Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realm

Immortals Fenyx Rising's second DLC takes the game to an entirely new world, but it still doesn't stray too far from its old one.

Again, Myths of the Eastern Realm doesn't tie into the core Fenyx campaign at all, but once you're done, you unlock all of Ku's equipment for use in the main game. A nice little bonus, considering how powerful some of Ku's weapons and armour sets are.

With its ancient China setting, Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realm could have expanded the main game's experience in a lot of meaningful ways, but Ubisoft Chengdu preferred to play it extremely safe, presenting an expansion that, in reality, expands very little. Lacking the good writing and the hilarious characters of the main campaign, and any major gameplay change, this DLC expansion is a worthwhile purchase only for those who haven't had enough of the puzzle-solving seen in Fenyx's adventure. Everyone else will find this adventure in the Eastern Realm a little stale.

Immortals: Fenyx Rising - Myths of the Eastern Realm marks the return of the game back to the more open-world adventuring as opposed to the instanced puzzle-solving of A New God. However, the DLC does not manage to differentiate itself enough to stand tall. While visually stunning and delving into the rarely touched Chinese mythology, Myths of the Eastern Realm, the expansion feels much more subdued and even a bit unsure at times, especially when it comes to humor.

Myths of the Eastern Realm felt a little underwhelmed and I wish they had added more to the mains story than do something which felt more like a spinoff than anything else.

Myths of the Eastern Realm is so repetitive because it changes almost nothing about the repetitive game it was based upon aside from the setting. This expansion could have been a chance for Ubisoft to address criticisms of that core experience by implementing a more varied toolset, moving away from block pushing, and allowing for more freeform exploration all while taking fulling advantage of Chinese mythology. Instead it makes all the same mistakes, which are more unforgiving this time around. Immortals itself was already awash with unoriginal ideas and Myths of the Eastern Realm is only following that trend, making it a derivative expansion of an already-derivative game.

If you wanted more of the same but with a new look, Myths of the Eastern Realm is just the thing for you but if the fact that you were going to get a totally new and different setting from the main game had raised your expectations, there is a good chance that you will get disappointed.

While Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realm fails to bring the title to its fullest potential, it offers some fresh innovations that fix the mostly dull original game. The shift in narrative tone helps alleviate the base game's narrative inconsistencies, and the reduced length means you're able to make the most of the combat and climbing systems quicker. However, the fact that it's essentially a reskin of the base game means that this DLC never reaches the heights it should.

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 likeable.

In the end, Myths of the Eastern Realm feels like an abbreviated version of the core Immortals Fenyx Rising experience. The main character and the gods have been swapped out, but little has changed in the overall feel. It's not a bad expansion by any means, and if you enjoyed the original, this is a good excuse to fire up the game again to explore a new region. The superficial treatment of the underlying content feels like a real missed opportunity. Given the care that Ubisoft typically puts into research for its games, Myths of the Eastern Realm comes across as more akin to Cliffs Notes than a novel.