YMMV / Rise of the Rōnin

• Demonic Spiders: The Giant Mook sumo wrestlers are always aggressive, have tons of health, and have attacks that are surprisingly difficult to parry. Running out of stamina against them guarantees you'll be eating a devastating throw from them.
• Difficulty Spike: Chapter 3 is when the game's bosses stop messing around. They will punish you for spamming parry and not having the advantage in fighting styles.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Yasusuke Sawamura is easily one of the most popular companions for obvious reasons. It also helps maxing out his bond status gives you Ryu Hayabusa's ninja garb as gear and a cool katana style to cut enemies up with.
• Fandom Rivalry:
  • With Dragon's Dogma II. Both of them being Wide-Open Sandbox Action RPG titles that released the same day has something to do with it. Dragon's Dogma II fans like to brag about it's bigger scope and higher sales compared to Ronin. Meanwhile, Rise of the Ronin fans think that it is a more refined experience and lacks the scrappy mechanics and microtransactions that hold DD2 back.
  • To an extent, with Team Ninja's previous work, Nioh and its sequel Nioh 2. Fans of the Nioh duology criticize Ronin for simplifying the combat system and lowering the difficulty Team Ninja's previous games are known for in favor of a formulaic Wide-Open Sandbox and lack of supernatural elements, and lament that Team Ninja made it instead of a third Nioh title. Fans of Ronin note that the Nioh series already received two full titles and a plethora of expansion packs, and appreciate Ronin for being a more approachable experience that tries to do new things for the studio such as the aforementioned open world design and an element of Story Branching.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • Fans of Ghost of Tsushima took to Rise of the Ronin quite well. Both have similar gameplay and setting, and both have their own identity that makes them fun to compare and contrast. Ronin also acts as a good holdover until a sequel for Tsushima materializes.
  • Overlapping with Ghost of Tsushima, fans of earlier Assassin's Creed games have been favorable towards Rise of the Ronin for harkening back to the simpler, slender open worlds of these games complete with some Stealth-Based Game aspects.
  • Fans of Days Gone also found enjoyment in Ronin, noticing similarities in the reception for both games and the Critical Dissonance between critics and the players, and the games' respective mechanic-driven combat and exploration systems.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: The open world design of Ronin was criticized by numerous review outlets for being a fairly standard and formulaic open world overall.
• Play the Game, Skip the Story: While fans did praise Team Ninja for attempting a more complex story, it falls flat for most due to there not being many consequences for being pro or anti shogunate, some iffy voice acting, and the sheer amount of characters that the game expects you to care about. The gameplay, however, has the depth and customization that you would expect from a Team Ninja title.
• Player Punch: Taka's death, especially if you romanced her. It's made worse by the fact that there's no way to avoid it.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • Rise of the Ronin is probably the closest we'll get to a new Tenchu title.
  • With the Wide-Open Sandbox gameplay, crafting, horseback riding, and hang gliding, it's basically Team Ninja's attempt to make their own version of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
• That One Boss:
  • Soji Okita in "Fate of the Vanquished." Always aggressive and has some deceptively fast swings that will throw off your rhythm. Even going in with two allies and having a style that has the advantage against him, you're gonna have a rough time taking him down.
  • Kashitaro Ito in "The Feud of Aburanokoji." He will play dirty and throw poison darts at you that are too fast to be reflected on reaction. He also likes to jump on a lamp and spread some paralyzing solution around it, stunning you and any allies nearby. If that wasn't enough, he has a unique attack where he can spread a poison cloud behind him while he super armors any attack. You better bring your anti-poison and anti-paralyzing pills with you, you're going to need them.
• Underused Game Mechanic: Certain characters have weapons that the Player Character cannot use, such as a kusarigama or a sword/shield combo. If you want to use those weapons, you'd have to hope those characters are available to bring on missions, otherwise you'd never be able to use them.