Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods Review

Immortals Fenyx Rising is a really interesting game that plays with some foundational tropes of its genre and spins them to make something safe yet new. It doesn’t always work and has the standard amount of Ubisoft bloat but it's generally enjoyable. Both to its favor and detriment, Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods follows in its footsteps. The experience isn’t perfect but the new perspective gave me a genuine reason to try the base game again.

Taking place after the events of A New God, Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods challenges you with reuniting ancient forces and solving puzzles, all from a fresh perspective. Not only do you get a new character, but you also get some new mechanics that actively shapes the way you might view the base game.

Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods’ central gimmick is you play the role of Fenyx controlling the actions of Ash. The end result is a mix between Immortals and Diablo,  a top-down action-adventure game that plays with the formula just enough to keep you invested. Ash is not a god, but she is good with combat. This allows The Lost Gods to feel fresh and drip feed you godlike powers in a very intentional order. 

Where you could go pretty much anywhere from the start of Immortals, The Lost Gods feels more linear and intentional. You have to advance a storyline to get the lunge and a further one to double jump. If you want to climb, you have to earn it. This makes progression much more rewarding whilst leaving exploration feeling a little flat. Early on, there’s little to keep you exploring when going too far has you unable to move forward. It's hard to will yourself to explore somewhere when you won’t have the ability to beat it for some time. 

That being said, when exploration is good in Lost Gods, it really works. Moving around from above the character makes platforming much more rewarding than the base game and, ultimately, more fun. There’s an innate sense of fun to Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods that the story and tone play up to really well. To avoid being too overt, the goddess Athena guides Ash in her owl form pleasantly named Owlthena. As Fenyx’s champion, you feel constantly guided by the gods in your quest to unite those less willing to help. 

An early scene with Poseidon annunciates this tone rather well. You follow him into a molten pit filled with deadly traps and great fire, only for him to act aloof and pretend he’s not there. He could simply disappear or move away but he entertains this mortal at his feet asking him to help. He acts almost shy as he turns you down. The personification of these legendary characters brings the heart to the center of the story. It turns a basic story into an enjoyable one, even if it's not that memorable. 

Ultimately, Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods is about the adventure itself and it's well aware of that. It’s about climbing a mountain just to see the sight behind you. It’s doing something hard just so you’ve done something challenging. The mechanics play up to this in interesting ways. Every skill you have to learn through your story, but they can be changed in unique ways. You earn the ability to shape your skills to deal more damage or use them in midair. You earn essence from killing creatures that can be added to skills to change them slightly. You can focus on a bunch of damage or adding stamina and more momentum. 

The way Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods plays up to its customization system is fun but limited. It requires you to change things to get further but that doesn't matter much after you’ve done it. Meaningful change is tied to progression leaving the minor change you get from exploration feeling a little stale. Ultimately, The Lost Gods is a linear approach to open-ended world design and this doesn't always work in its favor. 

Whilst puzzles feel more intentional, their solution often feels a slight bit boring when you don't have multiple ways to fix it. Although you could breeze through puzzles in the best game, their willingness to let you do that led to a lot of fun. Like Breath of the Wild before it, its open design was open to be exploited and that is highly enjoyable. 

Immortals Fenyx Rising: The Lost Gods Verdict

Although it hasn't been all that consistent in quality, The Immortals Fenyx Rising season pass has been commendably unique this year. A New God attempted the same perspective with a few new layers, Myths of the Eastern Realm offered a fun, if limited, view at an alternate attempt at Immortals. The Lost Gods is, by far, the most adventurous DLC and the most fascinating to play but it’s still bogged down in the same mistakes made before it. This is absolutely the DLC you should play but it's still not as fun as the base game.

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