Rise of the Ronin’s Protagonist is a Fully Realized Character With a Backstory, Says Team Ninja

Developer Frogwares has announced that it is now the sole publisher for its survival horror detective title The Sinking City on all platforms. Along with the change in publishers, The Sinking City is also getting a new update.

Thank your own personal deity—possibly Doomguy after typing 'IDDQD'—it's Friday! Today is all about the continuing deals of "Winter" at places like Fanatical, Green Man Gaming and the various first-party console eshops. I've done my best to filter through the white noise of a thousand odd "deals" to find you the true hidden gold. Business as usual, basically.

I'm a bit late to the party with Anode Heart, a creature collector RPG that launched to near-perfect user reviews last month, and I'm kind of kicking myself for it. After dipping my toes in the free demo on Steam, I reckon this could be one of the most underrated Pokemon-likes of the year, in no small part because it's got a heaping helping of Digimon in its DNA. 

There once was a time when video games were hard simply because that’s how game developers wanted them to be. Then, it became a thing where it should be “easier to play” because not everyone was a “hardcore gamer.” And now, we’re in an age where certain titles should have multiple difficulty levels or be “naturally hard” because many gamers love to be masochists. No matter where you fall in those difficulty categories, Rise of the Ronin from Team Ninja will have you covered. Team Ninja is known for making games difficult, and that will be no different with their upcoming game.

The release of Team Ninja’s upcoming action role-playing game, Rise of the Rōnin, is getting closer and closer, and it’s now been revealed what major Japanese locations players will be able to explore in it. 

The first quarter of 2024 kicks off in style, with titles like Koei Tecmo’s Rise of the Ronin for PS5. Developed by Team Ninja of Nioh fame, it’s the studio’s most ambitious project to date, and thanks to a new preview by Game Informer, we get a better idea of its scale.

Rise of the Ronin is easily Team Ninja’s biggest game, with a massive open world to explore. Set in Japan during the Bakumatsu, players encounter historical figures like Sakamoto Ryoma and Yoshida Shoin, but your decisions influence the narrative direction.

Incredibly, Wo Long: Fallen Dynasty launched in March 2023, ahead of the insane cavalcade of games that followed. Developer Team Ninja has been consistently supporting the Souls-Like ever since, and the third DLC pack to date, Upheaval in Jingxiang, is out today on PS5 and PS4.

Pre-orders for Team Ninja’s Rise of the Ronin are now available digitally on the PlayStation Store and physically on PlayStation Direct and various retailers. The Standard Edition retails for $69.99, while the Digital Deluxe Edition costs $79.99.

Publisher Sony Interactive Entertainment and developer Team NINJA have opened physical and digital pre-orders for Rise of the Ronin, which will launch for PlayStation 5 on March 22, 2024. It will cost $69.99 for the standard physical or digital edition, and $79.99 for the Digital Deluxe Edition. Physical edition pre-orders are available at retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, Play-Asia, PlayStation Direct, Walmart.

Jenn Wexler’s holiday horror movie The Sacrifice Game is full of surprises. The story, about a group of killers hoping to enact a demonic ritual at an elite boarding school at Christmas, feels a little like a home-invasion thriller, and a little like other period-piece boarding-school horror movies, from the classic Suspiria to Simon Barrett’s Seance. (And coincidentally, a whole lot like 2023 critical darling The Holdovers.)

In what I think is the biggest blunder in video game history, The Day Before developers, FNTASTIC, are shutting down. This has been confirmed through an official statement from FNTASTIC themselves, and honestly, I’m shocked but not surprised.