I’m willing to bet there’s at least a 25% chance that before you saw this review you didn’t know this game existed. To be fair, it was flying pretty under the radar for the most part and had a lot of major releases to compete with, but more people need to know about this game! It’s fantastic! First announced at E3 2019 as ‘Gods and Monsters’, Immortals: Fenyx Rising (as it’s now known) is a lighthearted, adventurous take on Greek mythology by Ubisoft Montreal, and its a bloody good time.
You play as Fenyx, a lowly shieldbearer in the Greek army who washes ashore on the mysterious Golden Isle after a storm destroys his/her fleet and finds his/her brother and the rest of the crew turned to stone. One thing leads another and soon enough you embark on an epic quest to stop the malicious Typhon, who has defeated the Greek gods and scattered their powers throughout the land. The whole story is experienced by you but told in Narration in a conversation between Zeus and Prometheus. If you don’t know your Mythology, Prometheus stole fire from the Gods and gifted it to Mankind, and was chained to a rock where an eagle could come and peck at his liver every day for all eternity. Zeus, king of the gods, was also defeated by Typhon and has come to Prometheus for help, but Prometheus agrees only if Zeus listens to the tale of Fenyx.
The Golden Isle is a beautiful setting, with distinct regions filled with unique variations of enemies and environments each themed after a particular god or goddess.
The Narration conversation between the two is excellent and provides some seriously funny dialogue to thread your adventure together. Along the way, you will also meet Hermes (God of thieves), Aphrodite (Goddess of Love), Ares (God of War), Athena (Goddess of Wisdom) and Hephaistos (God of the Forge). The Golden Isle is a beautifully colourful setting, with 5 distinct regions dedicated to each God/Goddess and is absolutely jam-packed with enemies and monsters to fight, mysteries to discover and puzzles to solve.
There are many kinds of puzzles, navigation, archery, myth, memory, this one is a constellation puzzle. All puzzles reward Coins of Charon, which are spent to upgrade your demigod powers
The first obstacle I had to overcome on playing was the games obvious lineage, the gameplay is almost a perfect child of Zelda: Breath of The Wild and Assassins Creed Odyssey, and it really sticks out like a sore thumb for the first few hours, even the voice actors playing Zeus and Prometheus (Daniel Matmor and Elias Toufexis) I recognised from AC Odyssey, and I checked, they played Socrates and Nikolaos in that game respectively.
Fenyx is a customisable hero with interchangeable gear. And I really want that mount. All I’ve got is a lame glowing blue unicorn
Once I got over the similarities I began to properly enjoy the game, I’ve always been fascinated by Greek Mythology, so I took joy in certain activities like slaying my first minotaur and completing my first myth challenge (pushing painted blocks around until they look like a picture of famous events in Greek myth). So if you share an appreciation for Greek Myth as I do, then you’ll enjoy the level of detail and information laid out to be learnt.
The exploration and combat are well married, you may see a golden ruin over a hill and chase the smell of loot eagerly only to find a cyclops sitting guard, and have to find a way to dispose of him best while not destroying the rocks and logs you need to activate a pressure plate (that actually happened to me). And the overall painted aesthetic of the game makes for some great sit-and-enjoy-the-ambience moments.
If you love a good combat game, if you love a good exploration or puzzle game, if you love a good mythological epic or all of the above, then check out Immortals: Fenyx Rising today!
Available now on Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5, Switch, Stadia and PC. This Review was played on an Xbox Series X.
Alec is no longer Alec, he’s Fenyx, saviour of the gods and slayer of monsters. But he’s also still a mild-mannered writer for Gotogame and manages to sustain himself on Weetbix and Sushi when he’s not in the middle of his own Mythology epic.
