Review: Rygar: The Battle Of Argus (Wii)

Rygar: The Battle of Argus is set in mythical times, the Romans have just conquered the Egyptian Empire and everyone lives in fear of the Gods. You take the role of Rygar, a fearless warrior with supposedly no equal in swordsmanship. Upon receiving a great honour from the Princess Harmonia, she is abducted during the ceremony. Queen Echidna has tapped into the power of the Titans for her own revenge and represents a threat to the Roman way of life. It’s all complete nonsense but the environments give Rygar a recognisable quality.

Events unfold on Argus Island, which is littered with classical Roman architecture albeit in a state of decay. Monuments to fallen heroes and mythical Gods may have fallen into a woeful state, but they are now home to a new sinister presence. Only Rygar can conquer each island location. In doing so hopefully freeing the Princess and along the way consigning the Titans to the history books, once and for all. Yes, it sounds like a starting point for a great romp where Roman, Egyptian, Titan and Greek influences are easily interchangeable.

There’s no escaping that one of the most important considerations concerning The Battle of Argus is its roots in the Playstation 2 title, Rygar: Legendary Adventure. That game was released in 2003 and since you’d have hoped that Tecmo had revitalised the blueprint for the Wii edition, or at least seen fit to give us a true sequel. Instead The Battle of Argus is an extremely lazy port, in fact one of the most blatant we’ve experienced of recent times. The most frustrating aspect is that within Rygar’s limited confines, there is a fun experience trying to be noticed and one that should have been encouraged to develop.

Rygar for many Wii owners will be their first foray into the world of swashbuckling adventure. For those in the know it’s practically impossible to review such a generic game with historical overtones without mentioning God of War. The PlayStation series set the benchmark so high that many have tried to better its non-stop action and epic boss encounters. Rygar uses this familiar mix of backdrops, fixed camera angles and simplistic puzzles, while never letting the action stop. Despite poor execution, clunky dialogue and 16-bit era presentation, the mix still manages to remain fun, at times. Think of it as being like Jason & The Argonauts where you take the role of hero and rarely pause for breath.

In the six years since its release, Tecmo have not shown much desire to take advantage of the Nintendo Wii to any great extent. The main story mode fails to utilise anything but a limited and ineffective example of motion control, despite this type of game being ideally suited to such a method. Instead you have to work with a convoluted control scheme that gets in the way almost as much as the redundant fixed camera perspective. The one-dimensional aspect continues onto the combat, as you progress additional moves become available unlocking new possibilities. Yet fighting rests upon hitting your opponent quickly and learning to block when required. The other moves don’t really matter in the scheme of things and summoning a Familiar is never truly exploited. Bosses despite their epic size are easily dispatched once you have memorised their pattern of attack and located their weakness.

Amazingly more enhanced Wii motion controls do exist in the Gladiator mode that may seem like a welcome diversion, but soon becomes unbelievably boring. Perhaps originally conceived as a training arena to learn combat moves, this sees you having to defend a small patch by simply killing any opponents who appear. Points are awarded for how long you survive on one life and the number of enemies killed. You can also unlock bonus items such as artwork to view. Seeing how the main story does not use the same motion control attacks, the Gladiator mode is immediately worthless. Gamestyle questions the logic of not offering the option to select your preferred control scheme in either mode, or tailor your own approach.

This issue is systematic of the lack of effort investigated in this title, which is identical is almost every aspect to the original PS2 release. The graphics are dated, harking back to 2003 with poor textures and murky levels of detail. In comparison the soundtrack is atmospheric, well orchestrated and represents the real highlight of the game.

Rygar: The Battle of Argus should have been a challenging and thrilling Wii experience, if only more care and attention was put into the final package. As it stands you have a game that has become progressively outdated since its debut in 2003. Even with the system suffering from a lack of traditional gaming experiences, this version is hard to recommend to anyone but fans of the original.

Rating: 4 / 10

Words by Jason Julier