The above may read like a scene from a film or a book, and it many ways you wouldn't be wrong. Rise of the Argonauts borrows heavily from the Argonautica, an ancient Greek poem originally written by Apollonius Rhodius in the 3rd century BC. The original poem tells the tale of Jason and the Argonauts and their bid to retrieve the Golden Fleece from Colchis. The game follows a similar storyline, though the locations and characters in the story are somewhat different from the poem, as are Jason's reasons for wanting to retrieve the fleece. At the start of the game, a cut scene shows the start of the marriage ceremony between Jason and his future wife, Alceme, who is then killed by an assassin's arrow. Jason vows to bring his wife back from the dead by any means necessary, and is soon told that the Golden Fleece is capable of doing that. This sets the stage for a grand adventure for Jason and his Argonauts as they battle exotic creatures in faraway lands.

The game is styled as an action RPG, though it is much more RPG than action, and it's a watered down RPG at that. There are no stat screens for you to spend hours looking at, no inventory system with an easy guide showing what weapon gives you the best bonuses in combat, none of the usual RPG fare at all in that respect. Liquid Entertainment obviously decided that Rise of the Argonauts would be aimed at the more casual gamer who may easily become overawed by all the stats and screens that are common to a lot of RPGs, especially when you add in weapons and armour that adds bonuses to your skills or are better against certain foes. Here everything is much more streamlined, with the bonuses for weapons and armour being quite generic, none being better against specific enemies, instead just offering different benefits such as improved resistance, health regeneration, or giving better chance to critically strike your opponent. It makes it much easier to decide what weapons and armour you need, as once you’re away from your ship, the Argo, you cannot change weapons or armour unless you come across something new.

You do get to improve your character though, by completing constellations. As you progress through the game various constellations will become active (viewable by going into the pause menu), and you'll need to fulfil certain criteria to light up the stars and complete them. These tasks are varied, and may be anything from completing all the side missions on an island, to decapitating a certain number of enemies, or simply learning about your fellow Argonauts. As you complete these stars you are given deeds which you can dedicate to any of the 4 gods (Ares, Apollo, Athena, and Hermes) for their favour. As you gain more favour with each God, you can then in turn use that favour to purchase various powers. Many of these are passive powers that increase resistance or damage, but some are active powers that you can use to revive fallen Argonauts, slow down time, create duplicates of yourself to fool enemies, and many more.

One standard part of RPGs that has been kept in is the amount of exploration and character interaction there is. All of the side missions in the game come from speaking to people you meet along the way, and they often require you to go backwards and forward between people, sometimes requiring a fight, others merely requiring some diplomacy skills. All dialogue in the game is voice acted as well, and it's all done quite well. It's not up to the same standards as something like Mass Effect for example, but it's still well done and you never feel the need to cringe at a bad bit of voice acting. This is especially important given just how much dialogue there is in the game. For an action RPG title, the game leans much more towards the RPG side of things, especially in the beginning of the game, where you can often spend as long as an hour merely exploring your surroundings and speaking to people between fights. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but if you're looking for a more action oriented game then this may not be the one for you, especially if you're not a fan of RPG games as a genre. It's much less action oriented than something like Fable 2 or Marvel: Ultimate Alliance which both fall into the action RPG category.

Should you decide you're happy with that much story in your game, you'll be treated to a very enjoyable, if slightly predictable story. Jason's journey is a good one, full of interesting characters and interactions, both mortal and god alike. Each part of the journey is different to the last, and though there are no fantastic twists or revelations in your journey, that doesn't stop it from being entertaining. This is crucial in a story driven RPG like this and I'm glad they got it right. Perhaps I'm slightly biased as an admitted fan of Greek Mythology, but I think pretty much everyone will enjoy the story and want to see it through to completion.

To do so, and as inferred in my opening paragraph, you're going to have to get your hands dirty. And by dirty, I mean covered in the blood of your enemies. You get 3 weapons to pick from as you fight the various enemies in the game, each with its own benefits. The sword is a good all-round weapon, with good speed and a decent reach. The spear has excellent reach and can be thrown, but lacks power. The mace is powerful and can destroy shields more easily, but can be outmanoeuvred by quick enemies wielding a spear. You can swap between the 3 on the fly during combat, even incorporating the swap into your combos. You have two types of attacks – standard attacks, and execution attacks. Execution attacks are slower than standard attacks, but deal more damage and can put down foes in brutal ways. Should you do a couple of normal attacks with one weapon and switch to another, you will automatically attempt an execution attack with your new weapon. This means you could, for example, use a couple of mace attacks to destroy someone's shield then quickly switch to your spear to impale them through the chest.

Despite the ability to swap weapons and the two types of attacks, I feel they could have done more with the combat. There are no big combos to learn like there are in games such as Ninja Gaiden. While I wouldn't expect the same depth to combat as there is in NG, a few proper combos for each weapon certainly wouldn't have gone amiss. I also would have liked more control of the behaviour of the Argonauts. While in combat they'll just attack whoever is closest to them. It would have been nice to have some kind of command system in the game, where I could tell them to be more or less aggressive, especially if you're trying to get the required number of kills needed for the constellations, as only the enemies you kill yourself count, not the ones done by your allies. So if you're one soldier short of getting a particular deed and Hercules gets to him before you do and crushes him with a bear hug, you need to hope there are more soldiers around the next corner for you to finish off your constellation. It's a fairly minor point as it doesn't really detract from the enjoyment of the combat, but having a command system in there would have allowed everyone to enjoy as much or as little of the combat as they want.

Unfortunately though there are a couple of technical problems with the game, the most obvious being the occasional frame rate problems. It's certainly not a constant problem, but if you get surrounded by enemies and try panning the camera around you'll often get the game slowing down as it struggles to keep up with the combat. On one occasion the game slowed down so much I thought it was going to crash, but after a few seconds it went back to normal speed. The other problem I found annoying is being trapped on invisible edges of trees, door frames, fences, etc. Rather than the game just slightly pushing you to one side to get past whatever may be stopping you, you'll have to do it yourself which becomes annoying after a while. It's another small thing but like everything if it happens enough you'll find it becoming quite annoying until you subconsciously teach yourself to avoid getting trapped in the first place.

Technical issues aside, the game is really quite attractive for the most part. Built on the Unreal engine, some of the environments are stunning, though the typical problem of texture pop up that's inherent to the Unreal engine does creep in occasionally. The character models are all done well enough, though there are times when they could have been more detailed. They're all animated to a decent standard as well, especially during combat, though when Jason is simply running around it can sometimes look a bit robotic in his movement as it doesn't look quite as natural as it should.

As previously mentioned the vocal work in the game is good, certainly enough so that you won't want to cut your ears off after listening to dialogue for hours on end. The music is well chosen too, fitting the theme and setting of the game nicely. I can't see anyone having any real problems with the game from an audio side of things, as there is nothing bad about any of it.

Rise of the Argonauts is a game that tries to mould together the action and RPG genres, and for the most part, succeeds in delivering an enjoyable game. Action game junkies will bemoan the lack of combos and fighting that effectively boils down to 2 button combat. True RPG fans will look at the lack of the usual hardcore RPG elements and possibly turn their nose up at the game. If you're after something that will appeal to the hardcore fans of each genre then this isn't the game for you. If however you don't mind a more casual game, one that has a very interesting story based on Greek Mythology, then I would certainly not hesitate to recommend Rise of the Argonauts to you.