Since its launch late last year, Immortals Fenyx Rising has told the story of a new protagonist exploring a world based on Greek mythology. The game's first piece of paid DLC, A New God, picked up where the base game's story left off, providing even more challenges for Fenyx to take on. However, Immortals' new DLC, Myths of the Eastern Realm, leaves the Golden Isle and Olympos behind in favor of exploring a separate world based on Chinese mythology through the eyes of a new hero, Ku.

While A New God took a different approach from the base game, focusing primarily on puzzles and platforming challenges rather than exploration, Myths of the Eastern Realm feels more like the main story -- sometimes uncannily so. For those who enjoyed Immortals' open-ended gameplay and lighthearted tone, Ku's story is a fun translation of the game's main story to a fascinating and underrepresented world of mythology.

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Myths of the Eastern Realm begins much like Immortals Fenyx Rising by introducing players to a world where gods and mortals are in danger from a malicious force, and only our hero can save the world from destruction. This hero is Ku, who awakens to find he is alone, surrounded by humans who have been turned to stone -- an origin story Ku shares with Fenyx. Ku learns that chaos has taken over, and it's up to the goddess Nuwa to restore balance. Though Nuwa initially wants Ku to stay put, she eventually allows him to help out by locating pieces of Heaven and Earth.

From there, Ku must explore the world and its two distinct regions, which is essentially a pared-down version of the Golden Isle where the various collectables, enemies and puzzles have been reskinned to fit with the DLC's Chinese mythology theming. For instance, "pomegranates" have become "peaches," "Olympian figs" are "saffron" and "Coins of Charon" are replaced by "Jade Coins."

Just as with the base game, Ku's story is split into separate questlines that players can complete at their own pace. There are also plenty of optional puzzles and areas to explore, which net great rewards that allow players to upgrade Ku's health, stamina and weapons. Though the new puzzles and challenges follow a similar formula to the base game's, there are new elements like clouds, which are moving platforms that break when they make contact with something solid. Also compelling are the Eastern Realm's version Mural Challenges, which replace pushing blocks for flipping panels using arrows.

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While the map is obviously smaller and Ku's story is much shorter than Fenyx's, that's not a bad thing. In fact, whereas some of Fenyx's quests to free individual gods dragged on and on, Ku's missions are more straightforward. You don't need to have finished Immortals to play Myths of the Eastern Realm (in fact, you don't even need to have started the game for it to be available on the home menu if you've purchased the Season Pass), but assuming most who are jumping into the DLC have put a least some time into the game, it's nice that this new storyline can be completed in about five to ten hours depending on how much you feel like exploring.

Of course, some of that comes at the expense of the original's depth. Unlike Fenyx, Ku cannot be customized, and he has far fewer upgrades to unlock. Virtually all of his skills become available early on, and there's less context to each of them than there was with Fenyx. As for the base game's light (sometime irreverent) tone, that's remained intact, and will likely be just as divisive this time around.

Perhaps the best part of Myths of the Eastern Realm, however, is how it portrays a mythology and culture that most Western audiences are not familiar with. While Greek mythology has been covered time and time again -- especially in recent years with titles like Hades and Assassin's Creed Odyssey -- its rare for a game to dive into Chinese mythology, especially without referencing Sun Wukong or Journey to the West. Just like the main game, the DLC has plenty of references that those familiar with the source material will pick up on, but it's also filled with World Logs, which spell out the myths and lore, encouraging player to learn more.

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Myths of the Eastern Realms covers similar themes to Immortals Fenyx Rising, but the details and language surrounding them is distinct and particular to Chinese culture. The way that Ku and other characters talk about things like family, devotion and tradition are very much in line with ancient Chinese thinking and concepts like filial piety, and they are no doubt the influence of Ubisoft Chengdu, the Chinese studio that led the DLC's development. Still, while each is distinct, the fact that there are so many lines to be drawn between these Chinese and Greek-based stories shows just how flexible world mythologies are -- as well as how similar the stories that vastly different cultures have told over the years really are to one another.

Unlike A New God and the upcoming The Lost Gods (which has been teased as a top-down brawler that returns to Greek mythology), Myths of the Eastern Realm sticks to the base game's formula. And though it doesn't try to reinvent the wheel, Immortals Fenyx Rising itself proved that placing familiar elements in a new environment could create fresh and exciting gameplay experiences -- so it's shouldn't come as a surprise that the game has done that again.

Developed by Ubisoft Chengdu and published by Ubisoft, Immortals Fenyx Rising: Myths of the Eastern Realms will be available March 25 for PC, Stadia, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Switch, Xbox One and Xbox Series X. A review copy was provided by the publisher.

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