Immortals Fenyx Rising - PS4 | Review

I’ve heard many people describe Immortals Fenyx Rising as “Breath of the Wild if it was Greek” and honestly, that kind of hit the nail on the head. Fenyx Rising is Ubisoft Quebec’s latest open-world adventure that builds upon the mechanics and environments that were introduced in games like Breath of the Wild and Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, their previous title.

In terms of story, Fenyx Rising is nothing special. Building upon the “Help four powerful deities and beat a huge boss” Fenyx Rising has you journeying across the legendary Golden Isles to help and restore the Greek Gods who were defeated by the fearsome Typhon. As with Breath of the Wild, this sees you travelling across the land freeing each God’s essence and restoring their power to aid you in a final showdown.

Fenyx Rising builds upon the Breath of the Wild foundation by vastly expanding the world you inhabit, the four ‘divine beast’ encounters and, most importantly, the weapon/combat system. Rather than simply going to each God, facing off against a corrupted version of them and powering up the deity - you instead have to complete a short questline for each, which sees you solving puzzles and learning more about the Gods.

For example, one of the Gods, Aphrodite, has had her personality locked away by Typhon, rendering her a harmless and nature loving tree only concerned about the preservation of her region of the Golden Isles (You’d think this would be a good change, but you need the real Aphrodite’s assistance. To free her locked personality you must first recreate the conditions of her….creation, through a comical scene in which you roll a pearl into the ocean to create “sea foam” needed to treat Aphrodite’s roots. Then you need to recover the tears from her ill-fated romances of old and find the Apple of Discord - the catalyst to the famous Trojan War.

It’s a simple thing, but where Fenyx Rising shines is in its world building and storytelling - and this makes sense since the great prophet Prometheus is the one narrating the story. Having played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, which was created by the same team, it truly feels like they’ve been able to expand their scope and explore the stories they really wish to tell, without the constraints of an already established franchise on their shoulders.

Even the world design leads into this - I can’t think of an open-world that is as densely packed with content as Fenyx Rising. In terms of puzzles, enemies and lore bites, the Golden Isle is brimming with content, and it never feels overwhelming. Similar to Breath of the Wild, Fenyx has “shrines” or “vaults of Tartarus” where you need to solve some sort of puzzle to gain materials needed to improve your base skills. However, Fenyx also has a multitude of other challenges, ranging from small side quests to musical memory challenges, to heroic boss encounters (also based off of Greek myths).

One of my favourite aspects that has returned from Ubisoft Quebec’s back catalogue, and one that makes completing these puzzles even more rewarding is the idea of ‘transmog’, or the ability to change your skin without removing perks. As with Assassin’s Creed Odyssey there is a whole host of weapons and armour you can find on your travels, and Fenyx ramps this up in terms of mythical design and powerful perks. This extends to the mounts you can find and tame throughout the world (My personal favourites being Aethon - a literal fire horse - and Ptilon - a rainbow feathered Pegasus)

As is to be expected, however, due to the sheer amount of content and rewards, the crafting materials can be a little overwhelming at times. Your four potion ingredients, Zeus’ Lightning used for stamina upgrade, Ambrosia used for health upgrades, Coins of Charon which are used to upgrade perks, a multitude of shards which are used for weapon and armour upgrades and finally amber chunks which are used to upgrade potions. It’s a lot to begin with and can take some time to pick up, especially when trying to stock up for a difficult boss fight - this does get a little easier once you get perks that allow you to collect multiple resources at once, or collecting at a wider range.

As is to be expected also as this is a Ubisoft game, Fenyx does have micro-transaction mechanics which, while purely cosmetic, do feel a little unnecessary. Hermes, the mercantile god, has an in-game store which allows players to use paid-for currency to buy some of the more desirable skins in game. You can generate this currency through a limited number of weekly challenges, but it can be difficult to generate enough for the better skins Hermes has to offer.

Due to the number of perks and upgrades you can get through the game, I found that by the time I was getting to the 4th and final God, I was waltzing my way through most combat encounters with ease, and so had to up the difficulty towards the end. I’ve only dipped my toes into the first DLC - A New God - but this issue does seem to have been addressed with the puzzles the DLC has proving more challenging than others I’ve encountered in the main game.

With the benefit of being released four years after Breath of the Wild’s success and being able to build upon and improve its shortcomings, Immortals Fenyx Rising definitely proves itself as one of Ubisoft’s more innovative and creative open-world titles. Having played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, Immortals Fenyx Rising truly feels like the game Ubisoft Quebec wanted to make, exploring the themes and stories that they are genuinely interested in - and this passion is shown throughout the game.