Jason the loquacious

Rise of the Argonauts is a game with some identity issues.

Although it masquerades as an action RPG, it feels more like an adventure game with some customization, and clearly it wants to carve out its own piece of glory wrought from the success of Sony’s venerable God of War series.

But the game’s most off-kilter characteristic is that while it craves the bloodshed inherent in its mythological subject matter and purported style of gameplay, it’s short on stabbing and long on speeches.

And when I say long, I mean really long.

In fact, maybe it would’ve been apropos to call Rise of the Argonauts “Jason the Loquacious” or “Jason and the Janus-faced Game,” because of the sheer volume of dialogue and its uneven division between mostly mundane conversation and actual action.

The plot, which does sort of a hodgepodge, rape-and-pillage job of taking characters and places from Greek mythology and mashing them all together (again echoing God of War, which I’ll mention numerous times throughout this review), is a retelling of Jason and his Argonauts’ quest to reclaim the Golden Fleece.

But rather than taking a road soaked in his enemies’ blood, when Jason embarks on his quest to find the fleece and stop a group of weird, vampire-like assassins, he finds himself in cities and villages jawing it up with the locals, helping them with their various problems while he gathers information to aid him on his quest.

This is a big issue in the somewhat-maligned Argonauts: Its streamlined approach sometimes leaves you with gameplay that’s less exciting than it should be.

In other words, it’s often unbalanced and over-burdened with long exchanges of spoken dialogue (thank God at least the voice acting is pretty solid) and a veritable slew of RPG-style errands and fetch quests that sometimes border on the enjoyment of the antiquated, God-awful “adventuring” found in Sega’s $70 million Dreamcast disaster, Shenmue.

But, thankfully, (and unlike most actual RPGs), the game does give you incentive to perform these tasks. Whether completing chores for the rabble or engaging your enemies, you are rewarded with deeds—a kind of in-game achievement or trophy system—which can be offered as dedications to Hermes, Ares, Athena and Apollo, the four Olympians who protect Jason.

Depending on which gods you want to dedicate your deeds to, new magical and physical abilities will be unlocked for use in battle, essentially the game’s version of grinding. And, on the seemingly remote chance you’re actually afforded an opportunity to spill blood, Argonauts’ battles are fun, if more scaled down and simpler than most other games with hacking and slashing. That doesn’t mean enemy encounters aren’t without their disappointments, though.

Take for example, the camera: While slogging through towns, it stays close behind Jason. But the second you get into a fight, the camera zooms back (presumably to provide a better picture of the action).

The result is that the game’s violence, relegated to the distance, feels nonchalant, which is a damn shame considering Argonauts’ use of the Unreal engine makes for some pretty tasty gibs. At the very least, it would have been nice to see a manual camera-zoom.

Another battling disappointment, especially for fans of God of War or 300, is that skirmishes are so small they rarely extend past, say, six or eight foes at once. Hell, even EA’s last-gen Lord of the Rings games supported more enemies onscreen than that.

The game also has a mostly understated sense of violence (where God of War revels in its crimson-soaked carnage, Argonauts gives a relative whimper) and you have battles that just aren’t as epic as they could be.

I get that Jason is a far nobler protagonist than God of War‘s Kratos, but this is still based on Greek mythology, whose canon is rife with carnage.

However, the biggest problem I have with the game is something far simpler: the map. Inconveniently located off the slow-loading pause screen, the map is a must because of the game’s numerous narrow pathways and maze-like streets.

Since there are no direction indicators to speak of, simple navigation often turns into a back-and-forth between taking small movements, pulling up the map and checking how my position has changed. If Argonauts needs one thing above all else, it’s a goddamn compass.

Argonauts isn’t a bad game, but what I see at its core is actually a lot of wasted potential. Instead of simply fighting with one or two of your fellow Argonauts, which has been done in countless other games, it would have been really cool to see a game that utilized the various powers of Jason’s crew.

The story, while sometimes overly simplistic or self-explanatory, is interesting and Jason is a good, strong character. The combat could have been so much more, if there was more of an emphasis on it. The graphics, and particularly the score, are excellent.

Instead, Rise of the Argonauts struggles to find its place post-God of War, a series which delivers a similar but far more visceral experience. The game may be OK for those seeking some light adventuring fare—it’s certainly easy enough—but if you’re hoping to find an adventure to rival Kratos’, you’d best look elsewhere.