Dad Joke: The Game returns! A New God is the first major DLC for Ubisoft’s action-adventure Immortals: Fenyx Rising, continuing the story of the adorable wannabe-hero-demigod Fenyx. Following the restoration of their essences to a bunch of eccentric gods and the defeat of Typhon, the protagonist is invited to join her siblings and Lord Dad in the Olympian Pantheon… provided she can pass the gods’ challenges, of course!
A New God is everything you’d expect from a DLC: it adds a variety of new gear, new abilities, new challenges that either utilize completely new mechanics or use the old ones ramped up to 11, and continues the story of the main game.
So spread your Daedalus’ Wings and leap right in! This is our Immortals: Fenyx Rising – A New God review.
Having defeated the titan Typhon, Fenyx earned the recognition of Aphrodite, Ares, Athena, Hephaestos, Hermes and even Zeus himself. The gang thinks that Fenyx is ready to join their elite club at the top of mount Olympus.
However, there is a catch: every one person mentioned above wants to test their youngest sibling in a variety of ways. To go through all of the gods’ trials, you’ve got to be swift, witty, strong and mysterious like the dark side of the moon. Additionally, divine siblings consider the use of healing potions as cheating, so you can already see where this is going!
It isn’t a single challenge or even three challenges. Each person on the list will ask you to complete a whole set to test your resolve. If you remember the main story challenges from the base game, each of the tasks is basically like that. Time-limited? Check. A bit of RNG? In. Can randomly go wrong and force you to grind your teeth together and begin anew? More often than you think!
The developers from Ubisoft that have tested the action-adventure community with the puzzles of Ares, Aphrodite, etc. have rubbed their hands together in glee and presented A New God with all it has, including magnets, portals, death lasers, and more. If you are someone who enjoyed the mini-games and puzzles of the base game despite the frustration they gave from time to time, you’re going to love the DLC.
While A New God doesn’t revamp the game or bring major changes to the way Immortals plays, it adds just enough new content and painstakingly-designed Vaults that will test your knowledge of the game’s mechanics. Who knows, it might be possible to cheese some, provided you know how to!
If you endure the trials of a particular deity, they will offer you a blessing by buffing up the ability provided to Fenyx during the original campaign. For example, finishing Athena’s set of challenges will buff your Athena’s Dash to break through the Immortal Fields.
Finishing the Vaults of all divine siblings allows you to challenge Lord Dad Zeus himself and claim your rightful place in the Olympian Pantheon.
Unlike the base game, A New God is much less of an open-world action-adventure. Most of your time in the DLC will be spent tackling puzzles inside the Vaults – the even harder analogs of the Rifts. For someone like me, who didn’t necessarily mind the mini-games, but also enjoyed riding through the lush fields and deserts of Golden Isles only to leap from a cliff and glide through half the map, that particular aspect of the expansion feels lacking.
It also cements the feeling of the sameness of the gameplay loop: just when you are done with a Vault and a set of puzzles, back in you go on another quest. The particular puzzles might differ, but jumping from one to the next with barely any pause feels suffocating in the way the base game did not.
The story has taken a similar approach: the DLC has completely embraced Immortals’ identity as Dad Joke: The Game. Fenyx’s siblings crack jokes left and right, but at the same time, the actual characters’ development is basically non-existent for any of them, including Fenyx as well. I have not really expected a lot of character development in a humorous game like Fenyx, especially in a DLC aimed largely at a variety of challenges, so I don’t consider it a minus. But it would have been nice to have.
Altogether, if you are someone who had enjoyed the puzzles and mini-games offered by Immortals: Fenyx Rising and you don’t mind or actively look forward to the next bout of Zeus’ dad jokes, you will have a splendid time in A New God. It can get frustrating when circumstances beyond your control or RNG ruin your latest Vault run, but nothing compares to the feeling of having left one behind.
And finding another three waiting for you!
Similar to: Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, Genshin Impact
Note: the base game and the DLC are verified purchases by the author
