Ronin is an interesting take on stealth design; challenging the player with a combination of real time movement and turn based combat. Unfortunately for all its uniqueness, the game can’t avoid the trap of repetitive gameplay.
Terminated:
The very loose story of Ronin involves a mysterious assassin who is out to kill the five heads of a mysterious organization. The game is set up as five chapters of three stages each; the first two stages involve you breaking in to facilities to track down your target, with the third stage being the actual assassination attempt.
What makes Ronin different from other stealth and action games on the market is the combination of real time and turn based elements that make up its design. When you’re not detected, the game plays in real time as you move around the levels killing guards from the shadows. Once you are detected, Ronin becomes a turn based action game … no really. How it works is that you need to avoid the guard’s attack line represented by a red line; if you are on that line when they attack, you are killed. You move around by choosing a jumping arc that sends your character forward; many of your turns will end with you still in the air and you will have to decide to keep going at the same velocity or try to change it.
Avoiding shots and getting the killing blow is a lot more interesting with the turn based design
To kill a guard, you need to land close enough to them to use your sword. As you get kills during combat, you’ll build up limit breaks that allow you to either move twice to avoid a fatal attack, or use special moves that can stun entire room, distract and more.
There are three enemy types that have different rules to deal with, samurais cannot be dashed and take two hits to go down for example.
Each mission also has bonus objectives that are kill all guards, don’t let the alarm go off and don’t kill civilians. Completing them all will get you skill points to unlock new special attacks.
Despite the almost split personality of having action and turn based combat in one game, Ronin works surprisingly well; the turn based sections become a calculated dance of death as you try to maneuver around to land the killing blow. Unfortunately Ronin plays its hand very quickly and becomes a one trick pony… or assassin.
Slashed:
The problem with Ronin is that the mechanics and how they are presented are not enough to last for 15 levels of content and the game becomes repetitive because of it. You’re not doing anything different in each stage and the way the combat system works makes encounters play out the same way.
What’s annoying about Ronin is the split personality of the game mechanics. The game’s story and structure makes it seem like a stealth game, especially with how alarms work and line of sight. However, the game repeatedly puts you in the middle of a fully lit room and asks you to fight your way out. One of the hints that come up tell you that Ronin is not a stealth game, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that a lot of the game is built around stealth mechanics and even a stealth finishing move.
Ronin doesn’t seem to know whether it wants to be more about stealth or combat, and the game’s pacing suffers from it
Controls are also very basic and will get you killed more times than not. To get around once you enter combat, you need to use the right analog stick to jump in a direction; even if you’re just trying to move one foot into the kill range.
Getting through windows using the rope mechanic is a huge pain in the ass, because it doesn’t show you the trajectory that you’re going to swing in, only where the rope attaches.
There were cases where I literally couldn’t hit an enemy because he was just barely out of my attack range and if I hopped forward I would have been hit by something else.
The game’s use of line of sight is also questionable as the sight lines are never really explained or makes sense. In one case, there were two rooms of guards in adjacent towers. I attacked a guard on the left building to only discover that someone saw me all the way across in the right building and started raising the alarm; with no easy way to get over there in time.
Hidden Away:
It’s a shame about these issues as I like the idea of having a tactical stealth action game as a good alternative to the action based Mark of the Ninja. But where Mark of the Ninja gave you expanding tools that gave the game’s encounters variety, Ronin just asks that you do the same thing to the same enemies with different shades of dark backgrounds behind you.
One of Ronin’s “tips” is that it’s not a stealth game, but there were sections that seemed only beatable by using stealth
The combat system of making use of turn based design was really neat and I would have loved this to be embellished more.
I could see this becoming more fleshed out with having special moves or commands to turn it into a quasi XCOM experience, and the more mechanics you give the player would give you more options for expanding the enemies and situations to fill out the levels better.
Too much of what makes Ronin difficult is due to the lack of properly displaying information to the player in terms of stealth detection; again, a completely different experience compared to the amazing Mark of the Ninja.
If you’re looking for a different take on stealth and action design, Ronin fits the bill, but it’s going to be a short trip. For more on Ronin, you can watch my video spotlight and supplement to the review.
