memorable and wonderfully heroic, accurately capturing Fenyx’s inherent charm and her desire to prove herself. The battle themes are very hype and the ambient exploration music sounds exactly like how I imagine getting lost on a mythical island inhabited by gods and monsters would. I’m pretty sure one entire point in my review score is for the music, it makes the game what it is. I mean, listen to this!
Voice acting is mostly great. Every character you meet is just oozing with personality and charm, except Fenyx who sounds like someone doing a table read for a high school play. She did end up growing on me over the course of the game but I credit the writing for that. Honestly the writing was the most surprising part of Immortals for me. It features solid character beats, a single thematic throughline the story follows all the way through, and it remained consistently funny (at least for me) with a few unexpected gut punches along the way.
It’s not all perfect, obviously. There are some glaring camera issues, particularly during fights in enclosed spaces or dense forests. I also found some weird difficulty spikes on the default difficulty, while easy was far too easy. The game crashed on my at least four times but I was not able to replicate any of them so it might just be my PC. The switch version is also quite subpar. Not unplayable but far from ideal, but it runs just fine on PS4. I wasn’t able to test the next-gen versions yet, so more on that later probably. None of these issues are enough to bring down the overall quality of the game in my opinion.
I think all of us, myself included, have been kind of apathetic towards Immortals Fenyx Rising. Its trailers sell a cringey and overtly try-hard tone, while its mechanical similarities to other games make it seem uninspired and derivative. However, I think it will surprise anyone who is willing to give it an honest shot. It’s a delightfully well-told story with lots of charm and a strong beating heart.
This review was originally published on PC Mag Middle East.