https://www.cybersport.ru/games/articles/obzor-immortals-fenyx-rising-odna-iz-luchshikh-rpg-ukhodyashego-goda

The Legend of the Phoenix

Phoenix is ​​not a hero. She (according to the standard we are offered to play as a girl, but the gender and appearance can be easily changed) was thrown onto the shore of the Golden Island as a result of a storm. Waking up after a shipwreck, the girl discovers that all the members of her team are turned to stone, and in an attempt to save them she learns about a terrible disaster. The formidable titan Typhon escaped from captivity and again attacked the Olympians – this time successfully. Many of them have lost their powers and essences, and according to the prophecy of the newbie oracle, it is Phoenix who will be able to save the gods and defeat the evil titan. The story of the formation of a mighty mortal is told by the mythical Prometheus to Zeus, the god of thunder and lightning and also the head of Olympus, and the user will hear comments on key events throughout the game.

The “offscreen” skirmish between Zeus and Prometheus does not tire at all: their dialogues are presented in a humorous vein and most of the time are based on rather witty jokes. True, it does not do without humor “below the belt”, which, however, is organically woven into ancient Greek mythology with its characteristic features such as castration and bestiality. At the same time, Immortals manages to stay within the 12+ age rating, without going too far and limiting itself to hints – so subtle in places that they are almost invisible.

On the way to victory, Phoenix will have to enlist the support of Hermes, the patron saint of trade and thieves, and then save the four Olympians: Aphrodite, Athena, Ares and Hephaestus. And only with their support, the heroine will be able to go to save the world from an impending disaster.

Hero’s path

The first thing that catches your eye when playing Immortals is the lack of the usual pumping. Random battles are for the most part meaningless here: for killing monsters, the player does not receive experience that could be spent on pumping a loved one. You need to win only in order to better memorize the behavior of opponents and accordingly build the tactics of future battles. Somewhere it is useful to stand in a solid defense, actively repelling attacks, somewhere it is more important to use frequent switching of heavy and light attacks. As a result, you try to engage in battles either according to the plot, or by attacking those who defend something interesting.

At the same time, you can and should improve your hero. To do this, the game has a variety of resources ranging from easily obtained crystals in four colors (they are needed for a forge, in which Phoenix can improve armor, weapons, an arrow quiver and a potion bag) to Zeus’ lightning bolts, which increase stamina. They are no longer so easy to get: lightning is issued either for completing certain tasks, or for completing special dungeons. In them, most often you have to solve various puzzles, show miracles of dexterity or prove your strength in several combat rounds.

Leveling up in the forge is furnished in a rather interesting way: Phoenix improves not so much a specific armor or sword as the class of an object. Equipped items themselves change modifiers: for example, the starting sword deals more damage if the Phoenix does not miss the blows of opponents, and one of the armor can restore stamina with successful dodges.

Phoenix can also acquire new abilities, for which you need to collect Charon’s coins. With them, everything is a little more complicated: the currency of the afterlife carrier is issued for completing mythical tests. There are also several types of them: from the simplest “tags” for four parts to the tests of Odyssey, in which you need to show the skill of archery. The tasks “Constellation” stand apart: this is a complex multi-stage puzzle in which you need not only to correctly place special elements on a lined board, but also to find them and figure out how to get them. Since solving such problems is much more difficult than shooting accurately or running fast, for “Constellations” and the reward is much better – you can usually get about twice as many coins.

A few words about the in-game store, without which it is difficult to imagine Ubisoft games today. All items available in it are purely cosmetic: unlike items that can be found during an adventure, purchased items do not change the characteristics of the slots. In addition, all of them can be bought for electrum – a special currency that can be obtained without donation for simple daily tasks.

Research as a lifestyle

Immortals are pushing to explore the world. There are no automatic markers on the map, except for those related to the main quest. At the same time, the starting characteristics of Phoenix are not enough for a comfortable passage: over time, more and more difficult opponents will appear in the game, overcoming them without pumping is not easy, although possible.

To find points of interest, you need to inspect the territory from a height. A little bit interesting things will be slightly highlighted: a thin orange line rises to the sky above the chests, mythical tasks are “marked” with iridescent shine, and ambrosia, necessary for improving health, is already sparkling white. In the release version, however, everything is somewhat simpler than in the beta, which we managed to test a month ago: The dots are illuminated even through obstacles, so to “search” it is enough just to move the camera, catching the moment of vibration of the controller or watching the tapering white diamond around the scope.

From the very beginning, the game does not limit the user’s actions in any way: the entire Golden Island is available for study, and there is no specific order of saving the gods (except, perhaps, the fact that the game strongly pushes to save Aphrodite at the very beginning). There is no trace of almost classic “grind walls”: strong opponents appear over time, and the chance to stumble upon someone too difficult by chance is extremely small, plus the game will helpfully tell you that a particularly formidable opponent is ahead and it would be better to pump up a little.

“It’s alive!”

The general structure, gameplay approach, and many small elements in Immortals are borrowed from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This concerns, for example, rock climbing, a blueprint taken from Nintendo, and the approach to pumping, where instead of gaining experience you need to go through special dungeons. As in BotW, the player must first enlist the support of allies, each of whom has their own problems, and only then go to the final battle. And, as in the Nintendo game, each ally’s quest chain ends with a special “dungeon” in which battles alternate with puzzles. You can, again, tame horses, and even in a very simplified form, cooking is borrowed. There is no need to select ingredients, the potions are prepared automatically. But they can be improved with amber. The principle of application, however, is similar: with the help of potions you can heal, restore stamina, and also increase attack and defense.

Those gameplay moments that Zelda did not have are borrowed from the previous parts of Assassin’s Creed: the combat system is largely based on that of Origins, up to the use of combat skills by binding them to certain key combinations. Here, however, there are not so many skills, and they are fixed: Ares’ blessing, for example, deals damage in a small radius from Phoenix and throws opponents into the air, and Phosphorus (a tame hellbird), which is opened in one of the side quests, can attack opponents from heaven , damaging them to health and stamina at the same time.

Not even without hidden attacks: Phoenix, of course, does not have a hidden blade, but with an invisible attack, it still inflicts increased damage. Weak opponents can die from one hit, and stronger ones lose up to half their health.

The result of crossing the two franchises does not feel like a hastily sewn “New Prometheus”: Immortals works surprisingly organically, and all of its elements complement each other well. The additional opportunities received after saving the gods are pushing for experiments, and rarely any battle takes place as a simple “call out” of a crowd of opponents. It is much more interesting, for example, to shoot an arrow charged with lightning at the largest one, and while everyone is moving away from an unexpected attack (and lightning is spreading to all nearby opponents), Phoenix already manages to pull the cobblestone to throw it into the crowd. Under the “curtain” you can hit Hephaestus with a huge hammer.

A fairy tale is a lie, but there is a hint in it

Speaking about the plot, I would like to note a certain boldness of interpretations shown by the developers. Typhon, as already mentioned, stole the essence from the gods, which Phoenix is ​​to return. At the same time, it is easy to read in the myths that the gods are not such nice guys: they constantly cheat on each other, envy, quarrel, destroy entire cities in anger and send misfortunes simply because it is fun. Typhon, taking away their essences, to some extent “corrects” this: the wise Athena turned into a little girl who does not know how to build strategies (or intrigues), and Ares became a cowardly rooster, having lost not only the ability to hold a sword and bear suffering, but also your unrestrained temperament.

At first glance, it may seem that the disappearance of dark lines is almost a blessing, but playing with the lips of Phoenix utters an interesting and in many ways provocative thought: shortcomings make us who we are. And to hide your dark sides (not to correct, namely to hide) is a stupid idea and will never lead to good.

In detail, Immortals goes even further: the same story of Hephaestus says not only that each of us is the sum of good moments and sorrows that have fallen to our lot, but also the fact that being “different” is not always bad. In mythology, Hephaestus was abandoned by his own mother and thrown him from Olympus. All this remained in the game, and, unlike other gods, the blacksmith needs to return not so much courage or selfishness as the grief, anger and pain he lost, without which the talented creator god becomes literally a machine.

If you do not dive into the depths of analysis, the scope for which you do not expect at all from such a game, the story still remains entertaining enough to keep you on the screen. It does not shine with delicacies, and most of the twists in it are read strongly in advance, but the simplicity is compensated for by a truly interesting presentation and good humor. And scattered hints can easily attract users to further study Greek mythology: how are relationships built in the Hephaestus – Aphrodite – Ares triangle? How did Aphrodite actually appear and where did the discrepancies come from? Finally, why did Typhon, who got free, manage to defeat the Olympians?

Descent to Tartarus

For all its advantages, Immortals remains the brainchild of Ubisoft, which means that it was not without problems. The most surprising of them is the incorrect operation of the gamepad on the PS5: in those moments where the improved vibration response should obviously work, for some reason the motors of the adaptive triggers turn on. As a result, you can hear (and feel at least a little) how the gamepad turns on the effects, but in reality you will often not be able to feel them. The problem is that, for example, when rolling a cobblestone, you simply cannot touch the triggers: the right one is responsible for attacking with an ax, and the left one is for aiming with a bow. Therefore, most often it remains only to understand what the developers wanted to do by the sound of the actuation.

Immortals has a tendency to freeze on load: it has become unresponsive four times in a playthrough during a fast transition. Sometimes the game still loads, but refuses to accept any commands: Phoenix stands rooted to the spot. All that remains is to reboot.

Sometimes opponents can turn off their intellect: one of the bosses towards the end of the battle simply stood and steadfastly accepted his death, without trying to prevent it in any way. In rare cases, the Phoenix can fall through the textures, incorrectly count the player’s actions, or “slide” into the abyss where, in general, there is nothing to slide on. Fortunately, there are few such problems, and in 25 hours of passing them, two dozen will hardly be typed.

But what is difficult to close your eyes to is facial animation. It’s hard to say exactly what went wrong, but it can easily be called monstrous, even with a discount on the cartoonish visuals. In rare scenes, it looks good, but most often it gives out the level of games from the early 2000s.

Speaking of cartoony, I would like to separately mention a strange solution with animated inserts. The retelling of the events of the past on behalf of Zeus or Prometheus is accompanied by hand-drawn cut-scenes, which are performed at the level of cheap indie games. In The Legend of Zelda, a similar technique is used, but the drawings were stylized to resemble Aztec rather than the standard re-lay animation. The decision, to put it mildly, is controversial, but the game does not interfere much.