IntroductionA tale of a great loss, an unspeakable betrayal, and an epic journey to save a true love. A warrior who will stop at nothing to save his love, even if it means going to hell and back again. With the Gods at his side will even that be enough to bring back the dead and save a young warriors love? Or will she be lost to Hades forever...or worse?
GameplayRise of the Argonauts really does nothing to stand out above the crowd, but that does not mean it's a horrible game. Throughout your epic journey you'll be joined by a number of allies, such as Hercules, to aid you throughout your quest.
For combat, you have the basic combo system like all other games in this genre, it may not be as fancy as some other systems, but it gets the job done. As for the "magic" part of this game, you earn God Powers from any of four different Gods: Ares, Athena, Hermes, & Apollo. You level up these God Powers by making key dialogue aligned choices throughout the game and also by completing different quests (such as kill 10 enemies, use God Power 10 times, etc.) Each of the aforementioned Gods' powers are closely related to a particular weapon. By taking any of these powers, the particular weapon gets more powerful.
Rating: 7/10StoryOn the day of your wedding day your wife is killed by an unknown assassin. So, if it was in the realm of possibility you'd try to save your wife-to-be, wouldn't you? Not only that, you'd want to hunt down the little schmuck and make him wish he was dead. Well, this is what our King Jason does...sets out on a quest of love, devotion, and revenge. He will eventually wind up on Delphi seeking a way to bring his loved one back. On Delphi, he'll meet an Oracle who will give him more questions than answers. From here the real story begins as Jason continues on his quest to answer those questions and maybe he'll find a way to bring his love back.
Rating: 8/10GraphicsArgonauts is nothing on the scale of amazing graphically. It's, again, on par with most games in it's genre (i.e. Conan, etc). The characters are nicely detailed but they could've used a little more work to make them seem more life-like. Cutscenes are about the same as the games in-game graphics, but they do help to tell more about the story which is a plus. At least the cutscenes actually mean something in this game as opposed to other games.
The thing that troubles me the most are the "invisible barriers". There's not much more in a game that drives me crazy in a game than an open section where I'm getting ready to go explore, but yet get blocked by an invisible barrier. I really thought we were getting passed this phase in gaming, but apparently not.
Rating: 6/10SoundThe sound is somewhat glitchy at times. I noticed near the beginning of the game that Hercules was talking, but there was no sound to accompany his lip movement. So, I turned it off and back on again and behold! Sound that goes with the lips. Other than that issue, I didn't see much of a problem in the rest of the game. The actors did a great job with their lines, promptly promoting emphasis when it was need unlike some games (See My Two Worlds Review, lol).
Rating: 5/10Achievement DifficultyHonestly, there's nothing really extremely hard about these achievements. I played on the hardest difficulty on my first playthrough and got every achievement on my first playthrough. The only thing is that some of these achievements seem a little glitchy, but they can be obtained. The one that bothered me the most is the Corona constellation...because it said I needed to have the 4 God constellations fully completed. But it turned out I only had to have the first 4 in each God's constellation to have it complete. I can't really thing of any reason why an average game couldn't potentially get 1000/1000 on this game.
Rating: 6/10Final ThoughtsI really enjoyed the storyline to this game. It's one of the better one's I've played so far this year. It's by no means on the scale of Bioshock and games like that, but I really did enjoy it. If you're big into mythology, Gods, and hacking and slashing this is a game for you.
Final Rating: 6.4/10 3.0