Rise of the Argonauts Preview

Codemasters and Liquid Entertainment’s Rise of the Argonauts is the subject of a short preview over at Video Game Media.

RotA has a lot of the usual action RPG staples; button-mashing combat against dozens of foes at a time, upgradeable weapons and armor, combos and special attacks. Arguably, the biggest of these for this kind of game is the combat part. Here, it’s about realism the enemies don’t necessarily have (hit points). If a character is hit with a sword/spear/mace/whatever other kind of attack, the character will react appropriately and realistically, and the position in which the attack comes from plays a part as well. An enemy with a shield will be easier and quicker to take down if you, duh, move behind him to attack, but you can also whittle away at the shield until it breaks. These aspects hold true for any attack from any character, controllable or not

The different face buttons of the controller are mapped to different kinds of attacks. Pressing A will perform an attack using your shield (for off-setting an enemy’s defense), the X button is for light attacks, and the Y button for heavy ones. This, of course, is for the 360 version, but we can assume the PS3 buttons will be the same. You can earn different abilities and power-ups by winning the favor of the gods Hermes, Ares, Athena, and Apollo. They’ll each ask of you certain tasks do them, and you’ll be rewarded. Some of these tasks require you converse with certain characters where a multiple choice-style dialog system is used, and each response is tied to one of the gods. This of course means that the more you select a certain god’s response, the more that god will reward you. RotA seems to be pretty accessible as it doesn’t waste your time with boring ol’ item management and too much stat-tracking; the focus is very much on the gameplay.