I finished Ryse last night and enjoyed it from start to finish. The graphics are phenomenal and the detail in the sets are amazing for a launch game. Facial animation and lip sync are spot on, voice actors did a great job, the detail in the sets are spot on and the environments are varied and beautiful.
I really loved the setting of the game, ancient Rome. I've read a lot about how it is not historically accurate but I could not care less. I don't know the history of Rome and don't really care, so it was all good enough for me. The story was easy to follow and doesn't get difficult in the slightest, which I appreciate.
Combat was equally simple but I was fine with this. When you are surrounded by 5 guys and waiting for the fight to begin, it always reminded me of fight scene towards the end of The Transporter. You're in the middle and people are surrounding you, you're just waiting for the first guy to attack. When he does, it's sort of a dance that starts, attacking, gliding to the next guy, blocking, attacking...when done right and you don't get hit, it's pretty awesome. You build your combo and get more damage and points to upgrade. You can cancel out of any move to block, which is the linchpin to the combat system.
There aren't many moves you can do, though, it's pretty much attack, shield bash, roll and shield block. You can hold down the attack and shield bash to do a power attack, however I didn't see much incentive to use these. The devs did mix up combat a little throughout the game though, switch between on-foot, then to using the cross-bow stationary weapon, then throwing spears and finally with the group sections where you march with your soldiers and block incoming arrows while spearing them down. You were never really doing one thing too much, which was nice.
The executions were fun throughout the entire game. You can't lose them but if you hit the wrong button, it breaks your combo. By the end of the game though, I was wishing there were more of them. You tend to see the same ones over and over. There are a couple of context-sensitive executions, which was nice. Pinning somebody up against a wall, kicking them off a ledge or holding your shield to their throat while they're under water and drowning. They still follow the quicktime event scheme, only there isn't a button over their head, they instead glow the color of the button you need to push (which is either sword or shield attack). You'll use them a lot, too, since they are kind of like a get-out-of-jail free card, as nobody attacks you while you do them and everybody kind of resets to circling you and waiting to attack.
As for the bad things about the game, it is very linear. You do have a couple of points in the game where you get to choose how to defend or attack, but it's basically a "go left or go right" affair. It tells you what the ramifications are and you pick your strength, that's it. Also, there were a couple of moments where I got stuck on the environment and had to wiggle/jump my way out of it, or I'd get in some kind of dead-zone in the corner where an enemy kept attacking me but my blocks weren't registering. These were few and far between. I also didn't care for the jarring animations when jumping over stuff, ducking under stuff and climbing ladders. There was no transition animation.
Also, I finished the game on easy in 5 hours according to the Smartglass app. One other thing that annoyed the piss out of me were a function of the boss fights. While the fights themselves were fun, it was extremely annoying to work on a boss and get their health bar all the way down, only for a cut-scene to play and you end up fighting them again with a fresh health bar. WTF.
Overall, fantastic game. If you aren't going to play multiplayer (which I haven't touched), then this is definitely a $40 game. However, I don't regret buying it. If anything, it was worth it for the ending scene alone, it brought back memories of MGS4 on the PS3.
EDIT: Ran across this guy trying to get out of dodge:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bSMwavQ0a4o - the game essentially didn't think he existed since I couldn't spear him.
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