Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realm Review

Immortals Fenyx Rising is an interesting game. Using mythology as a backdrop and fusing that with a generous sprinkling of humor, it fits a nice niche between Breath of the Wild and the more fast-paced open-world design Ubisoft is known for. With the Chengdu Ubisoft team taking the mantle for this one, they can really try and do justice to the Chinese mythological theming of Myths of the Eastern Realm. For the most part, they succeed. 

Before analyzing Myths of the Eastern Realm itself, I think it’s important to understand what works about Immortal. As we said in our review, the combat feels great and the map provides an incredibly rewarding sense of exploration. Unfortunately, it lacked a bit of polish and got stale by the end of the 40 or so hours it takes to finish. A New God was the antithesis of this. It was tight and focused with a fairly small runtime. The puzzles were interesting but not nearly malleable enough. Combat was good but it just felt like it was holding your hand. Myths of the Eastern Realm is exactly what I’m looking for. 

Myths of the Eastern Realm is a self-contained 5 to 8-hour long adventure through a new world with a new setting. The lands it takes place in are originally surrounded by pure chaos. The creation of Heaven and Earth brought a stable balance to the land that is suddenly disrupted turning all humans into stone. You wake up as Ku, a protagonist much like Fenyx. With Ku comes a new fighting style and new abilities. There’s a nice progression system but it’s much more streamlined with the first 20 or so hours of abilities already achieved. You already know your powers and have a decent pool of stats to draw on. While the land is new, Myths of the Eastern Realm is much closer to the last 10 hours of Immortals than the first 20. 

This style of progression works really in its favor. It cuts away some of the bloat that came with Immortals and makes exploration feel more intentional. It still has the regular items to upgrade health, stamina, and armor but it’s a much faster progression this time around. It’s also not entirely needed to finish. If you’re good (and patient) enough, you could go from one quest to the other and finish it in a manner of hours. Luckily, puzzles are quite fun this time around. They feel more intentional than the base game with very specific solutions. While some puzzles, you can brute force your way through, others have specific solutions that require certain moves or actions. Immortals’ puzzles started to fall apart as you get better abilities and your traversal skills get better but a multitude of these actually feel like something you have to figure out. They’re not hard but they can get quite specific. 

In Myths of the Eastern Realm, there are two central islands to explore, floating way above the earth. Both islands have you deal with two powerful beings, both with their own way of fixing the problems their derision has caused. You have to run through their plans whilst gathering your own. There’s this lovely duality at work in Myths of the Eastern Realms. You deal with the clashing of ideas, the duality of man, and, fundamentally, the fight between good and evil. Not everyone fits within this lens but that’s what makes exploring it so interesting. The land is split into two, there are two central characters you talk to, you are split between man and god. What makes humanity interesting is this grey space, the liminal existence between the binary. It makes us complex. It also makes us complicated. 

Myths of the Eastern Realm itself is not that complicated but that, in turn, fits its own niche. You can examine its themes but its smooth gameplay and reasonably easy difficulty make it work well in a casual sense. If you’re looking for something deep or something with a huge playtime, you might be disappointed. If you want the experience of playing Immortals with a different mythological lens, Myths of the Eastern Realm is easy to recommend

If you happened to read our review of A New God back in February, you’ll likely be aware of some of the issues we saw in it. It was just a little too linear to provide the aspects that the base game did so well. Myths of the Eastern Realm is the perfect antidote to this. With a new world to explore and a more focused storyline, this could be to Immortals what Spider-Man: Miles Morales is to Spider-Man — A fresh, tight, bite-sized piece of what makes the base game so likable.

TechRaptor reviewed Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realm on PC with a copy provided by the developer. The game is also available on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch.