Set in Japan during the 19th century, “Rise of the Ronin” is an open-world action-adventure game where the player will take on the role of a samurai in navigating the conflict between the Tokugawa Shogunate and the incoming Black Ships from the West.
The game is rated M18 for strong violence and sexual references.
Played from a third-person perspective, the player character will explore a variety of indoor and outdoor environments to complete a series of missions and tasks. Weapons such as swords, guns, flamethrowers, cannons and arrows, as well as stealth attacks can be used to inflict damage on adversaries. Cash and items can be obtained from slain victims or by pickpocketing other characters. Gameplay also involves engaging in some action and dialogue choices, and side activities such as settling disputes and helping people in need. The protagonist can consume medicinal pills to restore health, or mount a horse for faster traversal.
Bloodstains and corpses can be encountered during exploration. When the player character is defeated, the screen turns red. Throughout the game, there are scenes of graphic violence where characters use weapons to inflict heavy damage onto others. Some of the stronger portrayals depict characters being slashed, impaled and getting their throats slit, while certain attacks result in dismemberments and decapitations with copious bloodletting that stain surrounding surfaces. Other scenes include a character who is implied to commit seppuku, with blood staining the ground. Such portrayals are appropriate under the M18 rating, where the Classification Guidelines allow “depictions of realistic violence, such as killing, maiming or causing other serious injury to humanoid characters.”
The game also contains some suggestive content. These include optional scenes of same-sex characters inferred to be romantically attracted to each other, or implied to be engaging in intimacy, including one of a woman getting atop another before the screen fades out. Other scenes portray geishas dancing and playing music for guests, and descriptions of sexual innuendoes during conversations between characters without explicit details shown. The M18 Classification Guidelines allow the depiction of “some homosexual content, if discreet in treatment and not gratuitous”.