I picked up Rise of the Argonauts for fifteen dollars last week, and I must say, I’m pleased with it so far. It’s essentially a retelling of the classic Greek tale of Jason and the Argonauts, except in this incarnation Jason’s wife is assassinated and Jason goes on a quest to retrieve the golden fleece in order to bring her back to life.



This is probably one of the buggiest games I can remember playing. Characters pop and twitch, when they aren’t talking they stop blinking, movement is sometimes difficult or unresponsive, camera angles cut in strangely during dialogue, there is no onscreen map, and the lack of body language during extended cutscenes does nothing to help the games lengthy, Bioware-esque conversations.



But you know what? I’m enjoying it. The combat has been sparse, but the fights are entertaining. Maybe it helped since I’m playing on hard mode, but the dodge, block, strike at openings style of gameplay has a lot of “oompf” to it. You use a sword, shield, and spear, the latter of which is my current favorite for its reach and agility, reminding me of Troy and 300. There is no onscreen health bar, or anything onscreen for that matter, and I haven’t been having any problem with that at all, I rather enjoy it. Jason’s physicality is believable, whereas God of War’s Kratos is a superhuman Greek, Jason has much more of an India Jones flair about him, that he’s an ordinary man trained to rigorous physical ability.



Most of the game is spent in dialogue trees. I love what they’ve done with the branching tree system, like in Mass Effect. You have options, each aligned with a different god, which shows up as a differently colored symbol in the center of the convo tree. Ares for angry responses, Apollo for just and logical responses, Hermes for witty retorts, and Athena for wise words. Responses give you xp to be spent on each god to power up. But the phrases listed only allude to what Jason is actually going to say or do. Take a situation that unfolded on the Mycenean docks. An Ionian mercenary insulted Jason for allowing his wife to die, calling him the biggest coward in Greece. He said his home island of Iolus was weak like its king. The Apollo aligned response was, “Defend Iolus.” I selected it, and Jason proceeded to sock that son of a bitch right in the mouth. I practically shrieked with joy.



Though the dialogue is technically sound and well voiced (mostly), the bugs really put a damper on it. Awkward pauses which should have been smoothed out in editing, along with the aforementioned problems with character movement, cast a pall over what is generally good writing. It’s unfortunate, but if you can work past it, there’s a fun story being told here. Rise of the Argonauts is a retelling, like God of War, but it has none of the satirical, postmodern outlook of its predecessor. Rise of the Argonauts seems much more like what the Greeks would have thought of their epics in their own time, full of bold heroes in classic Greece doing Greek things. Hell, it has almost as much dialogue in it as the Iliad! If that doesn’t make it Greek, I don’t know what does.

It’s a shame this game was rushed out so soon, and that it didn’t offer more combat, especially against monstrous enemies. Perhaps I haven’t seen any yet? Don’t spoil it for me, I like to be surprised. I’m only about three hours in so I can’t make any assertions about the game’s ending or overall length, although I’m finding the latter is consumable in bite size chunks, perfect for a busy college student. Given a bit more polish, this probably would have been one heck of a game. Instead, it stands as a monument to unfinished greatness.