Rise of the Ronin hands-on report: Team Ninja’s first open-world is a wandering swordsman’s playground

One lucky PlayStation 5 owner has recently come across a 45% discount on Rise of the Ronin at Walmart. The hefty price cut was spotted less than a week after Rise of the Ronin officially hit the store shelves.

Several major games released at the same time last week, and though most have made it into the latest weekly Japanese sales charts released by Famitsu, the one that’s topped the charts might not be the one many would have expected. Princess Peach: Showtime! sits on top of the charts, beating out both Dragon’s Dogma 2 and Rise of the Ronin.

Rise of the Ronin diverges from the kind of games Team Ninja has becoming synonymous with in a number of ways, chief among them being its open world setting. How well it executes on its open world is up for debate, but the developer wants to keep building on the foundations it has laid down with the recently released action RPG as it looks ahead to its future games.

and are two epic samurai RPGs, taking place in different parts of Japan, and set hundreds of years apart. As one of PlayStation's biggest exclusives of the year thus far, the anticipation for was immense, and the game has mostly lived up to high expectations. From the developer Team Ninja, the game brings familiar elements with parallels to other samurai games from the last several years.

A Rise of the Ronin player stumbled upon a character creator preset that bears an uncanny resemblance to Hollywood actor Samuel L. Jackson. The player shared their discovery with the Rise of the Ronin community only to find out they were not alone in noticing the likeness.

is an adventure of substantial size, but whether it's possible to keep playing after the credits roll is one question that's likely to come to mind over the course of the game. As an open-world experience, has plenty of side content that could be passed over while racing toward the story's climax. The game's developer Team Ninja included a variety of optional missions in prior games like , so it's no surprise that this element carries over to the more expansive historical setting of Edo in Japan.

Rise of the Ronin, the latest tentpole PS5 console exclusive from legendary Japanese developer Team Ninja, has been subject to a colossal marketing push in Asia, where posters and billboards have been spotted around cities such as Taipei for several weeks now. That’s all culminated in an Edo period art exhibition in Huashan 1914 Creative Park – coincidentally, the former home of a Japanese sake manufacturer– where Sony has installed several 19th-century props inspired by the game.

For Team Ninja veterans and newcomers alike, Rise of the Ronin offers a deep and satisfying combat system, set to the backdrop of the Bakumatsu era of Japan. With the game now less than a day away, I spoke to Rise of the Ronin’s Producer, Yosuke Hayashi, and Game Producer and Director, Fumihiko Yasuda, who offered their tips for players joining the Veiled Edge tomorrow.

Rise of the Ronin has gotten a high score from Famitsu. The upcoming action-RPG from Team Ninja nearly reached the maximum score in Famitsu, backing Rise of the Ronin as one of the year's most anticipated releases.

Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Team NINJA have released the fourth developer diary for open-world action adventure game Rise of the Ronin, titled “Rise as One.”

The first Rise of the Ronin review has been published in Japanese magazine Famitsu.

As an open world action-adventure game with a period Japanese setting, Rise of the Ronin has drawn a lot of comparisons with Ghost of Tsushima, and the more that we’ve seen of the upcoming Team Ninja game, the more prominent the similarities between the two games have become. It’s no surprise, then, that Sucker Punch’s 2020 samurai epic served as very direct inspiration for the Rise of the Ronin development team.