After playing Assassin’s Creed Origins and Odyssey over the last few years, a green Xbox case landed in my hands. In it, a game I never heard of, which turned out to be one of the best gifts and one of the best games I ever played.
Using the same engine as the other two, the game’s control, interface and style feel pretty similar. But this is where the similarities end. Immortals is a different game altogether, being based mostly on solving puzzles and clearing rift vaults, rather than stealthily assassinating foes.
While Fenyx feels a bit hard to control at the beginning, it’s just a matter of time to getting used to the controls (and not using the broken controller with stick drift) and sorting out the game physics and mechanics.
The puzzles themselves are not too complicated, you basically look around and you either carry stuff, throw stuff, run at stuff or shoot at stuff until you clear the puzzle’s goals. However, some can get a bit tricky and need a bit of trial and error to get them done and some might be even frustrating (I swear to Hephaistos, the stick drift mentioned above has nothing to do with me swearing at the controller), but they’re doable with a bit of patience (which I usually lack) and carefully looking around (which I’m pretty bad at). But all these are just side-content in your quest to ultimately defeat the big bad, Typhon.
You’ll spend quite a bit of time in various vaults doing various puzzles, even if to collect some upgrade materials, or because a quest sends you there. However, the open world is wonderfully created, super coloured and has a very nice over-saturated summer feeling (except the last zone).
Regardless of game mechanics and appearance, one of the strongest points of Immortals Fenyx Rising is the writing. The story is nicely written around Greek mythology, being filled with jokes, references, breaking the fourth wall and other comedic reliefs. Probably one of the most enjoyable stories I’ve encountered in the last years. The story itself is super funny, seeing the mighty Greek gods in vulnerable and hilarious situations, facing their own personal issues and frustrations.
The soundtrack also deserves credit, for setting the mood perfectly, it’s one of the games where I didn’t listen to Spotify while playing. The movies and cutscenes are a mix of animated artwork and in-game renders, which put your customisable character in the spotlight.
This is not a huge game, the map itself isn’t huge, but it amounts to a ton of fun. There are a lot of things that you can collect, like armours and weapons, with both gameplay buffs or just cosmetic features. On the collectables list, you can also find several mounts (stags, horses, unicorns), but you can also receive appearances for your pet bird, Phosphor.
These are so nice that I’m considering to do the 100% completion grind, just because of how beautiful the open world is and how funny the Zeus jokes are, even those placed in the most unexpected places, like the game hints.
In conclusion, Immortals Fenyx Rising is a very strong title, feels like the Assassins’s Creed fun brother and will definitely be around for a while, and let’s hope it will have a continuation (besides the DLCs which I haven’t played yet). You can find some more (bad) gameplay videos on my gameclips page and some screenshots are below
| Developer(s) | Ubisoft Quebec |
| Publisher(s) | Ubisoft |
| Engine | Ubisoft Anvil |
| Platform(s) | Stadia |
| Microsoft Windows | |
| Nintendo Switch | |
| PlayStation 4 | |
| PlayStation 5 | |
| Xbox One | |
| Xbox Series X/S | |
| Release | December 3, 2020 |
| Genre(s) | Action-adventure |
| Mode(s) | Single-player |
| Source | Wiki |
Gallery
Below are some random screenshots from my gameplay.
Watch out, as they might contain spoilers!
