Rise of the Argonauts Reviews
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Combat, though rewarding with its frequent decapitations and bursts of blood, also becomes a repetitive process of light/light/heavy and light/light/light/heavy combos before long. Things are kept somewhat fresh by Jason's range of weapons and his ability to string together multi-weapon combos, but there's rarely any need to employ any strategy beyond the basic combos. Some enemies are better able to deal with certain weapons than others, such as shield-bearers turning away Jason's sword with ease, but Argonauts' combat in general feels unpolished and clunky.IGN's review is similarly unimpressed, giving the game a 6.2/10.
Combat isn't the only mechnical issue either. Navigating Argonauts' load-free environments can be quite a chore thanks to the total lack of an on-screen minimap or directional finder. What's more, actually getting to the map requires pausing the game and selecting the map option while the gamepad's Back/Select button remains unused. While I can respect Liquid's desire to maintain a HUD-free presentation, would it have been so difficult to at least allow players quick access to the map?
The main issue is there just isn't much reason to use anything other than X,X,Y or Y,Y attack combos. Each of Jason's tools of battle, the shield, mace, sword, and spear, can be powered up in various ways, but even at the end of the game on the hardest difficulty setting, it was a matter of using the simple two and three button press combos to vanquish pretty much everything rather easily. Part of this is due to a large number of enemies having almost exactly the same behavior in battle. There'll be guys with weapons and guys with shields, a few larger guys with weapons and shields, and that, with a small number of exceptions, is it. Combo and repeat, and they're dead. The handful of bosses in the game play out in a familiar fashion, with progressive attack patterns that in some cases require you to sit up and pay attention to timing, movement and blocking. They're certainly a nice break from the sloppy and simplistic battle arenas the game throws at you throughout each adventure area, particularly during the final stages, but they do little to elevate the overall battle system doldrums.
Over the course of the game Jason will gradually become more powerful, a result of better weaponry and armor types, but it's difficult to actually gauge how powerful. So while you'll be comfortable with the knowledge that you're enhancing Jason's abilities simply by virtue of activating larger and larger numbers of passive abilities and finding the occasional sword, mace, spear, or armor, which represents the entirety of the game's equippable loadout, you never get a good overall sense of how much you're improving. The game does provide a range of effects, from enemies moving more slowly when hurt to blood dripping from wounds to indicate what's going on during a fight, but these don't really address the ambiguity.
