Greek mythology has always been a fertile source of inspiration for game designers, especially considering the massive success of the God of War series.  But Kratos isn’t the only one who’s dealt with Ares and Athena and Zeus and such–in Rise of the Argonauts, you’ll be able to get a whole new side of the whole Greek mythology inspired action-adventure sort of thing.

Rise of the Argonauts puts you in control of King Jason of Iolcus, who was about to get married when his bride to be was suddenly assassinated by representatives of a supposedly dead assassin society called the Blacktongues.  King Jason, of course, didn’t take this lightly and went on a killing spree of everyone in the palace who wasn’t supposed to be there.  But after the blood was mopped up and the corpses were dragged out of the palace, King Jason was still left with a dead fiancée.  Thus, he set up a massive quest above the most technologically-advanced boat of all time, the Argo, to go forth and recover his fiancee’s soul and get it jammed back into her body before it boils off into a kind of metaphysical sludge throughout the cosmos.

In order to do this, you’re going to have to proceed through a series of quests to bring the earthly descendents of Ares, Hermes and Athena to the island of Delphi, where the descendent of Apollo, the Oracle, is already waiting.  Doing other side quests will also allow you to gain bonus traits and powers, giving you advantages in attack and defense as well as resistances and health bonuses.

There is, actually, a ready comparison for the gameplay on this one—it plays a LOT like Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic with multi-level dialogue choices and customizable team-building with AI controls over your teammates.  It’s actually kind of fun in this way, but only kind of.  This allows for a pretty nice story to be instituted, and give you a lot of interaction sort of challenges to do.  How do you handle a situation?  Do you try and convince your conversation target to agree with you?  Do you appeal to their sense of justice?  Or do you just bludgeon your way through the conversation and hope for the best?  These options are available to you on almost every conversation, and will help determine how you progress through the game.

See, Rise of the Argonauts has a LOT of problems to it.  One, it’s going to focus heavily on that dialogue, and the voice acting is not that great.  Two, there’s not a whole lot of fighting to be had here.  I spent way too much time running around between goals and not nearly enough time busting heads.  And when I get into a game like this I expect to be busting a lot of heads from the moment I walk in the door.  I shouldn’t have to be waiting to start the beatdown for everyone to stop talking.  That’s just not right.

However, if you’re into a good story, Rise of the Argonauts will definitely provide plenty of that.  You just have to be willing to accept that you won’t have a whole lot to DO with that story, and if you can handle that, then you’ll likely have at least a rental-grade good time with this game.  Otherwise, you’ll probably want to go find a game with a lot more action in it..